The ATF continues to struggle in the aftermath of its moronic Fast and Furious operation where they allowed powerful weapons to walk into the hands of gangs. One of those guns led to the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. However, in true lunacy, a more recent operation would seem to demand similar ridicule. In Milwaukee, ATF agents ran an operation using Chauncey Wright, a brain-damaged 28-year-old man with a low IQ in the 50s to set up gun and drug deals. They then shutdown the operation and, you guessed it, they arrested Wright.
Category: Criminal law
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
In 1964, during Barry Goldwater’s race for the White House, a book became a runaway best seller and it was titled “None Dare Call It Treason”. Its’ premise, typical of the thinking of many of that time, was that the United States was being sold out to Communism by its “liberal elites” who were pro-communist and thus wanted the USSR to win the “Cold War”. As the title clearly illustrates the book’s author, John A. Stormer, believed that the “elite” were traitors, liberal of course, who were so powerful that their “treasonous actions” couldn’t be challenged. I remember the popularity of the book at that time and how many who supported Barry Goldwater were believers in the books veracity. Goldwater himself seemed to be echoing Stormer’s theme of rooting out pro Communists in his Convention speech which produced the memorable phrase: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” It is thus a meme that in many different ways has been played and re-played through our Country’s history by those of a more Conservative persuasion. That meme is that the true American patriots are those who are of Right Wing political persuasion. Continue reading “None Dare Call it Treason”
Law Professor John Yoo has avoided criminal prosecution and bar charges for his now discredited defense of the Bush torture program. Even the Bush Administration ultimately rejected his infamous torture memos as poorly reasoned and unreliable. Undeterred, Yoo is back in the press condemning liberals for caring more about torture than diversity in not supporting a woman for the head of the CIA’s clandestine service. The woman was reportedly implicated in the torture program and is one of those officials who effectively got a “get out of jail free” card by President Obama when he pledged that no CIA employees would be prosecuted for torture at the start of his first term. Yoo is denouncing liberals for failing to support a woman simply because of a little thing like torture.
We have yet another horrific tale of the treatment of girls and women in traditional Islamic areas. In Pakistan, Gul Meena was forced by her family at age 12 to marry a 60 year old man. The man proceeded to beat her daily and when she ran to her family, they beat her and told her to go back to her abuser. She was bought and paid for. Instead, she ran away with a young man. However, her brother tracked them down and killed the man with an axe and stuck his sister 15 times. She survived the attempted “honor killing” by her friend.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has decided to continue the fight to preserve the state’s “crimes against nature” law that bans both oral and anal sex in both heterosexual and homosexual relations. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (considered by many to be the country’s most conservative circuit) struck down the law on obvious constitutional grounds. However, Cuccinelli has filed a motion for reconsideration to try to get that decision reversed. The current attorney general and likely GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli wants to keep anti-sodomy laws on the books in Virginia.
Continue reading “Virginia Is For [Some] Lovers: Cuccinelli Continues Fight To Save Crimes Against Nature Law”
The murders of two prosecutors in Kaufman County, Texas has caused heightened security measures to protect court staff and prosecutors. However, few expected those concerns to lead to the withdrawal of a federal prosecutor in Houston. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman has reportedly announced that he will withdraw from a case out of personal safety concerns. If true, it is a rare case for a federal prosecutor to refuse to litigate a case out of fear.
The Justice Department was once all too eager to announce its prosecution of Aaron Swartz and issue press releases on how they piled on additional counts against him. However, after Swartz committed suicide in response to its unrelenting prosecution, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz and the Justice Department now want to keep the names of prosecutors in the case a secret so that they will not be held accountable for the abusive case. The Justice Department routinely holds press conferences in which prosecutors crowd stages to take credit for indictments. However, when a prosecution is denounced globally as excessive and cruel, the Justice Department wants to prevent the public from knowing the identities of the prosecutors responsible.
