“In early 2009,” writes Bill McKibben in a soon-to-be-published new book, “just as Obama was getting set to unveil his energy plans, word came that 2,340 lobbyists had registered to work on climate change on Capitol Hill (that’s about six per congressman), 85 percent of them devoted to slowing down progress.” By early 2010, you can see the results of such efforts, multiplied many times over by the staggering levels of support available for anti-climate-change work from the richest industry on the planet: the energy business. All this was not helped, of course, by the much hyped “climate-gate” which proved that climate-change scientists were fallible human beings and not simply extraterrestrial super-brains. These “scandals” were, in turn, blown up to proportions that seemed to blot out the very image of the disappearing Arctic icepack.
Jamie Munks, Watertown Daily Times
Mail On Sunday Reporter, Sunday Mail / The One Click Group
Susan Brinkmann, The Philadelphia Bulletin
* Calls For Cervarix HPV Vaccine To Be Suspended In The UK
Daily Mail Reporter, Daily Mail
CIA Requests Its Own Documents From Author
WALTERVILLE, Ore. – In a bizarre about-face, the secretive Central Intelligence Agency has requested documents from an investigative journalist, even though the writer had earlier obtained them from the CIA itself under the Freedom of Information Act.
The strange request was made last week to author H.P. Albarelli Jr., whose recently published book A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments, details a myriad of CIA drug experiments and exposes a large number of previously anonymous physicians and business officials who contracted with the agency. The experiments resulted in the deaths of a number of people and sent hundreds more seeking medical help.
“The caller, an agency official, who identified himself by a name I was quite familiar with from past requests,” explained Albarelli, “asked if I would be so kind as to send by fax two documents my book referenced in its narrative and footnotes. I suppose I should have been bowled over by the request, but I wasn’t. It happened once before.”
26
Why the right needs ACORN
Why Conservatives Will Miss ACORN
The news that the embattled community-organizing group will restructure has the right in mourning — after all, the organization provided the perfect locus for conservative panic.
ADAM SERWER
On Monday, news broke that the embattled community-organizing group ACORN had “dissolved as a national
structure,” with individual chapters severing their relationship to one another. It turned out not to be true — ACORN still exists as a national organization, but several of its large state chapters, including the ones in New York, Massachusetts, and California, have become independent organizations.
Here’s a sign that the NYTimes is waking up to the grave danger of computerized voting, although they have a ways to go.
The problem isn’t any lack of “robust competition.” How could it be? First of all, there really never was much “competition” in the e-vote/e-vote-counting business–and there really wasn’t any when, essentially, Diebold and ES&S divided up the territory, since those two juggernauts were Siamese twins. They were originally one company, founded by the Christinist brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich (who still wield corporate power today).
Moreover–and more important–elections are a vital civic exercise, not an economic matter that requires a market-based solution. We rule ourselves (or ought to) as voters, not consumers. The problem with ES&S, therefore, is surely not that that colossus hogs “the market,” although it is indeed grotesque, and dangerous, to have one private company run our national elections.
The problem, rather, is that America’s elections have been privatized, whether it’s one company or four, or six, that runs the show–and, indeed, “a show” is all it is, because that company, and all its peers, deploy a wholly non-transparent, easily manipulated electronic system, which makes it quite impossible for anyone to tell if the results of our elections are legitimate or not. (Those companies, moreover, are not honest brokers
but intensely partisan concerns, owned and managed by right-wing Republicans.)
What we need, then, isn’t “robust competition” in the field of electronic voting and vote-counting. What we need is to BAN SUCH VOTING NATIONWIDE, IN FAVOR OF A NATIONAL RETURN TO PAPER BALLOTS, WHICH MUST BE HAND-COUNTED. We also need to BAN PRIVATE COMPANIES FROM ALL PARTICIPATION IN OUR VOTING PROCESS.
I hope I’ve made myself clear. The time, in short, has come to repeal the disastrous (and frighteningly misnamed) Help America Vote ACT (HAVA), and start anew.
Tell the Times, in 150 words or less: Letters@nytimes.com.
MCM
The Voters Will Pay
It was bad news for the voting public when Election Systems and Software, the nation’s largest voting machine company, announced last fall that it was acquiring the elections division of Diebold, the nation’s second-largest voting machine company.
Important point from Thom.
I’ve sent out several items re: movetoamend.org.
MCM
Problem is that this does NOT reverse SCOTUS ruling – it merely gets around one tiny part of it (and thus essentially ratifies and strengthens it). We need a REAL Constitutional Amendment that strips constitutional rights from all corporations of all sort, taking us back to where we were before 1886 with the people in charge.
There are several great examples at http://www.movetoamend.org and http://www.freespeech.org.
Thom
25
Private firms run DHS?
Contractors outnumber full-time workers at DHS; lawmakers ‘astounded’
By Jeanne Meserve, CNN
Washington (CNN) — The Department of Homeland Security has more contractors working for it than full-time employees, a situation two members of Congress said Tuesday was “unacceptable, untenable and unsustainable.”
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and ranking Republican Susan Collins said they were “astounded” to learn there are more than 200,000 contractor employees at the department.
The civilian work force of Homeland Security numbers 188,000, according to an estimate provided to the senators by Homeland Security.
