Peter Callahan, longtime attorney for the Catholic Diocese of Orange.

Today, the Orange County Register plays catchup to the Los Angeles Times and interviews Scott Hicks, who claims Bishop Tod D. Brown abused him decades ago. Again, no mention of the fact that the Weekly broke this story six months ago.

But we're straying from our point. In the Register piece, Callahan was asked to comment about Brown. Not only does Callahan label Hicks' allegation as an "attack," but he then offers this gem:

"Bishop Brown is a good and decent man and he has led the way among many bishops across the country in trying to resolve the pain of victims who have been harmed in any way by any things or persons associated with the Church," [Callahan] continued.

Hey, Petey: dunno how much silver His Excellency is paying you to spout such crapola, but I wouldn't classify as "good and decent" somebody who creates one set of rules for themselves and another for everyone else. And that's just the most recent example to cite: here's some hella older ones.

• California's Police State: Imagine you are a suspect and the police take your entire statement out of context by secretly recording only snippets that seem to incriminate you in a crime. Can’t happen? Think again. California police officers have won the right to selectively tape you. It’s the Rush Limbaugh method of police work and by any fair measure it’s disgraceful. Today, Register opinion writer Steven Greenhut slams Orange County state representative Todd Spitzer (R-Brea) for his attempts to thwart any police reform legislation including SB511 which would force cops to record entire interrogations in violent felony cases. Greenhut isn’t disturbed by debating the merits of the police reform proposals. He’s pissed that Spitzer, a “second-rate demagogue,” is attempting to defeat numerous law enforcement reform measures with a cheap argument: police don’t want reforms and anyone who does is pro criminal. In “Disagree with Spitzer and You Love Criminals,” Greenhut writes:

  Spitzer's speech earlier this month on the floor of the Assembly was a stem-winder. There's demagoguery, a fierce attack on a straw man and the setting up of false choices. It includes invective and taunting. It is pompous, deceptive and totally for show, given that no one is persuaded to change their mind by such banter. Spitzer's talk reflects an unthinking trust in government power and a stunning lack of concern about common government abuses, excesses and mistakes. Spitzer acts mainly as the spokesman for an interest group (the law-enforcement unions) rather than as a defender of the Constitution or the people.

  It’s not a secret that Spitzer, a former reserve cop termed out of Sacramento soon, dreams of eventually becoming the local district attorney if he can keep on the good side of GOP kingmaker Michael J. Schroeder and the powerful local union that represents deputies and prosecution investigators.

  Read the column here.



• Tustin Inspired Space Travel? The Los Angeles Times finds 51-year-old Young K. Bae, a “maverick one-man rocket research institution in Tustin.” Bae tells reporter Peter Pae that he’s working on the “photonic laser thruster.” Sounds like something from the Jetsons, but Bae--a UC Berkeley atomic and nuclear physics graduate--thinks he can overcome “the physical barriers of current rocket science technology.” The dream is to harness laser power enough to power future space ships. A joke you say? Perhaps, but U.S. Government officials at NASA have been so impressed with Bae’s work that they recently award him $230,000 to continue his research. As a sign of the possibilities, he’s hoping to soon prove a laser beam can lift an object the size and weight of a CD.


• More on the Bishop Brown Mess: Reporter Rachanee Srisavasdi travelled to Fresno to interview Scott Hicks, the man who claims Bishop Tod Brown repeatedly molested him decades ago. The alleged sexual abuse has scarred Hicks, a solid citizen, good husband and father who even today needs escape from his childhood memories. He stares at the flowers in his yard, cuddles with his dogs, sculpts pottery, reads poetry, draws and plays guitar, according to Srisavasdi. “These things help you escape,” Hicks tells her. “They make everything go away and, for a while, I can feel good.” Hicks believes that the abuse started one day when he attended a Bakersfield confessional with Brown, admitted that he’d been aroused by his father’s Playboy and quickly found himself the object of the future bishop’s sexual perversions. The Hicks story--revealed five months ago by OC Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano--has created a public relations nightmare for Brown. In an attempt to win public relations points in the seemingly never-ending sex abuse scandals, the Bishop had guaranteed that all allegations of abuse would be released publicly. The church released many documents, but one remained--as Arellano proved--buried: Brown’s relationship with Hicks. Peter Callahan, a snotty, hired legal gun for the Diocese of Orange, notes that it’s the bishop’s word versus Hicks, and the bishop says the man-boy sex charge is “untrue.” I guess that is supposed to be comforting. Still, the church won’t release documents and, bless his heart, Hicks passed an independent polygraph examination about his tale. Srisavasdi, a Reg courthouse reporter, “balanced” her story by throwing in some quotes by professors who question regained memories while in therapy.


