Boies: All of that is Junk Science. It's easy to come on TV and Lie, but to sit in a witness chair and present your opinions, and have them challenged and be cross examined is a lonely place. It's a lonely place to Lie under oath.
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples.
OLSON: Well, would you like your right to free speech? Would you like Fox’s right to free press put up to a vote and say well, if five states approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do? These are fundamental constitutional rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees Fox News and you, Chris Wallace, the right to speak. It’s in the constitution. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the denial of our citizens of the equal rights to equal access to justice under the law, is a violation of our fundamental rights. Yes, it’s encouraging that many states are moving towards equality on the basis of sexual orientation, and I’m very, very pleased about that. ... We can’t wait for the voters to decide that that immeasurable harm, that is unconstitutional, must be eliminated
Judge Walker's ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. In every state of the union from California to Maine to Georgia, where the people have had a chance to vote they've affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Congress now has the responsibility to act immediately to reaffirm marriage as a union of one man and one woman as our national policy. Today’s notorious decision also underscores the importance of the Senate vote tomorrow on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court because judges who oppose the American people are a growing threat to our society.
Amendment 14:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.
...
It is very clear, therefore, that no State can, by any act or law of its own, passed since the adoption of the Constitution, introduce a new member into the political community created by the Constitution of the United States. It cannot make him a member of this community by making him a member of its own. And for the same reason it cannot introduce any person, or description of persons, who were not intended to be embraced in this new political family, which the Constitution brought into existence, but were intended to be excluded from it.
In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday he supports GOP calls for congressional hearings into altering the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to children of illegal immigrants who are born in the United States.
“I support the concept of holding hearings,” McCain told reporters in the Capitol. [...] McCain, who helped lead the charge in 2007 for a comprehensive immigration bill with a pathway to citizenship for illegals, has taken an increasingly hard-line position on the issue as he faces a conservative primary challenger in a state that has become ground zero for the nation’s battle over immigration reform.
“I may introduce a constitutional amendment that changes the rules if you have a child here,” Graham said during an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “Birthright citizenship I think is a mistake, that we should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child’s automatically not a citizen.”
"And so the question is," said Kyl, "if both parents are here illegally, should there be a reward for their illegal behavior?"
The American people don’t want more Washington ‘stimulus’ spending – especially in the form of a pay-off to union bosses and liberal special interests. This stunning display of tone-deafness comes at the expense of American workers, who will be hit by another job-killing tax hike because Washington Democrats can’t kick their addiction to more government ‘stimulus’ spending. Democrats should be listening to their constituents – who are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ – instead of scampering back to Washington to push through more special interest bailouts and job-killing tax hikes.
# Adams is a long-time right-wing activist, who is known for filing an ethics complaint against Hugh Rodham that was subsequently dismissed, served as a Bush poll watcher in Florida 2004, and reportedly volunteered for a Republican group that trains lawyers to fight "racially tinged battles over voting rights";
# Adams was hired to the Justice Department in 2005 by Bradley Schlozman, who was found by the Department of Justice Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to have improperly considered political affiliation when hiring career attorneys -- the former head of the DOJ voting rights section reportedly said that Adams was "exhibit A of the type of people hired by Schlozman";
# Adams has admitted that he does not have first-hand knowledge of the events, conversations, and decisions that he is citing to advance his accusations;
Voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for prison time for the new US Attorney for Arkansas, Timothy Griffin and investigation of Griffin’s former boss, Karl Rove, chief political advisor to President Bush.
“Timothy Griffin,” said Kennedy,”who is the new US attorney in Arkansas, was actually the mastermind behind the voter fraud efforts by the Bush Administration to disenfranchise over a million voters through ‘caging’ techniques - which are illegal.”
In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law. Only John P. Hale, Charles Sumner, Salmon Chase and Benjamin Wade voted against the measure. The law stated that in future any federal marshal who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave could be fined $1,000. People suspected of being a runaway slave could be arrested without warrant and turned over to a claimant on nothing more than his sworn testimony of ownership. A suspected black slave could not ask for a jury trial nor testify on his or her behalf.
Any person aiding a runaway slave by providing shelter, food or any other form of assistance was liable to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Those officers capturing a fugitive slave were entitled to a fee and this encouraged some officers to kidnap free Negroes and sell them to slave-owners.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in any mixed community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white race, is property in the same sense that a right of action or of inheritance is property. Conceding this to be so for the purposes of this case, we are unable to see how this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he be a white man and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called property. Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man.
