For those who believe that Attorney General Eric Holder is in any way repentant for the crackdown on journalists and whistleblowers, think again. If you recall, while Obama sacked the head of the IRS for its scandal, he only sent Holder to a confab with the media. After Holder insisted on the meeting being off the record, principled media organizations refused to attend. Holder proceeded to propose meaningless changes that actually would allow the very same investigation of reporters. Now, Holder has given a speech and his people made sure to leak it to the media. Holder told top lawyers in the Administration to continue their scorched earth campaign against leakers. This Administration has surpassed even Nixon in its pursuit of people who speak to the media and Holder wanted people to know that it will continue unabated.
Category: Criminal law
There is an interesting tort case out of Miami where a New Jersey woman, Anna Burgese, is suing W Hotel (owned by Starwood) after a beat down by prostitutes outside of the hotel. Burgese says that the hotel is widely known as catering to a large prostitution business and failed to protect guests. Police believe that the prostitutes assumed that Burgese was a “working girl” intruding on their territory.
Continue reading “New Jersey Woman Sues W Hotel After Beat Down By Prostitutes In Miami”
In a blow to civil liberties, the Supreme Court yesterday voted 5-4 to allow police to collect DNA from suspects arrested in serious crime cases. The decision by Justice Anthony Kennedy opens the door for the collection and retention of a massive DNA databank by the states and federal government. The decision produced a strange lineup with Justice Antonin Scalia writing a dissent (with Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan) and normally liberal Justice Stephen Breyer joining Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts. It is a disastrous case for Breyer to lose his bearings. His switch denied the creation of a bright line rule protecting privacy and forestalling such a databank.
There are some obvious answers about the cause of the epidemic of rapes in India. There is the religious and culture treatment of woman in traditional areas. There is hostility of police to rape victims. However, the municipal council in Mumbai sees the cause elsewhere . . . lingerie mannequins. The council voted overwhelmingly to ban the ceramic vixens to prevent rape in the city.
Continue reading “India Leaders Face Rape Crisis . . . By Banning Lingerie Mannequins”
The crackdown on free speech continued this week under President Mohammed Morsi (left) with a conviction of Ahmed Douma for insulting the leader. It is only one of a variety of cases against Egyptian journalists, bloggers, and others charged criminally for their criticism of Morsi and the imposition of authoritarian measures and Islamic laws in the country.
Continue reading “Egyptian Activist Convicted Of Insulting President Mohammed Morsi”
We have yet another story of a rape victim subjected to a demand for an honor killing in a traditional Muslim area. Kainat Soomro was gang-raped by four men at the age of 13. According to their religious and cultural traditions, her village classed her as a “Kari” or “black virgin” and ordered her killed. The family was attacked by the four men and other villagers and one of the sons was murdered after they refused to carry out the “honor” killing.
The Obama Administration has once again reaffirmed the new relativism controlling Washington in the nomination of James Comey as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, even as it struggles to put out the controversy over its attack on free press principles. Comey was a critical player in the abuse warrantless surveillance program of the Bush Administration and will now be put in charge of the people carrying out such surveillance. The Administration has been spinning the nomination by pointing out that it was Comey who opposed efforts of the Bush White House in a famous confrontation by the hospital bed of the Attorney General John Ashcroft. However, while that was admirable, Comey did what all officials in his position are duty bound to do (though few in the Bush Administration fulfilled that obligation). Comey however also was critical in other abuses of warrantless surveillance as well as the abusive treatment of Jose Padilla and Plamegate. He is no hero for civil libertarians by any measure.
Continue reading “The One-Eyed Man In the Land Of The Blind: James Comey Set To Be Next FBI Director Despite Past Civil Liberties Controversies”
The Obama Administration is currently struggling to deal with disclosure of its attack on the free press under Attorney General Eric Holder. Now, it’s U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Bill Killian, suggesting an equally disturbing attack on free speech. Killian told a meeting with local Muslim citizens that he wants to “educate” people about how civil rights laws can be used against anti-Muslim speech. He made these comments along side of the FBI special agent in charge of the Knoxville office.
As previously discussed California’s infamous Knoller case involving a vicious dog attack and the sentencing of two lawyers for the death of a young woman coming home from a jog. Now, the owner of four pit bulls has been charged with the murder of a jogger with the use of DNA testing of the blood found on their snouts. Alex Johnson, 29, will stand trial in the death of Pamela Dewitt, 63, who was bitted 150 to 200 times by his pit bulls.
Continue reading “California Man Charged With Murder In Pit Bull Attack”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
Over the years we have heard the stories about Supreme Court justices coming under fire for attending political rallies and symposiums and for taking gifts from political organizations. Abe Fortas and his subsequent resignation from the Supreme Court is one instance that comes to mind. More recently, of course, Justice Clarence Thomas’ exploits come to mind. “Justice Clarence Thomas is an ethics problem in a black robe. Just eight months after ThinkProgress broke the story of Thomas’ attendance at a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser, we learn that Thomas doesn’t just do unethical favors for wealthy right-wing donors — they also do expensive favors for him.
