Category: Corruption

Bush and His Evil Minions™ Say that Telcos Will Not Cooperate with Surveillance Requests…Except, of Course They Are Cooperating

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Yep, McConnell and Mukasey are at it again claiming that intelligence is being lost because there is no Telco Immunity, except of course for this:

But hours later, administration officials told lawmakers that the final holdout among the companies had relented and agreed to fully participate in the surveillance program, according to an official familiar with the issue.

The Telcos broke the law and surveilled people without warrants, startinb 7 months before 9-11, and they would like to be excused, but it is not stopping them from cooperating new.

McCain Sleaze Update

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So, the FEC has said that McCain has opted in for the primary, and that unless the FEC approves his petion to pull out, which it cannot because it lacks quorum, he cannot opt out. (here and here)

The WaPo story has the money quote’

This is serious,’ agreed Republican election lawyer Jan Baran. Ignoring the matter on the grounds that the FEC lacks a quorum, Baran said, ‘is like saying you’re going to break into houses because the sheriff is out of town.’

As I’ve said before, if Barack Obama wants an out for the general election, all he has to do is explain that McCain is already violating campaign finance law.

In the matter of inappropriate dealings with lobbyists and their clients, we have broadcast station owner Lowell “Bud” Paxson directly contradicting McCains “no meetings’ statement, and we have letters from McCain threatening the FCC regarding a loophole in regulations that benefited Glencairn Ltd. and Sinclair communications. Glencairn’s lobbyist? Vicki Iseman.

I do not believe that John McCain screwed Vicki Iseman, but I do believe that McCain and Iseman did screw the American public.

Finally, we are starting to see coverage regarding how the national media is in the tank for McCain.

It’s only been 9 years for someone to recognize that.

McCains Denials are False, So Says….John McCain

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Michael Isikoff has the goods: McCain’s claims of never talking to anyone from Paxson Communications is false:

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman’s clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

Just hours after the Times’s story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response……

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. “I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue,” McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK. “He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint.”

…

McCain’s subsequent letters to the FCC—coming around the same time that Paxson’s firm was flying the senator to campaign events aboard its corporate jet and contributing $20,000 to his campaign—first surfaced as an issue during his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. William Kennard, the FCC chair at the time, described the sharply worded letters from McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, as “highly unusual.”

So, what we have here at best is what he did with Charles Keating, and now he is lying about it.

You have more details on his ties to lobbyists and wealthy pay-to-play campaign contributors here and here.

The Washington Post notes that McCain’s paid campaign staff is full of lobbyists, which kind of means that when AP Reporter Glen Johnson heckled Mitt Romney about not having lobbyist on staff, he was being unfair and unprofessional.

There May Be Tapes of Gitmo Torture

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This is very interesting:

Last week, a team of faculty and students from Seton Hall Law School—the folks who’ve worked tirelessly for years to document the government’s best evidence (PDF) against the Guantanamo prisoners—released a new report suggesting that the government has recorded all of the interrogations at Guantanamo. Using documents prepared by the government and obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the team established that all of the 24,000 interrogations conducted at the camp since 2002 were taped. This jibes with reports from the detainees themselves, who came forward to dispute CIA Director Michael Hayden’s claim last winter that the videotaping had been halted in 2002.

Ex-Gitmo Prosecutor Offers to Testify for Defense

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Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who resigned from his position as Guantanamo Chief Prosecutor, is offering to testify on behalf of the defense. (here and here)

The defense is arguing that political interference violates the Military Commissions Act, and I expect that Col. Davis will be offering evidence to confirm this.

This is a very brave thing to do.

“I think the rules are fair,” he said. “I think the problem is having political appointees injected into the system. They are looking for a political outcome, not justice.”

He alleges, for example, that senior officials pushed for a plea bargain in March 2007 for Australian David Hicks, allowing him to serve a nine-month sentence in his homeland for aiding the Taliban.

Davis said the sentence was too lenient and was orchestrated to help Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who was under criticism domestically for his support of President Bush and U.S. policies.

I hope that his testimony is public, but given the fact that the military has already forbidden him from appearing before congress on this matter.

If I were the defense, I’d get a subpoena, which would make any order for him not to appear illegal.

Cafe Talk | Talking Points Memo | Behind the Times McCain Story

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We have an interesting comment on the John McCain coverage at the NY Times from Molly Gordy on TPM Cafe.

She notes that Marilyn Thompson, one of the authors of the, quit the Times and returned to the WaPo, about a month ago. Ms. Gordy wonders if she did so because she felt that the story had been unfairly spiked.

For reasons that have never been clear to me, the press is seriously in the can for McCain, and they may have suppressed, or watered down, the story.

In 2000, McCain Aides Felt Compelled to to Build Human Shield Around His Penis

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The New York Times has just broken a story on a possible inappropriate relationship between John McCain and a young attractive lobbyist, Vicki Iseman*.

