Rick Santorum Shilling for NOM
Submitted by David Hart on Mon, 07/27/2009

Former US Senator, Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum [R-PA] is lending his name to National Organization for Marriage. Who’s next? Joe the Dumber Plumber? Santorum’s pitch against marriage equality is that same-sex marriage is a “nightmare.” He is also conforming with the NOM meme that judges who rule in favor of marriage equality are “anti-marriage.” Yet, I am still waiting for one of these theocrats to explain how any couple’s same-sex marriage affects any other couple’s “traditional” marriage. Overall, this is a pretty standard send us some money.

There is a Palinesque framing of progressives as “elite” and DOMA is described as defense of children. This was probably written by one of NOM’s high-priced political consultants. NOM uses the same PR firm that the swift boaters used and they have also hired a brigade of bigots as spin doctors.

2 Million for Marriage

I need you to be one of 2 million Americans working to STOP Washington from repealing the Defense of Marriage Act. Will you help?

Dear Supporter,

Should people who disagree with same-sex marriage be treated by the law as racists and bigots?

Should schools force kids to learn that it’s good for men to marry men and women to marry women?

Should Congress allow a radical judge in Boston to impose same-sex marriage across the nation?

I trust your answer to these questions is an emphatic “No!”

But these nightmares could happen soon—because President Barack Obama and liberal leaders in Congress have promised to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

That’s why I’m asking you to (1) sign the online petition to Congress and/or (2) send a donation to join the Two Million For Marriage Campaign, a project of my friends at the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

Our historic campaign has one goal: STOP Congress from abolishing the Defense of Marriage Act (known as DOMA).

DOMA was carefully written to specifically shield any state from being forced to recognize gay marriages from other states.

This makes DOMA a strong firewall against out-of-control, anti-marriage judges.

But . . . if Congress repeals DOMA, then gay couples, who “married” in the six states where radical officials have imposed gay marriage, will sue other states to recognize their “marriages”.

Soon gay marriage, like a grassfire, would spread across America!

In state after state, gay marriage activists and liberal courts would rapidly destroy laws protecting marriage—even constitutional amendments approved by voters.

That’s why I hope you will join our Two Million For Marriage Campaign with an online gift that will instantly be put into action!

As a U.S. senator, I helped pass the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. But now President Obama has vowed to “repeal . . . the Defense of Marriage Act.”

President Obama’s campaign was in great part bankrolled by a small yet zealous network of Hollywood liberals and gay marriage activists.

This elite has been plotting to take away our right to define marriage as a husband and a wife . . . and then to use legalized gay marriage to indoctrinate our children in school.

In Massachusetts, where radical judges imposed gay marriage on unwilling citizens, schoolchildren as young as first grade were read books like King and King, which features a gay wedding between two princes, complete with a kiss. Judges have banned parents from opting out their own children from same-sex “education” in their schools. A Christian adoption agency—Catholic Charities—was forced to shut down because it refused to obey Massachusetts’ requirement to give innocent children to gay married couples.

Please click here to stop these outrages from spilling across all of America.

Make no mistake, the plot to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act is a ruthless attempt by a rich, politically powerful minority to take away the rights of the vast majority of Americans and faith communities.

For example, billionaire gay activist Tim Gill has vowed to “punish the wicked”—meaning people like you who oppose gay marriage.

That’s why I need you to click here to (1) sign your online petition to Congress and (2) donate to the Two Million For Marriage Campaign.

We aim to bury Congress in an avalanche of petitions telling them: “Don’t Mess With Marriage!” Don’t repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. Not now. Not ever.

But we’ll need every petition.

And while your petitions are being delivered on Capitol Hill, your contribution will be hard at work throughout America creating a firestorm of resistance to the plan to repeal DOMA. Your donation will help: Recruit millions of Americans to stop the repeal of DOMA through ads on radio, TV, Internet, magazines . . . mail and e-mail . . . interviews . . . and more.

Build coalitions across parties, races, and denominations to create a chorus to stop the repeal of DOMA that the Washington politicians cannot ignore.

Persuade members of Congress. The National Organization for Marriage is legally allowed to lobby Congress—and with your help, we will!

The National Organization for Marriage—creator of the Two Million For Marriage Campaign—is a proven winner in the battle to defend marriage and children.

