Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Supreme Court let stand a ruling from the lower court that forces the Federal Reserve to disclose details about its emergency lending programs to banks during the financial crisis in 2008.

Fed’s Court-Ordered Disclosure Shows Americans’ ‘Right to Know’

A Supreme Court order that forces unprecedented disclosures from the Federal Reserve ended a two- year legal battle that helped shape the public’s perceptions of the U.S. central bank.

The high court yesterday let stand a lower-court ruling compelling the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed money at the so-called discount window during the credit crisis. The records were requested by Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. In July, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank law, which mandated the release of other Fed bailout details.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke “now must finally understand that this money doesn’t belong to the Federal Reserve, it belongs to the American people and the American people have a right to know how their taxpayer dollars are being put at risk,” said Senator Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent who wrote Fed transparency provisions in Dodd-Frank.

The financial crisis, which began in August 2007 and peaked after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008, focused the public’s attention on the Fed and its $3.5 trillion effort to rescue the banking system, said U.S. Representative Ron Paul, who heads the House subcommittee that oversees the central bank.

“People wanted to know more about what the Fed was doing,” said Paul, a Texas Republican. “It’s been a significant change and the American people won’t ever be complacent about this.”

Fed Will Release Bank Loan Data as Top Court Rejects Appeal

The Clearing House Association contended that Bloomberg is seeking an unprecedented disclosure that might dissuade banks from accepting emergency loans in the future.

Obama Administration

“We are disappointed that the court has declined our petitions, which deal with the protection of highly confidential bank information provided to the Federal Reserve,” the group said in a statement after the high court acted.

A federal trial judge ruled in 2009 that the Fed had to disclose the records in the Bloomberg case, and a New York-based appeals court upheld that ruling.

The Clearing House Association’s chances at getting a Supreme Court hearing suffered a setback when the Obama administration urged the justices not to hear the appeal. The government said the underlying issues had limited practical significance because Congress last year laid out new rules for disclosing Fed loans in the Dodd-Frank law.

“Congress has resolved the question of whether and when the type of information at issue in this case must be disclosed” in the future, the administration said in a brief filed by acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, President Barack Obama’s top Supreme Court lawyer.

While this is great news, unfortunately, it is a one time disclosure under the terms of the Dodd-Frank bill (pdf) and with the Republicans in control of the House it is unlikely that any amendment for future audits would pass. Obama should have worked harder for better oversight of our tax dollars.

The independence of the judiciary means that the Courts should be free from improper influence from outside interests.  What a great idea for having a transparent, fair judicial system.  It’s a concept that has so much promise.  But in practice the present Supreme Court and its members may be driving it off a cliff. Today’s news about Justice Thomas’s wife’s lobbying business may signal its ultimate demise.

The New York Times reports that Justice Thomas’s wife,

who has raised her political profile in the last year through her outspoken conservative activism, is rebranding herself as a lobbyist and self-appointed “ambassador to the Tea Party movement.”

Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, said on libertyinc.co, a Web site for her new political consulting business, that she saw herself as an advocate for “liberty-loving citizens” who favored limited government, free enterprise and other core conservative issues. She promised to use her “experience and connections” to help clients raise money and increase their political impact.

Happy Friday from the Obama Administration:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-…

The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Friday to pause enforcement of the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian service members while that policy faces a legal challenge.

The high court sided against the Log Cabin Republicans, a GOP gay rights group, that had asked that discharges of gay and lesbian members of the armed forces under military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy be suspended.

The Supreme Court of the United States sided with Eric Holder’s Department of Justice and the Obama White House, and against the Log Cabin Republicans, letting the military’s unpopular and discriminatory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy stay in place while it is undergoing a legal challenge that is trundling through the Federal appeals process, after Judge Virgina A. Phillips of the Central District of CA ruled that DADT was unconstitutional on September 9, 2010.

