Category: Justice

Finally!

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The mercenary monger behind Blackwater, is being investigated for selling mercs to foreign governments and money laundering by the US Department of Justice:

Erik Prince, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.

What began as an investigation into Prince’s attempts to sell defense services in Libya and other countries in Africa has widened to a probe of allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, is also seeking to uncover the precise nature of Prince’s relationship with Chinese intelligence.

Prince, through his lawyer, Victoria Toensing, said he has not been informed of a federal investigation and had not offered any defense services in Libya. Toensing called the money-laundering allegations “total bullsh%$.” (%$ mine)

The Intercept interviewed more than a half dozen of Prince’s associates, including current and former business partners; four former U.S. intelligence officers; and other sources familiar with the Justice Department investigation. All of them requested anonymity to discuss these matters because there is an ongoing investigation. The Intercept also reviewed several secret proposals drafted by Prince and his closest advisers and partners offering paramilitary services to foreign entities.

For more than a year, U.S. intelligence has been monitoring Prince’s communications and movements, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence officer and a second former intelligence official briefed on the investigation. Multiple sources, including two people with business ties to Prince, told The Intercept that current government and intelligence personnel informed them of this surveillance. Those with business ties were cautioned to sever their dealings with Prince.

As an aside, Toensing, she of the unprofessional legal utterances, was a major player in the pursuit of Bill Clinton’s penis in the 1990s.

Prince is an evil dangerous man with delusions of creating a full mercenary army to rival nation states.

I really hope that he gets taken down hard.

H/t Charlie Pierce.

The FBI Probably Never Needed Apple’s Help to Read That iPhone

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The Department of Justice has asked for a recess in the court proceedings to force Apple to write a hacking tool for the iPhone:

The Justice Department said on Monday that it might no longer need Apple’s assistance in opening an iPhone used by a gunman in the San Bernardino, Calif., rampage last year.

The disclosure led a judge to postpone a court hearing over the issue and temporarily sidesteps what has become a bitter clash with the world’s most valuable company.

In a new court filing, the government said an outside party had demonstrated a way for the F.B.I. to possibly unlock the phone used by the gunman, Syed Rizwan Farook. The hearing in the contentious case — Apple has loudly opposed opening the iPhone, citing privacy concerns and igniting a heated debate — was originally set for Tuesday.

While the Justice Department must test this method, if it works “it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple,” it said in its filing. The Justice Department added that it would file a status report by April 5 on its progress.

This happened because they think that the case is going against them.

None of this would happened if the FBI hadn’t “mistakenly” reset the iCloud password for the phone, which would have allowed them to access the phoe.

My take is that the FBI attempted to sandbag the judge, and deliberately f%$#ed up the analysis of the phone to have a court case and create a precedent.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever

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Upon announcing Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme court, they tweeted that he would ignore the Constitution of the United States of America:

“Merrick Garland would take no chances that someone who murdered innocent Americans might go free on a technicality.” —@POTUS #SCOTUSnominee

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 16, 2016

Those “Technicalities” are the bill of rights, and their comment reflects that Garland is positively dismissive about the due process rights of defendants.

I do understand political realities, but the idea that any President would try to trumpet the willingness of a nominee for Supreme Court justice to ignore the Constitution is truly awful.

H/t Cory Robin.

Credit Where Credit is Due: This Police Chief Expects his Deputies to do their F%$#ing Job

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We’ve all seen the video of the Trump supporter sucker punching a protester as he was being escorted out by deputies.

Well, the police chief was not impressed with the lack of response of his deputies on the scene, and he lowered the boom on them:

Five sheriff’s deputies in North Carolina have been suspended without pay following a Donald Trump rally where a protester was sucker-punched as he was being escorted out, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.

Videos recorded at the March 9 rally in Fayetteville, N.C., showed a Trump supporter assaulting an anti-Trump protester, who was then detained by numerous uniformed men as his assailant walked away.

“The actions of the deputies and their failures to act in situations such as that which occurred during the Trump rally at the Crown Coliseum have never been and will not ever be tolerated under the policies of this office,” Sheriff Earl Butler said in a statement.

………

As Jones walked toward the exit, a man, who appeared to be white, emerged and punched him in the face.

“Boom, he caught me,” Jones told The Post in a telephone interview. “After I get it, before I could even gain my thoughts, I’m on the ground getting escorted out.”

