Category: Politics

That New Speaker of the New York State Assembly?

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When Carl E. Heastie leapt from obscurity to the top of New York State’s political power structure this year, he brought with him the potential of a new beginning in Albany. He vowed to bring accountability and integrity back to a statehouse that was reeling from the latest arrest of a lawmaker — the man he was succeeding as the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.

But an episode from Speaker Heastie’s past that has never received public scrutiny casts new light on his claims of being a reformer.

About 16 years ago, when he had not yet run for public office but had already become entrenched in Bronx Democratic politics, Mr. Heastie was able to hold onto a home that prosecutors said his mother had bought with embezzled money and that a judge had instructed him to sell. Selling it years later brought what appears to be the only significant financial gain of his life.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

“If it was purchased with moneys that were stolen, then no one should receive the benefit of that,” Justice Robert H. Straus told the Heasties during a hearing in January 1999 at State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

But Mr. Heastie did, indeed, profit from his mother’s crime.

Despite the judge’s instructions, Mr. Heastie was able to keep the apartment. His mother died at age 60 three weeks after being sentenced, and Mr. Heastie said he stopped trying to sell the property. When he finally did sell it — six years later for nearly $200,000 more than his mother had paid — he used the proceeds to buy a more expensive home.

………

The first break for the Heasties came when the Bronx district attorney’s office did not require Mrs. Heastie to sign a formal forfeiture agreement, as is common in such cases. Prosecutors also did not pursue a civil action against Mr. Heastie to force him to sell the home, which they could have done even after her death, Mr. Levin said.

And when Mr. Heastie told the judge, through a lawyer, that he could not sell the property, the assertion went unquestioned. Prosecutors did not press Mr. Heastie, for example, about the “real estate salesperson” who he said was trying to sell it. So it never came out in court that the person was not a full-time real estate professional but another loyalist to Mr. Seabrook with a full-time job in city government.

Finally, a judgment against Mrs. Heastie that was signed by the judge was never filed in civil court by the Bronx County clerk’s office. The judgment, which essentially disappeared, could have been used to pursue money from her estate after her death.

This really is kind of mind boggling.

I understand that there are necessary compromises that a politician must make if they want to become a leader, but it seems that everyone in New York state government are ethically compromised.

Is it Just Me, or Does Jabba the Governor Seem to be on a Path to the Pokey?

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The pattern of self dealing continues.

This time it’s Chris Christie cutting a sweetheart deal for his brother’s law firm:

As one of its first moves in its state takeover of financially strapped Atlantic City, Chris Christie’s administration has awarded a lucrative government contract to the financial services firm that employs the Republican governor’s brother, Todd Christie. The deal followed an even bigger contract given to the firm by Christie officials only weeks after the governor’s brother began working there.

In January, Chris Christie signed an executive order installing an emergency management team to develop “a plan to place the finances of Atlantic City in stable condition on a long-term basis.” Two months later, Reuters obtained documents showing that Christie administration officials signed a contract with Ernst & Young, which hired Todd Christie as a New Jersey-based director in March 2013. Todd Christie is listed as working on the firm’s “business development” in campaign finance records.

The Christie administration contract will pay Ernst and Young more than $250,000 to provide financial analysis of Atlantic City. As the casino town faces a $101 million deficit and hotel closures, the deal cemented by Christie’s Department of Law also will allow Ernst & Young to bill taxpayers $455 per hour for other services, according to Reuters. The Christie administration gave the contract to Todd Christie’s firm at a time when New Jersey’s executive branch ethics code says that public officials may not use their positions “to secure a job, contract, governmental approval or special benefit for yourself, a friend or family member.”

“I hope the governor’s advocacy for the state takeover of Atlantic City was not simply to repay a favor to his brother, Todd Christie, for all of the support Todd has given him over the years,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s investigative committee. “It is fair to ask questions any time you have the executive branch taking actions that at least on the surface appear to uniquely benefit somebody very close to the governor.”

………

The Christie administration’s Atlantic City-related contract to Todd Christie’s firm follows Todd Christie delivering more than $50,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which backed his brother’s election campaigns. The governor’s brother also delivered a maximum $3,800 contribution to his brother’s reelection campaign after he started at Ernst & Young.

This is not the first time Todd Christie’s business has intersected with the government business his brother oversees.

