Well, after white house staff admitted using RNC emails to avoid the record keeping laws, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested backups of the emails.
Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, has now revealed that the GOP has told Congress to go pound sand, saying that they, “has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails.”
These folks are absolutely lawless.
They write about the fact that WHNT, a CBS affiliate, went to black during the 60 minutes presentation of the politicization of the prosecution of former governor Don Siegleman.
Last two ‘graphs:
In 1969, the F.C.C. revoked the license of WLBT in Jackson after the commission established a systematic effort by the broadcaster to suppress information about the civil rights movement. Today, broadcast rules have changed, giving stations more leeway to decide what to air. Dropping a single report is unlikely to set the regulators in motion. Still, it would be deeply troubling if a partisan broadcaster could suppress information on the public airwaves and hide behind a technical fig leaf.
In this case, if the blackout was intentional, it may also have been counterproductive. Rather than take attention away from allegations that Mr. Siegelman was the victim of a partisan campaign, WHNT’s technical glitch seems to lend support to the charge.
Based on what is going on in Alabama, I’m coming to believe that this prosecution was driven by political considerations.
Otherwise, why would the GOP there be so freaked out and hypersensitive about this.
On the Speaker’s blog, Chairman Conyers Releases Jill Simpson Transcript on the Prosecution of former Alabama Governor Siegelman.
You may recall that she has made some highly credible claims that Rove targeted Don Siegelman for prosecution. Additionally, Larisa Alexandrovna, details the total freakout mode that the Alabama GOP has gone into over this.
Check them both out.
He is now claiming that he did not have effective counsel, because his lawyers could not fully brief him on the case, because of secrecy rules.
I don’t think that Mossaoui was the “20th Hijacker”. I think that he was a terrorist wannabee, and I think that he should be locked up for some time, though I’m not sure if that’s in a prison or a high security mental ward, but the fact that Bush and His Evil Minions™ screwed up this case just stuns me.
These guys could not organize themselves out of a wet paper bag.
The Republican’ts are threatening a filibuster, and Bush and His Evil Minions™ are threatening a filibuster, but the Senate bankruptcy reform bill is a decent piece of legislation.
Basically, it gives bankruptcy courts the right to modify the terms of a loan on a primary residence, much in the same way that they can for rental properties and vacation homes.
It should keep people in their homes, it will allow things like outrageous fees and deceptive loans to be modified, and it places the burden to a large degree on the purveyors of the toxic mortgages.
Needless to say, the mortgage industry hates it.
2½ months ago, I commented on a peculiar foreclosure case, where the judge had halted a foreclosure because the holder of the title could not be confirmed.
The title had not been properly processed as the mortgage was packaged and repackaged.
Well, it looks like this problem may be far more widespread than previously anticipated:
Joe Lents hasn’t made a payment on his $1.5 million mortgage since 2002.
That’s when Washington Mutual Inc. first tried to foreclose on his home in Boca Raton, Florida. The Seattle-based lender failed to prove that it owned Lents’s mortgage note and dropped attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.
“If you’re going to take my house away from me, you better own the note,” said Lents, 63, the former chief executive officer of a now-defunct voice recognition software company.
Seven years of no payments on a million dollar plus mortgage for two years, because the creditors cannot prove that they own the mortgage.
They simply cannot find out where the paper that says, “I own the mortgage”, is, and how to assign it to the proper entity.
This means that there may be trillions of dollars in which there is no note, and hence no way to enforce the mortgage.
Video, with ads, courtesy of 60 Minutes.
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.
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.
It turns out that he may be tied to the corruption trial of his brother-in-lay, Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, for attempted bribery of a judge.
Good day for Schadenfreude.
It was a unanimous decision.
The facts of the case are that James LaRue lost $150K after his 401(k) managers ignored his orders to move his holdings to a different account. The lower courts said that only the plan had standing, but SCOTUS said that the participants do to.
Frankly, I’m surprised. I would have figured that one of the court Neanderthals would have taken the side of the incompetent money managers.
So said Pentagon general counsel William Haynes, when it was explained that fair trials always have the possibility of acquittals.
I guess he just hates America and fair trials.
Read the article, largely based on interviews with Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo’s military commissions.
What we find is, as is stated in the article, “For people like Haynes, justice is meant to serve the party.”
Stalinism at its finest, ant it is unnecessary when the defendants are as guilty as hell.
It will be the Saddam show trials all over again, and the officers officiating and prosecuting, along with the civilians directing them, are violating international law, and US treaty obligations.
Judge Robert Somma, a Federal Bankruptcy Judge, was pulled over for DUI, while reportedly wearing a woman’s dress, heels and stockings, and carrying a purse.
And not just any dress, but a, “Somma was wearing a cocktail dress, fishnet stockings, women’s heels and fumbled through a purse for his driver’s license.”
FWIW, he blew a BAC of 0.12%.
Yes, George W. Bush appointed him. Quel surprise.
The prosecutor wanted 25 years, the probation officer recommended over 50 years, but the judge went with the low side.
It appears that the judge did not buy the prosecution’s argument that it was all Wilkes, and believed that Randy “Duke” Cunningham was not a mind bogglingly stupid pawn, but shared some responsibility in this.
However, the judge has sent him to jail immediately, no bail on appeal, because he deemed Wilkes a lying sack of sh%$. (My words, not his)
The Judge has modified his injunction, replacing a permanent injunction against keeping the site up with a temporary injunction against hosting the specific documents in question.
Additionally, Wikileaks has been given an opportunity to file a response, the first ruling was between Julius Baer and the Domain Name service Dynadot LLC, with no input from Wikileaks.
It appears that the Wikileaks folks were not given any notice of the proceedings.
This is pretty close to unprecedented, see here and here.
The judge, Jeffery White, had the registrar take down the page, and prevent any transfer of the domain.
FWIW, I’ve not reviewed his background, but Judge White does not seem to be a lockstep Bushite, he has allowed environmental groups and cities sue federal agencies over global warming.
This was in response to a lawsuit brought by a Swiss banking group over documents leaked that imply that they were aiding tax evasion and money laundering.
FWIW, a Belgian mirror is accessible at this time, and the number of mirror sites is probably growing exponentially.
Clinton is saying that if elected, she will ask the Justice Department to see if the trials can be moved to US courts, Obama is splitting the difference, saying that they should be tried in “traditional military” or federal courts, and McCain thinks the military kangaroo courts are just fine.
I think that it should be a core value of any candidate, not just the Democratic party candidate, that all efforts should be made to try the defendants in open court under US civilian rules.
Good for Hillary Clinton, and a C- (at best) to Barack Obama on trying to split the difference. This should be a core American value.
F- to the sick, old man.
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.
The house passes contempt charges against Miers and Bolton, along with authorization to go to court to enforce them.
I predicted that Pelosi would fold. I was wrong, and I happily apologize to her.
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.