It’s Time to End Tax Exemptions for Churches That Insist on Politicking from the Pulpit

Posted: January 30, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: fetus fetishists, health, Health care reform, medicine, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 47 Comments

American Catholic Bishops Conference

My apologies if this post is a little incoherent. I’m hopping mad right now! We don’t yet live in a theocracy–although that danger clearly exists. As of today, the U.S. Constitution still requires the separation of church and state. Priests, ministers, bishops, and other church leaders are not supposed to be advocating for and against political candidates from the pulpit. In their roles as private citizens, they can hold whatever political beliefs they want and they can donate to political candidates. But they need to stop forcing their political views on church audiences.

Yesterday, in Catholic churches all over the U.S., parishioners heard a letter from their bishop denouncing the Obama administration for the January 20th HHS decision to require health plans to cover birth control services without requiring “a co-pay, co-insurance, or a deductible.” HHS Secretary Katherine Sibelius stated that the reason for this requirement is that access to contraception is important to women’s health.

Scientists have abundant evidence that birth control has significant health benefits for women and their families, it is documented to significantly reduce health costs, and is the most commonly taken drug in America by young and middle-aged women. This rule will provide women with greater access to contraception by requiring coverage and by prohibiting cost sharing.

Sibelius explained that this requirement applies to religion-based institutions that employ or serve people who don’t belong to their religion. Therefore, churches per se would be except from the rule, but universities and other religious-based organizations would have to abide by the rule.

Via Business Insider, here is the full text of letter that was read in churches in the Diocese of Marquette (Michigan):

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers,
including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture,
only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.

And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting http://www.usccb.org/conscience,to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
+Alexander K. Sample
Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample
Bishop of Marquette

The author of the Business Insider article, Michael Brendan Dougherty, uses a flawed analogy to defend the bishops for their action and their decision to flout the law.

it would be like the government mandating that all delis, even Kosher delis, serve pork products and then justifying it by saying that protein is healthy, and many Jews who don’t follow Kosher laws and many non-Jews go to those delis. The law wouldn’t technically ban Jews from owning delis, but it would effectively ban their ability to run them according to their conscience.

WTF?! Jewish delis do not receive federal funds to subsidize the selling of pork, and scientists have not found pork to be vital to the health of more than half of the U.S. population. For Dougherty’s information, unwanted pregnancies can be dangerous to women’s physical and mental health. Furthermore, the more unwanted pregnancies there are, the more abortions there will be. The rule will therefore reduce the number of abortions in this country. And BTW, no individual is required to use birth control. The Catholic bishops know that most Catholics used it, and they are simply trying to intimidate people. If an individual Catholic wants to follow the church’s ludicrous (IMO) rules against birth control, she is free to do so. An editorial by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune says it much better than I could:

The Obama administration…made the right decision. Birth control access is critical for women and children’s health, ensuring that kids are born to parents ready for this responsibility. Lost in all the heated rhetoric over this milestone public health measure are several important points.

This policy does not require anyone to use birth control. In addition, courts have already rejected claims by Catholic organizations that requiring contraceptive coverage in employee health plans violates their religious freedom.

Requiring these religiously affiliated institutions to cover birth control in their plans is nothing new. Twenty-eight states (Minnesota isn’t one) already have “contraceptive equity” laws requiring birth control coverage for many plans covering prescription drugs.

In 2004, the California Supreme Court, noting that many of these organizations’ employees are not Catholic, soundly rejected a challenge to the state’s contraceptive equity law. It concluded that the state can enact employment laws to protect workers, even if these laws conflict with the employers’ religious beliefs.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Catholic Charities’ appeal. New York’s highest court rejected a similar claim by Catholic Charities on grounds that the law didn’t target religious beliefs and that a broad public interest is served by addressing gender disparities in medical costs.

The U.S. Supreme Court has also decided on multiple occasions that religious beliefs do not protect discriminatory practices, such as failing to comply with civil rights laws.