John Franklin McGraw, 78, was not detained at the time. He was charged the following day with assault and disorderly conduct.

Jones told NBC affiliate WRAL that “I thought I was being arrested” by the deputies after being punched. “I saw, later on, that [McGraw] went back to his seat so I am trying to figure out why was he able to go back to his seat,” he said.

Three of the deputies have been demoted in rank and suspended for five days. The two others were suspended for three days.

Butler said the deputies were being disciplined for “unsatisfactory performance and failing to discharge the duties and policies” of the department.

What most of us saw was thuggish behavior by a Trump supporter.

To his credit, what Sheriff Butler saw was police officers literally turning their backs to a crime that was committed right in front of them.

He took names and kicked but.

Good for him.

Corrupt Prosecutors Lose Primaries

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The prosecutors who did their utmost to cover up the police murders of Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice have been turfed out in the primaries:

Forcing out prosecutors who refuse to treat police shootings as serious crimes is a significant milestone in the movement against unjustified police shootings of black Americans.

Last July, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez explained why she chose to charge police officer Dante Servin with involuntary manslaughter instead of murder for firing his gun into a crowd of people and killing 22-year old Rekia Boyd. Servin was inside a car, and fired the gun over his shoulder, claiming that he fired because he saw a man approaching him with a gun.

“He intentionally fired his weapon, yes. But is there intent to kill? I don’t think he went out intending to kill anyone,” Alvarez told the Chicago Tribune. “He was reckless, shooting off his shoulder into a crowd of people.” Servin was set free after the judge angrily said that the entire case had been wrongfully charged.

How someone could fire a gun into a crowd of people and not intend to kill anyone is as much of a mystery as why it took Alvarez nearly two years to charge Servin. Similarly, Alvarez took more than a year to charge officer Jason Van Dyke for the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, and only then after the government was forced to release video of the shooting that showed Van Dyke firing his weapon into McDonald’s body while he was lying on the ground. According to the Daily Beast, Alvarez declined to file charges against police involved in fatal shootings more than 68 times in the last seven years.

Alvarez lost her job Tuesday night. So did Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County, Ohio prosecutor who told the grand jury looking into the shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old holding a toy gun, that they shouldn’t press charges against the officers who killed him because Rice’s death was merely tragic and not criminal. Though a video showed that Rice had been shot by police moments after they arrived, with no opportunity to even follow their commands, McGinty, by his own admission, encouraged the grand jury not to indict.

“Justice would not be achieved by bringing charges that would violate the ethical canons of our profession,” McGinty said last December, “because we know these charges could not be sustained under the law in our Constitution.” The local judge who ruled there was probable cause to bring charges against the officers described McGinty’s approach to the matter as “unusual.”

………

Forcing out prosecutors who refuse to charge police with crimes for fatal shootings of unarmed black men may be the best sustainable strategy of changing that national culture of impunity, where police need only say they were afraid to justify ending someone’s life. If prosecutors know they will pay a price for letting cops slide, they will be less likely to do so.

These are deeply evil people, and I would hope that folks in the legal profession in Illinois and Missouri are looking at referrals to the state bar for discipline.

These folks lack the moral character to practice law.

Perhaps some other district attorneys out there who are starting to realize that they have more to fear from people thirsting for justice than they do from the PBA (cop union).

Speaking of Unprosecuted Banksters

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It turns out that former Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, was referred to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: (FCIC)

In late 2010, in the waning months of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the panel responsible for determining who and what caused the financial meltdown that lead to the worst recession in decades voted to refer Robert Rubin to the Department of Justice for investigation. The panel stated it believed Rubin, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary who has held top roles at Goldman Sachs gs and later Citigroup c , “may have violated the laws of the United States in relation to the financial crisis.” Rubin, the commission alleged, along with some other members of Citi’s top management, may have been “culpable” for misleading Citi’s investors and the market by hiding the extent of the bank’s subprime exposure, stating at one point that it was 76% lower than what it actually was.

No government action was ever brought against Rubin. And there is no evidence that Department of Justice acted on the crisis commission’s recommendations. A source close to Rubin says the former Wall Street executive was never contacted by the Justice Department in relation to the commission’s allegations. Nonetheless, the fact that Rubin was among a relatively small group of top bankers who the crisis commission referred to the Justice Department for potential wrong-doing, and the fact that is appears nothing happened, sheds new light on the financial crisis, and the government’s effort to pursue those who may have broken the law.

