We previously discussed a controversy involving porn found on the computer of Alex Kozinski, then the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was later cleared of misconduct but admonished over his conduct. Recently, however, Kozinski was accused of sexual harassment and improper touchings by over nine more women. Formal charges were brought against Kozinski and an investigation launched. Kozinski has now resigned from the court. It was the correct decision for himself, the alleged victims, and the court given these very serious and disturbing allegations from former clerks. The sheer number of women and the pattern described in their accounts made the allegations quite compelling. The decision is a sad conlusion for some of the most accomplished judicial careers on courts. Kozinski, who I have known for many years and has been to my class at George Washington University, was the best known libertarian on the bench. At 67, he could have had over a decade of additional opinions and impact, but his inappropriate conduct prematurely ended a brilliant career.
Kozinski apologized in a statement issued by his lawyer that he “had a broad sense of humor and a candid way of speaking to both male and female law clerks alike” and that, “in doing so, I may not have been mindful enough of the special challenges and pressures that women face in the workplace . . . It grieves me to learn that I caused any of my clerks to feel uncomfortable; this was never my intent. For this I sincerely apologize.”
The resignation will bring an end to the investigation. The early retirement will not only likely avoid negative findings, but it will preserve his retirement pension.
A public service announcement for those that have limited their resources and don’t get all the news.
Obama is responsible for a lot of young deaths due to drug overdoses.
“The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook
An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah’s billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House’s desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.”
“In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.
Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.
They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
They followed cocaine shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.
The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.
conclusion at https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/
In which I learn below that libertarian is a meaningless label.
Libertarianism is a justification for,”Leave me the hell alone so that I can pillage”, masquerading as a philosophy.
Linda, you just want to live off the hard work of others.
Allan, you mean the destroyers of the American dream, the idle rich heirs of the aristocracy who abhor the foundational tenets of the U.S., the financial sector that drags down GDP by an estimated 2%,
the 5 richest men in the world who each have wealth equivalent to 750,000,000 people?
Six predatory Walton heirs who have wealth equivalent to 40% of Americans combined are living off the hard work of their underpaid employees, the community taxpayers who pay the healthcare, food and shelter costs of their employees and, they are living off of the community taxpayers by not paying for the drain that the company is on infrastructure.
” the idle rich heirs of the aristocracy ”
Those heirs ended up paying above 50% of their inheritances in estate taxes.
How do they drag “down GDP by an estimated 2%”
I mean you. Those people don’t have their money under their mattresses. Their money is invested or spent or taxed. Someone earned it and they are able to use a portion of it when that person dies.
Linda, You, on the other hand, want all the luxuries of life that others worked for, but you want it given to you. You are a very envious person and you want things you aren’t willing to work for.
Worked all my life contributing to GDP, raised kids who contribute to GDP…paid taxes recognizing that they are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
Those who do nothing more than invest capital and take a lion’s share of the rewards gained through productivity improvements can’t justify their existence. With more mutual funds than there are companies in which to invest, many investors create no value.
Allan, move to a banana republic and convince those peasants that you are their savior, and take pretend job creators, Parker and Gates with you.
As I said you want more than you earned and are envious of others.
You forgot to mention the fact that above 50% of the money left to heirs is taxed. I don’t have any love for the trust fund babies, but I think the one that earned it and paid taxes all those years has a right to leave some to his heirs. 50% is a good deal of money, but you would love a piece of the remainder as well. Your envy shines brightly.
Linda, you should be the one to move to the banana republic because it is the political economics you preach that made those people so poor. It is capitalism that made American’s comparatively rich.
Free enterprise is not the economic system that the U.S. currently has. Economist, Thomas Picketty explained the loss of the economic growth engine that will result from the current system, if it is continued.
Labeling people as communist because they oppose oligarchy isn’t going to work for you, Allan.
Picketty explained a lot of things you don’t understand and a bunch of things he doesn’t understand either. Good economists have taken a lot of things Picketty has said to task. He is not the gold standard of economics though he appeals to your socialistic (communistic) sentiments.
Labelling people as socialists/ communists is correct when they are advocating redistribution. That is the nature of communism. Unfortunately that nature also leads to strongmen which rule with an oligarchy.
Opposition to oligarchy is well understood and agreed with, but the worst oligarchies occurred under the guise of socialism. Read your history.
Redistribution occurred when the richest 400 American families took over governance in state capitols and in D.C. explaining why the amount that goes to labor is at the lowest point in recorded U.S. history.
Allan, you advocate for a system that is perpetuating redistribution of wealth to the top 0.1%, at an accelerating rate.
Evidence of your misstatements at this blog (deliberate or not) disqualifies you from judging research.
“Evidence of your misstatements at this blog (deliberate or not) disqualifies you from judging research.”
Anytime you wish to compare our respective knowledge of raw facts, go ahead and do so. So far you have been wrong on almost everything and I have demonstrated that with numbers that originally came from .gov sources.
