30 August 2011

johnny cashless sings "we're in obama's prison"


we received this today by email forward.

EXTERNAL LINK

29 August 2011

1st circuit appeals court smacks down nutty district court judge mike caldwell's tony the grosse tete truck stop tiger ruling

louisiana has so many incompetent and downright crooked judges and attorneys it's pathetic.

this assclown caldwell has been a lawyer since 1974; yet still doesnt know basic law such as you cant take someone's property without at least giving them a hearing.

the sad part is that it's no telling how many others "judge" caldwell has fucked-over in a similar fashion and gotten away with it too -- simply because they didnt have the money to take it to the next level or the media attention to bring his shoddy judicial practices to light.

====
Ruling in Tiger Truck Stop case tossed

JOE GYAN JR.

Advocate staff writer

A Baton Rouge appeals court on Monday threw out a judge’s May ruling that barred state officials from issuing any new permits to an Iberville Parish truck stop to keep a 550-pound tiger on display there.

A three-judge panel of the state’s 1st Circuit Court of Appeal sent the matter back to state District Judge Mike Caldwell for another hearing, saying Tiger Truck Stop Inc. in Grosse Tete and its owner, Michael Sandlin, deserve to be heard.

Caldwell’s ruling in May came after the Animal Legal Defense Fund sued the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to have the tiger removed from the Interstate 10 truck stop.

Only attorneys for the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries took part in the first hearing.

Caldwell later denied Sandlin’s and Tiger Truck Stop’s request for a new trial.

The 1st Circuit said Sandlin and the truck stop “were parties needed for just adjudication in this case.’’

The appellate court reversed Caldwell’s denial of the new trial request, vacated his May ruling in favor of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and sent the matter back to him “for further proceedings.’’

Caldwell had agreed with the Animal Legal Defense Fund that a permit can only be issued to an individual, not a corporation, and that the individual must live on the premises.

Tiger Truck Stop is the permit holder, not Sandlin, the judge said.

The last annual permit that the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries issued to Tiger Truck Stop was in December 2010. ~ view original

EXTERNAL LINK

28 August 2011

hurricane irene nearing new york city

here are a few snaps a friend of ours who lives in brooklyn, took from her cell phone, saturday evening, 27 august 2011.

====
BULLETIN
HURRICANE IRENE INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY NUMBER 32A
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL092011
800 AM EDT SUN AUG 28 2011


...CENTER OF IRENE NEARING NEW YORK CITY...

SUMMARY OF 800 AM EDT...1200 UTC...INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...40.3N 74.1W
ABOUT 40 MI...60 KM SSW OF NEW YORK CITY
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...75 MPH...120 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NNE OR 20 DEGREES AT 25 MPH...41 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...963 MB...28.44 INCHES
====
UPDATE:
000
WTNT64 KNHC 281302
TCUAT4

TROPICAL STORM IRENE TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL092011
900 AM EDT SUN AUG 28 2011

...CENTER OF IRENE MOVES OVER NEW YORK CITY...

REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT AND NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATE THAT THE CENTER OF IRENE MOVED OVER NEW YORK CITY AROUND 900 AM EDT...1300 UTC. IRENE HAS
WEAKENED TO A TROPICAL STORM AND THE ESTIMATED INTENSITY AT LANDFALL WAS 65 MPH...100 KM/H.

SUMMARY OF 900 AM EDT...1300 UTC...INFORMATION
--------------------------------------------------
LOCATION...40.7N 74.0W
ABOUT 0 MI...0 KM N OF NEW YORK CITY
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...65 MPH...100 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NNE OR 20 DEGREES AT 26 MPH...43 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...965 MB...28.50 INCHES

$
FORECASTER PASCH
====
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
====
see also

EXTERNAL LINK

27 August 2011

louisiana college president joe aguillard devours a worm onstage

via: save our l.c. "joe ate a worm in chapel"

click here to download/view the clip
or view the whole thing over on wildcat media here.


====
last updated 03 september 2011 - embed added
====

EXTERNAL LINK

hurricane irene: virginia beach, va., degenerate exposes himself during live weather channel standup

via: twitter @drudgeretort

As a broadcaster lamented the number of people who were out on the streets of Virginia Beach, Va., during Hurricane Irene, one of them exposed himself to the full fury of the storm. "I'm speechless," the broadcaster said. ~ read more

EXTERNAL LINK

new yorkers blow off mickey bloomberg's hurricane irene scare


The hype over Hurricane Irene is overblown, predicts the CEO of Advanced Forecasting Corporation.
====

====
BULLETIN
HURRICANE IRENE ADVISORY NUMBER 28
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL092011
500 AM EDT SAT AUG 27 2011

EXTERNAL LINK

26 August 2011

video: lsu head coach les miles presser on suspension of quarterback jordan jefferson and linebacker josh johns

via: twitter @wwltv

click here or external link to view/download the video
====
"earlier today, both josh johnson and jordan jefferson are suspended until further information is brought to light and that suspension is indefinite." ~ les miles
====
related posts
  • jim beam crappin' his depends over les miles - snoop dogg friendship
  • head coach les miles post bcs game press conference

  • ====

    EXTERNAL LINK

    rod noles: tax credit housing competes with alexandria landlord gayle underwood's rental properties

    our [alexandria landlord gayle underwood call for federal investigation into city of alexandria government!] post from the other day takes a new twist.


    link to audio download page

    ms. underwood made her call before the alexandria city council tuesday afternoon ... early the next morning she was amongst the first to phone in to the rod noles radio program.

    on wednesday mornings, rodney v. noles, an area real estate executive and developer, hosts his own local am talk radio show about area economic development and what-not.

    in turns out that his property management firm was set to manage a portion of the housing project in question (sparc phase 2) that ms. underwood opposes.

    we come away from the conversation with the opinion that what mr. noles was getting at, is that ms. underwood has property in the 3rd street area to let and opposes new housing, because it has a potential to harm her bottom line.

    we also found amusing ms. underwood's casting herself as some sort of champion of the people when she complains about how close together the apartments were built.
    ====

    one thing's for sure this should all make for one heck of a an investigation; we cant wait to see how it turns out.

    EXTERNAL LINK

    alexandria attorney thomas davenport sues ladads.info webmaster

    this is all developing but we'll probably have more as time goes on.

    click here to download 14 page .pdf [2.66 mb]
    ====
    see also
    www.ladads.info

    EXTERNAL LINK

    hurricane irene nasa terra satellite snap

    via: twitter @nasa

    ====
    high-res snap at link
    All of Hurricane Irene captured in this image from our Terra satellite, Thursday ~noon ET. http://go.nasa.gov/ofJRnB #hurricaneirene
    ====
    see also
    hurricanes.gov
    ====

    EXTERNAL LINK

    25 August 2011

    last days of the o.k. allen bridge

    work crews continue progress laying out the replacement bridge soon to be hoisted and spanned across the red river at alexandria and pineville, louisiana.

    click picture to enlarge
    ====
    ====
    ====
    ====

    EXTERNAL LINK

    24 August 2011

    alexandria landlord gayle underwood call for federal investigation into city of alexandria government!

    we agree. although, most likely not for the same reasons.


    we've opposed the sparc program from the beginning; neverminding that, we would like to see an investigation too, into, for example -- why the alexandria city council two weeks ago approved after much -- apparently for public consumption, complaining, belly-aching, bitching and moaning, giving $140,000 [97,143 eur] tax-payer dollars to continue to prop up the alexander fulton hotel when there is an extremely high probability that it is going to shut its doors at 01 november anyway. so wtf there?

    it would have made far more sense to have denied this 140k squandering public money and then approving phase 2 of the sparc/hodges stockyard project.

    the council could have used that money for a lot of things, but since they have that kinda money to waste, the least they could have done was to apply it toward the legal fees in expropriating the bentley -- then after the alexander fulton shuts down, the sheriff can sell them both.

    the alexander fulton hotel would have been sold off eons ago on the court house steps if the city would not have kept applying taxpayer money to it.

    so there needs to be an investigation into the capitol one banksters and the alexandria city government to find out if the banksters are blackmailing the mayor and the city council or just what is going on because this makes no sense.

    we would like to see a complete, in toto, in globo investigation into each city councilperson the results of which should show amongst other things how and why they arrive at their decisions.

    another thing that we would like to see investigated is why exactly is councilman chuck fowler a republican the only one voting in support of the sparc expansion -- when it is contrary to the republican platform. so he needs to be investigated from top to bottom too.

    oh and while you're at it -- find out why councilman harry silver at going on 90 years of age (no joke) is the only councilman with any sense.

    as far as the alexandria mayor -- we've never said that he was honest -- at least as far as politically -- but after umpteen lawsuits -- some, maybe all of which he has been deposed and/or had to testify under oath, investigations, whisper campaigns, including that freak piece of shit greg aymond and his dreary band of rabble-rousers and house negros dogging him out daily, for years, the result of all this has not yielded one thing that the mayor could be arrested for, disbarred, censured, removed from office etc, etc: zip. zilch. nada. nyet.

    the fact of the matter is that mayor roy was reelected, in the open primary, less than a year ago with 62% of the vote.

    louisiana is a to the victor go the spoils state and the mayor has his entourage of supporters and others, that he trusts to carry out his will.

    what we have in opposition to the mayor is a group of people who want to steal all the mayor's ideas and plans as their own and most importantly the money they generate -- to give to their friends.

    this is true because they never stand up to the mayor over what's right and what's wrong or even what political philosophy they pretend to subscribe to, like how wrong it was to borrow a bunch of money to fund an inperpetuity governmental give-a-way program(s) the repayment of which, in part, is already promised by alexandrians not even born yet and without their informed consent by an in perpetuity (slave) tax (2007) -- a clear violation of moral law and federal law, including but not limited to, amendment xiv, federal constitution and louisiana law at La. R.S. 14:134.

    so yeah, lets have an investigation. send in the national guard, feds, postal inspectors, fbi, carnivore, darpa, the calvary & that thing up in alaska, haarp or whatever, you know, the whole nine yards, because its obvious that alexandrians, no matter their race, creed or religion are too stupid and pathetic to come together as one, like they should have done years ago, to march on city hall with torches and pitchforks and put a stop to this chicanery.

    we recommend that everyone closely question each candidate for sheriff of rapides parish and alexandria city marshal about what exactly they have done to curb public corruption -- NOT what they plan to do.

    they are all longtime policemen and if each one can not give you a specific example of who, what, when, where, how and what time of what he has done to put a stop to public corruption -- then refuse to vote for him -- because they are part of the problem. simple as that.
    ====
    alexander fulton hotel, downtown alexandria, la. 18 august 2011
    ====


    click here to skip ahead to ms. underwood's call or fast forward to 4:00 minutes
    ====
    related posts
  • rod noles: tax credit housing competes with alexandria landlord gayle underwood's rental properties

  • ====

    EXTERNAL LINK

    indian hen woodpeckers

    a pair of indian hen woodpeckers (pileated woodpecker:dryocopus pileatus), in rapides parish, louisiana, enjoy a game of drumming round the pecan tree around 7:28 am cdt, wednesday, 24 august 2011.

    click picture to enlarge
    ====
    ====
    ====
    And God created great whales, and euery liuing creature that moueth, which the waters brought forth aboundantly after their kinde, and euery winged foule after his kinde: and God saw that it was good. ~ genesis chapter one:verse twenty-one, kjv (1611)

    EXTERNAL LINK

    22 August 2011

    **FLASH** richard lee mcnair talks about viewing solitary mermaid blog and wst... while on the lam


    link to audio download page

    richard lee mcnair is the federal inmate who escaped from the the united states penitentiary (usp) in pollock, grant parish, louisiana, a "high security institution housing male offenders," on wednesday, 05 april 2006. he was captured in campbellton, new brunswick, canada on thursday, 25 october 2007.

    mcnair is now incarcerated at the the administrative maximum (adx) facility (aka supermax) in florence, colorado. it "houses offenders requiring the tightest controls."

    as you can imagine, during his 568 days on the lam, mcnair, used the internet as much as he could.

    at the beginning we posted about the escape several times; our most notable post is this one, because it contains the dashcam video.