KELLY: Rand Paul is a libertarian. You are a libertarian. He is getting excoriated for suggesting that the Civil Rights act -- what he said was, "Look it's got 10 parts, essentially; I favor nine. It's the last part that mandated no discrimination in places of public accommodation that I have a problem with, because you should let businesses decide for themselves whether they are going to be racist or not racist. Because once the government gets involved, it's a slippery slope." Do you agree with that?
STOSSEL: Totally. I'm in total agreement with Rand Paul. You can call it public accommodation, and it is, but it's a private business. And if a private business wants to say, "We don't want any blond anchorwomen or mustached guys," it ought to be their right. Are we going to say to the black students' association they have to take white people, or the gay softball association they have to take straight people? We should have freedom of association in America.
KELLY: OK. When you put it like that it sounds fine, right? So who cares if a blond anchorwoman and mustached anchorman can't go into the lunchroom. But as you know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came around because it was needed. Blacks weren't allowed to sit at the lunch counter with whites. They couldn't, as they traveled from state to state in this country, they couldn't go in and use a restroom. They couldn't get severed meals and so on, and therefore, unfortunately in this country a law was necessary to get them equal rights.
STOSSEL: Absolutely. But those -- Jim Crow -- those were government rules. Government was saying we have white and black drinking fountains. That's very different from saying private people can't discriminate.
STOSSEL: Because eventually they would have lost business. The free market competition would have cleaned the clocks of the people who didn't serve most customers.
KELLY: How do you know that, John?
STOSSEL: I don't. You can't know for sure.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Title II
Outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; exempted private clubs without defining the term "private."
Title VII of the Act, codified as Subchapter VI of Chapter 21 of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e [2] et seq., prohibits discrimination by covered employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin (see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2[23]). Title VII also prohibits discrimination against an individual because of his or her association with another individual of a particular race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. An employer cannot discriminate against a person because of his interracial association with another, such as by an interracial marriage.[24]
In very narrow defined situations an employer is permitted to discriminate on the basis of a protected trait where the trait is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise.
STOSSEL: And I would go further than he was willing to go, as he just issued the statement, and say it's time now to repeal that part of the law
KELLY: What?
STOSSEL: because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won't won't ever go to a place that's racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist.
Meanwhile, the department has charged more people with police misconduct and human trafficking. For example, since 2001, the department has prosecuted 360 people on charges of human trafficking, compared with 89 in the six years before that.
FBI figures show that hate crime reports fell 11% from 1997 to 2005, the most recent year available.
Ablin says the Justice Department is committed to investigating and prosecuting civil rights cases. It charged a record 201 people with civil rights violations last year.
The number of reports doesn't necessarily reflect the number of hate crimes, says Steve Wessler, executive director for the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence. Victims are often scared to report the crimes, and police agencies report inconsistently, he says.
"Racial violence is not decreasing," Wessler says. "Either the resources are not going in to prosecute these cases or there isn't a willingness to bring these cases."
Ten-year Justice Department figures show a 60% drop in annual referrals of hate crime investigations to prosecutors.
The FBI touts civil rights enforcement as a top priority, but the number of investigations into such cases -- from hate crimes to the actions of rogue police officers -- has fallen sharply, raising concerns that victims are left with nowhere else to turn.
Pressed by the Bush administration to beef up counterterrorism ranks, the FBI has pulled agents off civil rights and slashed the number of criminal investigations conducted nationwide.
The bureau has tacitly adopted more-stringent standards governing which cases to open. That move has contributed to two-thirds fewer investigations targeting abusive police officers, cross-burners and other purveyors of hate from 2001 to 2005, according to a Seattle P-I analysis of Justice Department data.
The downward trend began in 1999 and accelerated after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the analysis found.
Civil rights experts -- and even one of the Justice Department's top civil rights lawyers -- are troubled by the trend. They say hate-crime enforcement is too important to ignore, and there is a deterrent effect to federal review of police misconduct that is being muted.
"You're going to have officers getting away with, in some cases, literally, murder," said Jesselyn McCurdy of the American Civil Liberties Union's legislative office in Washington, D.C.