The one thing we agree upon, something I have mentioned at least twice before to pure silence, is that I worry about the political power of the richest Americans. I don’t worry about how much money they have as long as it is legally obtained and spent. I worry about the very rich perverting our political system. Trump hasn’t significantly done that to date, but we saw with Obama an underlying fascist movement as he combined politics with big business artificially creating winners and losers. We saw some of that under GWB, but much less.
You don’t like oligarchy and neither do I, but you wish to institute a government that requires oligarchy to redistribute the spoils.
67% of Americans oppose the Ryan/McConnell tax law because it redistributes wealth to the rich. That majority opinion has been communicated to both Trump and Congress.
Because the popular vote went to Hillary, Trump’s election via electoral college, provides no majority mandate for his proposals. But, Trump will sign the law he encouraged Republicans to write for his rich supporters.
“67% of Americans oppose the Ryan/McConnell tax law because it redistributes wealth to the rich. ”
Linda, You keep saying these things, but you are never able to define how such a law redistributes wealth to the rich. It makes your comment meaningless. In fact, a lot of very well off people will be paying more taxes than before and their rate reduction will not make up for the money lost. That is fine with me, but your statements are so generalized and lacking concrete fact that they make you look ridiculous.
I guess at your age and disability the ability to learn has ceased.
This article deserves a little G&S–just because . . .
Or a little Gilbert & George:
Thumbing
What a gold-digging bimbo! She serves up her testimony in parts. Hmmm. !!! She deserves an Irish Poem:
The Harth Wants What The Harth Wants???
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
Said a gold digging bimbo named Harth—
If you can’t afford all, pay for parth!
Screw sanctimony!
For my testimony,
You can order it up ala carte-th!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I’m waiting for JT to add, in one of his articles, that he finds her accusations to be credible, as well. Funny, how stories, such as the one that I provided, below, don’t seem to get any traction. No coverage. Zippo. Nada. Nothing. Why? Because it would spoil the narrative. Ruin the agenda, where we are admonished to jump on the bandwagon and believe every flake, with every accusation, against every person, where the accusers have remained silent for decades, because, as JT suggests, they must be credible. Stories, which tend to prove that the accuser or accusers are not credible and not to be believed are hidden from view. A frightening concept.
True. All Harth needs to do is make up a few details, and KABLOOEY! – she’s credible. Why do people find the mere existence of alleged details determinative when we are surrounded by fiction?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Trump Accuser Wanted To Be His Makeup Artist
December 19, 2017
Daniel Greenfield
This is how stories fall apart. Badly.
A New York cosmetics executive who publicly alleged Donald Trumpsexually assaulted her in the 1990s repeatedly solicited the future president to become his campaign makeup artist and to pitch her new product line in the months before her story roiled the 2016 race, according to the woman and her contemporaneous emails.
“Hi Donald, you are doing a tremendous job of shaking things up in the United States. I am definitely on Team Trump as so many others are,” Jill Harth wrote the future president in an Oct. 1, 2015, email sent to him through his New York company’s headquarters.
“I can’t watch television without seeing you or hearing your name everywhere! It’s a good thing for sure but PLEASE let me do your makeup for a television interview, a debate, a photo session, anything!” Harth wrote.
In another email seeking to meet Trump personally, Harth offered to be a campaign surrogate willing to tell voters how the future president “helped me with my self-confidence and all positive things about how he is with women.”
Harth’s statement is even more bizarre.
“The Hill has insisted I explain how I could accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault, sexual harassment and attempted rape in a 1997 federal lawsuit, then send him an email volunteering to do his makeup during the 2016 election campaign. Well, a couple years of therapy helped me deal with Trump’s sexual attacks and the mind games he had played on me for more than a year and move on with my life. In 2015 I was very excited about a new men’s cosmetic product line that I had developed and needed a prominent spokesperson. And after discussions with my business associate she thought Donald Trump would be ideal. I called Trump’s executive assistant who asked me to put everything in writing by email with a formal proposal for Trump.”
Nothing in that paragraph makes any sense.
Therapy helped me deal with Trump’s sexual assaults. So I wanted him to be my spokesman for my line of men’s cosmetic products.
“I firmly believe Trump should resign or be investigated and impeached. Leopards don’t change their spots.
This is the same woman who had written…
Harth wrote Graff that she had a “winner of a project that I want to approach Mr. Trump with” and that “I also would like to show my support for Donald and his campaign.
And then it gets weirder.
“The Hill’s blatant attempt at Fake News fails miserably and exposes it as an apologist for Trump and a rag for right-wing hit jobs.”
The Hill’s response: The story The Hill ran was not in retaliation for any article involving Lisa Bloom. Harth herself alerted The Hill to the existence of emails showing her effort to win business from President Trump at the start of the 2016 presidential campaign and she encouraged our reporter to obtain those emails, which we did.
bams:
My Irish Poem was supposed to be in reply to your comment. See above. Sorry I messed up posting it.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter