UPDATED BELOW Pensacola Assistant U.S. Attorney Roy Atchison, whose arrest on interstate child sex abuse charges shell-shocked Gulf Breeze, was found "unresponsive" by federal prison officials in Michigan early this morning. Atchison was transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital "and was pronounced dead at 10:17 a.m., federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman Mike Truman said."
“His death appears to be the result of suicide,” Truman said. “A thorough investigation is under way.”
The Detroit Free Press is reporting in a late on-line edition that Atchison "hanged himself this morning at the federal prison in Milan, where he was taken after trying to commit suicide last month at Sanilac County Jail, authorities said."
Officials said Atchison, 53, of Gulf Breeze, Fla., had been housed in solitary confinement and was under close supervision, adding that he had shown no signs of despondency. * * * “We are deeply saddened to learn of the death of John Roy Atchison," his lawyer, James Thomas of Detroit, said today in a statement.
“Our heartfelt regrets go out to his wife and children, his parents and his brothers,” Thomas said. “This is a man who has done a lot of good in his life. Unfortunately, he is going to be judged by his most recent charges and what we have read in the media, and not by the goodness, hard work or by the love of his family."
UPDATE # 2 10-06 am
Abby Goodnough of the New York Times writes that Atchison's Detroit lawyer, James C. Thomas, told her he had unconfirmed information "that Mr. Atchison had hanged himself in the shower."
I think they don’t put somebody in there to watch you when you’re in the shower,” he said. “But you have cameras and people watching you as you’re going in.”
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, Felicia Ponce, would not provide details of the matter but said Mr. Atchison had been living in a one-person cell in the special housing unit.
Goodnough also quotes Thomas as refusing to comment on Mr. Atchison’s last known state of mind or on whether Atchison claimed to be "wrongly accused."
"We’re not going to talk about that, ever, Mr. Thomas said."
[A]fter three years and against all odds, the movie shot on Pensacola Beach in July 2004 by Gulf Breeze product Kevin Wheatley, aka "Tex," is hitting the big screen Oct. 19 in more than two dozen cities across the United States. "We knew it had this potential or otherwise we would have quit," says Wheatley, the movie's star, creator, director and executive producer in an exclusive interview with the Independent News from Los Angeles. "We knew 99 percent of all independent films never end up in theaters at all. I was coolly optimistic. But if it didn't make it I would've been upset, knowing we had great scenes and knowing how much everyone involved with it believed in it."
National Lampoon, a comedy powerhouse for 40 years with motion pictures such as "Animal House" and the "Vacation" series by comedian Chevy Chase, announced plans recently to distribute "Threshold of Hell."
Wheatley and friends shot the film at Fort Pickens just two months before Hurricane Ivan wiped out all land access to the historic site. The movie is set in the year 2097. Among other things, Escobedo tells us, it features "two robot companions, "Cannibal" Sue, the great, great, great grandson of Fidel Castro, a giant sea snake, a Satanic cult and other bizarre heroes and psycho villains."
If that isn't enough of a hint, Variety has described the film as a "hallucinogenic and crazy-quilt" movie that's "part mock-History Channel, part post-Apocalyptic frat fracas and entirely midnight movie in sensibility." The film, says Variety, includes "non-stop violent shtick ... slapstick and action set pieces... chasing and killing... with healthy doses of improv and incongruent casualness."
Sounds to us like a typical day at the beach. Not to everyone's taste, perhaps, but then Wheatley's film is intended to be a cult film. Formal wear will not be required at the opening. Read the rest of the Independent News article to learn more about local film guru Kevin Wheatley and his plans for a TV spin-off, plus another script he's working on tentatively called "Henchmen." We're told the script is "about two expendable villains who decide to take matters into their own hands."
Out of control high rise developers brought low by mutant sea turtles and a mischief of Santa Rosa beach mice? We can only hope.
Click here to see the official National Lampoon web site for the film, "Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell" and enter the site to see the newest trailer for the movie. Or, below, you can watch an earlier version of the trailer -- probably the one that first attracted the attention of the National Lampoon people.
George Touart, the one-time Escambia County administrator who broke down in tears while resigning, and whose resignation was accepted with alacrity by commissioners last month, now wants the county to take him back. He's aiming to be paid "his monthly salary of $12,937" for the next six months. That works out to somewhere close to $80,000, plus benefits.
And then he'll resign. Really. He will. Promise.