    ====
    sometime after friday, 11 august 2006, we noticed, probably from referral logs, that an anonymous, female canadian blogger, "solitary mermaid," had linked to that post.

    we've often wondered and it was only recently that we learned, for sure, that mcnair had indeed visited wst... as well as the solitary mermaid blog.

    while we're anxious to find out what mcnair writes about it, in the letter he mentioned in the above audio clip, that he is mailing to byron christopher this week, we can see where there might be some confusion about the mysterious "comment - link(s)" from wst... to solitary mermaid.

    we refer to them as "mysterious comment-link(s)" now because if anyone who hears the above clip or if by chance it's included in mr. christopher's book and then visited the 06 april 2006 post or any other of our richard lee mcnair posts, they would not find any comment from, nor link to, the solitary mermaid blog. so wtf?


    this is what we believe happened: on 05 april 2006 we were still using blogger.com's comment system.

    blogger's commenting system is o.k. but the comment spam we would receive was just overwhelming. for example: "we really despise scott arthur edwards."

    it looks like that on 26 october 2006, we registered with and installed the haloscan commenting system. we used haloscan until they went out of business in early 2010.

    the thing about replacing the blogger commenting system is that you lose all those blogger comments. actually they're not lost, just covered over.
    ====

    this snapshot was made on 14 april 2006, months before solitary mermaid's 11 august 2006 post which mentioned and linked to the wst... post. this is where mcnair would have seen the "mysterious" link to solitary mermaid.

    apparently, another feature that you lose when you switch from the blogger commenting system to another, is the backlinks or "links to this post" feature.

    how that works is, when another blogger links to one of your posts the title of their post along with the link will magerifically appear towards the bottom of the post of yours that they linked to.

    confused yet? check out this post from the official google video blog and look under the "links to this post" and you will see all the posts that linked to that post displayed.

    so from the period of 11 august 2006 until we installed haloscan on around 26 october 2006 there was a backlink under "links to this post" to the solitary mermaid blog. this is what mcnair saw.

    whether mcnair discovered wst... from the solitary mermaid blog or the other way around we dont know and perhaps he will address that in his letter.

    without giving away the details, we do know that the very first time (in his life) mcnair got on the internet was from a computer located in interstate dodge, chrysler, jeep -- then located in monroe, la., now west monroe -- and the very first thing that he viewed was the ball, la. police video.

    whether or not he viewed it from wst... or even viewed the video that we had uploaded is, at least for now, pure speculation.

    so, in short (kinda), when we installed haloscan we lost the backlink to the solitary mermaid blog. a couple of weeks ago when mr. christopher mentioned mcnair's referring to a blog post from a woman who offered to put him up, we instantly recalled it but without that backlink and it being nearly five years since we had viewed that blog + we had ignorantly neglected to link to it in the body of one of our blog posts, irrespective of a dodgy backlink feature, so that it would have been preserved -- we didnt have a clue how to locate it or even if that blog was still online.

    we thought that a seahorse was associated with that blog. seahorse ... mermaid at least we were in the ball park.

    finally, yesterday morning we were able to locate that blog.

    so after viewing all of solitary mermaid's richard lee mcnair posts, we couldnt find where exactly she had stated an offer to take mcnair in.

    it's possible that we misremembered that or solitary mermaid could have thought twice about what she wrote and edited a sentence or two out of the post but according to mcnair that was his impression of the post as well -- guess we'll have to wait and see.
    ====
    after we found her blog we were able to get her email address -- its publicized on her blog -- and search our gmail account for it.

    we found the record of her comments and a forgotten email exchange we had with her:

    ====
    ====
    as you know mcnair was captured on 25 october 2007 but it was only about 3 months ago that he had his telephone privilege restored.

    mcnair is now allowed one telephone call per month no longer than fifteen minutes in length. the first two calls, naturally he called his folks.