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

On October 12th, Judge Phillips issued an injunction to suspend DADT and

(3) Orders Defendants United States of America and the Secretary of Defense immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation, or other proceeding, that may have commenced under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Act, or pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 654 or its implementing regulations, on or prior to the date of this judgement.

That is where and when the Obama administration could have let the thing die, but, oh no, they have to go on appealing and defending it.  On October 14, the DOJ under Eric Holder appealed with a request for an emergency stay on Judge Phillip’s injunction, and on November 1 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed it, pending appeal to the Supreme Court.

The policy change is currently stuck in the Fiscal Year 2011 Defense spending appropriations bill, and Senator John McCain of Arizona successfully filibustered it on September 21st.  His wife Cindy McCain, and her daughter Meghan, are doing their usual good- cop Republican routine and calling for the policy to end.  His 2008 Vice Presidential running mate is busy planning a book tour and promoting her new reality TV show on her twitter account.  The first stop on the book tour is in …. Phoenix, AZ.    A leaked draft of Gate’s review of DADT has shown that the report says repeal would not be detrimental to the military.

BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl…

Some 70% of troops surveyed said the effects of repealing the ban would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, the paper said, citing a Pentagon report.

According to the newspaper, (the WAPO)  which spoke to people who had read the unreleased 370-page study, the survey results have led the report’s authors to conclude that objections to openly gay colleagues would drop once troops were able to live and serve alongside them.

However, a significant minority opposes serving alongside openly gay troops, with opposition apparently strongest in the Marine Corps.

Currently the Marines have fewer active personnel (14%) than any other branch of the military except for the Coast Guard.

Nicholson’s response from Servicemembers United

“These results confirm what those of us who actually know the modern military, especially the rank and file troops, have said all along. The men and women of America’s armed forces are professionals who are capable of handling this policy change,” said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army Human Intelligence Collector who was discharged under the law in 2002. “In light of these findings, as well as the Secretary of Defense’s recent call for Senate action on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ during the lame duck session, there is no longer any excuse for failing to bring the defense authorization bill back up during the first week of the post-election legislative session.”

http://archive.constantcontact…

Since the Democratic Party took the House of Representatives in 2006, there have been over 2,000 discharges of servicemembers under the discriminatory DADT policy.  Since the Clinton administration, there have been over 13,000.  The Democrats now have a short window of time in a lame duck session to accomplish anything,  before they can kiss their supermajorities goodbye.  One of the political fatalities of the last election was Representative Patrick Murphy of PA, who introduced the amendment repealing DADT into the bill.   In an interview, the President asked for assistance from the Log Cabin Republicans to get more Republican votes to get the bill changing the policy through the Senate (before the Nov 2, 2010 election).  Secretary of Defense Robert Gate’s military review report on DADT is “due” out officially now on December 1st.   The lame duck session will begin next week.

Apparently there is an (unspoken)  assumption being made, that if a conservative, Republican dominated Senate passes something the Supreme Court will not rule to over turn the law or declare it unconstitutional later.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday on two cases that have the potential to further ease the way for theocracy in the United States.

At stake is whether or not citizens can sue when tax credits are used to fund religious education and whether or not taxpayers have the right to sue to stop it. “The Obama administration says taxpayers have no right to sue if a state uses tax funds for parochial school tuitions,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

The ‘ability to sue over church-state claims at stake‘, The Associated Baptist Press reports. A 5-4 conservative Roberts Court decision “has the potential to change the way the law handles cases dealing with government endorsement of religion.”

If the court sides with the state, one consequence could be a significant reduction in taxpayers’ ability to sue governments over violations of the First Amendment clause that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

The one recently in the headlines, as it was stolen after a Supreme Court ruling about the placement on public land.

Well:

Anonymous letter explaining cross theft sent to Desert Dispatch

contacted the Desert Dispatch newsroom at around 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Snip

We are passing along this information in the hopes of illuminating what might have happened: