Category: Justice

Wanker of the Day

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William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton:

Former President Bill Clinton says it is “time to lower the rhetoric and talk about the facts,” in reference to the government’s scrutiny of Wall Street.

In an exclusive interview with Maria Bartiromo, Clinton noted that while many financial firms are being questioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he does not believe that Goldman Sachs or CEO Lloyd Blankfein did anything illegal, based on what he’s seeing.

You know, when your spouse is in the cabinet, it’s a good idea not to shoot your mouth like this, even if she is Secretary of state.

I always that he was a slimy corporatist prick who looked good only in comparison to the ratf%$#s who tried to impeach him.

I believe that my view is validated.

I Love Me Some Viking Justice

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Much more satisfying than putting their photos on the urinals

Iceland, a tiny nation of only 317,593 souls has looked at its epic bank failures, and said, “Why yes, we do have to make a federal case out of this:

More than a year and a half after Iceland’s major banks failed, all but sinking the country’s economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives and owners face a two-billion-dollar lawsuit.

Since Iceland’s three largest banks — Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir — collapsed in late 2008, their former executives and owners have largely been living untroubled lives abroad.

But the publication last month of a parliamentary inquiry into the island nation’s profound financial and economic crisis signaled a turning of the tide, laying much of the blame for the downfall on the former bank heads who had taken “inappropriate loans from the banks” they worked for.

What a quaint and old fashioned idea. When people corruptly enrich themselves at your expense, investigate.

If you find that they broke the law, arrest them and try them.

I vote for going medieval on the bankers asses.

[on edit]

Perhaps the bankers should learn this old prayer, “A furore normannorum libera nos domine.”*

*From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord!

It Ain’t Just Goldman

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You are no doubt aware of the SEC, and criminal, investigations of Goldman Sachs misleading investors by selling them bad CDOs, and then betting against the instruments.*

Well, it appears that practice may have been more common than previously understood, because Morgan Stanley is under criminal investigation for similar activities. (see also here and here)

The CDOs in question were named after dead presidents, James Buchanan and Andrew Jackson were two of the names, but they appeared to have been referred to generally as “Dead Presidents.”

Seriously, these guys watched the movie Wall Street, and they though that Gordon Gecko was a Christ figure.

*Earlier posts on Goldman Sachs’ alleged misdeeds here, here, here, here, here, and here.

We Have a Report that Elana Kagan Will Be the Scotus Nominee

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Not surprising.

Basically, they are choosing her because of her ability to get ahead in legal academe without saying, or publishing much.

She was tenured at the University of Chicago, and later Harvard, where she became Dean of Harvard Law, but her record of publications is remarkably sparse, though I think that Paul Campos’ comparison of her to Harriet Miers is a big much:

Yesterday, I read everything Elena Kagan has ever published. It didn’t take long: in the nearly 20 years since Kagan became a law professor, she’s published very little academic scholarship—three law review articles, along with a couple of shorter essays and two brief book reviews. Somehow, Kagan got tenure at Chicago in 1995 on the basis of a single article in The Supreme Court Review—a scholarly journal edited by Chicago’s own faculty—and a short essay in the school’s law review. She then worked in the Clinton administration for several years before joining Harvard as a visiting professor of law in 1999. While there she published two articles, but since receiving tenure from Harvard in 2001 (and becoming dean of the law school in 2003) she has published nothing. (While it’s true law school deans often do little scholarly writing during their terms, Kagan is remarkable both for how little she did in the dozen years prior to becoming Harvard’s dean, and for never having written anything intended for a more general audience, either before or after taking that position.)

On the other hand, the fact that she has not been a Federal judge, or worked as a US Attorney, and she made the prima-donnas at Harvard Law play nice.

Still, I think that it is her lack of a record that has put her in this position, which I think is a bad idea.

It will just push Obama’s opponents to look harder, and they will find something eventually.

Appointing a real liberal would be day 1 news, but instead, we will have a drip, drip, drip, about her.

I also think that this is a real attempt to avoid a fight, and once again, because the Republicans understand that unreasonable opposition is their best political tactic, it will fail.

Color me unimpressed.