The gambit, which his lawyer claims is based on an "indication" presented to Touart by county attorney Janet Lander after she met with three of the five county commissioners (well away from the sunshine of public knowledge) is beyond bizarre. If county commissioners fall for it, what that will teach us is that Florida public employee laws are just for the suckers who do the work. The big-shot pols can re-write their contracts any time they like -- even after they've quit.
Touart needs a classier exist line than "'Mo' money." If he's as stupid as his bumbling behavior suggests, he should sign up to have a computer write his next farewell speech.
[W]hen the history of the Bush Administration is written, this systematic violation of statutory and treaty-based law concerning fundamental war crimes and other horrific offenses will be seen as the blackest mark in our nation's recent history -- not only because of what was done, but because the programs were routinely sanctioned, on an ongoing basis, by numerous esteemed professionals -- lawyers, doctors, psychologists and government officers -- without whose approval such a systematized torture regime could not be sustained.
A democracy depends upon, and can survive, only if its citizens are informed about what their government is doing in their name. So, you should read this revelatory news in its entirety. These guys have --
For the past three years State Highway 399 has been closed between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach. As a consequence the mid-way point of "Opal Beach" -- the jewel in the crown of Gulf Islands National Seashore, as those with a taste for cliches have called it -- has been inaccessible for tens of thousands of visitors whether they hail from here or from afar.
At long last, this week it was announced that post-hurricane repairs to the roadway are about to begin. After much dithering over possible redesigns, alternative materials, temporary roadways, and the inevitable expense it looks like the U.S. Park Service will be content with [drum roll....] the same old, same old.
Construction on the long-damaged State Road 399 connecting Navarre Beach to Pensacola Beach is finally expected to start in about two weeks.
About 30 percent of the 7-mile roadway sustained damage during Hurricane Dennis in 2005, said Jerry Eubanks, superintendent of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. The roadway has been redesigned to be repaired as inexpensively as possible.
Panhandle Paving & Grading has signed a contract to repair the damaged roadway and will use a sand and cement mixture for the base of the road repairs to keep cost down. An asphalt overlay will go over the mixture. * * * The roadway sustained considerable damage by Hurricane Ivan’s storm surges in September 2004. Repairs were nearly completed and the road was temporarily reopened for the July 4, 2005, weekend. The roadway was damaged again a week later when Hurricane Dennis washed it out July 10.
The construction will be completed in three phases. The section from Navarre Beach to Opal Beach park will be completed first, followed by repairs to Opal Beach park and finally from the park to Pensacola Beach.
How long the new road repairs will last, estimated not long ago to cost $5 million, is any one's guess. It all depends on future hurricanes. After Hurricane Opal destroyed so many dunes in 1995 it took about ten years for the sea oats to grow back to maturity.
Will we have that much time before the next hurricane? It's any one's guess. Apparently, multiple and conflicting guesses like those of the once-revered Dr. William Gray, are welcome, too.
On Pensacola Beach, Highway 399 is known as Via De Luna until it reaches the east end of the beach community. There, ironically in the shadows cast by the Portofino high-rise complex, the road turns into "J. Earle Bowden Way" for a stretch -- so named to honor the former editor of the Pensacola News Journal who led the long and bitter fight back in the 1960's to preserve Pensacola Beach from over-development.
One should ask him, no doubt, but we have often thought that a more fitting tribute to Mr. Bowden would have been not to build Portofino at all. Instead, the county should have named the nearly 40 acres of wetlands on the site after Bowden and let them continue doing nature's job of absorbing the impact of flooding waters while mitigating the damage to dunes and sea grasses.
As you read the latest New Yorker article by Seymour Hersch, you should bear in mind that his reporting exposed the disaster that would become the Iraq war earlier than anyone else.
This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran's known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on "surgical" strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.
....A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called "short, sharp incursions" by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, "Cheney is devoted to this, no question."
A limited bombing attack of this sort "only makes sense if the intelligence is good," the consultant said. If the targets are not clearly defined, the bombing "will start as limited, but then there will be an 'escalation special.' Planners will say that we have to deal with Hezbollah here and Syria there." * * * Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, ‘Uncle Sam is here! We’d better stand down’? ” the former senior intelligence official said. “The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer.”
As the week ends, we don't want to overlook a depressingly candid remark caught a few days ago by the cameras of local TV station WEAR-TV. In a short segment about two new high-rise hotels planned for Pensacola Beach, hotel designer Jeff Townsend was quoted as saying --
"As the market increases, as our group business builds, we'll just continue to build out our core, and that has to be developed before you look at off-shoots at other parts of the island."