Only weeks after Todd Christie started at Ernst & Young, Christie administration officials awarded the firm separate contracts worth more than $550,000 for auditing services in connection with the state’s expenditures on Hurricane Sandy recovery. Ernst & Young has said Todd Christie was not involved in the deal, and noted that Ernst & Young is a large company with many employees.

Todd Christie also was part of a group of investors who purchased and sold properties near public transit facilities that his brother’s appointees redeveloped, according to the Bergen Record. At an event touting the redevelopment, the governor joked that his father was the “lobbyist in the Christie family for this project.”

So totally not corrupt, right?

This is not the sort of sh%$ that goes unnoticed in a Presidential race, even if it is business as usual in New Jersey, and even if Christie is a Republican.

I Cannot Believe That I am Not Saying This Ironically, but Donald Trump Just Seized the Moral High Ground in the Republican Presidential Sweepstakes

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He’s a nut. He’s a Joke. His hair is absurd.

But Donald Trump had the guts to support Social Security and Medicare in front of a Republican audience in New Hampshire:

Among the usual platitudes designed to garner applause in his Saturday afternoon New Hampshire Republican leadership summit speech, Donald Trump included a line railing against cutting Social Security and Medicare. There was no applause from the fiscally conservative crowd for that one. Go figure.

“You look at what is going with the various things that our country is doing and then you hear politicians, and all you hear is all talk, no action,” the mogul said in his speech before the state GOP’s “First in the Nation” summit.

“I am actually disappointed with a lot of the Republican politicians,” he continued, “I am a conservative Republican.” He then rattled off a series of policy ideas of which he either approves or disproves:

“Whether it is we are going to cut Social Security, because that’s what they are saying,” he continued. “Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”

No applause there. Know your audience, man.

This is not a mark of an outbreak of sanity, or morality, on the part of “The Donald”, though. 

It is a mark of what is, for lack of a better term, the depravity of the modern Republican Party.

And the Biggest Koch Sucker of This Election Season Is………

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It is Scott Walker:

Charles G. and David H. Koch, the influential and big-spending conservative donors, appear to have a favorite in the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

 On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee.

 “When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination,” Mr. Koch told the crowd, the billionaire brothers would support him, according to a spokeswoman. The remark drew laughter and applause from the audience of fellow donors and Republican activists, who had come to hear Mr. Walker speak earlier at the event, held at the Union League Club.

 Two people who attended the event said they heard Mr. Koch go even further, indicating that Mr. Walker should be the Republican nominee. A spokeswoman disputed that wording, saying that Mr. Koch had pledged to remain officially neutral during the primary campaign.

 But Mr. Koch’s remark left little doubt among attendees of where his heart is, and could effectively end one of the most closely watched contests in the “invisible primary,” a period where candidates crisscross the country seeking not the support of voters but the blessing of their party’s biggest donors and fund-raisers.

Not surprising.

The Kochs don’t want to waste money, and Scotty, goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin,* is already bought and paid for.

**Credit where credit is due. This bon mot was coined by Esquire magazine’s inimitable Charlie Pierce.

Things are Getting Very Interesting in New York State Politics

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As you may recall, the Speaker of the New York Assembly, Sheldon “Shelly” Silver was indicted for corruption, and it looks like the prosecutors have a pretty good case. (See here)

Basically, Sheldon Silver has been one of the “3 Guys in a Room,” (Governor, the State Assembly speaker and the State Senate majority leader) who have made pretty much all the decisions in Albany for a very long time, over 20 years, and it is pretty clear that he knows where the bodies are buried.

What’s more, it appears that the prosecutor, US Attorney Preet Bharara, is upping the pressure, specifically by indicting his son-in-law for financial fraud:

A son-in-law of the former State Assembly speaker was arrested on Monday and accused of defrauding investors out of $7 million, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court.

The defendant, Marcello Trebitsch, 37, of Brooklyn, told investors that he would use their money to trade in securities through his investment fund, and promised them double-digit returns with very low risk, according to a statement from the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Mr. Trebitsch’s wife, Michelle Trebitsch, is the daughter of Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, the former speaker who has been indicted on corruption charges.

Agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Mr. Trebitsch, and he appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan. He was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud.

The complaint said that Ms. Trebitsch, a certified public accountant, was a co-owner and managing partner of the investment fund, Allese Capital. She has not been charged.

They don’t need to charge her. (Yet)

The US Attorney can seize Silver’s daughter’s family assets under RICO, and that would have the effect of impoverishing his daughter and his grandchildren.