We helped win the battle for marriage in California in 2008, playing a crucial lead role in the Proposition 8 marriage amendment.

We are endorsed by Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. Dr. Dobson and his wife, Shirley, personally contributed to the National Organization for Marriage.

That’s why I urge you to join the Two Million For Marriage Campaign today! Click here to (1) sign your online petition to Congress and (2) donate to help us convince Congress and America to stop Barack Obama from abolishing the Defense of Marriage Act.

If we don’t act now, DOMA will soon be repealed—quickly, quietly, and with little fanfare—just like the gay marriage activists are planning.

It’s up to us—you and me—to stop them by petitioning Congress and recruiting millions of Americans to join in our effort.

Please let me hear from you today.

God bless you,

Rick Santorum

By Pareene
Mon Jul 27 2009

Last year, a well-funded, well-coordinated campaign to ban gay marriage in California won by a slim margin, partly because opponents forgot to organize and campaign until after the vote. Now they are not going to bother trying again next year.

Why? Because since last year’s vote, in the absence of a campaign of any kind, polling on gay marriage hasn’t shifted. So it’s not even worth it to try to overturn the ban in 2010, gay marriage inactivists say. After all, they all assumed Prop 8 would just fail, on its own, because it’s California, and then it passed, because of the Mormons and the Blacks and the Olds! It passed by a whopping 4 points (less than one million people), so let’s just wait until 2012.

Marc Solomon, marriage director for Equality California, said he spent June and early July asking the opinions of nearly two dozen California political consultants and pollsters and had been surprised by the almost unanimous opinion that a 2010 race was a bad idea.

“I expected having watched the protests and the real pain that the L.G.B.T. community had experienced that there would be some real measurable remorse in the electorate,” Mr. Solomon said, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “But if you look at the poll numbers since November, they really haven’t moved at all.”

So. Obviously you can’t fundraise without an organization, and you don’t want to build an organization until you think you might win, and you can’t win when no one is campaigning to change anyone’s mind, and so it’s best to just WAIT IT OUT. The olds will die, eventually! Especially once we pass OBAMACARE.

And gee, you may be saying, wasn’t one of the problems, last year, that gay marriage advocates waited too long to actually reach out to voters, allowing the issue to be framed by fear-mongering opponents? Yes, which is why they mustn’t make that mistake again, by trying to win an election in 2010.

by Jason Bellini

The Daily Beast has learned that the Senate, prompted by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, will hold hearings on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—a first since 1993, despite Obama’s campaign promises.

After determining she didn’t have enough votes in support of a temporary suspension of the ban on gays in the military, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tells The Daily Beast she has secured the commitment of Senate Armed Services Committee to hold hearings on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” this fall. It would be the first formal re-assessment of the policy since Congress passed it into law in 1993.

A statement from the Gillibrand’s office, shared exclusively with The Daily Beast, notes that “265 men and women have been unfairly dismissed from the Armed Forces since President Barack Obama took office.”
Gillibrand’s fast-track proposal for halting DADT, an amendment to the Military Reauthorization Act that would have ordered the Defense secretary to stop investigating gay service members, was never introduced. Even with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressing his support, Gillibrand couldn’t gather the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster, according to a spokesperson.

“I thought it was a long shot from the very beginning,” says Aubrey Sarvis, executive director the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an organization fighting for the end of DADT.

“Clearly one of the positive things that came out of the Gillibrand amendment was that it served as a catalyst for hearings,” he added.

Gay-rights leaders expressed high hopes that Senate hearings could bring reluctant legislators around. According to a recent Gallup poll, 69 percent Americans think gays should be allowed to serve.

“Almost all serious experts who used to argue against allowing gays in the military have either changed course or died,” says Nathaniel Frank, author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America.

Charles Moskos, the Northwestern University sociologist who came up with the DADT policy, died last year. He “defended the [DADT] policy to his dying day,” says Frank.

No matter the outcome of Gillibrand’s hearings, the chances of DADT’s repeal look stronger in the House, where Iraq war veteran Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) is taking the lead on a repeal bill called the Military Readiness Enhancement Act. Gay-rights lobbyists say he’s getting close to the 218 votes needed to pass the bill.

