Category: Society

Federal Court Set To Hear Final Arguments In Sister Wives Case

On Thursday, the federal court in Salt Lake City is set to hear final arguments in the Sister Wives case. The hearing on the motions for summary judgment will be heard on Thursday, January 17th at the federal courthouse in Room 102 before Judge Clark Waddoups. The Brown family has challenged Utah Code Ann. § 76-7-101 (West 2010) under seven constitutional claims, including due process, equal protection, free speech, free association, free exercise, the establishment of religion, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. As lead counsel, I am limited in what I can say about the case publicly beyond the statement below.

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Prosecutor of Aaron Swartz Linked To Another Suicide Of Defendant

600px-US-DeptOfJustice-Seal.svg DOJ220px-Aaron_Swartz_at_Boston_Wikipedia_Meetup,_2009-08-18_We previously discussed how the Justice Department hounded Aaron Swartz in a prosecution that sought 35 years in prison for his effort to make academic papers available to the public — even though MIT did not ask for such charges and later released the papers free of charge to the public. United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and the Obama Administration were long criticized for the prosecution but remained committed to destroying Swartz — a move that clearly delighted copyright hawks that have tremendous influence over the Administration as discussed earlier. Given the high-profile nature of the case and the months of criticism, it is clear that Main Justice in Washington had to be monitoring the case. Now it appears that Swartz’s line prosecutor, Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann was connected to a prior suicide of a defendant in a similar case. In 2008, Jonathan James killed himself while being pursued by Heymann in a criminal hacker case. Heymann then moved on to Swartz who also killed himself — complaining of the abusive treatment by the Justice Department. It is worth noting that the Justice Department could not come up with a single charge for anyone associated with the torture program, including the attorneys who facilitated the program. However, it wanted 35 years for a man accused of illegally gaining access to a university site and downloading academic papers to make available to the public for free. Those documents later released for free to the public but the Obama Administration still felt jail time was essential in the interests of justice.

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Stay Strong or Stay Silent? Armstrong Reportedly Admits Doping While Pursued In Various Lawsuits For Past Deception On Doping

256px-Oprah_Winfrey_(2004)220px-Lance_Armstrong_Tour_2010_team_presentation_(cropped)Lance Armstrong has reportedly gone to Oprah to come clean on his use of doping to win his seven Tour de France titles — sort of. Oprah says that he admitted to the use of the drugs but not quite as fully as she wanted. The admission is clearly calculated to allow Armstrong to compete in triathlons. However, there are an array of lawsuits facing Armstrong that raise some interesting questions.

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What Is An Assange? Part II

turley_jonathan220px-John_Cusack_Comic-Con_2011John Cusack and I had a dialogue last year about civil liberties and other issues. John previously ran a second interview (actually half of a second interview) on Huffington Post. Huffington has now published the second half of this last interview. With the death of Aaron Swartz this month, the Assange case takes on even greater significance for many. Below is the full interview if you want to read it without edits for space.

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Aaron Swartz And The Obama Administration’s War On Public Access To Information

220px-Aaron_Swartz_at_Boston_Wikipedia_Meetup,_2009-08-18_PresObamaThe suicide of famed programmer and free access advocate Aaron Swartz shocked the world. However, the underlying story of the how the Obama Administration prosecuted — and, in the eyes of many, persecuted — Swartz for seeking to publish academic papers which were later released by MIT without charge. Nevertheless, United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and the Obama Administration relentlessly pursued Swartz and sought an absurd 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines before he took his own life. His family blames the Justice Department and Ortiz for his suicide. Swartz opposed the Administration’s fight against public access and particularly President Obama’s “Kill List.” The Swartz prosecution was widely criticized for months but the Obama Administration and Justice Department remained committed to putting him in jail.

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The Fault, Dear Brutus, Is In Our Stars: Depardieu and Chan Strike Out Against Human Rights Activists In China and Russia

220px-Jackie_Chan_by_Gage_Skidmore150px-Gérard_Depardieu_Cannes_2010-1In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Cassius tells Brutus,
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. But in ourselves.” When dealing with dictators and tyrants, that may often be the case but recently the fault in part seems to be our “stars.” In Russia, French actor Gerard Depardieu accepted Russian citizenship directly from the hands of Vladimir Putin after leaving France over its high taxes. Depardieu not only embraced the man who has destroyed the democratic movement in Russia but actually criticized Putin’s opposition which has risked jail and beatings to fight for free speech and other basic rights. In the meantime, actor Jackie Chan has again held forth in defense of China’s authoritarian government — telling Chinese that they need to stop criticizing the government in front of foreigners and that the U.S. is more corrupt than China.