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

There is no specific allegation of any sort of physical or romantic relationship, but his aides were concerned enough about this that someone had a serious talk to him, and they prevented further contact between McCain and Iseman, forming a sort of a human shield.

Let’s be clear, it’s entirely possible that they never did anything physical. What’s more it could be possible that they never expressed to each other, or to anyone else any romantic feelings.

To put it in a military perspective, fraternization between an Officer and an Enlisted man does not have to involve romance. A BFF (Best Friends Forever) relationship is inappropriate within a chain of command.

That being said, given his involvement with con artist Charles Keating and his role as one of the Keating 5, where he was “just doing favors for a friend”, it is remarkably intemperate. It was insanely reckless.

John McCain has has a reputation for outbursts and instability, and it calls his judgment into question.

To quote a friend of his:

“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”

This at best brings his judgment, his common sense, and his commitment to really changing things in Washington into question.

The issue is not whether he had sex with that woman. It is why he forged such a close relationship with a lobbyist, and did favors for her after having experienced what he himself calls his catharsis in the Keating matter.

To put it bluntly at best is he reckless, and is he nuts.

*Well, young to me. She’s 40 and I’m 45.

Duke Cunningham Briber Brent Wilkes Gets 12 Years

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The prosecutor wanted 25 years, the probation officer recommended over 50 years, but the judge went with the low side.

It appears that the judge did not buy the prosecution’s argument that it was all Wilkes, and believed that Randy “Duke” Cunningham was not a mind bogglingly stupid pawn, but shared some responsibility in this.

However, the judge has sent him to jail immediately, no bail on appeal, because he deemed Wilkes a lying sack of sh%$. (My words, not his)

NLG Calls on Justice Antonin Scalia to Recuse Himself From Interrogation-Related Cases

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Following his disgraceful interview with the BBC, the National Lawyers Guild has requested that Antonin Scalia recuse himself from any torture related cases, as he has clearly prejudged this case, and shown himself not to be impartial in this matter:

Justice Scalia’s remarks inevitably pre-judge the issues in every case in which the Constitution might dictate suppression of evidence because of illegal police interrogation techniques, or the right to compensation of a person subjected to a violation of civil rights. We therefore call upon Justice Scalia to recuse himself from any case which comes before the Court in which such issues are at stake.

Increasingly, we have heard these outrageous statements from Scalia, the case of the obscene gesture in church comes to mind, and I’m wondering if we are seeing early onset Alzheimer’s.

Bush Administration is “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime”

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Eliot Spitzer, current Governor of, and former Attorney General for, the state of New York, has an editorial today that says just that.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

I don’t who care who wins the election in 2008. I want Eliot Spitzer to win the 2012 Presidential election as the Democratic nominee.

Read the whole thing

House of Saud Threatened UK With Terrorist Attacks If Bribery Was Investigated

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The Guardian is reporting that the House of Saud threatened to help terrorists if the British government continued to investigate the bribes paid to Saudi Prince Bandar.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced “another 7/7” and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

It should be noted that one of Bandar’s nicknames is “Bandar Bush”, because he is considered a sort of virtual member of the Bush clan by the family.

One of the future goals of any future US administration should be the removal from power of the House of Saud, and the imprisonment of those who held the reigns of power.

More Evidence that Destroyed Evidence Will Prevent Fair Trials at Gitmo

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It appears that tapes of interviews and torture interrogations were routinely overwritten, in defiance of a court order.

Not only does cast a pall over the Guantanamo show trials, it may make it impossible to hold a trial in a real court as a result.

The cynic in me believes that this was the intent. Screw it up so badly that the only alternative is a Kangaroo court.

Look at Saddam Hussein’s trial. How you run such an unfair trial, when the defendant was so plainly guilty, is completely beyond me.

Carbon Trading: Once Again, Speculative Market Type Solutions to Real Problems Fail Abysmally

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It appears that they have discovered that outright fraud is destroying carbon trading.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, one out of every five carbon credits that’s been issued by the United Nations may be bogus in the sense that the projects being credited for reducing emissions are in fact increasing emissions.

The justification for carbon trading has been that speculative markets will magically find truth and the best way of doing things.

The real justification is that people with MBAs can create complex instruments that generate them lots of fees for doing things that do not benefit the public, or achieve the stated goals of the program.

Basically, this is gambling, and Wall Street sets itself up as the house. It’s what the FDR era regulations were supposed to minimize, and what 30 years of deregulation, starting under Carter, have given us.

It’s a system that encourages phony numbers and lying to generate fees and profits.

Carbon trading is a carbon tax, they both serve to raise the cost of releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

The only difference is that the former benefits Wall Street types, and the latter benefits everyone, so under today’s morality, the former is good, and the latter is bad.