I’d Call For Barack Obama to Fire Eric Holder, but

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Obama would only replace him with someone even more hostile to the idea of the rule of law in the pursuit of terrorism cases.*

Money quote:

GREGORY: So, let me– let me unpack that a little bit. What you’d like to see happen is that Congress would pass a law that would say to judges, “Hey, look, in this environment, if we extract information that could be valuable intelligence about another terror plot, about who they’re involved in. Whether they’re connected to the Pakistani Taliban. We want to get all that without them lawyering up and still be able to use that against them in a court of law.” And you need more flexibility to do that, you think?

HOLDER: Yeah, we certainly need more flexibility. And we want the public safety exception to be consistent with– the public safety concerns that we now have in the 21st Century, as opposed to the public safety concerns that we had back in the 1980s.

GREGORY: So, that’s news. I mean, that’s an important development. Would you work with Congress to try to get that new law passed?

HOLDER: Yeah, we want to work with Congress to come up with a way in which we make our public safety exception more flexible. And again, more consistent with the threat– that we face. And yes, this is in fact the big news. This is a proposal that– we’re gonna be making and that we want to work– with Congress about.

GREGORY: So, a new priority for the administration.

HOLDER: It is a new priority.

It’s clear that Barack Obama has made a purely political decision to ape the worst aspects of the Bush administration, because he thinks that it will defuse criticism from the right, which it clearly hasn’t anyway.

This is venal, craven, and just plain un-American, as well as being stupid, because it does not work from a political perspective.

Would that we had some Democrats who were not a bunch of cowards.

H/t Crooks and Liars

*But remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.

New Analysis of Kent State Massacre Shows Order to Fire

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Or more precisely, it shows an order to prepare to fire, which explains why the guardsmen wheeled in unison to turn on the demonstrators before opening fire:

“That’s clear as a bell,” Owen said at one point as he and Allen replayed the phrase “Prepare to fire” on two large wall-mounted loudspeakers.

The two audio engineers didn’t add anything to the recording or fundamentally alter its contents. Instead, they boosted what was present to make it easier to hear. “It’s like putting on eyeglasses,” Owen said.

The order to prepare to fire is, according to the experts who analyzed the tape, “As clear as a bell,” and there is an an “F” sound heard immediately before firing started, which might be the order to fire.

Of interest is the fact that he first 3 gunshots are probably from 45 caliber pistols, and the remainder from M1s, which would be consistent with whoever was in charge giving the order to fire, and firing himself, as sidearms would not have been carried by the grunts.

The enhanced audio is below, and I can hear, with ordinary hearing, “Guard,” and “Prepare to fire,” quite clearly.

George Orwell Would Be Proud Appalled

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The 4 most knowledgeable journalists at Guantanamo Bay have been banned for “revealing” the identity of one of the witnesses, “Interrogator #1”.

The reason that I put “revealing” in quotes is because the individual in question’s name has been public knowledge for years:

Now the military has taken another great step toward enhancing the credibility of the proceedings by booting four reporters for violating a judge’s secrecy order. Their violation? Publishing the name of a former military interrogator who was a witness at the hearing. The Pentagon has now barred Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, Toronto Star reporter Michelle Shephard, Globe and Mail reporter Paul Koring and CanWest news service reporter Steven Edwards from covering future military commissions at Gitmo.

And here’s the kicker: The identity of the interrogator had been widely reported before the trial. The name of the individual — known as “Interrogator No. 1″ in the courtroom at Gitmo — had been published during a 2005 court-martial in which he pleaded guilty to prisoner abuse in Afghanistan. And he had also allowed the use of his name in an interview with Shepard (!) in 2008.

BTW, it should be recalled that in the case in question the military is trying a child soldier.

Omar Khadr was 15 when the events in question took place.

Seriously, we have the gang that can’t shoot straight, or more accurately, the gang that is so concerned about managing the message that it’s making the “military tribunals” about as meaningful as Stalin’s show trials.

Welcome to our Gulag in the Caribbean.

A Thought on Barack Obama’s Most Likely Supreme Court Choice

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Current Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, is on the short list to be the Supreme Court Nominee to replace John Paul Steven.

She has a long and distinguished record, though she has never been a judge.*

Perhaps her 2nd most prestigious position, after being Solicitor General was as Dean of Harvard Law School, where she made special efforts to “broaden the ideological diversity” of the institution by hiring conservative legal scholars.

Needless to say, this sort of thing would clearly play well with Obama, who has clearly drunk his own Koolaid on his post-partisan thing.

