February 2009 archive

As Dick and George slithered out of DC, a number of lawsuits that were filed by victims of their criminal acts involving FISA, torture and rendition have now been inherited by President Obama.  Bush routinely dismissed these cases by claiming his version of state secrets privilege on unilateral steroids.  The megamedia have reported that the Obama Justice Dept. has indicated in pleadings that it will also invoke the state secrets privilege.  However, there is an alternative which could protect legitimate governmental prerogatives, a victim’s right of redress for harms perpetrated by government officials and society’s right for a transparent government that sustains the rule of law.  The alternative is for Obama to adopt the state secrets standards that govern criminal prosecutions as his guidelines for use in civil litigation until Congress adopts the State Secrets Protection Act that was defeated last year amidst Bush’s veto threats. These guidelines are consistent with Supreme Court precedent that has rarely been correctly utilized.

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

There are 49 people presently facing the federal death penalty.  If we want to, we might be able to spare them.  We might be able to get the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, to review the decisions by the three Bush Administration Attorney Generals to pursue the death penalty in these cases, and if the new Attorney General thought, if there were convictions, that the defendants shouldn’t be killed, he could require prosecutors not to seek the death penalty, to be satisfied with a maximum sentence of life without parole.  This would be a remarkable development.  It would save lives.  The United States would join the civilized world that has stopped state killing.  The essential hypocrisy of an eye for an eye would be abandoned.  It would be a new era.  We would not have these people’s blood on our hands.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal..

“We face a monumental economic challenge that goes far beyond anything being discussed in the U.S. Congress or the corporate press. The hardships imposed by temporarily frozen credit markets pale in comparison to what lies ahead.

Even the significant funds that the Obama administration is committed to spending on economic stimulus will do nothing to address the deeper structural causes of our threefold financial, social, and environmental crisis. On the positive side, the financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and that markets work best when deregulated. This creates an opportune moment to open a national conversation about what we can and must do to create an economic system that can for work for all people for all time.”

RawStory this afternoon:

The United States Senate has confirmed Eric Holder, President Obama’s nominee for attorney general, by a vote of 75-21, making him the first African-American to hold the office.

His Republican opponents in the Senate said they felt Holder is hostile to the rights of gun owners and questioned his support of President Bush’s terror war.

Reportedly, among the no votes were Senators Barrasso, Brownback, Burr, Coburn, Cochran, Cornyn, Crapo, Ensign, Kaybee, Hutchison, Inhofe, Johanns, McConnell, Risch, Shelby, Thune and Wicker.

During the confirmation hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) scolded Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) after several Republicans demanded Holder pledge he would not prosecute US interrogators who followed the Bush administration’s orders to torture prisoners.

“No one should be seeking to trade a vote for such a pledge,” said the Vermont Democrat.

“When Cornyn rose to announce his vote against Holder, he did not make such a demand,” reports the AP. “However, he accused the nominee of changing his once-supportive position – on the need to detain terrorism suspects without all the rights of the Geneva Convention – to one of harshly criticizing Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies.”

During the hearing, Holder stated directly, “Waterboarding is torture.”

Now that he has been confirmed, it is within his authority to reverse President Bush’s order granting his former advisers blanket immunity against testimony before Congress. Three of President Bush’s close advisers — Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton — are facing congressional contempt citations.

“The confirmation of Eric Holder as our new Attorney General is a momentous day for the rule of law,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI). “During his confirmation hearings, Eric Holder clearly and unequivocally stated that no one, including the president, is above the law. Those were welcome words after eight years of Bush Administration policies that undermined our Constitution and damaged the integrity of the Department of Justice.”

Will prayers help?

From Dee over at Citizen Orange a report about one of our private prison systems, and it’s not good news:

A Prison Uprising is underway at the Reeves County Detention Center (RCDC). This is the second uprising in 2 months. The detainees say prison conditions are inhumane and they lack needed medical treatment. The trigger setting them off in December was a prisoner dying.

This center is located in Pecos, Tx, an extremely “out of the way” location. It houses approximately 2,400 minimum security inmates and immigration detainees. It is operated by the GEO group. GEO attempted to cover up the reason for the prisoner’s death by saying the young prisoner died of natural causes. The detainees, risking their lives, protested.

As I have previously reported, the GEO Group, is an international corporation that operates prisons around the country and is frequently in the news for its abuse of prisoners in its care resulting in many preventable deaths. At least eight people died at the Geo Group-operated George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, the state’s only privately run jail. Several of those deaths resulted in lawsuits by family members who say the facility did not provide adequate medical care or proper supervision for inmates.

Prisons for profit.  Let’s not also forget one of Halliburton’s prisons, the Hutto facility in Texas (hmm, Texas again?) being only one of the most egregious, children imprisoned — for profit.

Lot of cleaning up to do.  But for so many, it’s too little, too late.

Open thread is open!