Momentum in Congress could help ease the pressure on the White House. After the Palm Center of the University of California at Santa Barbara released a report in May making the case that Obama could issue a stop-loss order for gay soldiers, Obama faced harsh criticism form the gay community for insisting only Congress could overturn DADT.

The controversy has caused bitter rifts and recriminations within the gay community. Leaders of some gay-rights organizations, particularly the Human Rights Campaign, came under attack from activists and bloggers who accused them of protecting their access to the White House by not pressuring the president on DADT.

The Palm Center plans to issue a report this week with the provocative title, “A Self-Inflicted Wound: How and Why Gays Give the White House a Free Pass on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

A summary of the study, shared exclusively with The Daily Beast, says that “a network of gay and gay-friendly individuals and organizations worked to derail the possibility of a suspension of the ban,” but the summary doesn’t name the individuals.

Jason Bellini is a freelance TV journalist who has worked for MTV, CBS, and CNN. In 2006, he received the Journalist of the Year award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

By The Associated Press
07.27.2009

(Olympia, Wash) Sponsors of a campaign to overturn Washington state’s domestic partnership law turned in their petition signatures Saturday and said they believe they have enough to force a public vote.

The expanded “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law was scheduled to take effect Sunday, but is now delayed until the signatures can be counted, a process that could take up to a month.

To qualify for the November ballot, supporters of Referendum 71 must have 120,577 voter signatures. Supporters say they have about 138,000 signatures.

“I feel our signatures are pretty clean,” said campaign spokesman Gary Randall.

If they have enough signatures, the law will be delayed until the outcome of the referendum. If they fall short, the domestic partnership expansion will immediately take effect.

The signatures were turned in a day after opponents of the new law announced a final push to force a public vote, calling their effort “too close to call” and asking people to show up on Saturday at the Capitol to turn in their signatures to the secretary of state’s office.

Greg MacPherson of Kent, Wash. said he drove two hours in traffic to turn in about a dozen signatures.

“We want to stand up and be counted,” he said.

The new domestic partnership law expands on Washington’s existing partnerships. The newest version adds registered domestic partners to all remaining areas of state law that presently apply only to married couples. Those statutes range from adoption and child support rights and obligations, to pensions and other public employee benefits.

The underlying domestic partnership law, which passed the Legislature two years ago, provided hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.

Last year, lawmakers expanded it to give domestic partners standing under laws covering probate and trusts, community property and guardianship.

Josh Friedes, a spokesman for Washington Families Standing Together, said that if the referendum does end up on the ballot, he is optimistic that voters will retain the law.

“We need to have a conversation about the needs of gay and lesbian families,” he said. “So in some ways, this referendum brings to the foreground a lot of issues, and to that extent the dialogue can propel the movement forward.”

A political group called WhoSigned.Org has already said it will publish online the names of people who signed petitions. The petition-listing effort is not supported by the official campaign trying to keep R-71 off the ballot.

Washington state’s latest expansion of domestic partnerships for gay couples was hanging in limbo Friday as opponents announced a final push to force a public vote, calling their effort so far “too close to call.”

By RACHEL LA CORTE

Associated Press Writer

OLYMPIA, Wash. —
Washington state’s latest expansion of domestic partnerships for gay couples was hanging in limbo Friday as opponents announced a final push to force a public vote, calling their effort so far “too close to call.”

In a statement to supporters, organizers of the Referendum 71 campaign said they should have the minimum 120,577 petition signatures needed by Saturday to qualify for the ballot.

But R-71 organizer Gary Randall also said the campaign doesn’t have enough extra signatures to act as a cushion for erroneous or duplicate petition signatures, which must come from registered Washington voters.

To help meet the deadline, Randall appealed to R-71 supporters to gather additional signatures and drive them to the state Capitol on Saturday afternoon.

“This is how you can make the difference,” Randall said.

The new “everything but marriage” expansion of domestic partnerships is scheduled to take effect Sunday, but the law will be delayed if referendum sponsors turn in their petitions.

If the campaign has enough valid signatures, the law would not take effect unless approved by voters in the November election.

The new domestic partnership law expands on Washington’s existing partnerships. The newest version adds registered domestic partners to all remaining areas of state law that presently apply only to married couples. Those statutes range from adoption and child support rights and obligations, to pensions and other public employee benefits.