Seven years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the fact that no major Wall Street figure was ever prosecuted for crimes related to the financial crisis remains an sticking point for many. It is regularly brought up by presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders. When the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its 662-page report nearly five years ago, members of the commission said they had formerly referred evidence of possible misconduct of a number of individuals to the Department of Justice. But it declined to say who. Brooksley Born, a member of the commission and a former regulator, said at the time, “Our mandate was to refer to the attorney general any individual that our investigation found may have violated US laws. We did make several such referrals, but we are not going to talk about any of those.”

………

In the run up to the financial crisis, Citigroup aggressively expanded into the mortgage market and subprime lending. Despite warnings that a bubble was forming in housing and that lending standards had gotten to loose, CEO Prince in mid-2007 famously told the Financial Times that as long as the music is still going he would keep dancing. Rubin at the time was the chairman of the executive committee of Citi’s board. Rubin reportedly blessed the increased risk taking at Citi in the mid-2000s.

By late summer 2007, Citi’s direct exposure to subprime bonds was $55 billion, according to the crisis commission. The staff notes of the commission say that “based on FCIC interviews and documents obtained during our investigation, it is clear that CEO Chuck Prince and Robert Rubin . . . knew this information.” It says the two top officials were made aware of the extent of Citi’s exposure “no later than September 9, 2007.”

Yet, according to the commission, on October 15, Citi executives told analysts on a call that the bank’s total exposure to subprime was just $13 billion, or 76% less than it actually was. Two weeks later as pressure began to build on Citi, and values in the mortgage market fell, Citi told the market that its actual subprime exposure was $55 billion, and that its losses from mortgage-related assets could already be as big as $11 billion. Prince also announced he was resigning.

The staff notes say that “the representations made in the October 15, 2007 analysts call appear to have violated SEC Rule 10b-5,” and that Prince and Rubin, along with “members of the board” may have been “culpable” for “failing to disclose” the bank’s true subprime exposure.

Rubin should have gone to jail, and he should have been banned from the finance industry for life.

Rubin isn’t alone in this.

This wasn’t just some sort of black swan.  It was aggressive, deliberate, and systemic fraud, but there were no prosecutions.

To mind, this comes down to crass tribalism, where the regulators, and prosecutors, were, or were managed by, people who went to the same schools, and started their careers at the same firms, and so there are no prosecutions.

It’s why we are seeing the rise of populism on the right and left right now.

The corrupt elites maintained their grip on power, and so we are likely to see another financial crack-up.

This Reads Like Something from Joseph Heller’s Most Famous Novel*

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It appears that whistleblower protection legislation cannot apply to the FBI because there would be too many whistleblowers:

The Department of Justice is undercutting Chuck Grassley’s efforts to provide FBI employees whistleblower protection. That became clear in an exchange (2:42) on Wednesday.

The exchange disclosed two objections DOJ has raised to Grassley’s FBI Whistleblower Protect Act. First, as Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed, DOJ is worried that permitting FBI Agents to report crimes or waste through their chain of command would risk exposing intelligence programs.

What I would say is that as we work through this issue, please know that, again, any concerns that the Department raises are not out of a disagreement with the point of view of the protection of whistleblowers but again, just making sure that the FBI’s intelligence are also protected at the same time

I suspect (though am looking for guidance) that the problem may be that the bill permits whistleblowers to go to any member of Congress, rather than just ones on the Intelligence Committees. It’s also possible that DOJ worries whistleblowers will be able to go to someone senior to them, but not read into a given program.

Still, coming from an agency that doesn’t adequately report things like its National Security Letter usage to Congress, which has changed its reporting to the Intelligence Oversight Board so as to exempt more activities, and can’t even count its usage of other intelligence programs, it seems like a tremendous problem that DOJ doesn’t want FBI whistleblowers to have protection because it might expose what FBI is doing on intelligence.

That’s sort of the point!

Especially given Grassley’s other point: apparently, DOJ is opposed to the bill because it will elicit too many complaints.

One of the issues that your department has raised is that allowing FBI employees to report wrong-doing to their chain of command could lead to too many complaints. You know? What’s wrong with too many complaints? … Seems to me you’d invite every wrong doing to get reported to somebody so it could get corrected.