- Blocked an investigation into Voter Suppression of Native Americans
- Implemented a New Poll Tax and other restrictions on Minority Voters.
- Appointed as interim U.S. Attorney a former RNC staffer (Tim Griffin) who participated in Voter Caging (Suppression) of African-American Soldiers Fighting in Iraq!
- Implemented extensive investigations into alleged minority "Voter Fraud" when there wasn't any!
From H&C
Threatening someone with a Noose and a Shotgun? No problem. How could a noose or a shotgun hurt anybody? Pfft But hitting someone with a tennis shoe? Attempted Murder!!!
And Hannity is fine with that.
Hannity: This kid that was beaten - who was white - by these kids in the Jena 6 case. He was beaten brutally. And then stomped on after he was cold-cocked from behind. Let me ask you (Reverend), if that was your son - what should the penalty be?
Hannity: There have been cases where young African-American men have been accused of crimes and they have been exonerated. What should happen in the case, when that happens - should there be a severe penalty?
Reverend: Sure the people should be held accountable.
Hannity: You mean Reverend [Jessie] Jackson who offered, on this program, a Scholarship to the woman who was the accuser in the Duke Case? Or Reverend Sharpton who falsely accused Steven Pegonas, who was held liable, in the Tawana Brawley case?
Of the 208 exonerees:
125 African Americans
58 Caucasians
19 Latinos
1 Asian American
5 whose race is unknown
More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.
Among the single-bias hate crime incidents in 2005, there were 4,895 victims of racially motivated hate crime.
* 67.9 percent were victims of an anti-black bias.
* 19.9 percent were victims of an anti-white bias.
* 5.3 percent were victims of a bias against a group of individuals in which more than one race was represented (anti-multiple races, group).
* 4.9 percent were victims of an anti-Asian/Pacific Islander bias.
* 2.0 percent were victims of an anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native bias.
(Based on Table 1.)
From Democracy Now.
Another scandal is brewing inside Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department. Former Justice Department attorneys have publicly accused the Bush administration of politicizing the department's Civil Rights Division which was formed 50 years ago to protect the voting rights of African-Americans. According to a recent report by the McClatchy newspapers, the Bush administration has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.And since black and minority voters tend to favor Democrats by over 10 to 1 - they have become the perfect targets to help Republicans over the hump in marginal races.
The Los Angeles Times has learned that similar presentations were made by other White House staff members, including Rove, to other Cabinet agencies. During such presentations, employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans.
Leading up to the 2004 vote, Bennett oversaw the quiet purge of some 168,000 registered voters from the Cuyahoga rolls, including 24.93% of the entire city of Cleveland, which voted 83% for Kerry. In one inner city majority African American ward, 51% of the voters were purged. Centered on precincts that voted more than 80% for John Kerry, this purge may well have meant a net loss to the Democrats of tens of thousands of votes in an election that was officially decided statewide by less than 119,000.And Bennet was far from alone.
Parallel purges were conducted by Republican-controlled boards of election in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) where some 105,000 voters were purged from the rolls, and in Lucas County (Toledo), where some 28,000 were purged in an unprecedented move in late August 2004. These remain the only three counties in the state known to have conducted massive registration purges prior to the 2004 election. The three mass urban purges decimated the rolls in heavily Democratic areas. Since then, another 170,000 voters have been purged from the rolls in Franklin County, primarily in the heavily Democratic Columbus precincts. Many rural Republican counties, like Miami, practice a “no-purge” policy.In case you've lost count that over 300,000 voters, mostly democratic, purged from the roles and denied their right to vote - in a race that was decided by a difference of 119,000!
Rich: At least two U.S. attorneys were fired after failing to bring voter fraud cases. Last year the Boston Globe reported the Bush administration is filling the permanent ranks of the Civil Rights Division with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights. This has led to the Civil Rights Division focusing more on cases alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians.
Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,314 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:Contrary to popular belief most hate crimes are not acts of violence or aggression, rather they are acts intended to intimidate.
* 68.5 percent were anti-Jewish.
* 11.1 percent were anti-Islamic.
* 7.8 percent were anti-other (unspecified) religion.
* 4.6 percent were anti-Catholic.
* 4.4 percent were anti-Protestant.
* 3.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, (i.e., groups of individuals of varying religions).