Denise Grady, in an article published in The New York Times and The Herald Tribune writes:

About half of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, and about four out of 10 of those end in abortion, according to the Institute of Medicine report, which was released last July. It noted that providing birth control could lower both pregnancy and abortion rates. It also cited studies showing that women with unintended pregnancies are more likely to be depressed and to smoke, drink and delay or skip prenatal care, potentially harming fetuses and putting babies at increased risk of being born prematurely and having low birth weight.

Grady provides a number of real-life examples. Here’s just one:

One recent Georgetown law graduate, who asked not to be identified for reasons of medical privacy, said she had polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition for which her doctor prescribed birth control pills. She is gay and had no other reason to take the pills. Georgetown does not cover birth control for students, so she made sure her doctor noted the diagnosis on her prescription. Even so, coverage was denied several times. She finally gave up and paid out of pocket, more than $100 a month. After a few months she could no longer afford the pills. Within months she developed a large ovarian cyst that had to be removed surgically — along with her ovary.

“If I want children, I’ll need a fertility specialist because I have only one working ovary,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Georgetown, Stacy Kerr, said that problems like this were rare and that doctors at the health service knew how to help students get coverage for contraceptives needed for medical reasons.

Really? Then why was this woman “denied” coverage “several times?” Give me a break!

Even supposed “liberal” E.J. Dionne weighed in on the side of the church:

In its interim rules in August, HHS excluded from this requirement only those “religious employers” who primarily serve and employ members of their own faith traditions. This exempted churches from the rule, but not Catholic universities or social-service agencies and hospitals that help tens of thousands of non-Catholics.

As a general matter, it made perfect sense to cover contraception. Many see doing so as protecting women’s rights, and expanded contraception coverage will likely reduce the number of abortions. While the Catholic Church formally opposes contraception, this teaching is widely ignored by the faithful. One does not see many Catholic families of six or 10 or twelve that were quite common in the 1950s. Contraception might have something to do with this.

Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here.

I am sick and tired of this sh*t! We’re talking about the rights and the health of more than half of the population! Does Dionne realize that 98% of Catholics have used birth control at one time or another? It’s time to take away the tax exempt status of churches who use the power of the pulpit to try to intimidate their parishioners into voting for or against a candidate based on ridiculous (IMO) religious rules that hurt women. If religious universities and charities wish to ignore the law, then they too should lose their government subsidies and/or tax exemptions.

The Audacity of No Shame: Gingrich/Santorum Edition

Posted: November 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: worker rights | Tags: , , , , , | 41 Comments

There are policies  supported by today’s Republicans that go beyond long standing American Values. Is this really still the party of Abraham Lincoln?  Last night at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Newt Gingrich said that child work laws “entrap” poor children into poverty.  He went beyond  this to suggest “that the best way of handle failing schools is to fire the janitors, hire the local students and let them get paid for upkeep”.

“This is something that no liberal wants to deal with,” Gingrich said. “Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.

“You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You’re totally poor. You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I’ve tried for years to have a very simple model,” he said. “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

He added, “You go out and talk to people, as I do, you go out and talk to people who are really successful in one generation. They all started their first job between nine and 14 years of age. They all were either selling newspapers, going door to door, they were doing something, they were washing cars.”

“They all learned how to make money at a very early age,” he said. “What do we say to poor kids in poor neighborhoods? Don’t do it. Remember all that stuff about don’t get a hamburger flipping job? The worst possible advice you could give to poor children. Get any job that teaches you to show up on Monday. Get any job that teaches you to stay all day even if you are in a fight with your girlfriend. The whole process of making work worthwhile is central.”

The former House Speaker acknowledged that it was an unconventional pitch, saying, “You’re going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and give people a chance to rise very rapidly.”