Apparently, DOJ knows there are so many problems FBI employees would like to complain about that things would grind to a halt if they were actually permitted to complain.

We cannot protect whistleblowers, because they might whistleblow.

This does seem to be rather Helleresque, doesn’t it?

*Catch-22

This is Amazingly Evil

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The most evil thing in America this doesn’t come from the Republican Presidential campaign.

It came from immigration judge Jack Weil, who has asserted that 3 and 4 year old children are qualified to represent themselves before an immigration judge:

A senior Justice Department official is arguing that 3- and 4-year-olds can learn immigration law well enough to represent themselves in court, staking out an unconventional position in a growing debate over whether immigrant children facing deportation are entitled to taxpayer-funded attorneys.

Jack H. Weil, a longtime immigration judge who is responsible for training other judges, made the assertion in sworn testimony in a deposition in federal court in Seattle. His comments highlighted the plight of thousands of juveniles who are forced to defend themselves each year in immigration court amid a surge of children from Central America who cross the southwestern U.S. border .

“I’ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds,” Weil said. “It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience. They get it. It’s not the most efficient, but it can be done.”

He repeated his claim twice in the deposition, also saying, “I’ve told you I have trained 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in immigration law,” according to a transcript. “You can do a fair hearing. It’s going to take you a lot of time.”

Legal and child psychology experts ridiculed Weil’s assertions, noting that key milestones for 3- and 4-year-olds include cooperating with other children, saying simple sentences and building towers of blocks.

“I nearly fell off my chair when I read that deposition,” said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University, who is a witness for the plaintiffs in the Seattle case. “Three- and 4-year-olds do not yet have logical reasoning abilities. It’s preposterous, frankly, to think they could be taught enough about immigration law to be able to represent themselves in court.”

………

Lauren Alder Reid, a spokeswoman for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), said in a statement: “At no time has the Department indicated that 3 and 4 year olds are capable of representing themselves. Jack Weil was speaking in a personal capacity and his statements, therefore, do not necessarily represent the views of EOIR or the Department of Justice.”

………

Weil is not just any immigration official. As an assistant chief immigration judge in EOIR’s Office of the Chief Immigration Judge — which sets and oversees policies for the nation’s 58 immigration courts — he is responsible for coordinating the Justice Department’s training of immigration judges.

………

Ahilan Arulanantham, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Southern California and the attorney who questioned Weil in the deposition, said he initially thought the judge had misspoken “because what he said was so outrageous. As I asked further questions, he obviously meant what he said.”

“This is the person in charge of training immigration judges about how to treat children? And this is the witness the government puts forward to present their views as to how this is supposed to happen? That is horrifying,” said Arulanantham. He added that Weil’s assertions “are going to be a significant issue in the case.”

Unlike in felony criminal cases in federal court, children charged with violating immigration laws have no right to appointed counsel, even though the government is represented by Department of Homeland Security attorneys.

Although a network of pro bono organizations and a Justice Department program try to help children find attorneys — some paid for by the government — many children are forced to fend for themselves. According to Justice Department figures, 42 percent of the more than 20,000 unaccompanied children involved in deportation proceedings completed between July 2014 and late December had no attorney. It is unclear how often children 5 or under are forced to defend themselves, but attorneys and advocates for immigrants said it does happen.

This is a level of outright malice inherent in his statements that leaves me dumbstruck.

Weil should not be an Immigration Judge.  I’m not sure that he should be trusted as a pastry chef.

I Have Been Studiously Ignoring This Crap, but Now We Have a Grant of Immunity

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Yes, I am a Bernie supporter, but I’ve always felt that the whole Benghazi/Email with Clinton is 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag.

I guess I have to start taking it kind of seriously, because the IT guy who set up Clinton’s email server has cut an immunity deal with the DoJ: 

The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.

The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.

As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents are likely to want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said.

I still think that the email server thing is complete crap, and the Benghazi pearl clutching is such dense crap that it risks collapsing into a bullsh%$ black hole.

Still, with the grant of immunity, this stinking sack of sh%$ just got real.

