Fresh Loaf

The AJC says Forsyth County police have arrested the President Barack Obama supporter who claims she stopped short a trip to the inauguration after her home was set on fire. Police said “racially-charged graffiti” was also spraypainted on her fence.

Turns out she’s now a suspect in the crime.

Investigators arrested the homeowner Pamela Graf and her boyfriend late Tuesday, while executing a search warrant as part of their investigation into the Jan. 18 fire, said Steve Anderson, chief of investigations for the Forsyth County Fire Department.

“She is a suspect,” Anderson said today , “I look for something to be coming in the next day or two.”

“We were in search of fruits of the crime of arson,” the chief said. He declined to discuss specifics.

Graf was charged with possession of cocaine, and her boyfriend, identified as Steve Strobel, was charged with obstruction for giving statements “that were not truthful,” Anderson said.

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Forsyth County fire investigators confirm the January 18 fire that destroyed Pamela Graf’s home was indeed arson.

Because graffiti reading “beware bitch your black boy will die” was found on a fence next to Graf’s home, and because Graf had an Obama campaign sign in her front yard, local and federal investigators are trying to determine if the arson was politically motivated.

If the fire was motivated by Graf’s support for Obama, the attack would appear to meet the U.S.’s legal definition of terrorism.

The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant^/*/ targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

At the time of the fire, Graf was in Washington, D.C. for events marking President Barack Obama’s inauguration. She has three children. No one was injured in the fire.

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While she was in D.C. last weekend celebrating the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, Pam Graf’s Cumming home burned in a fire Forsyth County officials have deemed suspicious. The words “your black boy will die” were spray-painted on Graf’s fence. Graf had at least one Obama campaign sign in her yard.

The Gainesville Times and Forsyth-based blog Tondee’s Tavern have the details.

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Dale Russell of Fox 5 Atlanta reports that Carol Couch, director of the state Environmental Protection Division, may have engaged in a little favor dishing for Mike Evans, the state Department of Transportation board chairman.

Evans and some of his developer buddies had a proposed Wal-Mart project in Forsyth County. A stream ran through the land. With time running out on the development group’s contract with the big-box retailer, going through the EPD’s permitting process to build on it — you know, doing the right thing — would’ve been too time-consuming, they thought. So, according to the documents Russell obtained, Carol Couch — after a little prodding from U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Sen. Judson Hill, R-Marietta — overrides the variance and gives ‘em a pass. What ensues is confrontation journalism at some of its most awkward and delicious, although sadly there are no middle fingers or hands over lenses here.

Check it out. I’d heard that Russell had been holding this report until after the DOT election. I’m glad it’s out now. It’s a sad, sad state of affairs when the person looking out for the environmental well-being of the state has to be concerned with politicians’ business interests as well.

Oh, and the Wal-Mart planned for the site? Never built.

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John Sugg’s March 7 CL cover story went into detail over how the AJC refused to publish a series on racial cleansing that was written by Elliot Jaspin, a member of the Washington bureau of Cox Newspapers. Jaspin turned the series into a book, Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America, that details his behind-the-scenes battles with AJC editors.

And the fur hasn’t stopped flying. In an interview with the History News Network, Jaspin again criticizes the AJC for not running a series that other Cox newspapers ran because it happened to criticize the AJC’s coverage of racial cleansing in Forsyth County.

And Jaspin even issues a Clint Eastwood-like challenge to the paper.

(more…)

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