    saturday evening, 20 august 2011, mcnair made his third call this time to byron christopher. this is the first time that mcnair has spoken by voice to a news reporter. -- in late 2008, mr. christopher and mcnair began a postal mail correspondence that consists so far, of 153 letters from mcnair containing over 2,000 handwritten pages.

    mr. christopher has generously shared with us a pretty good bit of confidential information: (1) about the minot, north dakota, shootings and murder and (2) details relative to cenla and louisiana concerning mcnair's escape and the search and (3) mcnair's leaving louisiana and we can honestly say, that whether or not any mention of wst... in mr. christopher's forthcoming case study makes the final cut, that this is a fantastic story.
    ====
    photo credit: richard lee mcnair via: byron christopher upon information kindly furnished by michael soucy
    Here is a shot of McNair's stolen white GMC Savanna van, as seen in the reflection of a Ford dealership he was scoping out at night.

    This was shot on October 4, 2007.

    McNair was captured on October 25th. ~ photo caption: byron christopher
    screen grab from a video made by richard lee mcnair in rimouski, quebec, canada, at medaillon ford on leonidas avenue -- released to wst... by byron christopher, 20 august 2011. the dealership has since moved and changed names.

    salle de montre translates into english as showroom.
    ====
    see also
    the richard lee mcnair label
    in the footer of this post
    ====
    related posts
  • a wst... global exclusive: case study: the richard lee mcnair file

  • ====

    EXTERNAL LINK

    20 August 2011

    internet support grows for tony the grosse tete, la truck stop tiger

    ###
    the baton rouge morning advocate has changed its mast and its url to www.theadvocate.com so we werent sure at first which site we were on.


    watch in HD from youtube

    these are two really well made vids that explain tony's situation. be sure and visit savetony.com

    to view the radio show internet broadcast, click >> http://outonline.com/ and look to the right and choose "save tony the tiger - out and wild with joe exotic" from the vid list -- it's currently the top vid. (we couldnt find a direct link to it).

    EXTERNAL LINK

    19 August 2011

    blogosphere: 3 rpso deputies suspended in wake of missing drugs/evidence internal investigation

    topix - woodworth forum commetators. according to the commentator, "thetowntalk," probably not to be confused with the gannett/alexandria daily town talk, a public mail-out is forthcoming.

    if wst... receives a copy we will post it.

    ====

    EXTERNAL LINK

    18 August 2011

    slabbed blog sued by the canadian greg aymond's

    in need of a good horse laugh? meander over to slabbed and read their post "First class bitches, common thugs or plain ol’ morons: The Girls at Trout Point Lodge sue Fox 8 and Slabbed. A Trout Point Lodge /Jefferson Parish Political Corruption Scandal Update" the accompanying lawsuit and the comments.

    lawsuit excerpt:

    Leary and Perret feared imminent contact and harm from obviously mentally unstable individuals from the deep south of the United States ~ paragraph 87
    an official statement from slabbed new media llc,. is forthcoming.

    EXTERNAL LINK

    one crazy motorcycle stunt ... deserves another

    via: email fwd

    Red Bull paid the American biker $2 million for this stunt.

    After the jump the biker said he will never do it again, not even for $10 million...

    EXTERNAL LINK

    17 August 2011

    a wst... global exclusive: case study: the richard lee mcnair file

    wst... note: this is an extremely lengthy and difficult post. yet one of the most interesting posts that we've ever done.
    while there is a chance that some may interpret this as our "blowing our own horn" so-to-speak thats really not the case as there is a chance that wst... might receive a sentence or two passing reference in a book about richard lee mcnair, it gave us a good opportunity to relive the events of the spring of 2006 ... and 17 november 1987.
    ====
    click picture to enlarge
    "notice of escaped federal prisoner" original fax sent at 1:53 pm cdt by the bureau of prisons
    source: byron christopher via: roy hebron

    where to begin ... around mid morning on wednesday, 05 april 2006, the united states penitentiary in pollock, louisiana inmate, richard lee mcnair, "mailed" himself to freedom.

    wst... first learned of it later that evening when we happened to glance at the television screen and read kalb's crawl -- which we posted about here.