* 0.4 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism.
Of the 8,380 hate crime offenses in 2005:It seems to me that the priorities of the Civil Rights Division should be clear - yet the Bush Administration doesn't see it that way according to for CRD head Joseph Rich.
* 30.3 percent were intimidation.
* 30.2 percent were destruction/damage/vandalism.
* 18.7 percent were simple assault.
* 12.7 percent were aggravated assault.
* The remaining 8.2 percent of hate crimes were comprised of additional crimes against persons, property, and society.
JOSEPH RICH: Well, I was at the Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division right out of law school in ’68 and worked twenty-four of the thirty-six years I was there under Republican administrations, starting with Ramsey Clark, John Mitchell, through Ed Meese, Janet Reno and finally this administration with Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft.So exactly what was it they did?
This administration is the first administration that I felt had politicized the department to the extent that it has. And I had been the head of the Voting Section for the last six years that I was there, from 1999 to 2005, and I think the Voting Section has always been a section that is of political interest, but never had been politicized to the extent that it was in this administration.
...there was two major things that concerned me the most. The first was, in the voting area, some of the major decisions made were contrary to recommendations from the career people, such as myself, and in my judgment were made for partisan political reasons. These were redistricting decisions in places like Mississippi and Texas. There was a voter ID law in Georgia that was decided just after I left the department in 2005.Redistricting so that democratic voters have left influence in Violation of the Voting Rights Act? Check. Implementing onerous ID requirements which echo the use of the "Poll Tax" and "Literacy Tests" which was used for decades to keep blacks from voting? Check. What else?
JOSEPH RICH: Well, another thing that happened in this administration right from the outset was a great priority on voter fraud. It continued to increase through 2004 and then, I think, particularly after I left in 2006. The priority on voter fraud -- voter fraud is done by the Criminal Division. The Civil Rights Division works on voter intimidation based on race during elections. And the increase in emphasis on voter fraud became more and more apparent, to the point that last year Bradley Schlozman, who had been one of the ones responsible for politicizing the Civil Rights Division -- he had been there from 2003 to 2006. He was one of the first -- I think the first -- interim US attorney appointed under the PATRIOT Act, that gave the Attorney General the authority to appoint people without confirmation indefinitely. He was appointed in Missouri, a battleground state in 2006.So if Rich is correct, and I strongly suspect that he is, this set of firings has sent a clear signal thruout the remain USA's. I shudder to think exactly what kind of pre-emptive prosecutions can we expect prior to the 2008 Congressional and Presidential Elections which just might create a hostile atmosphere to various democratic get-out-the-vote operations which might be critical in battleground states and close elections?
Five days before the election last fall in Missouri, he brought five voter fraud cases against members of -- or I think employees of ACORN for alleged voter fraud. This was contrary to longstanding department policy not to bring or even investigate voter fraud cases shortly before an election because of the sensitivity to having any impact on elections. The longstanding policy was one in which, if there was evidence of voter fraud, the investigation would take place, unless there was a real emergency, after the election.
The fact that that happened in Missouri, the fact that the United States attorneys in New Mexico and Washington, who were following the priority of investigating vigorously voter fraud and yet were removed because they did not indict, is extremely disturbing, because they were doing their job, but in their professional judgment they did not have evidence to bring the cases, and that appears to have been a major factor in their removal.
Vyan
The last few days have brought some rather strange events. All of a sudden Bush has done an about face on his Domestic Spying Program (or has he?)
At the same time 11 U.S. Attorney's have found themselves suddenly jobless, while AG Gonzales blamed the lawyers for Bush's lack of successful terrorism prosecutions and decided yet again to threaten Judges not to mess with the President - and oh yeah - the "Scooter" Libby trial has begun selecting it's jury.
Could all this just be a coincidence?
I think not.
We already know from prior experience that Bush doesn't do anything unless he basically has no choice. He didn't go to Congress over his Military Commissions and decide to eviscerate Habeas Corpus until after the Hamdan Decision cut he previous AUMF and Unitary Executive arguments to ribbons and exposed his administration to possible War Crimes charges.
He didn't deciderer to finally run Dumpsfeld over with the Bus - despite his three previous resignations - until after the November election clearly didn't go his way and he was looking a string of democratic subpeonas square in the face.
