The ‘Judicial Independence’ of Justice David T. Prosser
Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning with Brad Friedman
The hornets’ nest of corruption binding the embattled WI Supreme Court Justice with Scott Jensen, Kathy Nickolaus and the criminal misuse of state employees for partisan gain…
“This was a decisive election about judicial independence,” WI Supreme Court Justice David Prosser said at a press conference in Madison last Monday, declaring victory and explaining his opposition to a recount of the April 5th Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
“The people realized that judges should be much more than partisan politicians who wear black robes. Judges should be impartial in theory and in fact. They should faithfully apply the law without fear, and without favor,” he told the assembled media.
However, as an investigation by The BRAD BLOG reveals, there is a stunning gap between the lofty ideals of “independence” espoused by the incumbent Justice as quoted above, and the sordid reality of his own personal record as a hard-Right partisan official in Wisconsin, with the state’s GOP caucus, and even during his role as a justice on the state’s highest court.
If this new film is an accurate expression of the views of the Iranian protesters—-i.e., those who protested Ahmadinejad’s re-election (or “re-election”)—-then we should not assume that they’ve been driven mainly by a hunger for legitimate democracy. They would appear to be concerned exclusively with getting rid of Ahmadinejad, and not with any genuine reforms of their benighted voting system (which, BTW, seems hardly any worse than ours).
And so Iran’s “green wave,” although emotionally stirring, was evidently not a struggle for democracy in any rational form, but a theatrical outpouring meant to ramp up pressure on Iran’s regime.
That’s too bad, as we badly need a global movement for elections that are truly democratic; and that movement should include all those who have been disenfranchised through vote suppression and/or election fraud. Iranians would seem to fit the bill, but it appears that they have other fish to fry (if I may mix my metaphors).
MCM
From a friend:
Mark,
This afternoon at the SF Int’l Film Festival, I saw a screening of The Green Wave, a new Iranian documentary based on cell phone videos and blogger/twitter updates, etc., from the protesters who had campaigned for Ahmadinejad’s rival, Mousavi, for President, and then protested in the streets after it seemed clear that the election had been stolen.
I wanted to let you know that the filmmaker, Ali Samadi Ahadi, was clueless about exit polling and public hand-counting of ballots, and that no one had any idea what the true vote count was. There’s only the official tally of 69% for Ahmadinejad.
When I asked Ahadi about EP’s and who gets to count the votes, he said there are no exit polls, and that the ballots are not counted publicly. So I mentioned that without these safeguards there is no way to figure out how many votes each side got.
I also brought up how 90% of all votes in the US are now cast on or tabulated by electronic voting systems that are owned by privately held firms managed by rightwing conservatives, but that also went right over his head. He didn’t say anything about how US elections are run, implying that he thinks the US is still a democracy.
As he sees it, the lack of exit polls, and the counting of the votes behind closed doors, are entirely normal things.
K
Scientists say BP money for Gulf oil spill research coming very slowly
By The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS – Scientists say it is taking far too long to dole out millions of dollars in BP funds for badly needed Gulf oil spill research, and it could be too late to assess the crude’s impact on pelicans, shrimp and other species by the time studies begin.
The spring nesting and spawning season is a crucial time to get out and sample the reproduction rates, behavior and abundance of species, all factors that could be altered by last year’s massive spill. Yet no money has been made available for this year, and it could take months to determine which projects will be funded.
“It’s like a murder scene,” said Dana Wetzel, an ecotoxicologist at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida. “You have to pick up the evidence now.”
What, did he bang his head? The man–a major Koch-head–is confused.
MCM
GOP Congressman Calls For Ending Corporate Tax Loopholes And Billions In Subsidies To Big Oil
By Lee Fang
ThinkProgress filed this report from a town hall meeting in Florence, SC.
On Monday, ThinkProgress spoke to Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) at one of his constituent town halls in Florence, SC. Mulvaney, a freshman, spent much of his time arguing in favor of the new Republican budget put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
USDA moves to let Monsanto perform its own environmental impact studies on GMOs
BY TOM PHILPOTT
Last August, Federal Judge Jeffrey White issued a stinging rebuke to the USDA for its process on approving new genetically modified seeds. He ruled that the agency’s practice of “deregulating” novel seed varieties without first performing an environmental impact study violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
The target of Judge White’s ire was the USDA’s 2005 approval of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets, engineered to withstand doses of the company’s own herbicide. White’s ruling effectively revoked the approval of Monsanto’s novel beet seeds pending an environmental impact study, and cast doubt upon the USDA’s notoriously industry-friendly way of regulating GM seeds.
A rigorous environmental impact assessment would not likely be kind to Roundup Ready sugar beets. First, sugar-beet seeds are cultivated mainly in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, also an important seed-production area for crops closely related to sugar beets, such as organic chard and table beets.
BP’s Secret Deepwater Blowout
by: Greg Palast, Truthout and Buzzflash
Only 17 months before BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.
You’ve heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it’s because BP has kept the full story under wraps.
Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.
***
BP Still Being Awarded Lucrative Government Contracts
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout
BP continues to receive tens of millions of dollars in government contracts, despite the fact that the British oil company is under federal criminal investigation over the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and twice violated its probation late last year.
Last week, the Defense Logistics Agency awarded Air BP, a division of BP Products North America, a $42 million contract to supply fuel to Dover Air Force Base for the next month and a half. BP is the biggest supplier of fuel to the Defense Department.
What makes this particular contract unique is that it is one identified as “an unusual and compelling urgency” contract, which means the government would be “seriously injured”and national security could be at risk unless the Defense Logistics Agency was permitted to “limit the number of sources from which it solicits bids or proposals.
The Credit Rating Hoax
William Greider
Standard & Poor’s, the self-righteous credit-rating agency, has a damn lot of nerve. It provoked scary headlines by solemnly threatening to “short” America. That is, downgrade the credit-worthiness of US Treasury bonds unless Congress and the president oblige creditors by punishing the citizenry with severe budget cuts. What a load of crap.
The headline I would like to see is this: “S&P Execs Face Major Fraud Investigation, Take the Fifth Before Federal Grand Jury.”
News coverage on S&P’s credit warning typically failed to mention that Standard & Poor’s itself is in utter disrepute. It was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Wall Street deceitfulness that brought the nation to financial ruin. During the bubble of inflated housing prices, S&P and other rating agencies blessed the fraud-based mortgage securities issued by Wall Street banks with AAA ratings-deceiving gullible investors around the world and assuring bloated profits (and executive bonuses) for the greedy bankers. S&P provided cover for the massive scam that led to the crisis that sank the national economy.
***
The real reason for the “negative credit” warning
by Cannonfire
Standard and Poors has revised the sovereign credit rating of the United States. We used to be stable; now we’re “negative.”
Futures fell from a 33-month high as Standard & Poor’s said there’s a “material risk” that U.S. policy makers may not agree on a plan to address long-term budget issues by 2013.
Translation: The revised credit rating is meant to push the administration and lawmakers into going after Social Security and Medicare. The right-wing now has an additional propaganda tool to push for draconian cuts in areas that will most hurt working and middle class Americans. You can already see how this move will play out.
ElBaradei suggests war crimes probe of Bush team
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
NEW YORK – Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the “shame of a needless war” in Iraq.
Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of “grotesque distortion” in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei’s and other arms inspectors inside the country.
The Iraq war taught him that “deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators,” ElBaradei writes in “The Age of Deception,” being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.
New Civil War erupts,
led by super rich, GOP
Commentary: ‘Shock Doctrine,’ Reaganomics trigger explosive class war
by Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) – Yes, “there’s class warfare, all right,” warns Warren Buffett. “But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Yes, the rich are making war against us. And yes, they are winning. Why? Because so many are fighting this new American Civil War between the rich and the rest.
Not just the 16 new GOP governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and across America fighting for new powers. Others include: Chamber of Commerce billionaires, Koch brothers, Forbes 400, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform – which now has 97% of House Republicans and 85% of the GOP Senators signed on his “no new taxes” pledge – the Tea Party and Reaganomics ideologues.
Data Pirates (AKA Cops) Can Hack Your Cell Phone
WonderHowTo |
By now, many of you may have heard about iPhone tracking and recording your location data, but is there anything else being extracted from cell phones without our knowledge? If you’re a Michigan state resident, the answer is an alarming “maybe”.
Michigan’s police department have been using handheld gadgets called “extraction devices” for nearly three years now, which can take every lick of data from a mobile phone. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan claims that these DEDs (data extraction devices) are being used to secretly copy cell phone data during routine traffic stops.
Seems like a serious violation to the 4th Amendment, right? If the search and seizure law prohibits police officers from checking your trunk after getting pulled over, how could stealing your cell phone data be an exception? Do they really need to investigate your photos and texts? Don’t worry, the ACLU are on the case (despite being unsuccessful).
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