    we assumed that the escapee would be captured overnight and that would be the end of it. boy were we wrong.

    on the morning of 06 april we learned that the prisoner had not been captured. sometime before 10:33 am gannett/the alexandria daily town talk newspaper had acquired and uploaded to their website www.thetowntalk.com a dashcam video between a ball, la., policeman and the escapee in which the policeman and mcnair, playing a runner, exchanged pleasantries before the ball cop shook mcnair's hand and let him continue his run.

    thus began mcnair's "the running man" saga.

    we really cant remember what if any opinion we had of the ball cop and what he did or didnt do in the mcnair stop. we just knew that the video was an incredible find.

    at that time youtube was fairly new we didnt even have an account there so we opened one and we attempted several times to add it there but they had a strict 10 minute in length and 100 mb file size per video limitation and the ball cop video is seven seconds over the 10 minutes cutoff and at 101 mb was always rejected.

    so we uploaded it to google video and posted it here.

    now it's instantaneous, however, in those days, at least as far as wst... posts were concerned, it took google up to 24 hours to fully spider and index our postings into their search engine.

    the evening of april 6th, we noticed that our first post containing the kalb crawl was beginning to receive a lot of traffic from googlers searching for mcnair news. so we updated it with a link to the second post -- the one containing the embedded dashcam video.

    not long after the second post became the primary post that google would send traffic to.

    looking back at that post now the length of it and all the updates scattered around, it hardly makes any sense but due to all the interest in mcnair's escape we were attempting to keep everything on one page to avoid creating another post and waiting for google to catch up again.

    many of the visitors were from the feds - doj, homeland security, fbi, bop and police departments. still many more visitors were from regular citizens who were concerned that they might live in the path that mcnair was taking and were looking for the latest news and links.

    one news article that we were able to acquire and repost with his permission was written by our friend andrew w. griffin. mr. griffin had been a reporter with the alexandria daily town talk and he had left only a few months before to take a job with the lawton, oklahoma, constitution which as it turned out is mcnair's hometown newspaper.

    living here, on the same side of the red river and not that far, as the crow flies, from where everything was taking place, the longer this "cold blooded killer" was on the loose made it easy to identify and empathize with the fear and tension that folks over in the tioga area were feeling.

    so it became like an obligation or a challenge really that as long as mcnair was on the loose and so many people were looking for information about his whereabouts that we would attempt to post all the updates that we could.

    some visitors now may think that we were just attempting to draw traffic here for the ad revenue. however, we didnt add google adsense until nearly 21/2 years later in september 2008.

    after it was confirmed that mcnair was out of the area the story was pretty much over as far as we could tell. we continued to post a few updates about him from time-to-time because of the local interest
    ====
    ====
    source: adatlantic.com 2010 better newspapers competition 32 page [12.2mb].pdf
    click here to download hi-res scan of section b cover page 05 august 2009 campbellton tribune
    one page .pdf [631 kb]
    ====

    unbeknownst to us though was that in canada and elsewhere the mcnair escape and 18 months on the lam generated a massive amount of interest and remains a sensation to this day.

    one interesting tidbit that we learned -- we know alex cenla will love this -- is that apparently, cenla is receiving tour buses sent here at least in part by interest in the mcnair escape.

    in the fall of 2008, canadian crime reporter, byron christopher received a lead from a colleague about a federal prisoner who escaped and made his way all the way to canada before being captured.

    mr. christopher explains in the below audio file how one thing led to another and he began corresponding with mcnair, now held at the florence, colorado, supermax federal penitentiary.

    actually, we had heard of byron christopher before. in january 2009, wst... fave mike magnoli (now with katc in lafayette, la.), did a local interest story about mcnair and interviewed mr. christopher by phone about their burgeoning correspondence. we posted about it here.

    as far as we can tell, that january 2009 post is the last we heard anything about mcnair.

    until last sunday, 07 august 2011, when out of the blue we received an email from byron christopher.

    mr. christopher's interest was in our 13 april 2006 post "riding the richard lee mcnair escape train." in that post we mentioned all the various traffic that the mcnair escape was generating.

