GOP Ally of Big Coal Smears Environmental Activist With Kiddie Porn Accusation

[cbayer]

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/06/coal-activist-kiddie-porn-accusation

—By Tim McDonnell| Tue Jun. 5, 2012 7:50 AM PDT



When award-winning West Virginia anti-coal activist Maria Gunnoe went to Washington, DC, last week, she was prepared for obstructionist tactics. She was prepared to face icy stares and hard questions from Republican lawmakers. She was not prepared to be branded a pedophile.

On Friday, Gunnoe testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources in a hearing on the Obama administration's contentious relationship with the coal mining industry. She had prepared a slideshow presentation that included a photograph by the photojournalist Katie Falkenberg depicting a nude young girl sitting in a bathtub filled with murky brown water. The photo was meant as a salient statement to legislators on the impact of coal mining on society's most vulnerable. "We are forced to bathe our children in polluted water," she said. "Or not bathe them."

Such water is common in taps near mountaintop-removal sites, Gunnoe told me yesterday by phone, and often contains high levels of arsenic, which can seep into groundwater via underground cracks caused by mining explosions.

It was a point she never got to make: Shortly before she testified, Gunnoe was approached by committee staffers at the direction of Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) and told she had to remove the photo from her presentation.* She complied, but after testifying was escorted into an empty side room by Capitol Police Special Agent Randall Hayden and questioned for nearly an hour about the photo, which she had gotten the approval of the photographer, the child's parents, and Democratic committee members to use. Gunnoe said Hayden, whom she described as kind and professional, told her the committee believed the photo to be suggestive of child pornography, and that he would be following up on the possibility of her being involved in such illegal activity.

more at link

[Bill USA]

1. thanks for this thread. Clear case of infringement of Gunnoe's right to free speech by Lamborn and

Capital police. Questioning for an hour when the pertinent facts were, I'm sure, provided in a very brief time interval, permission from parents, photographer. There were no questions of fact to be established, so the long 'interview' was meant to harrass Gunnoe.

Hopefully, Gunnoe will contact ACLU and pursue this in the courts.

The Republicans take so easily to the methods of totalitarianism.

recommended!

[rug]

2. More on this, with photo, at the link.

http://bethwellington.blogspot.com/2012/06/more-coal-porn.html

They're morans.

[rhett o rick]

3. I am waiting for the day the authorities will find something notty on KKKarl's computer. Anon where

are you?

[Blue_Tires]

4. The reason why I really hate this

Is because they constantly do it with impunity, without worry of retribution, legal action or even a half-hearted "apology"...And a week or two from now this will be forgotten about, and they'll pull the same shit elsewhere...They need to pay for this, but no one ever makes them...