I do believe that it’s just a matter of time when we see them suggest the return of forced labor and poor farms.  Earlier today, I found this video from Santorum suggesting the Christian thing to do was to allow people without jobs and food to suffer.  I wasn’t raised Catholic, but my understanding of that particular brand of Christianity is that outreach and care for the poor has been a central part of the church’s core mission for years.  Michelle Bachmann has already suggested letting the unemployed starve.

“Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”

Is the new Republican pogrome one that forces the poor to sell the children which is basically what happens in undeveloped nations all over the world?

Are they suggesting we return to a time of indentured servitude and child slavery?  It seems that way to me.  Labor reforms of the 20th century included laws regulating the use of children as workers.   These have essentially been core US values since the very dawn of the 20th century.  The attempts to let children be children instead of the property of their parents and others to be used as slaves was enshrined in national law via Labor Standards Act in 1938.  The movement to end enslavement of children in the US began as early as the 19th century in 1832 New England.

The New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workingmen resolve that “Children should not be allowed to labor in the factories from morning till night, without any time for healthy recreation and mental culture,” for it “endangers their . . . well-being and health”

The mental, emotional, and physical development of children is such that they are endangered in many working environments.  They don’t have the physical or mental maturity to make all kinds of basic decisions and they certain don’t have the physical or emotional power to stand up to exploitative adults.   You can see this in  the exploitation of children by pedophiles in positions of power of children like priests, doctors, coaches, scout leaders, and teachers..  Children are the least among us to be able to stand up to bad situations and bad people.  That’s exactly why our laws protect them.  However, the pro-slavery argument of “states’ rights” has resurrected itself in a new brand of neoconfederacy.

Newly elected extremist Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has argued that child labor laws are actually unconstitutional.  This is the Tea Party candidate that took down Bob Bennett. It is easy to see the anti-labor regulation ideology of the Koch Brothers and others in the rhetoric.  They clearly want to remove 20th century labor laws.

“Congress decided it wanted to prohibit that practice, so it passed a law. No more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that law, and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer v. Dagenhardt,” Lee said. “In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting — that, as reprehensible as child labor is, and as much as it ought to be abandoned — that’s something that has to be done by state legislators, not by Members of Congress.”

Lee’s reasoning was that labor and manufacturing are “by their very nature, local activities” and not “interstate commercial transactions.” He added: “This may sound harsh, but it was designed to be that way. It was designed to be a little bit harsh.”

The key Congressional law that addresses child labor is the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which placed a series of restrictions against the employment of people under 18 in the public and private sectors.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law in the 1941 United States v. Darby Lumber decision, overturning Hammer, on the basis of the constitutional authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It has hardly run into controversies since.

Lee said he was not opposed to laws regulating child labor, but merely insisted they be controlled by state governments, not Congress. The issue of states rights is particularly popular in Utah, widely known as America’s most conservative state.

The slippery return to slavery and women and children as property is again cloaked in the mantel of “state’s rights”. There’s been a Maine bill already seeking to overturn child labor laws.   There are ongoing efforts in other states to also dismantle laws protecting children from exploitation.  Missouri seems to have jumped on the child labor bandwagon also.

Maine State Rep. David Burns is the latest of many Republican lawmakers concerned that employers aren’t allowed to do enough to exploit child workers:

LD 1346 suggests several significant changes to Maine’s child labor law, most notably a 180-day period during which workers under age 20 would earn $5.25 an hour.

The state’s current minimum wage is $7.50 an hour.

Rep. David Burns, R-Whiting, is sponsoring the bill, which also would eliminate the maximum number of hours a minor over 16 can work during school days.

Burns’ bill is particularly insidious, because it directly encourages employers to hire children or teenagers instead of adult workers. Because workers under 20 could be paid less than adults under this GOP proposal, minimum wage workers throughout Maine would likely receive a pink slip as their twentieth birthday present so that their boss could replace them with someone younger and cheaper.