    so we emailed him back and again, one thing led to another and we wound up having two telephone conversations with him that afternoon and evening.

    mr. christopher had been commissioned to write a case study of the mcnair case which will be an enlargement of his award winning "the running man" series that ran in the campbellton tribune newspaper from august 2009.

    all last week mr. christopher answered our follow-up questions and sent us more information about his work.

    while mcnair's escape was the cause for all the excitement and tension around cenla, we often wondered what the story was behind why mcnair was in prison for in the first place.

    in the msm accounts you might get a sentence here or a paragraph there touching on the 17 november 1987 incident in which mcnair, reportedly, shot two men, killing one when they walked in on him burgling a grain elevator office in minot, north dakota.

    mr. christopher made available to us several passages from his draft about mcnair's escape, the [cenla part of the] search and the ball police officer/dashcam incident.

    both passages are painstakingly researched. where possible the participants describe what happened in their own words. this was the result of mr. christopher's travels to cenla, north dakota and elsewhere to interview anyone as well as view evidence thats been connected to mcnair.

    mr. christopher has perfected a technique in his case study of allowing mcnair to tell the his story, in his own words, while mr. christopher fills in around that with whats happening based on his research.

    one of our concerns was whether this was all an attempt to glorify mcnair.

    for sure, the mcnair escape and subsequent 18 months on the lam makes for a compelling story. just how did a 47-year-old man escape from a federal prison in grant parish, louisiana, on foot, with no money, with no outside accomplices and with the full force of the federal government as well as every parish and county sheriff in the country out looking for him -- make it all the way to canada?

    we're happy to report that from the passages that we've read from mr. christopher's case study that the central louisiana police and people were treated very well -- including ball policeman carl bordelon, whom mr. christopher says was given a bad rap by the media and after being privy to mr. christpher's research and methods we believe him.

    but there was that reason for mcnair's being in jail to start with: the 17 november 1987 minot, north dakota shootings and murder.

    the murder and shootings are not glossed over in any way whatsoever. mr. christopher has allowed mcnair, in his own words, to describe the events of that night, while using the technique we described before, he went back and filled in around mcnair's words with the words of the surviving victim dick kitzman, first responders and another grain elevator employee, jerry omvig who arrived at the scene right after it happened.

    mr. christopher also drew from his viewing of the crime scene photos and police reports including a transcript (to be in the book) of dick kitzman's 911 call.
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    jerry thies tombstone
    fort snelling military cemetery, minneapolis, minnesota
    photo credit: byron christopher, december 2010
    ====
    the vivid recounting of the break-in, shootings and murder as well as mcnair's reasoning for it all, are as disturbing as their inclusion is necessary.

    we understand that the family of the slain trucker, jerome "jerry" theodore thies, are very reluctant to talk to the media.

    while we've never had an immediate member of our family murdered, so we cannot know exactly how they feel, we can understand on some levels where they are coming from.

    if we could, we would probably tell them that for reasons known only to god and satan, that the lives of mr. thies, dick kitzman, larry omvig and others are forever linked to richard lee mcnair and that as long as mcnair's story is being told so will mr. thies and he will not be forgotten.

    as for us, we dont hate mr. mcnair, nor do we, even if we could, damn him to hell for all eternity. we believe that he deeply regrets what he did and how he messed up his own life.

    mcnair writes that back then he was like a selfish, spoilt child. "a piece of shit." that if north dakota, at the time, had the death penalty that he would have received it and deserved it. we agree.

    which brings us back to the present -- on sunday evening 14 august 2011, we had an opportunity to have a telephone conversation with byron christopher about all this. the embed is below.

    towards the end, mr. christopher plays an audio clip from a home move that mcnair made while on the lam.

    this is the first time that mcnair's voice has been broadcast publicly -- exclusively from wst...
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    link to audio download page
    wst... note: this is a telephone conversation we had with byron christopher on sunday, 14 august 2011. this is not an "interview" or represented as such.

    although we had chatted by phone with mr. christopher for about 30 - 45 minutes the previous sunday as well as emailed back and forth all week -- we still became a bit nervous at the beginning - but such is life.
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