This is a victory in the fight against the Peter Pan accounting that has gotten the financial markets into so much trouble.
The U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the board did not violate the separation of powers clause.
It appears that Federal Judge Orlando Garcia is upset at the state of the death penalty in Texas, and said so in his ruling granting a stay for Jeffery Lee Wood.
The judge described the positively Kafkaesque system under which he was determined to be competent for execution, as, “an insane system,” because it required that he prove that he was insane before the state would grant him a lawyer and a psychologist to prove that he was insane.
In addition to his not pulling the trigger, he was driving the getaway car, the man has a long history of mental problems and retardation.
I understand why the Judge finds this insane, but he does not understand Texas. People there do not care if someone is innocent, or insane, they just want a needle put in as many arms as possible.
The entire state is nuts.*
*I lived in Texas from 1992-1994, and 1996-2001.
First, we have an editorial in Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific publication in world, suggesting that the data provided this far by the FBI has been incomplete and not properly reviewed. They strongly suggest that the FBI is using selective information releases to make their case, and I agree.
Meanwhile, this breathless article detailing the efforts to identify the sample genetically seems to be exactly what the editors of Nature are objecting to.
I again would note that none of the information provided by the FBI has shown how the samples might have been weaponized, a capability that was not present at Bruce Ivin’s lab.
This is good news from a legal perspective, but it bothers me, because the circumstances are so Kafkaesque:
A British court ruled on Thursday that the government must disclose evidence to a defendant being held at Guantanamo Bay, a decision that carried with it implicit criticism of U.S. government detention policies.
In its ruling, the High Court said Britain’s Foreign Office must provide Binyam Mohamed, a British resident detained in Pakistan in 2002 and now held at Guantanamo, with information relating to his time in detention.
His lawyers say the material supports his claim to have been “extraordinarily rendered”, tortured and forced into a confession on terrorism charges.
FedEx has been classifying its drivers as independent contractors for years, despite the fact that it, “tells its ground-service drivers when to work, what to charge customers and what kind of socks and shoes to wear,” and it looks like a federal judge is about to rule against them opening them up to billions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages, and possibly even more in back taxes.
What’s more, it’s likely to see successful unionization efforts once reclassification is completed.
This is an increasing problem nationwide, and one would hope that there will be a crackdown soon.
Now New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is strongly implying that he will be going after brokerages, in addition to his already having gone after investment banks, on misleading investors as to the nature, and risk, of auction rate securities.
It’s depressing that when scandals break out in the financial system, that the Federal government seems to be completely uninvolved, and that state authorities have to enforce the law.
This all seems to have happened in the past 6 months or so. I’m wondering if the judiciary has just gotten sick of them, or if lame duck syndrome changes the thinking of judges.
In this case, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided that the Bush EPA was full of it when they tried to prevent state and local governments from monitoring power plant pollution.
Seriously, it seems that the courts are finally getting around to reversing blatantly illegal crap that has been going on for years…Do the wheels of justice just grind this slow, or some members of the Judiciary realizing that this is not a boat that they want to hitch their anchor to?
Care of Atrios:
Perhaps they should consider my cunning plan to let 18 year olds have a drinking license or a driver’s license but not both, which would have the added benefit of helping my plot to make everyone move to Manhattan increasing the appeal of less car dependent locations.
(emphasis mine)
I’m Matthew Saroff, and I approve of this message.
People will now be able do demand in court to confirm that they are on the no fly list, and challenge the reasons for that placement in court.
Additionally, the FBI will be releasing more evidence to buttress their claims.
Personally, I’m not as concerned about the timeline to mail the letter from New Jersey as the complete lack of evidence of weaponization equipment or experience.
It’s clear that he could lyophilize (freeze dry) his anthrax, but then it would have to be milled in some manner to a very small particle size, and then coated with a substance that gives it a static charge so that it would aerosolize well, and this was not something done at the lab.
I wonder if any of the mercenaries will become a witness for the prosecution….Rats and sinking ship, after all.
If so, this should get interesting.
He served 1½ years of a 2½ year sentence. He was given time off for entering an alcohol treatment program.
I wonder how long before he starts doing the Sunday morning gasbag pundit circuit.
Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) tried to claim that dismiss RICO charges against him, but the court was having none of it, so the charges stand.
Prosecutors have revealed some more Ted Stevens (R-AK) sleaze.
It appears that he bought a condo in Florida for $5K down, when the contract required $36K, and sold it a few months later for a $130K profit…tsk, tsk.
A jury has indicted former Winnfield police officer Scott Nugent for manslaughter. He tasered Baron “Scooter” Pikes 9 times after he was subdued and handcuffed.
Considering that there had been 14 uses of the taser by the Winnfield department, and Nugent had used it 10 of those times, he was clearly a problem before this.
Had I been the prosecutor, I would have put felony murder on the table, because he was committing a felony, aggravated assault and battery, when the death occurred.
I’m sure that Nugent will get the best defense that Taser, International can buy, because they don’t want this to be a precedent in product liability cases.