Also note that Michelle Trebitsch was not just the “Co-Owner” of the firm, she is a CPA, and she did the books, so you can be sure that Shelly is under a lot of pressure to roll over right now.

If Silver rolls on someone to protect himself, his daughter, and his grandchildren, it has to be someone big, i.e. one of the two other “Gusy in a room”, the Senate Majority Leader or the Governor.

We are now getting reports that evidence against Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is being presented to a federal grand jury.

What’s more, it appears that Skelos’ son is being targeted as well.

So, it appears that the Feds are trying to turn Skelos into a cooperating witness as well.

This would imply that they are after Cuomo as well, and that he may be their ultimate goal.

This is what makes the reports that Andrew Cuomo made a tidy $180 for every copy of his memoir that was sold, interesting:

In the first week after its release in October, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s memoir, “All Things Possible,” sold almost impossibly poorly. According to Nielsen Bookscan, fewer than 1,000 people picked up a copy that week. And as of last month, the grand total of all sales was at 3,008. (Plus 13 audiobooks.)

But before you go complaining that being a writer is unrewarding work, know that Cuomo’s time and effort was worth it — financially, at least.

According to his tax release, made public on Wednesday, Cuomo reported earning $377,000 in income on the book in 2014. That’s apparently on top of the $188,333 he got as an advance that was reported in his 2013 filing, meaning that Cuomo seems to have made north of $565,000 for his book though last month.

Or: Nearly $188 per hardcover book.

While I have no doubt that reporter Philip Bump did his homework on the above story, I have a feeling that someone pointed him in the general direction.

I strongly suspect that whoever it was, they had a close relationship to US Attorney Preet Bharara.

If Cuomo gets indicted, it would amuse me no end.

If You are the Subject of the Sentence, “Some Moron in an Autogyro………,” It Will not End Well

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He says that, “No sane person would do what he is doing.”
The insanity defense might be a good idea.


And here is the landing, and the inevitable freakout.

Case in point:

U.S. Capitol Police said that a small gyrocopter with one occupant landed on the West Lawn of the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.

 One person has been detained, Capitol Police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider said in an e-mail.

 Eyewitnesses in Capitol offices reported seeing police run toward the aircraft and take the pilot away. The small craft landed in the middle of the West Front Lawn, where the annual Christmas tree and Fourth of July concert stage are set up.

 All was calm as of about 1:45 p.m., but police blocked access to the lawn. Schneider, at about 3:13 p.m., sent out an e-mail saying bomb squad had cleared the craft and was preparing to move it to a secure location.

………

The Tampa Bay Times wrote about Doug Hughes, a 61-year-old mailman from Florida, who planned to fly to the Capitol.

 From their report:

His stated intent: to buzz through the air at 45 miles per hour at about 300 feet up in an ultralight gyrocopter toward Washington, D.C., toward protected airspace, where, if his plan works, he’ll land on the lawn of the United States Capitol building and deliver the mail.

Of course, Doug Hughes might be shot out of the sky. He knows this. He has thought about it day and night for more than two years, wrestling with the tiniest details of his insane plan.

“No sane person,” he said, “would do what I’m doing.”

Rather unsurprisingly, he is currently in custody.

I don’t expect a long jail sentence, but I would expect that he is likely to be fired by the US Post Office, and his pension might be at risk, and he is going to be in for a world of petty harassment by the authorities.

Call Your Congresscritter

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It looks like the Obama administration is planning to submit a fast track bill next week.

If this passes, expect the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and (TTIP) Trans-atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to follow soon after, and it both deals will pass under fast track, because there will be no meaningful public discussion:

Senators will introduce trade promotion authority legislation next week, a top Obama administration official said Thursday.

 Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker expects a “fast-track” bill to be introduced early next week in the Senate and said in a call with reporters that she is “anxiously awaiting to see the language.”

 Pritzker is the first administration official to suggest a firm timeline for legislation that would grant President Obama “fast-track” powers for negotiating trade deals.

 Speculation has been swirling about when the Senate Finance Committee would start moving on a bill.

 Senate aides have said negotiations between Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are making progress but that no deal had been struck.

The TPP and the TTIP suck.

They favor big big banks, big pharma, and big content over ordinary people, labor rights, environmental protection, and democracy.

As a bonus, it also appears that it would make state owned banks like the Bank of North Dakota, which has saved taxpayers millions, illegal. (It would probably make a US Post Office bank, which would serve to rescue poor Americans from predatory check cashing operations, illegal as well).

Background here.

Call, and tell them to vote no, and tell them that if they vote yes, you will not vote for them ever, in any election, primary or general.

This is particularly important if your Congressmen are Democrats, because there will be a full court press from the Obama administration, which supports fast track, and has negotiated the TPP and TTIP on this. They will argue that the credibility of the President depends on this.

If your Congressmen are Republicans, call and sound like a wingnut who will never forgive them for supporting that Kenyan Muslim Marxist Atheist Tyrant.  (The more unhinged you sound, the better)

You can make email contact from here, but a phone call (The Congressional switchboard number is (202) 224-3121), or a letter sent through the mail probably have more impact.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Have a Nice, Big Cup of STFU!

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The Armenian Genocide is a fact.  It has been documented extensively.

So it is no surprise that Pope Francis noted this on the 100th anniversary of this atrocity.

Of course the predictable Turkish butt-hurt is also no surprise.

………

When Pope Francis used the term “genocide” on Sunday to describe the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago, he was not breaking new ground. Pope John Paul II had written the same in 2001, and Francis had made similar references before.

 But the timing and setting of the pope’s remarks — a Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica marking the centenary of the killings, with top Armenian religious and political leaders in attendance — drew a strong international response. Armenians worldwide expressed deep gratitude to Francis, while Turkey reacted in anger.

 ………

 The Turkish government responded to the pope’s comments by recalling its ambassador to the Vatican, and summoned the Vatican’s ambassador in Ankara to express its “great disappointment and sadness.”

 Turkey claims that just half a million Armenians died in fighting when they rose up against their Ottoman rulers during World War I, and denies that their deaths constitute an act of genocide.

 That position conflicts with the views of most historians of the period, who agree that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were victims of genocide at the hands of the Turks.

 ………

 Francis said it was “necessary, and indeed a duty,” to remember the Armenians killed, “for whenever memory fades, it means that evil allows wounds to fester. Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it!”

 Among those listening at St. Peter’s were Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and the leadership of the Armenian Apostolic Church, including Karekin II and Aram I, the two Catholicoi at the top of the church’s hierarchy.

 ………

 Turkey said Francis’ comments “contradicted his message of peace, reconciliation and dialogue” made during his visit to the country in November.

 “The pope’s statement, which is far from the legal and historical reality, cannot be accepted,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted on Sunday.

 “Religious authorities are not the places to incite resentment and hatred with baseless allegations,” he added.

 Francis now risks losing Turkey’s support as he seeks to defend Christian communities being persecuted by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Many Christians have sought refuge in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, as they have fled the Islamist militants.

Does anyone hear this statement, and interpret it as saying, “Nice Christians, you have there, it would be a shame if anything happened to them.”

I do understand that the Turks have made a habit of denying the Armenian Genocide, which has never made much sense to me, since the government that did it, the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist almost a century ago.

I do understand why Erdoğan’s government is determined to whitewash this though.  It is very clear that his AKP party is trying to relegate the reforms of tye Young Turks and Ataturk to the dust-bin of history. 

That is why the plans to redevelop Taksim square included the rebuilding of the Taksim Military Barracks, which was a central symbol of the attempted Ottoman counter coup in 1909.

This Guy is Going to Destroy Israel

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I am, of course, referring to Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who penchant for considering nothing but his own prospects for political power are a clear and present danger for the State of Israel.

The latest case of this is Netanyahu’s willingness to use the most polarizing issue in Israeli politics to help build a coalition, at least if reports that he will kill conversion reform in order to placate right wing parties: (This is Arutz Sheva, so a grain of salt is recommended)

Sources in Shas and United Torah Jewry said Sunday that they had reached an agreement with the Likud on rolling back recently approved rules on conversion. The changes had been designed to remove some of the power over the conversion process from the Chief Rabbinate and install it in the local authorities, where some jurisdictions would presumably be more liberal in their acceptance of converts.

With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu counting on them to join his new government, MKs from Shas and UTJ are insisting on rolling back the laws on conversion to what they were before Netanyahu’s last government – with the Chief Rabbinate solely responsible for the conversion process, overseeing the entire process without government interference.

In the November change, the government voted to allow municipal rabbis to establish conversion courts, which were to receive administrative and budgetary backing from the state. A rabbinical committee whose makeup is specified in the decision was to oversee the courts, which would exercise their own judgment regarding each conversion.

With several cities already appointing very liberal rabbis as the heads of their committees, the government”s intent was to provide venues for converts to receive approval from authorities more easily than they would have from the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, which until then had sole jurisdiction over conversion. The newest deal restores that situation.