About F%$#ing Time

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This guy is in custody now too

It looks like the the FBI is finally going after people who threatened federal officers at the Bundy ranch:

FBI agents have been busy today. Another one (possibly two) of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s sons was arrested, this time in Utah. According to what David ‘Davey’ Bundy’s wife told The Salt Lake Tribune today, her husband was arrested just after 7:00 a.m. Thursday at the site of the house the Millard County contractor is building for his family just south of Delta.

Marylynn Bundy said she was told of her husband’s arrest by a worker who was blocked from getting to the house by law enforcement.

“I think they are just trying to get all the Bundy men locked up, so they can raid their homes,” Marylynn Bundy said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nevada confirmed to the paper that a charging document had been filed against Bundy, but said that it was sealed and the feds did not confirm his arrest.

The feds are busy making arrests today. After his role in the armed standoff in Nevada almost two years ago at the Bundy ranch, tea party activist Jerry DeLemus was arrested on nine federal charges today. He’s also the husband of Rep. Susan DeLemus, a crazy-time New Hampshire Republican lawmaker and co-chair of the state’s “Veterans for Trump” coalition.

………

UPDATE: The Idaho Statesman just reported that, “Eric James Parker, 32, and Steve Arthur Stewart, 36, both of Hailey, O. Scott Drexler, 44, of Challis, and Todd Engel, 48, of Boundary County were taken into custody, U.S. Attorney for Idaho Wendy Olson said.”

“This investigation began the day after the assault against federal law enforcement officers and continues to this day,” U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden said in a release. “We will continue to work to identify the assaulters and their role in the assault and the aftermath, in order to ensure that justice is served.”

The wheels of justice do grind slowly, but it appears that they grind sure.

How Scalia’s Death Makes the World a Better Place

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Without Scalia on the court, business have lost a staunch defender of a business’s right to defraud its customers, and so they are settling with plaintiffs:

Dow Chemical Co (DOW.N) agreed to pay $835 million to settle a decade-long lawsuit on price fixing, saying it had less chance of winning its petition at the Supreme Court after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

 Dow, which is in the process of merging with Dupont (DD.N), said on Friday it decided to settle, without admitting any wrongdoing, citing “growing political uncertainties due to recent events within the Supreme Court.”

 The chemicals company was found liable by a federal jury in Kansas in February 2013 in the class-action lawsuit, which alleged Dow had conspired to artificially inflate polyurethane prices.

 ………

 Justice Scalia died earlier this month. The next justice could tilt the balance of the nation’s highest court, which was left with four conservatives and four liberals.

 “While Dow is settling this case, it continues to strongly believe that it was not part of any conspiracy and the judgment was fundamentally flawed as a matter of class action law,” the company said in a statement on Friday.

While we think of Scalia as a culture warrior, his role as the leading opponent of consumer protection and corporate accountability on the court has arguably hurt more people than anything else that he has done.*

*Except, of course for Bush v. Gore, but, as that opinion notes, it doesn’t count.  It never counts.

Another TTP/TTIP Talking Point Shown to be a Lie

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One of the claims made by the supporters of current and pending trade deals is that the US has never been sued through the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process, with the implication that such a suit will simply never happen.

Not so much:

A $15 billion lawsuit by the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline against the US government shows the serious threat to democracy posed by special privileges for investors, a new report has said. TransCanada is suing under investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to demand damages following rejection of the controversial pipeline due to its climate impact.

Keystone illustrates how the increasingly common ISDS clauses, that are contained in the draft EU-Canada trade agreement (CETA) and the proposed EU-US deal (TTIP), can be used to undermine climate action, the report by T&E, Friends of the Earth Europe and Sierra Club stated.

Last year US president Barack Obama denied permission to build the US-stage of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to American refineries, as it was not in the interest of national security and would have undercut America’s climate leadership. TransCanada’s lawsuit is under chapter 11 of NAFTA, which allows multinational corporations to sue governments if they feel they have not been treated as a domestic company would have been.

TransCanada has reportedly invested $3.1 billion in the project but is seeking five times this amount in damages. It will be able to launch its case as early as May 2016. A three-judge tribunal will issue a ruling, which cannot be appealed to any national court. It can award damages but not force the US to grant permission for Keystone to be built.

The ISDS process as currently practiced is a morass of corruption and opacity.

It’s underlying philosophy is that government has no rights to protect the common good, and that any lost profits as a result is a taking.

It is a perverted and evil thing.

Huh. It Appears that He Can Talk

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Clarence Thomas just just asked his first questions in a Supreme Court oral argument in 10 years. I am thinking that the absence of Scalia has something to do with this.