There is a saying in poker that goes something like this: If you don't know who the sucker at the table is, then it's you. On Pensacola Beach, if you don't know whose property is an "offshoot" then it's yours. Or the one next door.
Abby Goodnough bats clean-up on the Roy Atchison story in Saturday's edition of the New York Times, with an assist from Terry Aguayo of Miami and "Mari Krueger from Gulf Breeze, Fla."
To neighbors here, J. D. Roy Atchison was a deft federal prosecutor, an involved father and a devoted volunteer, coaching girls’ softball and basketball teams year in and year out.
His wife is a popular science teacher; his youngest daughter, an honors student who was on her high school homecoming court last year. Their house, with rocking chairs on the porch, oaks in the yard and a wrought-iron fence, is among the prettiest in town.
Butin an instant last week, the community pillar became an object of community loathing. Mr. Atchison, 53, was arrested getting off a plane in Detroit on Sept. 16 and charged with the unthinkable. The authorities there said he was carrying a doll and petroleum jelly, and that he had arranged with an undercover agent to have sex with a 5-year-old girl.
Now Mr. Atchison is awaiting trial in a federal prison in Michigan, and the people of Gulf Breeze, an affluent bayside suburb in the Florida Panhandle, are outraged, baffled and repulsed.
The rest is also pretty much what we've come to expect. Two local lawyers attest to Atchison's professional reputation, which comes down to "a little eccentric, but nothing perverted or weird." Buzz Eddy once again 'scours his memory' for any clues that Atchison was not what he seemed and, again, he comes up empty. The Gulf Breeze police once more report that "no one" locally "has come forward with accusations of abuse" by Atchison in the past.
And two or three previously obscure locals get their allotted 15 words of fame, one of whom uses it to say, "They ought to torch this guy.” Not specified was whether the 'torching' should come before or after the trial.
In other words, Goodnough doesn't uncover anything that wasn't known already and reported elsewhere, except that the Times' chief Florida bureau reporter, who also is the author of "Ms. Moffett's First Year: Becoming a Teacher in America", does add a little about Atchison's teacher-wife:
Around town, praise flowed for Mr. Atchison’s wife, Barbara, who teaches anatomy at Gulf Breeze High School but took a leave of absence after his arrest. She won the town’s teacher-of-the-year award in 2004. Several people said she was as stunned as anyone by the news.
"She’s shellshocked," said Deputy Chief Randle, who went with F.B.I. agents to execute a search warrant on the Atchison home, where they seized at least one computer. "She’s just floored."
Rick Outzen of the weekly Independent News tried just as hard, using similar sources and even his own son (a freshman at Gulf Breeze High) but he came up just as stumped as everyone else.
In a refreshingly unrestrained backgrounder piece on the rising unrest in Burma (aka Myanmar), a NY Times reporter describes the ruling military junta as "made up mostly of unsophisticated former field commanders." Then, he adds this:
“They are extremely hunkered down, delusional, paranoid and probably afraid at the moment about what could possibly happen,” said David Mathieson, a Human Rights Watch expert on Myanmar, formerly Burma. * * * “It is a fantasyland of male military vanity, the embodiment of their own delusions of grandeur,” Mr. Mathieson said. The place is a spick-and-span wasteland of broad, empty avenues, monumental buildings, military installations and at least one golf course.
Wait, wait! "...and at least one golf course?" That's a sign of "male military vanity?"
Well, maybe in Myanmar. For sure, it's unlikely Aung San Suu Kyi has had much opportunity to practice her drives while under house arrest for a dozen years.
For those who would like to know more about Burma's bunkers and traps, don't bother going to the web site for Myanmar Golf. All the news entries are about Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and the U.S.
"We will be following major golfing events in Myanmar," the web site promises. So far, however, the links to the "Local Golf Scene" in Myanmar are dead.
This Fall promises to be a busy time for Al Gore. Among a long string of other prestigious awards, he's an official nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. The winner will be officially announced on October 12.
So, and if I am right, the former vice president will then complete a year in which An Inconvenient Truth has been awarded an Oscar and he has authored a best seller. Roll it round your tongue again: an Oscar, a best seller, and a Nobel Prize in the space of 12 months or so. Not bad.
Hitchens also might have mentioned, had he been sober enough to notice, that earlier this year Gore was awarded Spain's "Prince of Asturias Award" for "international cooperation" -- that nation's equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. And, just this month the Sierra Club gave Gore its John Muir Award, the most prestigious honor bestowed by that venerable organization. And we haven't even mentioned the Emmy Award Gore collected for his Current TV venture.