Hamdan and Rumsfeld were his biggest potential criminal liabilities - so like any good chess player, he sacrificed those peices essentially placing his primary scapegoat for Abu Ghraib outside the government and off his table.
So just what could it be this time?
Maybe it was the fact that further evidence that U.S. has been spying on innocent Americans - who just happen to lawfully oppose the War and Bush Policy - was revealed on Tuesday.
A Defense Department database devoted to gathering information on potential threats to military facilities and personnel, known as Talon, had 13,000 entries as of a year ago -- including 2,821 reports involving American citizens, according to an internal Pentagon memo to be released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Pentagon memo says an examination of the system led to the deletion of 1,131 reports involving Americans, 186 of which dealt with "anti-military protests or demonstrations in the U.S."
Titled "Review of the TALON Reporting System," the four-page memo produced in February 2006 summarizes some interim results from an inquiry ordered by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after disclosure in December 2005 that the system had collected and circulated data on anti-military protests and other peaceful demonstrations.
Pardon me, but when exactly did the Defense Department find a loophole around Posse Commitatus so that they could perform law enforcement on U.S. Soil?
And now that they've chosen to delete all that data, no one will be able to discover exactly where they got their information (NSA, AT&T?) who they were targetting, why, and who else they might have shared their information with (the FBI, local law enforcement, the IRS?)
All of these numerous criminal violations for torture, war crimes and domestic espionage have all stemmed from a demented interpretation of a single clause in the Constitution.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;
According to the Bushites this clause gives the President near absolute power to conduct War and Espionage - even against American citizens on American soil. They have told the courts that they have "No business" meddling in National Security. From Gonzales.
"We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected judiciary inferior to Congress or the president in making policy judgments," Gonzales says in the prepared speech. "That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country."
Apparently Judge Ann Diggs-Taylor vehement disagreed with this view in her NSA Wiretap ruling.
On August 17, in the first and only ruling by a federal court to strike down the controversial program, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that the warrantless wiretapping program is illegal.
"There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all ‘inherent powers’ must derive from that Constitution," Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said in a widely quoted opinion.
Now we have the revelation that Bush had decided to completely reverse himself on not going to the FISA court with his "Terrorist Surveillance Program" - sort of. From Thinkprogress.
Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) criticized the Justice Department’s new approach to warrantless domestic spying, charging that it relies "on a blanket, ‘programmatic’ approval of the president’s surveillance program, rather than approval of individual warrants." Administration officials "have convinced a single judge in a secret session, in a nonadversarial session, to issue a court order to cover the president’s terrorism surveillance program," Wilson said.
In any case, the shift yesterday "doesn’t mean the government can’t still gather personal information about Americans without a court order," a USA Today editorial states. "How? Through something called a National Security Letter. Unlike the warrantless wiretapping program, these letters don’t violate any laws, though perhaps they should."
So apparently Judges have no business involving themselves in National Security - unless the Bush administration gets them to do as their told. Interesting.
And let's not forget that in addition to National Security Letters, Bush still has his illegal Data-mining program up and running.
Just in case their attempts to bully Judges doesn't work, Bushites have decided to take another take - Kill the Lawyers.
First there are the ones who would dare to fullfil their obligation and oath to represent "Enemy Combatants".
CULLY STIMSON, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Somebody asked, Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there? And you know what? It‘s shocking. The major law firms in this country, Pillsbury Winthrop, Jenner and Block, Wilmer Cutler Pickering, Covington and Burling here in D.C., Sutherland Asbill Brennan, Paul Weiss Rifkin, Mayer Brown, Weil Gotshal, Pepper Hamilton Venable, Alston and Bird, Perkins Coie, Hunton and Williams, Fulbright Jaworski, all the rest of them, are out there representing detainees.
And I think, quite honestly when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms. And I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks.
Clearly this is a replay of the sacking Lt. Cmd Swift for winning the Hamdan case. Let's create a deterent for reputable and competent firms to take these cases - cause gee-whiz they just might win them and we can't have that now can we?
Now with the Libby Trial coming fully-online and the Vice-President slated to testi-lie we have Gonzales latest Gambit - knee-cap anyone who might be inclined to come after his boss for perjury (or obstruction, or war crimes) in the same way that so-to-be former US Prosecutor Carol Lam came after Duke Cunningham.
