Remember that whole business in the Third Amendment about not having quarter soldiers in private homes without the owner’s consent or that stuff in the Fifth Amendment about takings of property or that other stuff in the Fourth Amendment on unreasonable searches and seizures. It does not appear to apply to police in Henderson Nevada. The City of Henderson is being sued with its police chief Police Chief Jutta Chambers (left) as well as the City of North Las Vegas and its Police Chief Joseph Chronister (right) for a bizarre takeover of a home for a stakeout. Anthony Mitchell says that he was told that police needed to occupy his home to get a “tactical advantage” on the occupant of a neighboring house. When Mitchell refused, the police ultimately, according to his complaint, busted through his door, hit him with pepper balls, and put him into custody. The lawsuit also names Officers Garret Poiner, Ronald Feola, Ramona Walls, Angela Walker, and Christopher Worley.
Category: Politics
This video of pro-Morsi demonstrators captures the dangerous undercurrent in Egyptian politics. The ease with which these individuals talk of turning to terrorism is unnerving.
Continue reading “From Brotherhood To Bombs: Ominous Signs Grow Of Potential Civil War”
Basic environmental and scientific programs suffer but the State Department felt free to spend more than $630,000 on advertising campaigns to boost the number of Facebook “likes” for the agency’s pages on the website between 2011 and March 2013.
As discussed in the media (Washington Post and Associated Press), the plaintiffs in the World Bank case have filed their final proposed findings before the Special Master, including recommendations that D.C. Attorney General Irving Nathan and top aides be referred to the Bar for investigation. The case (Chang v. United States) has been going on for over ten years and involves the mass arrest of bystanders without probable cause during demonstrations against the World Bank and IMF. The case has been under investigation by Special Master John M. Facciola, United States Magistrate Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, who is looking into the loss or destruction of key evidence in the possession of the District of Columbia as well as false statements and filings made before the Court by District officials. Because I am co-lead counsel in the case with Dan Schwartz of Bryan Cave, I must remain circumspect in what I can say about the case. To relieve the burden on my secretary, I am posting the filing this week which is in the public record.
Prosecutors in the George Zimmerman trial are facing a collapsing case and renewed question over whether Angela Corey succumbed to the political pressure and overcharged the case. The prosecution’s case has thus far been a disaster and many are now questioning whether charges should have been brought at all, let alone charged as second degree murder. For some inexplicable reason, the prosecutors led with Rachel Jeantel, who was one of the least compelling witnesses that they could have called from earlier perjury to ever-changing testimony. Now Angela Corey (right) and her office appear to be turning toward alternative areas of prosecution involving the daughter of one of the defense counsel.
I previously wrote a column how our country seems to have developed separate rules for the ruling elite and the rest of us. There is no better example than the lack of response of the Senate to the admitted perjury of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper before Congress. While the Justice Department has prosecuted people for the smallest departure from the truth, including testimony before Congress, no one in the Senate is calling for an investigation, let alone a prosecution, of Clapper. For his part, Attorney General Eric Holder is continuing his political approach to enforcing the law and declining to even acknowledge the admitted perjury of Clapper. Now, in a truly bizarre moment, Clapper has written a letter of apology like an errant schoolboy to excuse his commission of a felony crime . . . and it appears to have been accepted. What is curious is that we do not have letters from senators like Dianne Feinstein apologizing to doing nothing when they were all aware that Clapper was lying in his public testimony. Welcome to America’s Animal Farm.
We have previously discussed stolen valor cases where police arrest people for pretending to be former decorated veterans and heroes. But what if the man is not only the police but the police chief? When Robert Kerkorian joined the Waukegan, Ill., police department 26 years ago, he said that he was a Navy Seal (a common claim for stolen valor cases). That may have remained his secret until he was promoted to chief and a little checking led to a big embarrassment. Kerkorian was in the Navy for only six months and never even made it to Seal training.
Continue reading “Stolen Valor: Illinois Police Chief Demoted Over False Claim Of Being A Seal”
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has rejected a request from the state bar association to disbar Robert Bradley Miller, former assistant district attorney for Oklahoma County, and given him just a suspension from practicing law for 180 days and court costs for egregious misconduct in two capital cases twenty years ago. We have often discussed the lack of deterrence for prosecutors who are rarely disciplined for conduct leading to reversals or false convictions. In this case, the bar wanted Miller out of its ranks for hiding a key deal with a witness and using falsified subpoenas to coerce cooperation from other witnesses. The novel defense — accepted by the state Supreme Court — was that lots of prosecutors acted abusively back then. The shocking opinion was written by Oklahoma Justice Yvonne Kauger (left).