All of this has inspired a number of commentators, Hitchens among them, to speculate that if Gore does win the Nobel he'll announce whether he will be a candidate for U.S. president within a few days after that. Writes Hitchens:
Several people, some of them well-informed, have been saying to me that Gore will wait until the Nobel committee's announcement before he makes up his mind. Should he make up his mind to run, he could alter the entire equation
Note: Hitchens' sources haven't said he'll run if he wins the Nobel; just that he'll make an announcement one way or another. Brent Budowsky, writing for the Huffington Post, says either way "it will be a powerful transforming event in American politics that will bring a surge of patriotism and pride to a nation that has been torn by war, divided by partisanship, trapped in a quagmire and alienated from what Jefferson called the decent opinion of mankind."
Let's set aside for now the question of whether Al Gore runs for President, which is unlikely though world events can change our politics in a heartbeat.
The more important matter is what happens to our national dialogue and our democracy if indeed the Nobel Prize is awarded to Gore.
From the moment his award is announced through his speech in December accepting the prize, Al Gore will be the most influential living American in defining the terms of our national debate.
Maybe so, but that isn't enough for the millions of Gore supporters. They want more than "influence" for Al Gore; they want him to have the power of the presidency.
With that fervent hope in mind, almost entirely unnoticed by the mainstream media, the effort to "draft" Al Gore suddenly has picked up the pace. As Daily Green reported earlier this week --
Several groups have coalesced around the idea of drafting Al Gore to run for president of the United States. The new group, America for Gore, now includes some smaller groups that had made waves in political circles — including DraftGore.com, AlGore.org, Netroots for Gore, GoreHub.com, Goreganic.com and RunGoreRun.com.
The evidence is now visible on the front page of the new America For Gore web site. It can also be seen in the effort now underway in Michigan, as the Detroit News reported Monday, "to deliver 12,396 valid signatures to the Michigan secretary of State by Oct. 23" along with a sworn affidavit from the candidate himself.
Daily Kos diary writer "fink" has the details of Al Gore's appointment schedule. What it shows is that a normally whirlwind calendar filled with international appearances, speeches, interviews, and other commitments goes suddenly near-dark the last two weeks in October.
Has Al Gore stopped booking new events? Are his booking agents on hold? Will he simply be working on his new book? We can not say of course.
But either way you look at it, he is underbooked after the Nobel Peace Prize announcement. And that is when most people agree has to shit or get off the pot. Looking at his calendar, Al Gore HAS THE OPTION of announcing his candidacy for the Democratic nomination and running for President. He would have a couple international events to cancel but he would ample time to give notice.
Not to force fuel onto this fire, but we noticed the other day that for the last eleven months no less a luminary than Howard Metzenbaum -- former U.S. senator from Ohio, current D.C. lobbyist, and father of Al Gore's partner in the Current TV channel venture -- has had reserved the internet domain name of "Gore-Obama.com". The registration expires on October 15, 2007 (though it can be renewed). You can see it right here after entering the random security code.
Or, take a look at this screen-shot:
Not that we are predicting Al Gore will announce his candidacy by then. We're not at all sure he would have much chance of winning the next presidential election, assuming Cheney lets us have one. He may know it, too.
The more international awards and intellectual prizes Al Gore wins, the slimmer grow his chances of winning an election. By now, American voters have been thoroughly conditioned bycable news and political beauty contest reporters to judge their candidates by which one they'd rather have a beer with, rather than which one is smarter, works harder, or has better ideas.
The last guy they want to rub elbows with at a bar is some smarty-pants who not only reads books but actually writes them, too. And when they find out he's won an Oscar, an Emmy, and the Nobel Peace Prize, they'll just want to take him into an alley and punch him out.
There's a lot of late season tropical action in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and southwestern Gulf of Mexico today. Almost all of it, though, is expected to encounter wind shear. That's good news, especially for the eastern and central Gulf Coast.
Tropical Storm Karen likely will be steered northwest toward the Bahamas or the U.S.East Coast, if it survives at all.
T.D. 13 is threatening only the Mexican coast, and at that it isn't really much of a threat.
All but one computer model shows Invest 97L weakening under shear conditions and at most bringing rain to south Florida.
Even if 98L reaches tropical storm status it's likely to be a weak one and never make it into the Gulf.
Maybe the place Pensacola Beach people want to watch is what's coming off the suddenly active African coast. Wunderblog's Jeff Masters reports:
"This tropical wave is under about 10 knots of wind shear, and has some potential for development over the next few days. Most of the computer models forecast that a tropical depression will form off the coast of Africa in the next 2-5 days."
