Now this take a bit of hubris. Disgraced former Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella has moved to discuss federal lawsuits from juveniles who sent to jail after accepting bribes. tax evasion and depriving the public of their honest services for accepting more than $2.6 million in kickbacks in exchange for rulings that benefited the Pa Child Care and Western Pa Child Care centers. In a motion written by himself, Ciavarella demanded dismissal on . . . you guessed it . . . judicial immunity.
Ciavarella first disgraced the court and the bar by selling his office. Now, when confronted with his alleged victims of judicial corruption, he claims that he cannot be sued because he was acting as a judicial officer.
Ciavarella and former judge Michael Conahan pleaded guilty and must serve 87 months in prison — a remarkably light sentence in my view for what they did to these kids. Notably, they were not required to resign from the bar until 10 days after sentencing, so Ciavarella may continue to act as a lawyer. He will not be formally sentenced for at least a month.
Ciavarella cites a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case called the Supreme Court ruling in Stump v. Sparkman (1978) where a women sued a judge who had her sterilized at the request of her mother who described her as her “somewhat retarded daughter.” The girl was told that she having her appendix removed. The Court ruled that circuit judge had ruled within his jurisdiction and thus was immune from liability “even if his approval of the petition was in error.” Of course, the judge did not received a kickback from the hospital.
For the full story, click here.
I do wonder if the “h” in hasshole stands for Harry though.
The beautiful thing about it is that the trolls have been reduced to the most pitiful and blatant forms of trolling and thus stick out like a sore thumb. They aren’t even trying to convert any more, just to disrupt. That smells like maple syrup to me. I don’t worry about propaganda that’s easy to discern and minimally effective. It’s a sign of fear and regression of tactics after being routed by the regulars too often. They are in essence firing blindly at our entrenched and fortified positions as they run away.
Like chickens with their heads cut off . . .
rafflaw,
When you’re right you’re right.
Why did Barack Obama give a deep bow to the King of Saudi Arabia?
Obama bent over so deep in the bow it almost looked like he was licking the King’s boots.
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Saturday, April 04, 2009
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that just 34% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.
Thirty-one percent (31%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +3, matching his lowest rating to date (see trends).
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Bob,Esq.,
The trolls are out in full, non-sensical and repetitive force. It doesn’t matter what the thread is discussing, they have their marching orders for the day and they must control the “internets”.
Friday-night doc dump: Summers took millions from TARP recipients
The Obama administration has mastered the art of the Friday Night Disclosure. They tried to avoid media scrutiny over the revelation that National Economic Council chair Lawrence Summers made millions from the same people demonized by Barack Obama and the Democrats for the economic collapse:
Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, earned millions working at a hedge fund and speaking to banks such as Citigroup Inc. that later received taxpayer bailout money.
Hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. paid Summers more than $5 million in salary and other compensation in the past 16 months, according to a financial disclosure form released by the White House yesterday. Summers served as a managing director at the New York-based firm. Summers, a former Treasury secretary, also earned more than $2.7 million in speaking fees.
bob esq; you jerkbait: read the article with your eyes open:
So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying semi-automatic rifles, and force thousands of unknown “straw” buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s, AK-47’s, etc. from China, Russia, South Africa, Zenezuela, North Korea, Syria, Iran, or Libya as just a few examples?
Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean & Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.
hasshole
“But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.”
“So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:
– The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea,
Fragmentation grenades are not guns.
“AK-47s from China,”
By your logic, a Mauser 98 would also count as “not from the U.S. since it was built in Germany before and during WWII; yet it remains one of the most sought after rifles in the United States, next to the Winchester Model 70, for its supreme accuracy.
“and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.”
Once again Sherlock; those aren’t guns.
You’re nothing more than a Right Wing ditto-head sans a clue about which you speak.