1. The NY Times reports Welfare aid isn’t growing as economy drops off.

   Despite soaring unemployment and the worst economic crisis in decades, 18 states cut their welfare rolls last year, and nationally the number of people receiving cash assistance remained at or near the lowest in more than 40 years…

   Of the 12 states where joblessness grew most rapidly, eight reduced or kept constant the number of people receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the main cash welfare program for families with children. Nationally, for the 12 months ending October 2008, the rolls inched up a fraction of 1 percent.

   The deepening recession offers a fresh challenge to the program, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 amid bitter protest and became one of the most closely watched social experiments in modern memory.

   The program, which mostly serves single mothers, ended a 60-year-old entitlement to cash aid, replacing it with time limits and work requirements, and giving states latitude to discourage people from joining the welfare rolls. While it was widely praised in the boom years that followed, skeptics warned it would fail the needy when times turned tough.

Four at Four continues with climate changing off the U.S. Pacific coast, protecting deep sea reefs off the U.S. Atlantic coast, Bolivia’s lithium wealth, and China in the face of economic protests.

Note to the nervous, and people always seem to get nervous at the words “Class War” are spoken! Perhaps the greatest service McCain did in his campaign was draw the lines of the Class War. If you make under the McCain Line of $5 million a year….

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Tired of Being Lectured by the Rich About Need for Austerity? Tired of “shameful,” “irresponsible” members of the Ruling Class acting like idiots….on YOUR dime?

“They don’t get it,” McCaskill said on the floor. “These people are idiots. You can’t use taxpayer money to pay out $18-billion in bonuses… What planet are these people on?”

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Tired of … the richest American paying THE LOWEST EFFECTIVE TAX RATE since the IRS began giving out that data?  Tired of being declared an unlawful combatant in the Class War? Tired of the consequences of the Class War being so dire that a member of the House of Representatives has had to tell The People to defy The Banks authority to boot them into the street? Are you tired of being a pacifist in the Class War as it destroys American families and the American and world economy….because the Ruling Class is so greedy that it won’t even leave the customary crumbs on the table for the rest of us poor peons? Tired of the Ruling Class making obscene,  record profits, while children starve to death? Tired of the “two-tiered justice system” that the Ruling Class have created for themselves?

The one where they get away with starting illegal wars, torturing, looting the economy for billions of dollars, War Profiteering, (yes YOU, Halliburton) growing rich on the deaths of our (lower class) soldiers in Iraq, politicizing our government to their advantage and outting CIA agents with absolute impunity….while record numbers of the Lower Classes serve hard time for minor drug offenses or stealing bread to feed our families?

Tired of feeling helpless as Class War is waged upon you?

Then strike a blow against the Ruling Class. Strike a blow for justice. Sign the Citizens Petition: Special Prosecutor for Bush War Crimes.

Everyone knows that the Bush Administration committed War…and many other….Crimes. Even leaders of The Republican Party (the political arm of the Ruling Class) like Sen. Cornyn and Sen. Spectre, who tried to blackmail or extort a promise NOT to prosecute the Bush Administration from our soon to be Attorney General Holder. If there WEREN’T crimes, why would they try to strong arm the new AG from investigating and prosecuting them?

WE know they are guilty, (at LEAST guilty enough to thoroughly investigate) ‘THEY know’ Bush is guilty. Why then is there so much talk of “Looking Forward” and such angst about an honest AG being appointed?



Because the Ruling Class protect their own.

The only reason not to prosecute is to protect the Ruling Class from responsibility for their crimes. How does excusing yet another round of the crimes of the Ruling/Political Class from prosecution benefit anyone besides the Ruling Class?

Because Congress and the DOJ has “better things to do” than investigate and prosecute? You mean better things like bailing out The Ruling Class with tax money provided by the Lower Classes? Yeah, we better let them get to that before demanding justice….or something bad might happen to us. Like…maybe…being put under house arrest in our 7 million dollar home for stealing 50 Billion dollars….how inconvenient is that? Or maybe having to sell one of our seven houses. As the economy crashes around us….and NO ONE is held accountable for the mess they made. Yeah, nothing is more important than making sure that this system continues as it is….or people might suffer.



Thus, the most effective blow we can strike in the Class War that is being waged against us is this: Hold them accountable. Do NOT let the two tiered justice system that the Ruling Class has created to prosecute us and excuse them work this time. Demand justice. Demand accountability. Demand that the Ruling Class be held responsible for their crimes.

What suffers most in a Class War? Justice. How can we strike back in the Class War….by doing the right thing…. and show that we are not going to just lay back and take it? By fighting for justice for the Ruling Class. Not out of spite or resentment or revenge, but because IT IS the right thing to do, to hold them to the Rule of Law. To be sure that they are held equal, no more and no less, in this allegedly egalitarian democracy.

Strike a blow for equality…

Original article, by Ralph Nader, via nader.org:

Soon after the passage in 1999 of the Clinton-Rubin-Summers-P. Graham deregulation of the financial industry, I boarded a US Air flight to Boston and discovered none other than then-Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers a few seats away. He was speaking loudly and constantly on his cell phone. When the plane took off he invited me to sit by him and talk.