If you thrill to imagining tropical bogeymen, take a look at this satellite image of the eastern Atlantic from early today:
"Maybe they just let anyone speak at universities in Iran but that's not the American way. * * * People in the Middle East respect strength not weakness. By insulting Ahmadinejad and rebuffing his attempts at dialogue, we gain his respect. If we want to have peace in the Middle East, humiliating their leaders and refusing to talk to them is a good first step."
There is more, including a salute to Rudi Giuliani:
"If anyone should know how sacred Ground Zero is to Americans, it would be Giuliani, who was there just as much as, if not more than, the rescue workers were, taking such dignitaries and celebrities as Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, Donald Rumsfeld and many others on guided tours of this consecrated burial ground. Of course, it is unconscionable for a politician to use Ground Zero for a photo op... ."
Sunday's Miami Herald has one of the better written pieces we've seen about Assistant U.S. Attorney Roy Atchison's arrest on federal charges related to crossing state lines in an attempt to have sex with a 5 year old. Reporter Mary Ellen Klas was in the area several days late last week, trying to find the story that lies behind the story.
She knows what that story is: Who was this guy, really?
Aptly, her article begins with an almost lyrical passage describing the "picture perfect" exterior of the Atchisons' Gulf Breeze home. It could stand as a metaphor of the man's seemingly picture perfect life -- until last week.
The courtly colonial house with its wraparound porch and fishing boat in the back is perfectly situated in this close-knit beach town.
Twenty years ago, John D. Roy Atchison, a young prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office, picked this idyllic spot a block from the beach to build a home and raise a family. He fished in Pensacola Bay, coached girls basketball and softball, and dedicated himself to the community sports association just blocks from their home, while his wife, Barbara, taught honors science classes at Gulf Breeze High.
In contrast, the criminal charges Atchison now faces, as Klas writes, "paint a portrait of a man nobody in this small town even recognizes." Just as the house itself is now tightly shuttered against prying eyes.
In the end, Ms. Klas seems to have wound up as mystified as friends, neighbors, co-workers, and other locals are. Nothing she uncovered in Atchison's prior life even remotely hints at someone capable of committing the acts for which he has been indicted. As it appears -- for now, at least -- no one else can find any past signs or forewarnings of what was to come, either.
Writes Klas:
It's not unusual for there to be more issues other than the chat room,'' said Macomb County Sheriff Mark A. Hackel in Detroit. Among them, he said, is the possibility there may be child victims and involvement with child pornography.
That possibility has racked the Gulf Breeze town of 5,800 with worry and doubt.
''I've gone back mentally and reviewed everything we've done,'' said Buz Eddy, Gulf Breeze's city manager whose office is lined with team photos of his daughter's sports, including teams Atchison coached.
'If he would have called and said, `I'm taking a bunch of girls fishing in Destin for the weekend, can your daughter go?' I wouldn't have had any hesitation,'' said Eddy. "We've never seen anything like this from Roy, particularly from his demeanor and his profession. Shock isn't a strong enough word.''
Police have assured the community that no one has come forward to allege abuse by Atchison. The Gulf Breeze Sports Association, of which Atchison served as president until Monday, offered similar assurances.
The reporter did find some small evidence of newly expressed community hostility toward the once-respected Assistant U.S. Attorney who is now sitting in a Michigan jail under suicide watch.
Since news of the arrest, Atchison's well-kept house on Shoreline Drive has been egged by high-schoolers. His wife, a popular teacher who recently won teacher-of-the-year honors, has taken a leave of absence. His youngest daughter, a senior at Gulf Breeze High, has not returned to school all week.
And, of course, net-thugs can be found on countless message boards volunteering to personally dismember the defendant even before he is tried and convicted.
Everyone here is acutely aware, as city manager Buzz Eddy told the Northwest Florida Daily News, that with investigations continuing "someone" could "come forward with an accusation tomorrow." Or not. There simply is no way to know.
But local support for the family of the Assistant U.S. Attorney remains strong. Last week, Gulf Breeze High seniors hung a large sympathy banner, or perhaps more accurately it could be described as a solidarity banner, inside the school. And almost everyone else in Gulf Breeze, sensibly, is reserving judgment until all of the facts are known.
Speaking about the war in Iraq, she said that some mistakes were made, but that "hindsight is 50/50."* ... [footnote] * Kitty, the phrase you're looking for is "Hindsight is 20/20." You know, like eyesight?
Remember, this is the person who decided the 2000 presidential election.