The underlying domestic partnership law, which passed the Legislature two years ago, provided hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.

Last year, lawmakers expanded it to give domestic partners standing under laws covering probate and trusts, community property and guardianship.

The referendum wouldn’t overturn the underlying domestic partnership and its first expansion. But it would roll back the additional rights granted this year.

As of this week, more than 5,700 domestic partnership registrations had been filed in Washington since the first law took effect in July 2007.

The domestic partnership bill is Senate Bill 5688.

—

On the Net:

Legislature: http://http://www.leg.wa.gov

Washington Families Standing Together: http://http://www.wafst.org

Protect Marriage Washington: http://http://www.protectmarriagewa.com/

Domestic partnership information: http://http://www.secstate.wa.gov/corps/domesticpartnerships

Agency urges voters to refuse to sign petitions for Referendum 71
Thursday, July 23
BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN
COLUMBIAN STAFF WRITER

After opponents of gay rights kicked off an effort this summer to repeal Washington’s new “everything but marriage” law, gay rights backers in Clark County have found an unusual champion.

It’s the YWCA, the nonprofit group that describes its goal as “Eliminating racism, empowering women.”

As part of an effort to broaden its political identity, the Vancouver-based YWCA of Clark County has become the most prominent local voice against Referendum 71, a proposed ballot issue whose backers are still rushing to gather more than 120,577 signatures by Saturday afternoon.

“There were a few folks that were concerned about our organization getting publicly involved, because of the potential backlash,” said local YWCA Executive Director Kathy Kneip.

But equal treatment for same-sex couples was too important an issue to ignore, the YWCA decided.

“We think that we will gain more supporters by far than we will lose supporters for having taken this stand,” Kneip said Wednesday.

So far, the group has written letters to local newspapers, sent e-mail blasts to its 1,800 subscribers and hung a banner opposing R-71 outside its Main Street headquarters.

Kneip’s group typically draws about half its revenue from government grants and contracts, tax records show. Among its services: A 24-hour crisis line for domestic violence victims, court-appointed advocates for abused children and a preschool for poor children younger than 5.

In 2007, the YWCA’s total income was $3.5 million.

Money spent opposing R-71 came from donations, not government grants.

In all its communications, the YWCA has urged people not to sign R-71 petitions, to keep the issue off the November ballot.

The referendum doesn’t address same-sex marriage, which remains illegal in Washington. And it wouldn’t prevent couples with domestic partnerships from visiting each other in the hospital or using other rights granted in 2007 and 2008.

But if the referendum passes, it would prevent gay and lesbian couples from receiving pensions for dead partners and other rights granted to married couples.

“We see this as the same thing as racial discrimination,” Kneip said. “This is no different. … It’s a minority group being oppressed and deprived of rights that are given to everyone else.”

Opponents of gay rights disagree.

“It surprises me that they would support something that is so divisive and controversial, when they depend on the largesse from all walks of people,” said Debbie Peterson of Vancouver, who has been collecting signatures for R-71. “I think the (YWCA) founders would probably roll over in their graves.”

The first Young Women’s Christian Association was founded in 1855 in London. Now officially known by its initials, the YWCA of the USA has supported racial integration, women’s voting rights and other social issues.

Clark County’s YWCA has also publicly backed abortion rights and affirmative action laws, though Kneip said the campaign against R-71 is its most public fight in years.

Peterson, 57, said she has “affection” for the group, and as a private school teacher has organized student donations to YWCA services.

She said she supports the YWCA’s anti-racism work.

“I’ll be there bringing cookies and milk and holding a sign with them, because they’re right about that,” said Peterson. “There is a chasm a mile-and-a-half long between racism and these other things.”

Peterson said her beloved male cousin has a male partner and an adopted child. She added that her “heart goes out to people who are homosexual” but that she feels they are “desperate to have society put the stamp of acceptance on them.”

Peterson said the YWCA shouldn’t be part of that.

“They should stick to what they do best,” Peterson said. “Which is mending families.”

Margo Bryant, president of the Vancouver chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she sees no difference between racial discrimination and discrimination against gays and lesbians.