In her tenure leading the Southern District, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties, she prioritized prosecuting political corruption and health care fraud. She oversaw the government's case against Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former Republican congressman who pleaded guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes, and her office won corruption convictions of two San Diego city councilmen.
Not exactly the kind of prosecutor the Bush wants to keep around - not while they can circumvent Congress to get their own private hack into that position thanks to Arlen Specter.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) confirmed that as Judiciary Committee chairman last year he made a last-minute change to a bill that expanded the administration's power to install U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval.
Seizing upon the new authority granted by Congress last March, the White House has pushed out several U.S. Attorneys, and begun to replace them without the Senate's consent.
"I can confirm for you that yes, it was a Specter provision," a spokesperson for the senator wrote to me in an email earlier today, responding to repeated inquiries.
So with the lingering help of the 109th Congress, Bush is doing everything he can to dive for the finish line of his Presidency. He's implemented this surge, while defying the both the ISG and Congres merely to stall for time.
It's all part of his End-Game Strategy, which can be summed up simply - Get out without Getting Impeached and Prosecuted.
And his primary aider and abetter in this remains Alberto Gonzales. Jonathan Turley on Countdown last night.
TURLEY: Well, you know, Gonzalez has always acted more general than attorney in his position. He seems just inherently hostile to the rule of law. This administration for a long time said the problem was with these defendants. They shouldn‘t be allowed in court. And then the problem became the attorneys. And they prevented attorneys from meeting them. Then the problem became habeas corpus. And now the problem is the judges.
What‘s exactly left? I mean, everything is the problem, because they‘re acting outside the rule of law. And so, they‘re really hearing whistles down the track here, one coming from Congress, one coming from the courts, and both saying the same thing, that this president has been routinely and flagrantly violating the constitution that he took an oath to uphold.
That he has, but the game isn't over yet - there are still several moves to be made, subpeona's to be issued - witnesses to grill over a slow fire - and revelations to uncover which are far more likely to drive Bush's approval rating and the resistance to outright impeachment and removal from office ever lower and lower.
And the one thing they don't realize, is that the crazier and more desperate their tactics become - the less likely their are to win this game, especially in front of the Senate Judiciary Commitee (where Gonzales is scheduled to appear today- only under oath this time!)It ain't over till it's over Mr. Bush, and I despite all this thrashing about by AG Gonzales - it won't end well for you (particularly when you have witless dolts like Dinesh D'Souza on your team)
Now it's our move, let's make it a good one.
(My own personal recommendation would be to Impeach Gonzales First for the total B.S. he's about to unload on Congress over their off-again on-again support for the FISA Court)Vyan
We’re thankful Rick Santorum will have more free time to find the WMD.I echo their sentiment. I'm Thankful for the 110th Congress, and also Hopeful that the act of Peacefully Demostrating and/or Giving Money to Legitmate Charitable Organizations will no longer be treated as a Criminal Offense.We’re thankful Maf54 isn’t online right now.
We’re thankful for “the Google” and “the email” (and the “series of tubes” that make them possible) — but not iPods, which are endangering our nation.
We’re thankful Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who calls climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” will no longer chair the Senate environmental committee.
We’re thankful Bill O’Reilly does not resort to name calling - well, besides labeling ThinkProgress as “far left loons,” “kool-aid zombies,” “hired guns,” “vile,” “haters,” a “far left smear website,” and “a very well-oiled, effective character assassination machine.”
We’re thankful Ted Haggard bought the meth but never used it.
Washington - An antiterrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks against military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.
One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that "a church service for peace" would be held in the New York City area the next month. Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding "nonviolence training" sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
The Defense Department tightened its procedures earlier this year to ensure that only material related to actual terrorist threats - and not peaceable First Amendment activity - was included in the database.
The head of the office that runs the military database, which is known as Talon, said Monday that material on antiwar protests should not have been collected in the first place.
"I don't want it, we shouldn't have had it, not interested in it," said Daniel J. Baur, the acting director of the counterintelligence field activity unit, which runs the Talon program at the Defense Department. "I don't want to deal with it."
Mr. Baur said that those operating the database had misinterpreted their mandate and that what was intended as an antiterrorist database became, in some respects, a catch-all for leads on possible disruptions and threats against military installations in the United States, including protests against the military presence in Iraq.