My guess is that he is confused, because Scalia is no longer there to tell him what to think:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for the first time in a decade, asked questions from the bench during oral arguments, according to reporters present at Monday’s Supreme Court hearings. His questions pertained to the rights of domestic abuse offenders to have a gun, in a case considering a federal law banning convicted abusers from owning guns.

The 10-year anniversary of the last time the conservative justice asked a question came just this month. In the period, however, Thomas did make a comment from the bench, but it was not a question. He has said that he would prefer to end oral arguments at the Supreme Court.

It appears that he was asking questions that had nothing to do with the actual issues raised by the litigants, so I am wondering if this exercise in “got from a Cracker Jack box judging” is an homage to the memory of Scalia, who frequently raised issues not brought forward by the litigants, and on many occasions assuming facts not in evidence. (Scalia’s Hobby Lobby opinion is a particularly egregious example)

Quote of the Day

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Over at the LGM blog, notes that  Hans “Der novotenführer” Spakovsky is claiming that, “Voting is for Dead Republicans, Not Living African-Americans.”

Von Spakovsky, whose entire career can be boiled down to 4 words, “Keep n*****s from voting,” is now suggesting that Scalia’s preliminary ballots should be counted as final.

But that is not the quote of the day.  The quote of the day comes from Warren Terra in the comments of another post: 

The joke here is of course that the delightfully named Hans Von Spakovsky has built a career as the country’s leading advocate of rejecting would-be voters on spurious grounds; now he’s got an actual corpse, and he wants to let it vote.

They really have no shame at all.

Sandoval to Obama: Drop Dead

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It appears that Obama’s attempt to spelunk his way into a supreme court nominee has failed, because Republican Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval’s having none of it.

You know, this whole prenegotiating bit, where he offers concessions before negotiations start, is really pretty damn stupid.

You would have though that Barack would have learned by now that this is stupid, and all it does is demoralize your power base.

It almost makes me long for President Trump.

The Official Hat of Team Obama

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A Spelunking Helmet for Frequent Cavers

There are reports taht Barack Obama is considering Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval as a Supreme Court appointment:

The White House is considering picking the Republican governor from Nevada to fill the current vacancy on the Supreme Court, scrambling political calculations in what is expected to be a contentious confirmation battle in which Senate Republicans have pledged to play the role of roadblock.

 President Obama is weighing the selection of Brian Sandoval, a centrist former federal judge who has served as governor since 2011, according to two people familiar with the process. Though the review process is in its initial phases and it is unclear whether the governor could ultimately emerge as the president’s pick, even the prospect of his nomination poses a difficult dilemma for Senate Republicans who have promised not to consider any nomination before November’s elections.

Here’s the kicker though, it turns out that Sandoval has explicitely called Obamacare unconstitutional:

The Washington Post reports that the White House is vetting Brian Sandoval, the Republican governor of Nevada who once labeled President Obama’s signature health law “unconstitutional,” as a possible nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Sandoval previously served as a federal district judge, the lowest rank of judges who receive lifetime appointments, for just under four years. He resigned to run for governor in 2009.

 Though the Post claims that “Sandoval is increasingly viewed by some key Democrats as perhaps the only nominee President Obama could select who would be able to break a Republican blockade in the Senate,” the second-ranking Senate Republican poured cold water on this idea almost immediately after the Post’s report went live. According to Politico’s Burgess Everett, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) “says [it] doesn’t make a difference if Sandoval is the nominee.”

 The fact that Obama would consider naming Sandoval is surprising, given the governor’s past statements on the Affordable Care Act. In his first State of the State Address in 2011, Sandoval said that “many aspects of the law are unconstitutional” and he pledged to “continue to fight to have them overturned.” He later personally signed briefs filed in the Supreme Court arguing against the law’s constitutionality and claiming that the Supreme Court “should hold the ACA invalid in its entirety.”

 It’s worth noting that, after losing this case, Sandoval did agree to implement provisions of the law, such as its Medicaid expansion. Nevertheless, if Sandoval’s position had prevailed in the Supreme Court, Obamacare would have completely ceased to exist.

I understand that Obama is looking for items to bolster his legacy, and getting another Supreme Court justice confirmed by the Senate would be a feather in his cap, but Sandoval is only 52, and would likely be on the court for more than 25 years.