• SF Braggart on TCA: Former Weekly contributor Alex Brant-Zawadzki--now in a San Francisco for law school--wants attention for his contributions in the fight against the TCA's plans for a new toll road in South County. In his Saturday blog posting, ABZ says last week's bombshell California Coastal Commission report should have cited his old OCW work which reached the same conclusion: the proposed road is a potential disaster on several fronts despite TCA lies otherwise. To read him gloat, go here. You can tell he's going to be one annoying lawyer someday. Just don't let this Newport Beach boy play with refrigerator magnets.

• The Final Solution: Alicia Robinson at the Daily Pilot takes over court duty in the Benito Acosta trial and finds ACLU lawyers continuing to press their point that Acosta’s arrest for speaking at a Costa Mesa city council meeting was “political.” At a 2006 public meeting, Mayor Allan Mansoor allowed members of the Minutemen Project to stand to show support for a controversial cops-immigration plan backed by Mansoor. But when it was Acosta’s turn to speak, Mansoor--an honorary member of the Minutemen group--turned the public microphone off before the allotted three minute speaking period had lapsed, demanded that pro-Acosta folks remain seated, took a break in the meeting and had a gaggle of cops drag Acosta from the hearing. When Acosta reached back to the podium for his speech officers pounced, according to video. Three police officers want the Newport Beach jury to believe that Acosta, a little fellow, scared them and, given this is OC where an on-duty officer can ejaculate on a female motorist and get away with it, jurors will probably buy it. Robinson says Officer Dan Guth testified that the expulsion and arrest was necessary “because of the situation inside the council that was being created by [Acosta] and what he was saying and his actions.” [My emphasis.] But there wasn’t any violence until the cops used force to help Mansoor. Acosta had merely asked his allies to stand just as Jim Gilchrest with the Minutemen had been allowed to do. He didn't call for violence. The person who should be on trial is Mansoor, a shameless hack who built his political career on antagonizing the least powerful in Costa Mesa.
• It Worked for the Chinese? The Department of Homeland Security claims it will complete 70 miles of new border fencing this month despite earlier predictions otherwise, writes Richard Marosi at the Times. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff went to Arizona yesterday to celebrate the wall and the Secure Border Initiative with Boeing Co. engineers like Welby Redwine (didn’t make the name up, honest.) Redwine gives Marosi the money quote: “This is going to be a rude awakening for the crowds [of poor immigrants] that come in the fall.” Yeah, I’m sure the Mexicans don’t know where the US is putting the fence.
• Sifting Through Toll Road Lies: On Friday, the California Coastal Commission released a scathing reporting rejecting a long list of silly claims in support of a new toll road by Orange County’s Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA). The TCA (a tool of local real estate developers) wants to build a 16-mile road at a cost of $875 million (a preposterous lie; triple the number for a glimpse of reality) through San Onofre State Beach, one of the last undeveloped coastal regions in Southern California. Predictably, the Orange County Register and Times lazily present the issue as either save-the-environment or reduce-traffic-congestion. Reality check: the new road has nothing to do with reducing existing traffic. OC building industry interests desperately need the road built to sell tens of thousands of new homes they have planned for South County. What will tens of thousands of new homes do? It sure won't reduce traffic.
• California Cryobank: Looking for a fascinating read this weekend? See "The God of Sperm: In an industry veiled in secrecy, a powerful L.A. sperm peddler shapes the nation’s rules on disease, genetics — and accidental incest" by Steven Kotler at our mighty sister paper, LA Weekly.

Motherfucker. I am so disappointed. I thought this was the last time this piece of shit show was going to air but unfortunately next week is the finale episode of Newport Harbor, not this week. This allows just one last chance for these complete fucking wastes of space to invade our lives with their meaningless jargon and Barbie clichés.

So the episode opens with Sasha and Chrissy (BFF!) pondering the meaning of life, it was the blond leading the blond as they discussed the great unknown – whether Chrissy and Clay would stay together after graduation.

How come they never said that Clay was a junior? WTF. I’ve been watching this god-forsaken show for weeks now and this is the first I’ve heard of it. Anyway, the whole cast is abuzz with graduation talk.

Allie wants to know if she will be able to go to Europe, where we last left things she was arguing about how unfair her life is because her parents don’t think she is mature enough to go off to Europe without parental supervision. They were right. But regardless, Allie and her friend that doesn’t matter to the story line were left to discuss a change in strategy.

“Try to be mature about it,” The friend that doesn’t matter to the story line said. “It’s like my dad always says, ‘You always get more’ wait. ‘You catch more flies with’ um.”
“What does your dad always say?” Allie asks.
“Whatever,” FTDMTTSL said.
“You catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar?” another girl who equally doesn’t matter says.
“Well that’s what I plan on doing!” Allie says.

Three years ago, Orange County's most famous anarchist pleaded no contest to several felonies relating to his alleged attempt to blow up La Habra's Moose Lodge in 2002. On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court overturned Matthew Gordon "Rampage" Lamont's conviction, arguing that police violated Lamont's civil rights when they searched his car on April 20 of that year.