This is arguably the most contentious issue in Jewish Israeli society, and, after years of tumult, they made these baby steps toward sanity.

And now Netanyahu is going to douse this issue with gasoline, and light a match because he is worried about forming a coalition government.

As a secular Zionist, I find this extremely self destructive, but I am not surprised:  Netanyahu ran an explicitly racist campaign.

From the perspective of normative Jewish theology, it was this kind of short sighted bullsh%$ like this that got both temples destroyed.

H/T Failed Messiah.

Republican Family Values………

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New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte’s state director (her 2nd most senior staffer) just got busted for prostitution and has resigned:

A senior aide to New Hampshire US Senator Kelly Ayotte resigned his position after he was arrested and charged with soliciting a prostitute, Ayotte’s office announced late Saturday night.

 David Wihby, 61, served for the past year as Ayotte’s state director, the number two staffer behind her chief of staff. Wihby is also an elected member of the Manchester (N.H.) school board. He is a former longtime Manchester city alderman and the former deputy commissioner and interim commissioner of the state Department of Labor.

 Wihby was arrested Friday evening in Nashua on a misdemeanor charge for solicitation of prostitution, Ayotte’s office confirmed.

This isn’t the auto-asphyxia death of a Jerry Falwell confidant in 2 wet suits with a dildo up his butt, but  I notice a pattern here.

The Governor of the State of Walmart Vetoes Pro Bigotry Bill

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I am, of course, referring to the decision of the Governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchison, to veto their (almost the same as Indiana’s) so called religious freedom bill:

Facing a backlash from businesses and gay rights advocates, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas on Wednesday called on state lawmakers to either recall or amend legislation billed as a religious freedom measure so that it mirrored a federal law approved in 1993.

 Mr. Hutchinson, a Republican, said he understood the divide in Arkansas and across the nation over the question of same-sex marriage and its impact on people’s religious beliefs. His own son, Seth, he said, had asked him to veto the bill, which critics say could allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against gay men and lesbians.

 To ensure that the state is “a place of tolerance,” Mr. Hutchinson said, he was considering using an executive order that would seek to balance the “competing constitutional obligations” if the legislature declined to make changes to the bill.

 “What is important from an Arkansas standpoint is one, we get the right balance,” he said, “and secondly, we make sure that we communicate we’re not going to be a state that fails to recognize the diversity of our workplace, our economy and our future.”

 “This is a bill that in ordinary times would not be controversial,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “But these are not ordinary times.”

 Two state legislative leaders — Senator Jonathan Dismang, president pro tem of the Senate, and Jeremy Gillam, speaker of the House — who appeared with Mr. Hutchinson at a news conference Wednesday, said they agreed that the bill should be changed, but that they could not guarantee that outcome.

 The legislation, which easily cleared the state House by lopsided margins, has created a political rift in the state, with Mark Stodola, the mayor of Little Rock, sending a letter to Mr. Hutchinson this week urging him to veto the bill, saying it would have “a negative impact on our state’s image.”

 Several businesses and tech companies, including the state’s largest private employer, Walmart, as well as the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, the Arkansas Municipal League and other civic groups have spoken out against the legislation.

(emphasis mine)

It’s clear that the backlash in Indiana is a major factor, but I think that it was the objections by Walmart that was the main reason for this.

Goodluck Jonathan Defeated in Nigeria

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In a first for the west African nation, an incumbent President has been defeated in a bid for reelection.

This is a good thing, because it indicates the development of a more robust political culture, as well as indicating a relatively free and fair election.

On the other hand, the man who won, Muhammadu Buhari, was the military ruler of the nation in the mid-1980s following a coup:

Former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari has become the first opposition candidate to win a presidential election in Nigeria.

Incumbent Goodluck Jonathan telephoned Gen Buhari, 72, on Tuesday night to congratulate him and concede defeat.

Unofficial voting tallies put Gen Buhari more than two million votes ahead of his rival.

Observers have generally praised the election, though there have been allegations of fraud.

“I promised the country free and fair elections. I have kept my word,” Mr Jonathan said in a statement.

He said he had conveyed his “best wishes” to Mr Buhari, and urged “those who may feel aggrieved to follow due process… in seeking redress”.

A spokesman for Gen Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) party praised Mr Jonathan, saying: “He will remain a hero for this move. The tension will go down dramatically.”