The thing is, her definition of “diversity” is pretty narrow, and it appears taht she did not hire minorities or women:

Granting that we know very little about Kagan, what do we make of the facts that we do know? Here are some data that gives me pause about Kagan. When Elena Kagan was Dean of the Harvard Law School, she hired 29 tenured or tenure-track faculty members. But she did not hire a single black, Latino, or American Indian faculty member. Not one, not even a token. Of the 29 people she hired, all of them with one exception were white. Under Kagan’s watch Harvard hired 28 white faculty members and one Asian American.

One of Kagan’s purported qualifications for the Supreme Court is that she is a consensus builder. The chief evidence for that contention is that she broke the hiring logjam at Harvard and made it possible for Harvard to hire conservatives. It might sound absurd to some, but I will accept the point that one of Kagan’s chief selling points is that she assured that Harvard did not discriminate ideologically. I am personally gratified that Harvard Law School is not closed to conservative faculty members. I support ideological diversity and would not want to see qualified individuals discriminated against on the basis of ideology.

But what about people of color? How could she have brokered a deal that permitted the hiring of conservatives but resulted in the hiring of only white faculty? Moreover, of the 29 new hires, only six were women. So, she hired 23 white men, 5 white women, and one Asian American woman. Please do not tell me that there were not enough qualified women and people of color. That’s a racist and sexist statement. It cannot be the case that there was not a single qualified black, Latino or Native-American legal academic that would qualify for tenure at Harvard Law School during Elena Kagan’s tenure. To believe otherwise is to harbor troubling racist views.

I am unaware of the dynamics at Harvard Law School, but having a stepmother who is both a former college president, and a Harvard grad, I do know that the politics at Harvard can be unpleasant, and produce less than optimal results.

Still, 28 hires, 27 of whom are white, and one of whom is of Asian extraction seems to me to indicate some very real issues, whether it’s just conflict avoidance/cowardice, or something more.

It seems to me that in an environment like Harvard Law, hiring 28 faculty and hiring only 1 non-white actually takes a lot of work.

H/t BTD.

*I think that the practice of appointing Federal judges is overrated. Every current justice was a Federal judge, which was not the tradition. The last non Federal judge appointed was O’Connor, and you have people like Warren, Douglas, Fortas, Marshall, Brandeis, Black, Frankfurter, etc., as well as people like Holms and Cardozo, who were judges, but not Federal judges.

Federal Reserve Continues Its Full Court Press Against Transperency

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Once again the Fed is trying to cover up its role in bailing out the financial bigwigs.

I think that they know that they will lose if it goes before the Supreme Court, so they are delaying in the hope of getting a “Get out of jail free” card from Congress in the financial regulation bill.

Their latest delaying tactic is that, after having lost at the Federal district and appeals courts, they are asking for an en banc (Full Appeals Court) review:

The Federal Reserve Board asked an appeals court to reconsider a ruling requiring the agency to disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever.

Attorneys for the Fed yesterday asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals in New York to reconsider a unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel. If the court refuses, the Fed can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The decision is of exceptional importance,” the Fed’s lawyers wrote in a legal brief. “The real-world consequence of the panel’s decision will be serious, perhaps irreparable harm to the institutional borrowers whose information will be revealed.”

Nope. Everyone knows this information by now.

What they don’t know is just how much the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, are in the pockets of the financial industry, and how far they went to protect their buddies in Wall Street.

It’s time for the Fed to man up and fess up.

Good News, Everyone!

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Good news everyone!


I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that a lower court erred when it said that the Texas money laundering statute only applied to cash, which led it to dismiss the case against Tom Delay:

Co-defendants of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay suffered a significant setback Wednesday in their quest to avoid a trial on charges that the trio conspired to launder corporate money during the 2002 elections.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously ruled that the lower state 3rd Court of Appeals erred when it accepted the co-defendants’ arguments that the money laundering law did not apply to them because the funds involved were checks, not cash. The all-Republican court, in effect, said the lower court acted prematurely.

I always thought that the ruling that check cannot be used to money launder was a pretty good indication of just how f%$#ed up justice and the judiciary are in Texas, and it’s nice to see the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the state supreme court on criminal matter (the Texas Supreme Court is the supreme court on civil matter), to recognize this.

The interesting thing here is that after his performance in Dancing With the Stars, I think that a Texas jury might be much more willing to convict.

Pass the popcorn.

Vampire Squid Investigations Go Criminal

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Not a whole bunch of detail yet, but it appears that the SEC referred the issues in its civil fraud complaint against Goldman Sachs to the US Attorney in Manhattan, and they are now investigating. (See also here)

Obviously, an investigation does not prove guilt, nor does it guarantee a successful prosecution, though I think that the Prosecutors will have a lot to go on, because Goldman Sach’s personnel policy has employees regularly filling out self evaluation forms, and very likely these have some admissions of wrongdoing.

I think that a judge would be far more willing to grant a warrant for these records in a criminal investigation than he would for a civil investigation.

Damn, When Goldman Gets an Update Post……

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Click for full size

True Dat!

You know that the Vampire Squid* is “living in interesting times.”

It now appears that governments in both the UK and Germany are calling for investigations of the firm’s dealings.

Additionally, in a splendid piece of electioneering, the Tory opposition is calling for a ban on government contracts for the firm until the investigations are concluded.

Finally, in what might be the ultimate indignity, AIG is looking at suing Goldman Sachs on the insurance policies that it provided, on the theory that they were under no obligation to pay the arsonist who burnt down his own house.

It will be interesting to see where things goes from here.

Even with all the the opprobrium directed at the firm (see the Taibbi quote below), the consensus was that they would skate, because they were “too powerful” for any meaningful action to be taken against them.

If this case cracks that shell, I think that we will see many more rocks overturned to see what lurks beneath.

My guess is that this will all end with a token fine and no admission of wrong-doing, but I would be happy to be wrong.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

No, This is Not a Joke

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The lead SEC attorney in the civil fraud case against Goldman Sachs, aka, “The great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,”* is one Andrew Matthew Calamari.

I actually went and confirmed it with a Google, and Mr. Calamari is actually the associate regional director for the SEC’s New York office.

No really, click the link, it’s from the SEC.

As Dave Barry would say, “I’m not making this up.”

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a vampire squid. This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

Breaking: Former Blackwater Executives Indicted

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Gary Jackson, the former president of the mercenary firm Blackwater*, the former general counsel, executive vice-president, and two other formerly employees on for crimes related to gun-running.

Here’s hoping that someone in this group sings to the prosecutors, and maybe takes Eric Prince down, and maybe he’ll sing to prosecutors.

Of course, if he has dirt, it will be on Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, and nothing will happen, because Obama and Holder don’t want to look back.

*Now Xe

Justice Stevens to Retire

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Just Announced.

Obviously, the question now is who Obama will nominate to succeed him.

My predictions:

  • They will be Protestant
    • Stevens is the only Protestant on the court, the rest are Catholic or Jewish.
  • They will be a woman and/or a minority.
    • Because it will be his way to pander to the base when he chooses a basically conservative nominee.
  • They will be tepid, at best, on Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose in general.
    • Since Barack Obama has always been tepid, at best, on Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose in general.
  • They will generally favor a very expansive definition of the powers of the Presidency.
    • Since Barack Obama has aggressively asserted a very expansive definition of the powers of the Presidency.
  • They will generally be rather pro corporate, though not as much as Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy.
    • Since Barack Obama is ……… You get the picture.
  • They will not be particularly pro organized labor.
    • Obama has clearly been tepid on labor issues, as shown by his efforts to soft pedal the EFCA (Card Check).

What I would like to see, beyond ideology, is that:

  • They not have worked as a prosecutor, which tends to set people off on a legal path that is hostile to the rights of the accused.
  • That they not, and have not been, a sitting Federal Judge, which is increasingly the norm, and we need more diversity of experience in there.
  • Nominating someone who is publicly an atheist.

Things that could make this amusing, but will not happen:

  • Nominating Bill Clinton, just to make the ‘Phant’s heads explode.
  • Nominating a Muslim.
  • Nominating Hillary Clinton, just to make the ‘Phant’s heads explode.

But these will not happen.

Adventures in Wingnuttery

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Now that Wisconsin state law requires teaching about the use of contraceptives in sexual education classes, the Juneau County Distract Attorney is threatening prosecutions of any teacher who teaches these classes, on the theory that teaching kids about condoms, etc. is, “Forcing our schools to instruct children on how to utilize contraceptives encourages our children to engage in sexual behavior, whether as a victim or an offender.”

He is threatening prosecutions for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Expect a baby boom in Juneau County shortly, because those kids will be f%$#ing anyway.