And Burns is just one of many prominent Republicans who believe that America’s robust protections against the exploitation of children are wrongheaded:

It’s easy to image what kind of jobs children could be forced to do under this new Republican form of child servitude.  Farm labor comes to my mind.  Since Alabama has moved to vacate their migrant worker population, can forcing the unemployed, children, and prisoners to toil in farms for less than minimum wage be far behind?  What kind of country would undo the legal protection of its most vulnerable citizens?  These candidates repulse me.  How disingenuous is it of Newt to suggest that you can move quickly out of poverty by farming your child out as free/cheap labor?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Posted: November 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, Bailout Blues, Banksters, Economy, financial institutions, income inequality, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy, unemployment, worker rights | Tags: , , | 5 Comments

Nor apparently will it be discussed or reported in anything but negative terms.  Take a quick spin over to Memeorandum’s page.  The Portland Occupy group is fighting off cooties [head and body lice].  According to the New York Post, Zuccotti Park has devolved into anarchy, a mad den of rapists, vigilantes and wild men demanding free food at McDonalds. Occupy protesters, anti-capitalists all, are beating up elderly women, according to another reasoned report. The Sun Journal leads with the headline: The Lawless Heart of Occupy Wall St. , and then questions the legitimacy of a group that “would interrupt the flow of commerce” in a time of recession [referencing the Oakland port takeover last Wednesday]. And then, there’s the repeating, oh so familiar meme: the protesters are a bunch of Leftist radicals, dedicated to the overthrow of democracy.

Did I mention that they’re all hippies?

What we’re not seeing on the television is this:

War Veterans.  These are our men and women who are deified in the press, while shedding blood [frequently their own] in wars of no end and seemingly no point. What are their prospects once home?  Not good.  Not good at all.  According to US News:

And a Department of Labor report shows that unemployment tops 20 percent among 18-to-24-year-old veterans, compared to a national rate of about 9 percent.

Veteran unemployment is projected to worsen after 10,000 servicemen and servicewomen return from Afghanistan and 46,000 come home from Iraq by year’s end — many wounded or suffering from mental trauma.

Nor do we see much of this:

Hummm.  Not enough dirty hippies in the group, I guess. This was the “Surround the White House Action,’ to protest the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline yesterday.  Crowd estimate?  Around 10,000.

We’ve certainly had full coverage on the violence last Wednesday, in the waning hours of the General Strike in Oakland.  The bonfires, the group in black hoodies breaking windows, spray-painting walls, the suggestion that civilization was about to end.  But I haven’t seen much coverage of this recent incident [although I see Dak picked this up in the Morning Reads]:

While filming, the cameraman was shot with a rubber bullet. It appears that taking photographs of the Oakland PD is a criminal and/or a violent act, requiring defensive action.

But here’s the thing.  Images like this:

Aren’t terribly different from this:

The first is from Occupy Oakland.  The second is from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. And if you flip through images of the 1930 Labor protests, the similarities are there as well—people coming together, voicing grievances, demanding resolution.  Movements demanding social and economic justice have never been neat and tidy.  Nor short.  Not in the 60s, not in the 30s.  And not now.

So, the song is prophetic.  The Revolution will not be televised. No re-runs, brother. It will be live–growing, evolving.  For better or worse, morphing into what it will become.

Or not.

Wisconsin Recall Vote comes with High Turnout

Posted: August 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: worker rights | Tags: | 55 Comments

Recall votes on 6 republican state senators are being held today in Wisconsin. All 6 hold seats in traditionally republican areas of rural and suburban Wisconsin.  Tons of outside money has poured in for some of the most vituperous ads in political history.  It’s been a match of high money rollers on the republican side and on the ground voter turn work by unions on the democratic side.  Indications are that turn out is as high as it usually is in a presidential race.

Various clerks in the recall districts reported steady turnout so far with some projecting numbers that will rival a presidential election.

In the 10th SD in western Wisconsin, River Falls City Clerk Lu Ann Hecht said today’s numbers could be as high as the 2008 Presidential election. The city issued 1,003 absentee ballots, twice as many as a regular election.