“The NAACP is a firm believer — here locally at least — in rights for everybody, including gays and lesbians,” said Bryant, who like Kneip said she favors gay marriage. “I consider the overturn of a gay rights movement as an abomination.”

Barbara Aitken, who heads Vancouver’s chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, said that when multi-issue groups like the YWCA support gay rights, it can make straight people more comfortable with the cause.

Al Flory, a YWCA employee who helped organize the group’s effort, said the YWCA advocates are “neophytes at this.”

“We’re not heavy-duty, lobbying type people,” said Flory.

But Flory said the YWCA’s public policy committee had been trying to “re-energize” itself, and that a new campaign for civil rights is doing the job.

“It was sort of a feeling … we’ve done enough talking,” Flory said. “It’s time to take a stand.”

Michael Andersen: 360-735-4508 or mich...@columbian.com.

Tips to help you write your letter:

– State why you are writing, who you are and why UAFA matters to you.
– Provide more detail. Tell your story from the heart and support it with the
necessary facts. Provide specific, rather than general, information about
how the unfair immigration laws affect you personally.
– Close by requesting the action you want taken: cosponsorship of UAFA.

Sample Letter:

I am your constituent, and I am writing to ask you to co-sponsor the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), H.R. 1024/S. 424. I also urge you to press for UAFA to be included in Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation.

The UAFA would fulfill the pledge of family unification under current U.S. immigration policy by allowing gay and lesbian Americans to sponsor their life partners for immigration to the United States.

As you may be aware, under current law Americans are forced to make heartbreaking choices, including leaving the United States to be with the person they love.

I am sure you will agree that it is unfair to force any American into exile, separating them from their family, friends and community. The UAFA is the most effective way to keep loving couples together, and I hope that you will cosponsor this bill.

If Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation should move in this Congress, please press for UAFA – and thus our families – to be included in it. Comprehensive Immigration Reform will not be comprehensive unless all families are part of it – including gay and lesbian families.

Please reply to let me know that you have co-sponsored the UAFA, and if not, why not. Thank you for your time on this important matter.

Please visit http://www.immigrationequality.org for more information.

Posted by Amanda Hess on Jul. 23, 2009

Last night, WJLA* reported on the recent recent vandalism linked to American Apparel’s “Legalize Gay” displays. Yesterday, the Silver Spring location received another threat over the phone in regards to the anti-Prop-8 shirts, which an anonymous employee recounts for WJLA: “Why is that T-shirt still in the window? You should take it down or something will happen to you.”

On Monday, a window was broken at the Silver Spring store. On Tuesday, American Apparel’s Georgetown location received a threatening phone call. Following the two incidents, the Silver Spring store promised to keep its “Legalize Gay” display up in the storefront window; now, the Georgetown store has replaced its less political window display with the “Legalize Gay” shirts, as well.

I’ve got a call in to the American Apparel locations in Georgetown and Silver Spring; employees at the two stores are now being asked to notify American Apparel corporate brass before speaking with the press.

-Joe Mirabella, The Mighty Pen
Yesterday I wrote about potential fraud and intimidation from referendum 71 petition gatherers, particularly by Dan Ricca a migrant paid signature gatherer. I wrote about election fraud in Orange County California and Oregon that Dan Ricca was closely involved with. It turns out that was not the end of the story. In Montanans for Justice vs the State of Montana, Ricca Petition Service (Dan Ricca’s company at the time) was accused of falsifying documents and using “bait and switch” techniques to gather signatures. They allegedly told supporters they were signing petitions for one cause, but needed to sign several different pieces of paper because they needed “carbon copies”. Consequently they signed petitions for issues they were not aware of and did not support. According to Not in Montana, Ricca Petition Services was paid over $51,552.00 to gather signatures for three separate issues in Montana in 2006.