I understand your need to do your PPUS (Post Partisan Unity Schtick), and I know that you really want to appoint another justice, but it’s not worth it if you have to appoint a bad justice.

That Company Foreclosing You May Not Hold the Mortgage, Part MCMLXXVI

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The California Supreme court just ruled for a plaintiff who claimed that the company that foreclosed on her never held the mortgage:

The California Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously in favor of a fraudulently foreclosed-upon homeowner in a case that should serve as a wake-up call to state and federal prosecutors that mortgage companies continue to use false documents to evict homeowners on a daily basis.

“A homeowner who has been foreclosed on by one with no right to do so has suffered an injurious invasion of his or her legal rights at the foreclosing entity’s hands,” the justices wrote.

………

In this case, Tsvetana Yvanova purchased a $483,000 mortgage in 2006 from New Century, a company that went bankrupt in 2007. Four years later, in December 2011, New Century somehow transferred the mortgage to a trust, from which thousands of pooled mortgages had created mortgage-backed securities. But by law, the mortgages placed in that pool had to be put in it by January 27, 2007.

The eventual trustee, Western Progressive, foreclosed on Yvanova and sold her house at auction in September 2012. Yvanova later argued that her foreclosure was illegal because a bankrupt company (New Century) could not have transferred the deed of trust, and because the trust had closed to new loans four years before the transfer was executed. Therefore, the assignment document was false, and the foreclosure void.

A state appeals court ruled that Yvanova lacked the ability to challenge the defective assignment, because she was not a direct party to the transfer of ownership. But the state Supreme Court rejected that analysis.

“We conclude, to the contrary,” the ruling states, that “an allegation that the assignment was void… will support an action for wrongful foreclosure.”

The 33-page ruling is narrow – the court did not rule on the validity of the assignment itself in the case, nor did it allow state homeowners to pre-emptively challenge threatened foreclosures on these issues. But it did establish that borrowers have a chance to receive compensation for a wrongful foreclosure if they find it to have been executed with false documents.

………

California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed an amicus brief last April supporting Yvanova’s right to challenge her foreclosure. But Harris, like every other state and federal law enforcement official in the country, has not stepped in to prevent the continuing flood of false documents submitted to courts.

The 2012 National Mortgage Settlement with the five largest mortgage companies (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Ally Bank) included language committing the firms to end the production of false documents. But they continue to be used on a daily basis to evict homeowners. The foreclosure in the Yvanova case occurred in September 2012, seven months after the completion of the National Mortgage Settlement.

Despite promises from the banks and the mortgage servicers, mortgages and their progress through the financial system continues to be resemble nothing more than Captain Benjamin Willard meandering up stream in his pursuit of Colonel Kurtz in the movie Apocalypse Now.

Our own heart of darkness.

This is the Best Troll in the History of the Internet

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Wading into the sh%$ storm that is the successor of the death of legal hack Anton Scalia, Charlie Pierce has a suggestion for Barack Obama, Anita Hill:

I am all-in for total chaos on this whole Supreme Court thing.

If the Republicans are going to invent a new constitutional tradition on the fly, I say the Republic is best served by making them choke on it. Already, Steve M. is pointing out the shitstorm that would break if the president were to nominate Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Mountaineer Mike Tomasky has an interesting suggestion regarding a brilliant young jurist who also would put the GOP deeper in the ha’penny place as regards Hispanic voters. Good. All good. But let me suggest a name as well.

Anita Hill.

I am, as I said, all in for chaos, and this would be the all-timer.

This is quite literally the finest troll I have ever seen.

Mr. Pierce, you are a god among men, and I am not worthy.

The obvious point here is that this brings up Clarence Thomas’ sexual harassment of numerous women that he worked with:

Professor Hill is a widely respected scholar of the law. She would be a fine addition to any court in the land. Also, she would make the Republicans eat their own faces, one at a time. Imagine the hearings. The Republicans would have no choice but to bring up the whole Clarence Thomas matter again. Although perhaps, this time, the other women who allegedly were harassed by Mr. Justice Thomas would not be intimidated out of testifying, and the Democratic senators would not be intimidated out of calling them. (Sorry, Joe Biden. That was a bad day for you.) This would be Your Show Of Shows.

This would be so epic.

Obama needs to nominate her.