Gen Buhari’s supporters took to the streets in APC strongholds, including the northern cities of Kano and Kaduna, to sing and dance in celebration.

The concession by President Jonathan is a big deal.

It shortcuts the many challenges to the legitimacy of the elections which are legion in that part of a world, and it allows for a smooth transition.

Here’s hoping that this will allow for moves to reduce corruption in the infamously crooked government.

Remember the Attempted Coup in Turkey? Not So Much…

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In 2003, then Prime Minister, now President, of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan had over 200 military officers arrested on the charge that they were plotting a coup.

Every single one of them have now been acquitted:

A Turkish court acquitted all 236 military officers in a retrial over an alleged 2003 plot to unseat then-prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, after the prosecutor said key evidence was inadmissible, a defense lawyer told Reuters.

In 2012 a court sentenced the officers to jail over the “Sledgehammer” conspiracy dating back to 2003, a year after now-President Erdogan’s AK Party came to power.

However, the constitutional court subsequently ruled that the mishandling of evidence central to the prosecution case — computer files containing alleged conspiratorial documents — had violated the defendants’ rights, and a retrial began in November last year.

“At the end of the retrial, the judges ruled to annul the previous court decision in favor of acquittal for all defendants,” lawyer Celal Ulgen told Reuters.

The alleged plot was said to include plans to bomb mosques and trigger a conflict with Greece by shooting down one of Turkey’s own warplanes, paving the way for a military takeover.

Turkish officials suggested evidence in the case had been manipulated by supporters of an Islamic cleric who had been using his influence in the police and judiciary to help Erdogan break the army’s power.

When the court is saying that the evidence is “Mishandled”, I think that this is a polite way of saying that prosecutors made sh%$ up.

Erdogan certainly had reason to be concerned in 2003, there is a long history of coups in Turkey, but these charges appear to be trumped up.

Seriously, bombing mosques and shooting down their own airplanes?

Now that Erdogan appears to be taking an increasingly anti-democratic stance toward governance, it is significant that the court still acquitted these officers.

The power of the army is still broken, which is a good thing, but Turkey does seem to be headed down a troubling path.

OK, This Idea Makes Sense

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It is clear that Elizabeth Warren is not interested in running for President.

It is clear that Elizabeth Warren does not want to run for President.

However, with Harry Reid retiring, the recent moves by liberal organizations to promote Elizabeth Warren as the next Democratic Senate leader seems a good idea.

Unfortunately, Warren appears to have eschewed this idea:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) announcement Friday that he will not seek reelection next year has progressive groups licking their chops at the prospect of seeing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as the Democratic leader.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer, currently Democrats’ No. 3 in the Senate, is the heavy favorite to succeed Reid, but progressive groups have other ideas.

Democracy for America (DFA) is urging Warren to run for president, but says that if she passes, they’d back her or someone from her wing of the party as the next Democratic leader in the Senate.“There are real concerns about whether Chuck Schumer should be the frontrunner for leadership in the Senate among progressives,” DFA spokesman Neil Sroka told The Hill. “The Wall Street wing of the party, that Chuck has been close to, is dying, and the Warren wing is rising. So if Sen. Warren chooses not to run for president … she should run for leader of the Senate. She’d make a great leader.”

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee echoed that sentiment, predicting the race for Democratic leader won’t be a coronation for the establishment members of the party believed to be next in line.

“Her lifetime of fighting for the little guy against Wall Street power … shows she can think big, wage tough fights against powerful interests, and win key votes in the Senate,” the PCCC said in a statement. “She’s the definition of a leader. … There will likely not be a coronation to replace Harry Reid as Senate Democratic Leader, and Elizabeth Warren is right up there with others as someone who would be taken very seriously.”

Warren’s office on Friday morning said she would not run for the leader’s spot.

(emphasis mine)

I really do hope that it is someone other than Chuck Schumer though, he is basically Wall Street’s rent boy.

Indiana is in for a Lot of Well Deserved Hurt

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First, notwithstanding claims that the Indiana law is just the same as the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other state’s laws that require a compelling state interest to interfere with religious observance, the Indiana law is far more extreme:

No one, I think, would ever have denied that Maurice Bessinger was a man of faith.

And he wasn’t particularly a “still, small voice” man either; he wanted everybody in earshot to know that slavery had been God’s will, that desegregation was Satan’s work, and the federal government was the Antichrist. God wanted only whites to eat at Bessinger’s six Piggie Park barbecue joints; so His servant Maurice took that fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1968 decided that his religious freedom argument was “patently frivolous.”