From Troy Duster:
Mark,
Regarding Clark Hoyt of the New York Times, here is another matter to consider:
When the Chinese were caught selling tainted food, it was a front-page story in the Times,
and big news everywhere.
Today, we have another tainted food story–and this one is a doozy, involving not just
sloppy and inadquequate inspections, but outright bribery. And this is not a foreign scandal,
but all-American, involving “a top ingredient buyer” at Kraft Foods, headquartered near
Chicago.
So where did the Times place this story? On the front page of the Business section, most
of it below the fold. And it’s not mentioned at the bottom of Page One, where the only Business
story noted is, “Mr. Toyoda Says He’s Sorry.”
Troy
February 25, 2010
Bribes Let Tomato Vendor Sell Tainted Food
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes to get its products into Kraft’s plants.
The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,” he said, using a euphemism for bribes.
Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices near Chicago and confronted Mr. Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a startling vein of corruption in the food industry. And because the scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato products with high levels of mold or other defects, the case has raised serious questions about how well food manufacturers safeguard the quality of their ingredients.
Contact: Hiram Eastland
Eastland Law Offices, PLLC
It is very disturbing to once again find the U.S. Attorney’s office engaging in more meaningless doublespeak in their continued wrongful and political pursuit of Paul Minor and Judges Teel and Whitfield.
The prosecution of Paul Minor was flawed from the beginning and reeked of political motivations as evidenced by this case being flagged by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives in 2007 as one of the most glaring examples of prosecutorial misconduct by the Department of Justice.
Off and on throughout this case the U.S. Attorney’s office has maintained it has recused itself from the case when it clearly has not. Recusal is a seminal issue in this case simply because – as we have seen from some charges being overturned and the fifth circuit repeatedly questioning key points in the case by requesting re-briefings on the matters – that an objective US Attorney’s office without agenda, would not have proceeded with such an obviously flawed case.
So, the case progresses, the US Attorney’s Office continues to flip-flop on the recusal issue, the appellate court has overturned the main charge that served as the underpinning of the entire prosecution, and yet Paul Minor begins his fourth year in prison.
When the Fifth Circuit decision reversing Paul Minor’s federal bribery convictions was handed down the U.S. Attorney’s office refused to comment, maintaining that it had recused itself from the case. The office’s professed recusal was not surprising because it is our understanding that it is being investigated by the Justice Department itself to determine if Paul Minor’s prosecution was politically motivated.
Yet, the U.S. Attorney’s office has once again contradicted itself by proactively involving itself in opposing Judge Teel’s recent motion for release pending resentencing.
This is just another incident in a long line of disturbing issues associated with the prosecution of Paul Minor.
As egregious as all this recusal doublespeak is, it pales in comparison to the other double-talk and lengths to which the U.S. Attorney’s office and Justice Department have gone to wrongfully convict and imprison Paul Minor and state judges Teel and Wingate.
The Government misstated the law required to convict Paul Minor by representing to the district court that no this-for-that quid pro quo was required to convict Minor of the federal bribery, honest services bribery and RICO bribery charges brought against him.
Yet, the same Justice Department was required by other courts around the country to prove a quid pro quo on these very same federal statutory bribery charges.
The Government itself did not allege nor prove quid pro quo in the Minor case. Accordingly the federal bribery conviction was overturned. The recent US Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case clearly states that without proof of quid pro quo, contributions that intend to influence public officials are constitutionally protected free speech.
Similarly, the U.S. Attorney’s office and Justice Department have repeatedly opposed Paul Minor and the judges’ release pending appeal when the federal bail statute mandates release during the appeal of such substantial issues. In fact, we were able to secure Alabama Governor Siegelman’s release from prison during his appeal of remarkably similar issues.
Having said that, these are very capable Justice Department prosecutors led by an experienced Acting U.S. Attorney that is a very good man. Hopefully, the government will at long last do the right thing by acknowledging the error of not requiring a quid pro quo to convict Paul Minor under its federal statutory bribery charges and by acknowledging Paul Minor is entitled to be free during the courts’ resolution of the profound issues involved in his appeal.
After all, this is the Department of Justice, a renowned institution of the highest integrity–not the Department of Injustice.
Contact: Hiram Eastland
Eastland Law Offices, PLLC
Burkhalter Looks Horrible in Paul Minor Recusal Flap Mississippi Litigation Review:
http://www.mslitigationreview.com/2010/02/articles/us-district-courts-in-mississi/burkhalter-looks-horrible-in-paul-minor-recusal-flap/
25
“Torture Whitewash”
Torture Whitewash
On Friday, the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) released a long-awaited report investigating whether the legal advice in crucial Bush administration memos authorizing torture “was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys.” The report found that attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee “had committed professional misconduct in writing the legal opinions that authorized torture.” The report was softened, however, by Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, the top career attorney at the department, who “overruled OPR’s finding of misconduct” in an accompanying memo, concluding only that that Yoo and Bybee exercised poor judgment and made bad legal arguments. While stating that his “decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies” the torture memos, Margolis also “barred OPR from referring the matter to state bar disciplinary authorities where Yoo and Bybee are licensed.” What’s troubling, Margolis’ memo indicated that Yoo and Bybee’s legal decisions were understood as having occurred in the heat of the post-9/11 moment, (even though they were written in 2002) implying that “being under pressure” is an excuse for ignoring laws against torture.
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