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
We have all heard the stories about the federal education policy instituted under the George W. Bush administration referred to as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). That program required schools to continually test students in order to gauge which schools are “failing” to produce students who were making sufficient educational progress. The outgrowth of NCLB was the need for teachers to “teach to the test”. Schools across the country stopped teaching important subject areas because they were not deemed important enough to be on the all important test. Now, the latest federal educational program embraced by the Obama Administration, called Common Core standards, builds on the NCLB program and continues to force testing using standards that have not even been tested and are products of corporate sponsors tied to the testing industry! Continue reading “Common Core Standards = No Child Left Behind on Steroids”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
President Obama has admitted that while in school he was a frequent marijuana smoker. George W. Bush also alluded to smoking marijuana and possibly to using cocaine. Bill Clinton claimed to have smoked it but not inhaled it, which is the type of ridiculous statement Clinton is capable of asserting for political gain. Thus the last three Presidents of the United States have admitted that one time or another they have broken the law and used a banned substance. While each of those Presidents presided over the continued witch hunt and prosecution of the “War On Drugs” I believe that Barack Obama has been the most hypocritical.
Had either G.W. Bush, or Bill Clinton been arrested for smoking marijuana there is no doubt in my mind that they would have neither served jail time, nor would they have had their careers stained by a criminal record. Bush, as the scion of a great political family would have had his record expunged, or possibly have had the police back off when they discovered who he was. Bill Clinton was a student at a prestigious University and while not rich, came from a politically connected family in Arkansas. What they also had in common was that they were White men. Barack Obama on the other hand would have likely been arrested, despite his status as a Harvard student and while he probably would have escaped jail time he would have been forced to take a plea which would remain on his record. If such a thing had occurred it is highly probable that Barack Obama would never have been elected Senator, much less President. There is a likelihood that he might never even have been allowed to enter the Bar as an attorney, since that entrance requires extensive background checks. Whatever you might think of him Barack Obama is a very intelligent man. Surely he must realize how fortunate he was to not get caught smoking grass and yet as President he has stepped up the War On Drugs and has allowed egregious prosecutions in States that have passed medical marijuana laws. To my mind this is blatant hypocrisy, but beyond that political position lies a destructiveness that can only rationally be seen as the continuance of the oppression of Americans of color, particularly Blacks, by our Federal Government. I will deal with our President’s hypocrisy and use it as the basis of my condemnation of the War On Drugs. Continue reading “Obama and the War on Drugs: Hypocrisy in Action”
It appears there is a thin chalk line between us and anarchy. Police in various states are cracking down on a criminal epidemic sweeping the nation: sidewalk chalk protesters. We just discussed the case of a California man who was not only arrested but hit with 13 charges for writing protests in chalk in front of a Bank of America. Now in Pennsylvania, a blog is reporting that AJ Martin, a health care protester, has been arrested for disorderly conduct for writing the above statement on the public sidewalk in front of the home of Governor Tom Corbett.
After the historic victory in the Windsor case, gay state Rep. Brian Sims (left), D-Philadelphia, rose to speak about the decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act on the floor of the Pennsylvania House. He did so during a time when members are allowed to discuss any subject of importance. However, he was blocked by Republican Rep. Daryl Metcalfe who objected on the basis that any such comments would constitute a “rebellion against . . . God.”
Australia has called Japan to account for its openly fraudulent claims of scientific research as an exception to the moratorium on whaling. Australia accused Japan in the International Court of Justice in The Hague of commercial whaling in using the claim of research to kill hundreds of whales every year in the Southern Ocean.
Continue reading “Australia Confronts Japan On Whaling In Historic Hague Case”
While the rulings in Fisher and Windsor justifiably garnered the most attention this week, it is important to note an important but little discussed decision to accept a case. 
I have previously testified and written about President Barack Obama’s use of recess appointments, which I viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional. Recently, the D.C. Circuit agreed with that view and found that the Obama Administration had violated the recess appointment powers. Then a second appellate court has joined that view, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. I have two law review articles coming out on these appointments and more broadly the abuse of recess appointment powers in modern presidencies. See Jonathan Turley, Recess Appointments in the Age of Regulation, 93 Boston University Law Review ___ (2013) and Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Adverse Possession: Recess Appointments and the Role of Historical Practice in Constitutional Interpretation, 2103 Wisconsin Law Review ___ (2013). The case accepted for review is Noel Canning v. NLRB, No. 12-1115 (D.C. Cir. 2013).
Continue reading “Supreme Court Set To Review Obama Recess Appointments”
U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee has issued a sweeping victory for the Obama Administration and its contractors in seeking to bar any recourse for people injured or killed in U.S. camps or prisons like Abu Ghraib. Lee dismissed a lawsuit detailing well-supported accounts of abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison — holding that the injured parties could not use U.S. courts to seek judicial review and relief for the abuse. He closed the door to the U.S. judicial system to four Iraqi plaintiffs under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) as well as one plaintiff who was deemed as barred under Iraqi law.