Fat Tony Proves He Is What He Always Was

I wish I could say it feels good seeing everybody finally catching up with me after a decade or so, but it doesn’t. I predicted Obama’s corporate sell-out and got kicked off a Democrat group blog. I predicted his continued support of the Bush attack on privacy rights, and even that he would strengthen that attack, and I got left-wing hate mail. I predicted that he wouldn’t close Gitmo, and discovered that I was a “traitor”, an “extremist”, and, somehow, a Commie conservative. Nobody wanted to hear it, let alone believe it, but here we are, 5 years later, with massive NSA spying approved by the Administration, drones and a new presidential power to use them against anyone he (or she) doesn’t like and on his/her own say-so and nothing more, a continuing Gitmo embarrassment that Obama won’t end even though everybody – even the military – wants him to, and a Justice Dept that seems more eager to protect corporate profits than civil rights. Even some of his most rabid supporters are now being forced to admit that a Third Way Dem hasn’t turned out to be much of an improvement over a whacko corporate Pub.

What If the Arguments Defending the Bush Criminals Were Applied to Everyone?

This is what you’d hear in your average courtroom if justice for the Bushies was justice for all:

Prosecutor: And so Mr Rummysfelt has admitted that he knocked an elderly woman on the head with a tire iron in order to steal her purse after she cashed her Social Security check.

Judge:(to Defense) So your client is pleading guilty?

Defense: No, Your Honor, my client isn’t pleading at all. My client wants the charges dropped.

The 6th District Wiretapping Decision (Updated)

So let’s see if I’ve got this straight:

1. A Mayor announces publicly that he’s given himself the right to walk into any house in town and go through anybody’s personal effects, without permission from either them or a court, if he thinks they might be involved in criminal activity.
2. A number of prominent members of the Mayor’s opposition, along with critics of his policies, notice shortly thereafter that someone broke into their homes and searched them. They call the police.
3. The police investigate but when the homeowners try to find out what the evidence shows, they discover that the Mayor has declared the evidence “secret” on the grounds that releasing it might tip his hand to criminals, and he refuses to allow it to be seen by anyone except himself, select members of his re-election team, and police officers loyal to him.
4. The homeowners bring suit against the Mayor on the grounds that they have “a reasonable expectation” that the Mayor was the one who broke into their homes, seeing as how he announced that’s what he planned to do, and ask the court to declare the Mayor’s assumption of such powers to be illegal – which, absent the Mayor’s solo declaration that it isn’t, it is.
5. The Judge agrees with them, but when the Mayor appeals to the City Superior Court – where, of the three judges, two are loyalists of his party and one of them was appointed by him – the Superior Court overturns the Judge’s ruling because the plaintiffs can’t prove it was the Mayor (what with the evidence being locked up and all) and therefore “have no standing” – ie, they can’t prove that a) “they were harmed”, or b) the Mayor was the one who did it.

That’s essentially what just happened in the 6th District Court of Appeals over the ACLU’s wiretapping suit.

Bush Nominates Yet Another Racist to the Federal Bench (updated)

People for the American Way are reporting that Bush has just nominated yet another racist, sexist, anti-labor judge to a seat on the Federal bench, this time for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

President Bush has nominated Leslie Southwick to fill a seat on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Bush previously tried to fill the seat with Charles Pickering and then Michael Wallace, both of whom faced significant opposition due to their disturbing legal records, especially on civil rights.

“Regrettably, Southwick also has a troubling record and appears to be cut from the same cloth as the others,” said Ralph G. Neas, President of People For the American Way. “First Pickering, then Wallace, and now Southwick – Bush has completely struck out on the Fifth Circuit.”

What’s Really Behind the DoJ Politicization: Creating a Theocracy

On both sides of the political aisle now, you hear the same dumb question: “What’s wrong with putting religion into government?” This has to be in the Top Ten List of the Stoopidest Questions of All Time. It may be Number 1.

The argument, such as it is, goes that one’s faith, as expressed by religion, makes one a better, more humane, more thoughtful, more generous, more forgiving, etc etc etc person who will bring those fine qualities to govt where they will do some good. In the eyes of many people, having politicians and govt officials bring their religion into a central decision-making role can only be positive. Even moderates and centrists initially supported Bush’s program to ladle out govt contracts – and therefore public tax money – to faith-based organizations for any number of social functions, from rehabilitating criminals to combatting teen pregnancy. What harm could it do? they wondered.

The problem here is that virtually all religious folk see their faith as exclusively positive. In theory, that’s true of almost all religions – they all preach brotherhood, tolerance, respect, charity, and peace – but in practice, any institutionalized religion can be turned into an instrument of intolerance, meanness, sanctomonius arrogance, and/or authoritarian rigidity, any one of which characteristics can – and usually does – devolve fairly quickly into a warlike antipathy toward infidels and unbelievers.

The framers of the Constitution knew this, even though they were religious themselves (sort of – they were primarily Enlightenment Deists, which is kind of a religion and kind of not a religion). They had reason to: they had seen what happened to Britain when the monarchy allied itself with the CofE to create a state-sponsored, state-enforced religion. Wisely, they wanted no part of it, thus the Establishment Clause.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

The Establishment Clause has been interpreted by various Supreme Court decisions as forbidding the US govt from actively supporting a single religion or denomination, thus separating religion from law. In his letter to the Baptist Church of Danbury, CT, Jefferson (then President) explained:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

To make a long story short, the letter was written in response to a concern expressed by the leadership of the Danbury Baptist Church that “in their state, the religious liberties they enjoyed were not seen as immutable rights, but as privileges granted by the legislature – as ‘favors granted.'” At the time there was a movement by so-called “Establishment Religionists” to declare a state religion in Connecticut – an early attempt at legalizing a theocracy at the state level. The Baptists were worried because theirs wasn’t the religion that would be picked – that honor would go to the Congregationalists – and they were afraid that it would be outlawed.