If April 20 sounds like a familiar anniversary, it is, although not in a good way. That night at the Moose Lodge, members of an Orange County chapter of the white supremacist group Aryan Nations were rumored to be celebrating Adolf Hitler's birthday. The planned birthday party never happened. Instead, just blocks away, Long Beach police detectives pulled Lamont and a friend over as they drove up and down the street, seemingly lost or unsure of whether to proceed with their alleged plan to blow up the building.

Inside the vehicle police found a plastic jug full of gasoline, sponges soaked with flammable liquid and embeded with candles, several cigarette lighters, rubber gloves, a bandana, and "anarchist materials and "articles on Nazi gatherings." In its ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court found that because "there was no reasonable suspicion that justified the vehicle stop" all evidence used against Lamont "should have been suppressed."

Lamont had already had several run-ins with the law, most notably on May Day 2001, when he and more than 100 other anarchists, many of whom lived in a communal house in Long Beach, descended on the city's downtown area looking for a fight with the cops. Police herded the demonstrators into a corner and blasted them with rubber bullets. Lamont and his cohorts were all charged with misdemeanor charges of failure to disperse.

The last time the Weekly spoke with Lamont, he was in jail awaiting trial for the Moose Lodge incident. He refused to say why he was driving near the lodge, but claimed the police had been spying on him for weeks. (Police reports reveal that Long Beach cops indeed had been following Lamont and other anarchists ever since they picked up internet chatter among activists planning either to protest the Aryan Nations event or do something more sinister.

Since Lamont received a three-year prison sentence three years ago, the fact that the California Supreme Court has now overturned his conviction probably comes too late to see him released from prison early.

No word yet on his current wherabouts, but if his last public comments are any indication, Rampage will continue to live up to his nickname. "The bottom line is this country has to change," he said in an interview at the Orange County jail, where he converted to Islam and slept in a private cell thanks to death threats from white inmates. "Time is running out for America," Rampage predicted. "We're a whole new generation. Me, I'm prepared to go to prison. I'm prepared to die. I'm only 21 years old. I have plenty of life to throw away."

Apparently building a six lane, 16 mile long toll road right down the middle of an environmentally protected state park would break some hippy-dippy law from way back in the 70s, according to the eco-nazis at the California Coastal Commission via the Los Angeles Times.

The commission released a 236-page analysis that surprisingly contradicts a previous report by the toll-road builders, the Transportation Corridor Agencies. The coastal commission seems to think the road would lead to "widespread violations of state environmental laws designed to protect endangered species, natural resources and recreational opportunities," while the TCA's scientists concluded the road would actually bolster the park by creating a freeway from which to shower the environment with candy colored rainbow syrup, thereby making it better.

It makes one wonder how two teams of scientists could look at the same data and come up with two wildly divergent views. Let's see, the coastal commission is a government-created agency that is charged with preserving the natural beauty of California's hundreds of miles of coast. TCA is a private interest-created entity charged with expanding suburban development into otherwise remote areas and fill the lands with the splendor of more McMansions and Home Depots.

Not sure whether this latests development will lead to more delays. The $53 million per mile road has already had it's construction pushed back from an originally rosy start date of this summer to an increasingly wilty indefinite future date. Currently TCA hopes to begin in 2011.

Photo: LAT

Links to come--am boarding a plane to El Paso...

While OC Weekly cover boy Monsignor John Urell is in Canada to presumably get his rocks back in order, the Jeff Andrade matter trudges on. The latest twist: Urell’s lawyer is busy fighting a subpoena filed against the two of them filed by Newport Beach attorney John Manly.

In a letter dated Sept. 25, Urell personal attorney Peter Hennessey tries to plead innocence and ignorance as to why he should be deposed. “I am not aware of any legitimate basis supporting your trial subpoena of a non-party witness’s attorney,” Hennessey wrote to Manly. “I was not a witness to any of the events involved in the underlying litigation.” As for Urell, Hennessey repeats what he has told the world—“unavailable for medical reasons.”

Manly, on his part, noted Hennessey’s inconsistent public chronology of Urell’s breakdown with the truth in his response. “Your statements are the only explanation as to why Msgr. Urell has gone to Southdown [Gustavo’s note: the Canadian psychological facility where Urell sought treatment for “acute anxiety”] in contempt of court,” Manly wrote. “As such, you are a witness in the case.”

But Manly doesn’t end there. He alludes to a previous post of mine in stating that “the OC Weekly’s description of your story which involved ‘cheese grits’ was most apt.

“On a personal note,” Manly concludes, “I fully expect this type of third-rate transparently bogus cover story from the Catholic hierarchy and those who have made a living defending pedophiles. I am shocked that your firm would permit itself to be involved in this perversion of the civil discovery process.”

The pool of 100 questions unveiled today to be used on naturalization tests starting in October 2008 doesn't look all that different from the 96 questions they're replacing. At least not $6.5 million different, the reported sum spent on the revamp.

Some hard questions were simplified – applicants had to name both of their state senators and all three branches or government on the old test and just one of each on the new – while some of the more random fact type questions have merely been replaced by equally arbitrary ones. "Who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death?'" and "Who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner?" are out, "When is the last day to file your income tax forms?" and "Name one of the writers of the Federalist papers" are in. And lest we forget: "What major event happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States?"

The two metropolitan areas with the largest number of newly naturalized citizens were not included in a four month pilot program fine-tuning the new questions; 65,813 people naturalized in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Orange County area and 132,326 in greater New York City in 2006, according to Department of Homeland Security figures. Of the ten pilot regions, Miami and Denver had the most naturalizing citizens for 2006, ranking third and 26th respectively.

Some critics of the new questions perceive a shift toward conceptual rather than factual answers that adds an additional burden on poor immigrants with limited education or English fluency on top of a recent fee increase. In July, naturalization application fees were raised to $675 from $405. But maybe those critics didn't look at all the questions. If anything, I'd say the test looks easier and pass rates in the pilot group rose to 94% versus 84% with the old questions. See both the old and new questions here and judge for yourself. Whether the test actually measures anything useful is another story.

It's always tedious to hear health-freaks go on and on about the benefits of this or that special shake. But now there's a drink that gets right to the point, putting you to sleep all by itself.

(I thought such a thing already existed, and was called "whiskey." The things you learn in this job...)

So behold "dreamerz," billed as an "All Natural Sleep Beverage" and a "Dietary Supplement." The product's officially trademarked tagline is "Good Night, Better Day!", and the flavor, of course, is "chocolate s'nores." The allegedly active ingredients are "Lactium" (a registered trademark of some kind of milk protein), Stevia leaf, and Melatonin. Also, it's sweetened with "crystallized cane juice" rather than high-fructose corn syrup, which seems like a good thing.

Just in case you're stupid, the package also bears the following warning:

"Caution: May cause drowsiness."

Free crap photo behind the cut...

This weekend, get your butts to the Edwards University theater to check out GREAT WORLD OF SOUND.

I had the chance to see this earlier in the year at the L.A. Film Fest. Pardon the self-plagiarism, but what I said at the time bears repeating:

The success of Borat: Long-Ass "Funny" Subtitle I Get Really Tired Of Seeing Written Out In Full By Other Critics really seems to be inspiring people to do their own hybrid-reality movies -- as mentioned, I saw one like it the other day, and now this, a movie about “music producers” who hold auditions for their record label that are a total scam. Though most of the film is scripted, the bulk of the auditions are real -- ads were placed, bands were heard, and the two lead actors tried to hustle them and get them to sign. Afterwards, told what was up, the musicians pretty much got it and agreed to be in the movie anyway. What’s striking is that they could just as easily all be character actors, since they hit the same acting tone as the actual cast.

The movie opens with hopeless nerd Martin (Pat Healy) getting a job interview for what seems to be a radio job, but turns out to be music production -- sort of. The idea is to audition new talent, and sign them, but not just the good ones. See, part of the pitch is that while the company, “Great World of Sound,” pays certain studio costs, etc., the artist has to pay a percentage themselves, upfront. And it soon becomes clear that everything beyond that is a con, all to get the checks, which are to be made out to “GWS,” the company acronym but also the president’s initials.

Healy teams up with a black guy named Clarence (Kene Holliday), which allows them to play good cop/bad cop with black singers (Clarence pitching them the idea that his white boss doesn’t get their music, but he does, etc.). The actors mostly improvised their pitches, and come up with some great lines, like “When Jesus walked on water, the first thing he did was get out of the boat!” Holliday, it turns out, was both the voice of Roadblock in the G.I. Joe cartoon, and Matlock’s sidekick Tyler. I wouldn’t have guessed, but his performance here is one of the year’s best. Healy’s role is less flashy, but he’s no slouch -- deadpan delivery of dialogue like “I’m not gonna drink because I just brushed my teeth” is his forte.

With David Gordon Green’s name attached, you might expect a Southern flavor, and you get it...the action mostly takes place around Charlotte, NC, and there’s an overwhelming sense of rural economic desperation as a backdrop. And it doesn’t subside. This may be a comedy, but there’s no guarantee of a happy ending.

At one point, Martin says to a would-be critic, “I’m self-deprecating. All you gotta do is watch.” That applies to the movie as well. Before it’s done, it goes to surprisingly dark places -- nothing violent or anything, just really questionable moral choices that don’t get answered in a tidy fashion.

But beyond all that, it’s really freakin’ funny. So go see it.