In May 2005, David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown University, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the constitutional implications of a series of "anti-terrorism" laws rushed through Congress after 9/11. Cole said [emphasis mine]:
The statutes described above prohibit virtually all associational support to selected political organizations, while granting executive branch officials effectively unreviewable discretion to target disfavored groups. These laws make it a crime to write an op-ed, provide legal advice, volunteer one's time, or distribute a magazine of any "designated" group, even if there is no connection whatsoever between the individual's support and any illegal activity of the proscribed group.
Under these statutes, an American citizen who sends a treatise on nonviolence to the Kurdistan Workers' Party to encourage it to forgo violence for peace can be sent to prison for 15 years. This is so even if he proves that he intended the treatise to be used only for peaceful ends, and that it was in fact used solely for that purpose. Such a moral innocent can be said to be "guilty" by association. [1]
If you think this is an exaggeration and couldn't happen, think again. This is precisely the situation in which Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir found himself.
For 13 years, Dhafir worked tirelessly to help publicize the plight of the Iraqi people and to raise funds to help them.[7] According to the government, Dhafir donated $1.25 million of his own money over the years.[8] As an oncologist, he was also concerned about the effects of depleted uranium on the Iraqi population, which was experiencing skyrocketing cancer rates.[9]
For the crime of breaking the U.S. and U.K.-sponsored U.N. sanctions on Iraq and sending humanitarian aid to sick and starving civilians, Dhafir was held without bail for 31 months and then sentenced to 22 years in prison. By implication, his were terrorist acts.
"I fully intend to ask what's in those databanks, because many of them go way beyond any legitimate needs for our security," says Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy.
Congress wants to know not just what data was collected, but why and how it was to be used.
Since the day of Dhafir's arrest, February 26, 2003, when 85 (!) agents went to his home, government officials at national and state levels have portrayed Dhafir's humanitarian work as support of terrorism.[26] Simultaneous to Dhafir's arrest, between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., others associated with HTN were arrested in Syracuse, New York; Boise, Idaho; and Amman, Jordan. At the same time, about 150 mainly Muslim families who had donated to HTN were interrogated by government agents.[27] On the same day, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that "supporters of terrorism" had been apprehended - a completely unfounded assertion that was reiterated by New York Governor George Pataki in August 2004, just prior to the start of Dhafir's trial.[28]
At the same time, and throughout the trial, local government officials - the prosecutors and the District Attorney - denied that the case had any connection to terrorism. Instead they portrayed Dhafir as a common thief.[29] District Attorney Glenn Suddaby said, "[T]here's no evidence that any of the Help the Needy money went to al Qaida, the Iraqi government, or to buy arms and bullets that could be used against U.S. soldiers."
‘‘§ 948a. Definitions
‘‘In this chapter:
‘‘(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT.—(A) The term ‘unlaw-ful
enemy combatant’ means—
‘‘(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who
has purposefully and materially supported hostilities
against the United States or its co-belligerents who is
not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who
is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces);
Neither Breinholt nor West stated that these "powerful prosecution tools" are being used mostly against Muslim charities and individuals associated with those charities, while violations by large corporations like Halliburton, which did billions of dollars worth of business in defiance of [the exact same statutes used against Dhafir - 50 U.S.C. ss 1701,1702] IEEPA, go largely unpunished. At the most these corporations have gotten a slap on the wrist and a fine, but no individual board member or officer has ever faced prosecution. [60] And although many non-Muslim charities work in the same troubled regions of the world as Muslim charities, not a single non-Muslim charity has been closed.[61] None of this was mentioned at the lecture.
The ever-present threat of a "terrorist designation" by the Treasury Department functions based on the principle of "guilty until proven innocent." The use of secret evidence, hearsay, erroneous translations, guilt by association and press reports in recent court cases further erodes the ability of charities to rely on basic assumptions regarding their constitutional rights, especially when the courts ultimately favor the government when "national security" is allegedly at stake. Overzealous surveillance tactics of the intelligence community such as wiretapping, infiltrating organizations by bribing employees to work as spies (thereby disrupting normal and lawful humanitarian activities), and engaging in other forms of harassment - when added to the above bleak picture - will not only chill, but will freeze completely American Muslim charitable giving overseas. Perhaps this is the goal of the U.S. government. However, no one should be fooled into thinking that America or the American people will be much safer as a result.