Because reports of fraud were so pervasive during Montana’s 2006 initiative process, District Court Judge Sandefur invalidated every signature obtained by paid petition gatherers:

(1) the 2006 signature gathering process under Title 13,
Chapter, 27, MCA, for CI-97, CI-98, and I-154 is
permeated by a pervasive and general pattern and
practice of fraud and procedural non-compliance
perpetrated by paid, out of state, migrant signature
gatherers commissioned by Proponents;

(2) all signatures gathered by out of state signature
gatherers King, Schumacher, Cook, and Meyer, together
with all signatures gathered by the 40 other out of
state signature gatherers listed on Plaintiff’s Exhibit
5, are hereby invalidated; and

(3) as result of this invalidation, the Secretary of State’s
certified and final counts, referenced in Figure 1 are
hereby invalidated; and

(4) consequently, the Secretary of State’s certifications of
CI 97, CI-98, and I-154 pursuant to §§ 13-27-307, 13-27-
308, 13-27-311, and 13-27-312, MCA, are hereby
invalidated.

Ricca used the same “carbon copy” scam in Oregon in 2002. According to a voter alert issued by Northwest Labor Press:

In another incident in Salem, Heather Bowman, 17, was approached in January by a circulator named Daniel Ricca. Bowman says she wasn’t interested in his initiative which, she recalls, had something to do with taxes. She reports that Ricca was so aggressive she finally relented and stopped. When he learned she was too young to be a registered voter, Bowman says, the circulator handed her a voter registration card and told her he could turn it in for her because she would be 18 before the primary election in May. Then he had her sign his “tax measure” 20 different times. But she now suspects she signed 20 different initiative petitions or possibly duplicates of some petitions.

“He lied to me,” says Bowman. “He told me that he needed carbon copies of all the petitions to send to supporters of the initiative. I didn’t know any better at the time and now I don’t know what I signed.”

Dan Ricca is certainly not the only paid petition gatherer in Washington during these final days of the referendum 71 campaign. His colleagues are out there and many are using deceptive techniques. Reports have come in that people are being told by signing the referendum 71 petition they are signing a pro gay marriage petition, for example. Others are confronted by aggressive intimidation tactics.

I have two questions for you. 1) Why do we allow paid petition gatherers to collect signatures? 2) Would you trust any of these questionable characters with your personal information? It is too late to change the law for referendum 71, but Olympia should make changes during their next session to prevent this from happening in the future. At the very least, I hope this information reaches the right person before they sign referendum 71.

Despite the questionable techniques of paid petition gatherers, our opponents continue to claim the moral high ground. Today in Gary Randell’s blog, he wrote:

Your efforts, in many cases, have been above and beyond what most would do. We know this is a spiritual matter, not a political one for those who are involved.
Apparently Gary thinks fraud and intimidation are holy. I wonder if Randell thinks God would approve of hiring petition gatherers that are so intimidating they bring children to tears as Ricca did to an 8 year old named Allison in Lewis County on Sunday. I wonder…

Forth Worth City Council Requests Federal Investigation Into Gay Bar RaidShare
Today at 9:53am
The Fort Worth City Council has asked for a federal investigation to be made into the June police raid at the Rainbow Lounge gay bar. This would be the fourth inquiry made into the bar raid that sent one man to the hospital with a brain injury.

Council members explained that the federal investigation would reaffirm information found from inquiries made by the Fort Worth police department.

“We want to be able to assure people that this is a thorough and accurate investigation, and that’s part of the reason we’re taking the actions here,” City Council member Joel Burns said.

Two investigations have been made by the Fort Worth Police Department into the incident. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission is also investigating two of their officers involved in the raid.

The request for a federal investigation came several hours before Fort Worth officials released personal records for five of the seven officers involved in the raid. The records showed that Officer Jason R. Ricks, one of the officers involved in the raid, has had a history of misconduct.

Ricks has been arrested in the past by New Braunfels police after he punched a bus driver in the face in July of 2006. Ricks was off duty and had been drinking for a couple hours when the fight occurred. Ricks was disciplined several other times during 2006.

Captain W.A. Read, one of Ricks’s supervisors, wrote in a September 2006 letter that Ricks had “shown a history of poor decisions and bad judgment” and added that another lieutenant “has put forth a valid argument that Officer Ricks does not show the maturity level that is required of a Fort Worth police officer.”

Mayor Mike Moncrief supports the City Council’s request for a federal investigation as well as the Fort Worth Police Department.

“I am very pleased with the way the Police Department’s investigation is progressing,” he said. “I continue to be very confident in Chief [Jeff] Halstead and our department that they will resolve this issue in an open, timely and unbiased manner.”