You know, this sounds like some some of these folks realize that Bush only has 4 months, and that they are trying to cover their asses about the inevitable career destroying investigations:
One general testified about another general at the war court Wednesday, describing a Pentagon official fast-tracking trials here as “abusive, bullying, unprofessional.”
Moreover, in testimony, Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti, deputy prison camps commander, described the approach employed earlier this year by his counterpart, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, this way:
“Spray and pray. Charge everybody. Let’s go. Speed, speed, speed.”
I wonder who will be the next rat to sing in court.
The US Civil Service was created because a disgruntled federal job seeker shot a president (Garfield), but in the matter of Bush Administration Minions using political appointees, Michael Mukasey won’t pursue any charges.
He says that it is just a “civil” violation, not a “criminal” one.
That is crap. They committed criminal conspiracy, just as surely as the thousands of wives and girlfriends who are in jail now because their guy dealt dope, and they took a phone message or two.
He will not prosecute because there is a real chance that folks like Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson might flip on folks higher up, and work their way up the chain, to the White House.
He won’t because if he did, some of the people would flip on higher ups. Thanks a lot, Charles Schumer, for vouching for this bit of human excrement.
It appears that there was no autopsy of Bruce Ivins following his death?
You have the unexpected death of a suspect in what is probably the crime of the decade, and the coroner decides, “They say that it is suicide, that is enough for me.”
WTF are they thinking?
I agree with revere, “If, in fact, no autopsy was done on Ivins, the whole thing doesn’t just smell bad. It reeks”
Well, it appears that the timeline given by the FBI for the Anthrax mailings is more an alibi than it is evidence of guilt, at least according to Glenn Greenwald:
The fastest one can drive from Frederick, Maryland to Princeton, New Jersey is 3 hours, which would mean that Ivins would have had to have dropped the anthrax letters in the New Jersey mailbox on September 17 by 1 p.m. or — at the latest — 2 p.m. in order to be able to attend a 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. meeting back at Ft. Detrick. But had he dropped the letters in the mailbox before 5:00 p.m. on September 17, the letters would have borne a September 17 postmark, rather than the September 18 postmark they bore (letters picked up from that Princeton mailbox before 5 p.m. bear the postmark from that day; letters picked up after 5 p.m. bear the postmark of the next day). That’s why the Search Warrant Affidavit (.pdf) released by the FBI on Friday said this (page 8):
If the Post’s reporting about Ivins’ September 17 activities is accurate — that he “return[ed to Fort Detrick] for an appointment in the early evening, about 4 or 5 p.m.” — then that would constitute an alibi, not, as the Post breathlessly described it, “a key clue into how he could have pulled off an elaborate crime,” since any letter he mailed that way would have a September 17 — not a September 18 — postmark. Just compare the FBI’s own definition of “window of opportunity” to its September 17 timeline for Ivins to see how glaring that contradiction is.
(emphasis author’s)
Honestly, if the FBI thought that it could have convicted, it would have arrested him instead of harassing him in shopping malls.
A Baltimore Sun columnist expresses similar doubts, but throws in an interesting bit of information:
Another stretch comes with the attempt to explain the return address on the anthrax mailings, ‘4th GRADE, GREENDALE SCHOOL.’ Apparently, agents discovered that Ivins and his wife donated money in 1993 to the American Family Association one month after an article ran in the group’s journal about a lawsuit AFA had filed related to an incident involving a fourth-grade student at Greendale Baptist Academy.
Interesting, I suppose, but no more so than the link that investigators had made between ‘Greendale’ and their previous anthrax suspect, Hatfill: there is a neighborhood in Harare, Zimbabwe, near where Hatfill once lived, that is known as – you guessed it – Greendale.
(emphasis mine)
Obviously, the fact that Ivins and his wife were supporters of the extremist Christofascist organization makes me more receptive to the idea that he might be involved, but the FBI has still not shown means. The anthrax was weaponized in a very sophisticated way, and they have still not shown how he could take the pathogen past the instant coffee level, which would not aerosolize properly to infect lungs.
The FBI is under a lot of pressure to close the case, but I do not yet see the case closed.
My position remains the same as always, that until I see evidence of how Bruce Ivins might have been able to acquire the equipment, which was not at Fort Detrick, and know how, which was not at Fort Detrick, to weaponize the anthrax, I am dubious of the FBI’s case.
Had the case really been strong enough to go to court, they would have arrested him, instead of harassing him.
Meryl Nass, M.D., who has more background in this area than I do, runs down her concerns with the case, and notes that over 100 people had access to the flask.
Additionally, experts in the field are requesting a peer review of the FBI’s genetic test, which, considering the record of problems at the FBI crime lab, is not at all unreasonable.
Finally, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) are calling for an investigation of the investigation, which would be a good thing.
UBS has settled with the states of Massachusetts and New York, and agreed to buy $19.4 billion in auction rate securities at face value, and pay $150 million in fines.
Meanwhile, Bank of America has received subpoenas from the SEC and other agencies on its ARS activities.
Financial “innovation”, the gift that keeps on giving.