………

That’s a good background against which to measure the uproar about the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was signed into law by Governor Mike Pence last week. I don’t question the religious sincerity of anyone involved in drafting and passing this law. But sincere and faithful people, when they feel the imprimatur of both the law and the Lord, can do very ugly things.

There’s a factual dispute about the new Indiana law. It is called a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” like the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993.* Thus a number of its defenders have claimed it is really the same law. Here, for example, is the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack: “Is there any difference between Indiana’s law and the federal law? Nothing significant.” I am not sure what McCormack was thinking; but even my old employer, The Washington Post, seems to believe that if a law has a similar title as another law, they must be identical. “Indiana is actually soon to be just one of 20 states with a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA,” the Post’s Hunter Schwarz wrote, linking to this map created by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The problem with this statement is that, well, it’s false. That becomes clear when you read and compare those tedious state statutes. If you do that, you will find that the Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.

The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” (My italics.) Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.

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So, let’s review the evidence: by the Weekly Standard’s definition, there’s “nothing significant” about this law that differs from the federal one, and other state ones—except that it has been carefully written to make clear that 1) businesses can use it against 2) civil-rights suits brought by individuals.

Of all the state “religious freedom” laws I have read, this new statute hints most strongly that it is there to be used as a means of excluding gays and same-sex couples from accessing employment, housing, and public accommodations on the same terms as other people. True, there is no actual language that says, All businesses wishing to discriminate in employment, housing, and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, please check this “religious objection” box. But, as Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

So—is the fuss over the Indiana law overblown?

No.

The statute shows every sign of having been carefully designed to put new obstacles in the path of equality; and it has been publicly sold with deceptive claims that it is “nothing new.”

Being required to serve those we dislike is a painful price to pay for the privilege of running a business; but the pain exclusion inflicts on its victims, and on society, are far worse than the discomfort the faithful may suffer at having to open their businesses to all.

As the story of Maurice Bessinger shows us, even dressed in liturgical garments, hateful discrimination is still a pig.

The response has been outrage and boycotts:

Pence has been suggesting that there might be some tweaks made, but so far no one is buying this.

Here is hoping that the anti-gay bigots get their clocks cleaned over this.

Why We Need to Clean House at the State Department

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If you have to conceal substantive negotiations from your foreign policy bureaucracy, it means that it’s time to fire a bunch of people in that bureaucracy:

The December breakthrough that upended a half-century of U.S.-Cuba enmity has been portrayed as the fruit of 18 months of secret diplomacy.

But Reuters interviews with more than a dozen people with direct knowledge of the process reveal a longer, painstakingly cautious quest by U.S. President Barack Obama and veteran Cuba specialists to forge the historic rapprochement.

As now-overt U.S.-Cuban negotiations continue this month, Reuters also has uncovered new details of how talks began and how they stalled in late 2013 during secret sessions in Canada. Senior administration officials and others also revealed how both countries sidelined their foreign policy bureaucracies and how Obama sought the Vatican’s blessing to pacify opponents.


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Obama at first froze out the State Department in part due to concern that “vested interests” there were bent on perpetuating a confrontational approach, said a former senior U.S. official. Secretary of State John Kerry was informed of the talks only after it appeared they might be fruitful, officials said.

Cuban President Raul Castro operated secretly too. Josefina Vidal, head of U.S. affairs at Cuba’s foreign ministry, was cut out, two Americans close to the process said. Vidal could not be reached for comment.

Sorry, but if your senior members of a bureaucracy, of any bureaucracy,  have to be kept out of the loop by elected leaders in order to avoid possible sabotage of policy, then it’s time for them not to be senior members of that bureaucracy.

Unfortunately the legacy of a competent non-partisan civil service has been undermined by decades of burrowing by Republicans.

Preach It, Andrew Bacevich!!!!

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He observes the absolute uselessness our foreign policy, and juxtaposes the effects of tribalism in the United States, an which might be the best headline in MoJo this year, Ivy League Eggheads Have Led Us Into a String of Disastrous Wars. It’s Time For Something New:.

Policy intellectuals—eggheads presuming to instruct the mere mortals who actually run for office—are a blight on the republic. Like some invasive species, they infest present-day Washington, where their presence strangles common sense and has brought to the verge of extinction the simple ability to perceive reality. A benign appearance—well-dressed types testifying before Congress, pontificating in print and on TV, or even filling key positions in the executive branch—belies a malign impact. They are like Asian carp let loose in the Great Lakes.