Leading conservative donor Harlan Crow, whose company often litigates in federal court, provided $500,000 to allow Thomas’s wife to start a Tea Party group and he once gave Thomas a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which frequently files briefs in Thomas’ Court, also gave Thomas a $15,000 gift.” Think Progress
What we may have missed in those earlier discussions is how important the lower courts and appeals court judges are in enforcing corporate or political legislation and policies. What would you say if corporations and partisan foundations or think tanks and oil companies were deeply involved in making sure the judges know who their real “friends” are? Continue reading “It’s All About the Judges”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
The idea for this guest blog came from Anonymously Yours, who has been around at Jonathan Turley’s Blog, for at least as long as I have. We have had an E Mail relationship, offline for many years. He sent me the link that I’ll be basically using and I think his judgment was on the money. The topic is George Washington’s Farewell Address, how prescient our First President was and how much good advice he gave that we should heed today, after the passage of 218 years.
Like every other American child what I learned about George Washington came from school and little else. When I started learning about him and the revolutionary war, it was common when speaking about him to call him “The Father of Our Country”. As the years passed this description has seemingly fallen out of consciousness and we usually only see him referenced wearing a white wig and a tri-corn hat on President’s Day selling cars. Certainly too, as my education progressed through High School and College, the view of Washington as one of our Founding Father’s was diminished as compared to his more glamorous and brilliant cohort among the Founding Fathers, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison. It is easy to see why this change came about. When you think of Washington, most would see the famous portrait I’ve used as a picture above. The portrait shows a prim-mouthed, rather dour man with a wig. History has given us certain personal details like his famous wooden false teeth. History has also supplied a childish, hagiographic mythology that he never told a lie and threw a coin across the Potomac. There is even some debate about his competence as a General. Indeed, the traitor Benedict Arnold is considered by many to be the best military mind on our side during the Revolution.
So when AY sent me his E Mail, I was at first skeptical about the project until I read the link. While in some sense I knew about his Farewell Address in the back of my mind, rereading it and the commentary on it caused me to rethink George Washington. As I see now he was a great man, in a true sense and he at least gave this country a good start. He also made a contribution regarding how he felt this country should comport itself that is relevant today, although certainly not heeded. Let’s explore Washington’s message and see what wisdom we can draw from it today, or should have drawn in the ensuing 218 years since it was written. Continue reading “The Father of Our Country”
We just discussed a story of a kindergartner who was disciplined for a LEGO gun that he brought to school that was smaller than a quarter. Now we have another kindergartner who was suspended for the rest of the year (10 days) for bringing an orange-tipped toy gun to school. Rather than simply discuss the matter with his parents, school officials proceeded to interrogate him for hours without calling his parents– a growing problem that we discussed in another story today. The toy was in the boy’s backpack and he was pulled into an interrogation with police. I cannot imagine what officers did for two hours in questioning a 5 year old child but it is clear that Calvert County officials have zero crime and even less judgment. During his detention with the officials and police, the boy wet his pants.
In the last couple weeks, it has been astonishing to watch Democrats once again abandoning a core principle — in this case the protection of the free press — to excuse another abuse of the Obama Administration. The new talking point for defenders of the Obama Administration is that it is really not that bad to seize the records of journalists or label a journalist a potential criminal co-conspirator so long as they are not actually prosecuted. None however are quite so adamant as Georgetown Professor and MSNBC Political Analyst Michael Eric Dyson who called Eric Holder our “law giver” and “the Moses of our time.” In this case, of course, Moses came down from the mountain and endorsed the killing of any citizen deemed a national security threat, allowed warrantless surveillance, blocked public interest challenges to abuses of power, and attacked the free press. While some of us believe Holder should be fired, Dyson apparently believes Holder should be be beatified.
There is a troubling case out of Harris County, Texas where a court has issued an order barring 16 individuals from a Houston neighborhood on the ground that prosecutors alleged that they are gang members up to no good. However, this was a civil proceeding where the 16 individuals were neither given representation nor were present. The precedent established by such a public nuisance ruling is chilling if prosecutors can bar citizens from neighborhoods based on associations or future conduct.
I have previously written about my concern with the criminalization of conduct in America, particularly at our schools. A case in Columbia, Missouri again raises this issue with a 17-year-old Hickman High School junior facing possible felony charges for a prank. The student changed the last name of Raigan Mastain to “Masturbate” and more than 700 yearbooks went to press with the change. Now a prosecutor is considering a charge of first-degree property damage and harassment — a felony prosecution for an immature prank.
Continue reading “High School Student Facing Potential Felony Charge For Yearbook Prank”