Continue reading “Justice Department Seeks To Keep Secret The Names Of Prosecutors Of Aaron Swartz”
In Los Angeles, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched a rare investigation into the Doheny Glatt Kosher meat market after a council of rabbis withdrew his Kosher certification. The USDA is looking into allegations that the owner of Doheny, Michael Engelman, served meat that did not meet Jewish dietary standards. The investigation places the federal government in the awkward position of enforcing a religious practice. At issue is whether the meat was not adequately certified by rabbis. However, the tale has more turns than a Mike Hammer movie with a gumshoe, a mysterious rabbi, and boxes of meats carried out of car trunks and warehouses.
A classic confrontation is occurring in Arizona over the freedom of the press. FoxNews.com reporter Jana Winter is standing by fundamental principles of journalism in refusing to disclose who gave her a notebook that a judge had put under a protective order in the case of Colorado shooter James Holmes. Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos Samour is pursuing other avenues for the time being in trying to find out who leaked the notebook, but Winter could still be put on the bench and held in contempt for a failure to disclose her source.
Continue reading “Fox Reporter Faces Potential Jail In Protection Of Her Sources”
A Saudi court is prepared to carry out a sentence to have Ali Al-Khawahir surgically paralyzed in conformity with Sharia law’s “eye for an eye” traditions. Al-Khawahir was only 14 when he stabbed a friend and left him paralyzed. Now, his family has failed to pay the victim “blood money” to be released from jail. After ten years of negotiations over the blood money, Al-Khawahir faces total paralysis under the Kingdom’s medieval legal system.
Continue reading “Saudi Man Faces Paralysis Under Sharia “Eye For An Eye” Sentence”
Satirist Bassem Youssef has sometimes been called Egypt’s Jon Stewart — a refreshing uninhibited commentators in the increasingly restricted Egyptian public discourse. That ended last week as Egypt’s Islamic government added him to the spate of blasphemy arrests in defense of Islam.
Continue reading “Egypt Arrests Popular Satirist For Blasphemy”
An unnamed 20-year-old man succeeded last week in combining trafficking in the infamous ivory trade with the destruction of historical artifacts to become one of the truly vile humans on Earth. The man broke into the Paris National History museum and cut off the tusk of the famous Louis XIV elephant with a chainsaw. An alert neighbor heard the sound of the chainsaw and called police. The man was arrested as he tried to make his escape.
Continue reading “Thief Cuts Off Tusk From Louis XIV’s Elephant With Chainsaw”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
To some of us the transition from slave to citizenship by those Africans brought in chains to these shores for economic exploitation and horrific abuse ended with the “Emancipation Proclamation”. To others its’ end might have been marked by “Brown v. Board of Education”, or by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Those of somewhat more insightful bent may have said that the true emancipation occurred when Barack Obama was elected President in 2008. In my view, as much of an impact as all those milestones (and more such as Jackie Robinson i.e.) made to American consciousness, Black people in the United States clearly still lack the benefits and rewards of citizenship. I would go further and say that in the United States, at this time; most Black people still suffer the degradation and challenges brought about by both institutional and emotional racism. This is not to say that in our country other groups, such as Latino’s and Native Americans are free of oppressive prejudice, but to assert that given their history in this country Black people are slotted into the bottom of the economic and social ladder and are still struggling to obtain even those most minimal of rights that most Americans see as their birthright. Continue reading “The Myth of Black Freedom in the U.S.”
The spiny freshwater turtle population is less than 1000 according to Canadian reports, but they found a windfall of dozens of the turtles recently. The problem is that they were dead and on a Chinese menu. Yet, the Chinese owner will face only a relatively small fine for this violation. In killing and sell these turtles for soup (and contributing to the possible loss of a species) the owner will face less of a penalty than a car theft or bad check.
John Cassidy has a remarkable story out in the New Yorker this week about a sweetheart deal cut by the Justice Department with one of the wealthiest men in the world, Steven A. Cohen (who may be pictured here at a standard picnic, or not). Cohen’s company would pay $626 million but not have to admit any wrongdoing and Cohen would face no personal sanction. The billionaire appears to be celebrating this month with a buying spree with a Picasso painting and a huge new mansion. What is amazing is that various Cohen subordinates have pleaded guilty and Cohen has been tied directly to an insider trading allegation. Yet, he appears to “too big to jail” as a continuation of the Obama Administration’s bifurcated legal system for the super rich and the rest of us.