Id refers to Pulliam
From my Lord Scalia files:
“We never have had a rule of absolute judicial immunity from prospective relief, and there is no evidence that the absence of that immunity has had a chilling effect on judicial independence. None of the seminal opinions on judicial immunity, either in England or in this country, has involved immunity from injunctive relief. No Court of Appeals ever has concluded that immunity bars injunctive relief against a judge.” Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U.S. 522 at 536-537 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=466&page=522
“It is essential in all courts that the judges who are appointed to administer the law should be permitted to administer it under the protection of the law, independently and freely, without favor and without fear. THIS PROVISION OF THE LAW IS NOT FOR THE PROTECTION OR BENEFIT OF A MALICIOUS OR CORRUPT JUDGE, but for the benefit of the public, whose interest it is that the judges should be at liberty to exercise their functions with independence, and without fear of consequences.” Scott v. Stansfield, 3 L. R. Ex., at 223
The fundamental question in case of judicial immunity is “whether a judicial officer acting in her judicial capacity should be immune from prospective … relief.” Id at 528
The doctrine of judicial immunity is one of the earliest products of the English common law. It was established to protect the finality of judgments from continual collateral attack in courts of competing jurisdiction n5 and to protect judicial decision-making from intimidation and outside interference.” (Id at 547-548)
Common-law writs against judges were primarily “intended only to control the proper exercise of jurisdiction.” … [They] posed no threat to judicial independence and implicated none of the policies of judicial immunity. Thus, the judges of England’s inferior courts were subject to suit for writs of mandamus and prohibition, but judicial immunity barred all suits attacking judicial decisions made within the proper scope of their jurisdiction.” Id at 549-550
The common law recognized that the threat of personal litigation would jeopardize the independence of judicial decision-making: judges, to avoid being called before a hostile tribunal to account for their judicial acts, could be deterred by personal considerations from judging dispassionately the merits of the cases before them. LOL See Taaffe v. Downes, 13 Eng. Rep., at 23, n. (a) (“A Judge … ought to be uninfluenced by any personal consideration whatsoever operating upon his mind, when he is hearing a discussion concerning the rights of contending parties; otherwise, instead of hearing them abstractedly, a considerable portion of his attention must be devolved to himself”). Id at 549
“It has long been recognized at common law that judicial immunity protects only those acts committed within the proper scope of a judge’s jurisdiction, but provides no protection for acts committed in excess of jurisdiction.” Id at 549
The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.
By William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott
Saturday, April 4,2009
EXCLUSIVE: You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before — on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
— CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
— California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: “It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States.”
— William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that “there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.”
There’s just one problem with the 90 percent “statistic” and it’s a big one:
It’s just not true.
In fact, it’s not even close. By all accounts, it’s probably around 17 percent.
What’s true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency’s assistant director, “is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.”
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.
“Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market,” Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.
Video: Click here to watch more on where the guns come from.
A Look at the Numbers
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced — and of those, 90 percent — 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover — were found to have come from the U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.
So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:
— The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.
— Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.
– South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.
— Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.
— The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.
— Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America’s cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.
‘These Don’t Come From El Paso’
Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered “assault rifles” that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.
“These kinds of guns — the auto versions of these guns — they are not coming from El Paso,” he said. “They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don’t get these guns from the U.S.”
Some guns, he said, “are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way — the fully auto versions — they are not smuggled in across the river.”
Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.
The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years — but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.
“Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Boatloads of Weapons
So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown “straw” buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?
Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.
The exaggeration of United States “responsibility” for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the “90-percent” falsehood — and some Second Amendment activists believe it’s designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.
In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States — 730,000 a year. That’s a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general’s office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.
Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.
“Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this,” Cox said. “The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment.”
“The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It’s estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?”
But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the “90 percent” issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.
“Let’s do what we can with what we know,” he said. “We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/04/02/myth-percent-guns-mexico-fraction-number-claimed/
TURLEY< YOU NEED TO APOLOGIZE for printing garbage articles again. You were wrong.
rafflaw:
“So Rex has become Rexa. Are you guys twins?”
***********
More like gender confusion.
Hey Hass,
You can join your cousins, Rex and Rexa, in Troll land and leave the serious issues to people who actually care about the facts and the truth. by the way, nice moniker.
Failure
April 4, 2009
The London Times says that Europe’s leaders were “dazzled” but bewildered by Barack Obama and his trip was a failure:
Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities. But the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.
Gordon Brown was the only one to offer substantial help. He offered to send several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during the August election.
Just two other allies made firm offers of troops. Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers and Spain offered 12. Mr Obama’s host, Nicolas Sarkozy, at first refused his request then relented to 300 non-combat French troops.
Europe’s leaders are happy to humor Americans and reporters; it costs nothing to tell them how charming they think Barack is.
What they actually do will depend on their assessment of where their country’s interests lie.
So Rex has become Rexa. Are you guys twins? Twin Trolls?? It is amazing that you jump on Obama for his lack of oratorial skills. You have to be kidding, right?? Were you awake during the last 8 years of the word butcher?
Buddha,
You hit the nail on the head. This judge is a snake that should be locked up for life.
Now we have the abject failure of Barack Obama to use his “smart power” to shake loose any new troop commitments for Afghanistan from our NATO partners.
While Obama prostrated himself in Europe, apologizing for American arrogance in the past, our allies were so unimpressed that at first only the French offered any new assistance at all, 300 more troops — and will not allow them to fight.
Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.
But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.
Gordon Brown finally offered to send several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during the August election, but even that fell short of the thousands of combat troops that the US was hoping to prise from the Prime Minister.
Just two other allies made firm offers of troops. Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers and Spain offered 12.
The derisory response threatened to tarnish Mr Obama’s European tour, which yesterday included a performance in Strasbourg in which he offered the world a vision of a future free of nuclear weapons, without providing a plan as to how he would convince the numerous nuclear countries in the world to give up a single nuclear bomb.
The question that flummoxed the great orator
The Guardian, Friday 3 April 2009
Barack Obama, the World’s Greatest Orator, didn’t exactly cover himself in glory when the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson asked him a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Normally word perfect, Obama ummed, ahed and waffled for the best part of two and a half minutes. Here, John Crace decodes what he was really thinking …
Nick Robinson: “A question for you both, if I may. The prime minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany both blame Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn’t the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?” Brown immediately swivels to leave Obama in pole position. There is a four-second delay before Obama starts speaking [THANKS FOR NOTHING, GORDY BABY. REMIND ME TO HANG YOU OUT TO DRY ONE DAY.] Barack Obama: “I, I, would say that, er … pause [I HAVEN’T A CLUE] … if you look at … pause [WHO IS THIS NICK ROBINSON JERK?] … the, the sources of this crisis … pause [JUST KEEP GOING, BUDDY] … the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to . . . pause [I’M IN WAY TOO DEEP HERE] … a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system … pause, close eyes [THIS IS GOING TO GO DOWN LIKE A CROCK OF SHIT BACK HOME. HELP]. I think what is also true is that … pause [I WANT NICK ROBINSON TO DISAPPEAR] … here in Great Britain … pause [SHIT, GORDY’S THE HOST, DON’T LAND HIM IN IT] … here in continental Europe … pause [DAMN IT, BLAME EVERYONE.] … around the world. We were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and er … pause [I’VE LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT AGAIN] … the highly integrated, er, global capital markets that have emerged … pause [I’M REALLY WINGING IT NOW]. So at this point, I’m less interested in … pause [YOU] … identifying blame than fixing the problem. I think we’ve taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so, not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring banks are adequately capitalised, er, dealing with the enormous, er … pause [WHY DIDN’T I QUIT WHILE I WAS AHEAD?] … drop-off in demand and contraction that has taken place. More importantly, for the long term, making sure that we’ve got a set of, er, er, regulations that are up to the task, er, and that includes, er, a number that will be discussed at this summit. I think there’s a lot of convergence between all the parties involved about the need, for example, to focus not on the legal form that a particular financial product takes or the institution it emerges from, but rather what’s the risk involved, what’s the function of this product and how do we regulate that adequately, much more effective coordination, er, between countries so we can, er, anticipate the risks that are involved there. Dealing with the, er, problem of derivatives markets, making sure we have set up systems, er, that can reduce some of the risks there. So, I actually think … pause [FANTASTIC. I’VE LOST EVERYONE, INCLUDING MYSELF] … there’s enormous consensus that has emerged in terms of what we need to do now and, er … pause [I’M OUTTA HERE. TIME FOR THE USUAL CLOSING BOLLOCKS] … I’m a great believer in looking forwards than looking backwards.
Qualunque porto in una tempesta!
Good luck with that, Judge Scumbag.