As, indeed, it might well have been if the Connecticut legislature had gone along with the Establishmentarians, but it didn’t. The movement never gained much political traction and died out in only a few years, but the Baptists were right to be concerned. They were a distinct minority in Congregationalist New England, and the establishment of a state religion would make them criminals, subject to fines and possibly either jail or banishment from the state. Certainly their form of worship would be banned at the very least. Worse, laws could be passed demanding their adherence to practices they considered to be forbidden by their faith.

And therein lies the connection between Jefferson’s famous phrase and the supporting cast of the US Attorney controversy now raging.

Clintonite Appeals Court Judge Upholds Reaganite Judge in CIA Kidnapping Case

US District Court Judge TS Ellis III, who recently dismissed the corruption suit against Custer Battles on the fairly specious grounds that the CPA was not a “US govt entity” without explaining how it could rationally be considered anything else, last year dismissed Khaled Al-Masri’s lawsuit against the CIA for kidnapping and torture on the dubious grounds that “state secrets” might be “exposed” by a public trial. Al-Masri appealed that decision and yesterday the Fourth Circuit, led by Clinton appointee Robert B King, upheld Ellis’ ruling.

In May 2006, Judge T. S. Ellis III, of the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., dismissed the suit under the so-called state secrets privilege. The privilege can require courts to limit or dismiss suits that might disclose information harmful to national security. The decision yesterday, by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, affirmed that ruling.

“We recognize the gravity of our conclusions that el-Masri must be denied a judicial forum for his complaint,” Judge Robert B. King wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the court. “The inquiry is a difficult one, for its pits the judiciary’s search for truth against the executive’s duty to maintain the nation’s security.”

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mr. Masri, said there was enough public information about his ordeal to allow his suit to be adjudicated without endangering national security. The appeals court disagreed, saying that Mr. Masri could not win his case without exposing “how the C.I.A. organizes, staffs and supervises its most sensitive intelligence operations.”

Furthermore, the court continued, the defendants “could not properly defend themselves without using privileged evidence.”

King’s argument is tantamount to giving the CIA carte-blanche to do anything it wants to do anywhere in the world without either oversight or accountability and – as the Church Committee proved thirty years ago – there is no such immunity from prosecution enshrined in either US law or international law, nor was it ever the intent of Congress to give the Company such blanket immunity.

Guantanamo Detainees Lose Appeal

Just last week, a Reaganite judge dismissed the case for corruption against Scott Custer and Mike Battles on very dubious but Bush Administration-approved grounds. Today, the DC Court of Appeals rejected a petition by lawyers representing the Gitmo detainees to “challenge their imprisonment”, a ruling that basically gives Bush the power to continue with his de facto suspension of habeus corpus rights.

In its 2 to 1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld one of the central components of the Military Commissions Act, the law enacted last year by a then-Republican-controlled Congress that stripped Guantanamo detainees of their right to such habeas corpus petitions. Lawyers have filed the petitions on behalf of virtually all of the nearly 400 detainees still at Guantanamo, challenging President Bush’s right to hold them indefinitely without charges. Yesterday’s ruling effectively dismisses the cases.

The lawyers are going to appeal to the SCOTUS, and Dem Senators Patrick Leahy (along with Repub Arlen Specter) and Chris Dodd are already moving to overturn the suspension (Dodd introduced his bill last week), but until all that happens, the Gitmo defendants remain in a legal limbo where they have no rights of any kind except those granted by the military courts – which don’t seem inclined to grant very many.

The two appellate judges who upheld the administration’s position are – no surprise here – conservative Republicans. Another non-surprise: their lockstep parroting of Bush Administration arguments.

One Man’s Civil Right Is Another Man’s Holocaust

By a 51-46 vote, the Senate confirmed J Leon Holmes to the Federal bench. Letting local politics trump both good sense and good policy, Democrats helped put yet another radical conservative into the judicial system.

WASHINGTON — The judicial nomination wars, dormant in recent months, re-emerged Tuesday as the Senate narrowly confirmed one of President Bush’s nominees to the bench who has argued that abortion is akin to the Holocaust and that the Bible requires women to be subservient to men.The Senate voted 51-46 to put J. Leon Holmes on the federal bench in Arkansas after a fierce debate in which some GOP women voted against the president while Democrats from Holmes’ home state of Arkansas spoke of him in glowing terms.

Holmes has a record of saying startling things like his statement that rape victims become pregnant as often as it snows in Miami. He also wrote in 1997 that in a marriage “the woman is to place herself under the authority of the man.”

The inclusion of a crosscurrent of local Arkansas politics provided an unusual twist to the settled routine in which Republican senators regularly argue that a Bush nominee’s strongly held conservative beliefs will have no influence on the candidate’s future performance as a judge: The two Democrats from Arkansas, Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, were making that argument on Tuesday.

Pryor argued that despite Holmes’ personal views, he was confident he would be an impartial judge. Lincoln said she had “the utmost confidence” in Holmes’ ability to be fair, saying she had been told so by many prominent Arkansans.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said, “It was quite clear that he had made numerous strident, intemperate and insensitive public statements over the years” on issues including school desegregation, political emancipation and school prayer. “His statements also reveal a callous disregard for the trauma of women who are raped.” Leahy said that while it snowed in Miami once a century, more than 20,000 rape victims are made pregnant each year.

Thanks for your help, guys.