The municipality is home to both GOP Sen. Sheila Harsdorf and Dem challenger Shelly Moore.

“We expect the turnout to remain steady throughout the day,” Hecht said.

Hudson City Clerk Nancy Korson said voter turnout in Hudson, also part of the 10th, would likely not reach the levels of a presidential election. But they were comparable to the spring Supreme Court election, with over 500 absentee ballots received.

In Baraboo, Deputy Clerk Donna Munz said turnout was much higher than normal. She also said she’d received voter complaints over people at some polling places contacting them as they went into the polling places. At one, about nine people were outside and some voters said they were angry that they felt intimidated.

“We have received angry calls from voters regarding how persistent the people outside the polling places are,” Munz said.

In the 8th SD, one of the top races with GOP Sen. Alberta Darling and Dem Rep. Sandy Pasch, Whitefish Bay officials reported a steady stream during the morning, but said it was too early to say how turnout would end up in Pasch’s hometown.

In River Hills, where Darling lives, Village Clerk Barb Goeckner reported steady turnout through the morning. By 9:45 a.m., about 200 of the municipality’s 1,300 registered voters had cast ballots.

“It’s just been steady,” she said. “It’s not been a mad rush. We don’t have any lines, but it’s definitely been a steady turnout so far.”

In the 2nd SD, DePere officials predicted a turnout of around 45 percent by day’s end. In next door Green Bay, turnout was around 15 percent following the morning checks with polling places. In the April Supreme Court race, turnout was about 11 percent following the morning checks.

A lot is at stake in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Republicans are in real danger of losing control of the state Senate in tonight’s recall elections, as it looks more and more possible that they will lose at least three of the six seats that are on the ballot.

The losses would be cast by Democrats as a severe rebuke of Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) policies. And wins by Republicans would be cast by them as validation for Walker’s tough-love budgeting style.

Both of those evaluations would be fair. (For more on just how we’ve gotten here, see Michael A. Fletcher’s piece today and our primer from last week.)

Beyond Walker’s political capital, though, it’s hard to draw many broad national conclusions about what the recall elections mean. That’s because what’s happening in Wisconsin is occurring very much in a vacuum, for several reasons.

The first is that, as with special elections, these recall elections have have such unusual turnout and have received such inordinate attention from national third-party groups trying to influence the races and send a message. In fact, the recalls have essentially been special elections on steroids, with spending reaching nearly $30 million.

As of a couple weeks ago, about two-thirds of that has gone to benefit Democrats, and Republicans acknowledge that they were essentially caught flat-footed by the whole thing. And because of that, they’ve been fighting from behind in recent weeks.

“This is a referendum on Walker, and the Democrats have everything to lose, and the Republicans did not have a plan for what they started,” said one Republican monitoring the recalls. “And the national folks never saw it for what it was, which is a proxy fight.”

The proxy fight is between organized labor and the new coalitions of GOP governors and state legislative majorities. In the end, Walker’s gambit to cut collective bargaining rights through a legislative maneuver so badly irritated organized labor — and Wisconsin’s laws made it so easy to recall a member of the state legislature — that here we are amidst the biggest mass recall in United States history.

The second reason is that, while some Republican governors have been aggressive in cutting their budgets, the maneuver executed by Walker and the state legislature takes the cake.

The spending has been substantial according to ABC News.

The level of campaign spending has been unprecedented, especially considering it is a recall effort. Spending through Monday was estimated at about $28 million from outside groups on both sides of the aisle and about $5 million spent by the candidates themselves, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

That number was expected to increase by today. Wisconsin Democracy Campaign officials “estimate at this point it’s about even,” research director Mike Buelow said of spending on both sides.

The group will do a full accounting of spending after the election and will have a clearer picture of whether the spending totals are even.

JR Ross, the editor of Wispolitics.com, said turnout will determine which side is victorious by the end of the day.

“I don’t care who you talk to who says they know, they don’t,” Ross said. “It’s all about turnout. We’re in an unprecedented situation. … We don’t have elections in August in Wisconsin in the middle of summer.

“We do know that Democrats and union members are motivated and angry at Republicans and Walker specifically. If Republican voters can match that intensity and turn out in numbers to protect their guys, [then the Republican senators will be safe]. If not, the Democrats win control.”

Polls in Wisconsin close in less than an hour and the returns may be mostly in by  10 pm cst.  We’re going to follow those here in a live blog thread.

Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Words “Misrepresented” in Leaks to Media

Posted: July 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Violence against women, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Nafissatou Diallo

Just a short time ago, the woman who accused former IMF head Dominque Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her spoke briefly at press conference at a Brooklyn church.

“I’m here because I had people call me a lot of bad names,” Ms. Diallo said softly at the Christian Cultural Center on Flatlands Avenue. “A lot of things they said about me was not true.”

Before being introduced by Rev. A.R. Bernard, senior pastor at the center, Ms. Diallo, 32, dressed in a dark suit, rubbed her fingers together slowly, blinking often as she gazed out the windows of the lobby, past the bank of cameras and reporters.
“Me and my family, we are going through a lot,” she said. “We cry every day.”

She spoke for less than five minutes and was escorted from the podium when she finished without taking any questions; her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, and other supporters remained at the microphone and spoke with reporters.

Diallo’s attorney says that the Manhattan DA’s office either mistranslated or deliberately misinterpreted taped conversations she had with an Arizona prison inmate.

Ms. Diallo and her lead lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, spent much of Wednesday at the district attorney’s office in Manhattan, where they listened to a recording of conversations Ms. Diallo had with a fellow African immigrant in an Arizona jail after she said she was attacked. Law enforcement officials told Mr. Thompson and The New York Times last month that Ms. Diallo could be heard saying on the tape “words to the effect of: ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing.’ ”

But after listening to the recording on Wednesday, Mr. Thompson told reporters at a news conference that Ms. Diallo’s statements had been mischaracterized. He said that at no point did she raise the issue of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s wealth or status in the way that prosecutors had described it. Rather, he said, the man she was speaking with, who initiated the calls to Ms. Diallo, remarked during one conversation that Ms. Diallo could stand to gain money from the case, but she quickly dismissed the idea and said it was a matter for her lawyer.

Thompson also noted that in the first phone call, Diallo’s description of what happened with Strauss-Kahn was

consistent with what she told investigators a day earlier. In sexual-assault cases, people who hear an early account of an attack are called “outcry witnesses,” and are often used to buttress the credibility of a person making an accusation.

“She told the guy that someone tried to rape her at her job,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview after his news conference. “She said: ‘I didn’t know who he was. We fought each other. Because he wasn’t able to take off my clothes, he put his penis in my mouth. He touched me. They took me to the hospital, and they arrested him.’ ”

The DA’s office said they could not comment on evidence in an ongoing investigation. But didn’t they already have quite a bit to say? Someone leaked negative information about Diallo to the media, resulting in Strauss-Kahn being released on bail while his accuser was treated like a liar and money-grubber. From CNN Justice:

The hotel maid who has accused the then-head of the International Monetary Fund of sexually assaulting her met Wednesday with prosecutors for at least seven hours….

Prior meetings between the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, and prosecutors who are deciding whether to pursue charges against French financier Dominique Strauss-Kahn ended abruptly last month after Thompson accused Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance of “abandoning” her.

Prosecutors had disclosed credibility issues with Diallo, who is from Guinea.

[….]

Diallo’s attorney said the Sofitel New York employee wants to tell a jury what happened to her. “I want justice. I want him to go to jail,” Diallo told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview that aired this week.

I give Diallo a lot of credit for coming forward publicly and revealing her identity. I hope Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance will let her have her day in court.

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