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 Then came World War II, followed in short order by the onset of the Cold War. These events brought to Washington a second wave of deep thinkers, their agenda now focused on “national security.” This eminently elastic concept—more properly, “national insecurity”—encompassed just about anything related to preparing for, fighting, or surviving wars, including economics, technology, weapons design, decision-making, the structure of the armed forces, and other matters said to be of vital importance to the nation’s survival. National insecurity became, and remains today, the policy world’s equivalent of the gift that just keeps on giving.

People who specialized in thinking about national insecurity came to be known as “defense intellectuals.” Pioneers in this endeavor back in the 1950s were as likely to collect their paychecks from think tanks like the prototypical RAND Corporation as from more traditional academic institutions. Their ranks included creepy figures like Herman Kahn, who took pride in “thinking about the unthinkable,” and Albert Wohlstetter, who tutored Washington in the complexities of maintaining “the delicate balance of terror.”

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Over the previous century-and-a-half, the United States had gone to war for many reasons, including greed, fear, panic, righteous anger, and legitimate self-defense. On various occasions, each of these, alone or in combination, had prompted Americans to fight. Vietnam marked the first time that the United States went to war, at least in considerable part, in response to a bunch of really dumb ideas floated by ostensibly smart people occupying positions of influence. More surprising still, action intellectuals persisted in waging that war well past the point where it had become self-evident, even to members of Congress, that the cause was a misbegotten one doomed to end in failure.

The modern national insecurity intellectuals subscribe to what Matthew Yglesias derided as, “The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics.”

Basically, like the DC comic book character, the US can do anything, and the only way that it can fail is through a failure of the will.

It is historically and empirically wrong.

It is also batsh%$ insane, and it is the standard wisdom inside the Beltway.
It’s why you frequently hear military leaders repeat the myth that US forces lost no battles in the Vietnam War:  (we lost over 70 battles) The lesson that the military learned was that the press needed to be muzzled so as not to lose popular support.

The fact is that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong beat us, but the military, in a stunning display of human nature, blames the American public and the press instead.

In his fine new book American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity, Christian Appy, a historian who teaches at the University of Massachusetts, reminds us of just how dumb those ideas were.

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 These questions are by no means of mere historical interest. They are no less relevant when applied to the handiwork of the twenty-first-century version of policy intellectuals, specializing in national insecurity, whose bullsh%$ underpins policies hardly more coherent than those used to justify and prosecute the Vietnam War.

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 At least since September 11, 2001, and arguably for at least two decades prior to that date, US policymakers have taken these propositions for granted. They have done so at least in part because few of the policy intellectuals specializing in national insecurity have bothered to question them.

Indeed, those specialists insulate the state from having to address such questions. Think of them as intellectuals devoted to averting genuine intellectual activity. More or less like Herman Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter (or Dr. Strangelove), their function is to perpetuate the ongoing enterprise.

………

What prompts these observations is Ashton Carter’s return to the Pentagon as President Obama’s fourth secretary of defense. Carter himself is an action intellectual in the Bundy, Rostow, Huntington mold, having made a career of rotating between positions at Harvard and in “the Building.” He, too, is a Yalie and a Rhodes scholar, with a PhD. from Oxford. “Ash”—in Washington, a first-name-only identifier (“Henry,” “Zbig,” “Hillary”) signifies that you have truly arrived—is the author of books and articles galore, including one op-ed co-written with former Secretary of Defense William Perry back in 2006 calling for preventive war against North Korea. Military action “undoubtedly carries risk,” he bravely acknowledged at the time. “But the risk of continuing inaction in the face of North Korea’s race to threaten this country would be greater”—just the sort of logic periodically trotted out by the likes of Herman Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter.

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Let me propose an experiment. Put them on furlough. Not permanently—just until the last of the winter snow finally melts in New England. Send them back to Yale for reeducation. Let’s see if we are able to make do without them even for a month or two.

In the meantime, invite Iraq and Afghanistan War vets to consider how best to deal with ISIS. Turn the op-ed pages of major newspapers over to high school social studies teachers. Book English majors from the Big Ten on the Sunday talk shows. Who knows what tidbits of wisdom might turn up?

We are a tribal society, and the tribe of the Ivy League has run our country for a very long time, the last 4 Presidents were Ivy Leaguers, and they have proven themselves to be incapable of recognizing reality.