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Beijing’s Pollution Literally Goes Off The Chart

220px-Beijing_smog_comparison_August_2005While I have enjoyed my trips to China, I always hesitate to accept invitations due to the incredible pollution levels, particularly in Beijing. Every visit, I assume that it cannot get worse but it does — often you cannot see across a street due to the pollution. Many foreigners in Beijing often use the U.S. embassy’s pollution index to determine whether to go outside because of the Chinese government’s consistent underreporting of pollution data. It is common for people to remain inside all day because the pollution levels are so dangerous. Last week, even the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said on its website that the density of PM2.5 particulates had surpassed 700 micrograms per cubic meter in many parts of the city. The World Health Organization considers a safe daily level to be 25 micrograms per cubic meter. The level of pollution in the city is now beyond the measurements of standard pollution devices.

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Propaganda 102 Supplemental: Holly Would “Zero Dark Thirty”

(c) 2012, Columbia Pictures, image used w/o permission.
(c) 2012, Columbia Pictures, image used w/o permission.

by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

Upon the suggestion of long time and valued blog contributor James in LA, this column on “Zero Dark Thirty” and the controversy surrounding that film is offered as a supplement to the earlier entry in the series on propaganda,”Propaganda 102: Holly Would and the Power of Images“. It is in part movie review and in part a critical examination of the film’s content as related to the controversy around whether or not this film is pro-torture propaganda. Thank you for the excellent suggestion, James!

Is “Zero Dark Thirty” (ZDT) a good film? Is ZDT propaganda? If so, is it pro-torture propaganda (i.e. does it support or promote the idea of torture as a valid and/or necessary intelligence gathering methodology)?  Let us examine these questions . . .

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President Obama Disappoints, Why the Surprise?

Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger

495px-Constitution_of_the_United_States,_page_1Those who’ve read my comments here through the last two Presidential elections, know that I supported and voted for Barack Obama twice. Yet President Obama has been a disappointment to me throughout his Administration. His continuing support of what I consider extra-Constitutional intelligence gathering is a terrible thing. That Guantanamo Bay is still functioning is a continuing human rights violation. The continued American troop presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan is as disgraceful as the reasons that caused us to be there in the first place. Bradley Manning is an American hero that this country is illegally torturing with this President’s approval. The entire issue of the rising deficit and of a mythical “Fiscal Cliff” is one the President gives credit to, thus making it seem real to the public, while those decrying it merely are using it as a means of destroying America’s already frayed “social safety net”. The escape from criminal prosecution of the Bush Administration for War Crimes time has passed. The financial titans who collapsed our economy with their fraudulent manipulations will not be brought to justice, only become wealthier. The continuance of prosecuting the “War on Drugs” after we’ve seen marvelous public initiatives legalizing marijuana at State Levels, is a cruel hoax that destroys the lives of people in the name of protecting the citizenry. Need I go on to make the point of how disappointing this Administration has been? It would take tens of thousands of more words to do so, but then in this erudite group of those readers of this blog, it would be unnecessary, because so many here could do it on their own and perhaps better than I can.

Where I get confused at times here is in the continuing surprise that is expressed with each new violation of our rights, with each new foreign incursion and with the continued militarization of this country as it “goosesteps” towards the creation of an Empire. I get confused because I fail to understand why people who know better, would think that someone else as President could prevent all of these atrocious occurrences. This confusion is re-enforced by the fact that this blog has continually presented evidence that this country is no longer, if indeed it has been, under the aegis of our beloved Constitution. Leading the evidence presented here was Jonathan Turley’s blog post ”10 Reasons The U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free”. http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/15/10-reasons-the-u-s-is-no-longer-the-land-of-the-free/  As our esteemed proprietor followed up this post was selected as one of the top ten articles in the Washington Post’s Outlook Section for 2012. At the end of this piece I will give links to my own guest blogs which have also reinforced the idea that we are no longer the country of freedom that our establishment claims we represent. Thus comes my somewhat confused question as to why would we the denizens of this blog think that barring action by the people, that our President, or any other governmental officials could single-highhandedly return us to the ideals of our constitution. Continue reading “President Obama Disappoints, Why the Surprise?”

Eleventh Circuit Bars Death Row Appeal Of Indigent For Lawyer’s Failure To File $154 Fee Or A Motion Of Indigent Status

200px-HK_Central_Statue_Square_Legislative_Council_Building_n_Themis_sShortly after Christmas, the Eleventh Circuit barred an appeal from Ronald B. Smith, a death row inmate in Alabama, due to his failure to “properly file” a document by the court deadline. The filing was actually timely but his lawyer failed to include a $154 filing fee or, in the alternative, file a motion that his client was indigent. He was indigent but that did not stop the Eleventh Circuit from barring the death row appeal. The Supreme Court has twice rebuked the Eleventh Circuit for its draconian treatment of such minor rules in capital cases but the judges on that court continue to dispense with notions of equity and proportionality (and justice) in barring such appeals. It turns out that his lawyer was under probation at the time and later committed suicide.

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Deceptive Advertising Or Divine Puffery? ChristianMingle.Com Makes Killing On Faith-Based Dating

Christian Mingle screengrabI was interviewed this week for an article today on ChristianMingle.com. I previously published a blog article on the precarious line between false advertising and faith-based pitches at the company. My favorite fact from Paul Farhi’s article below is that ChristianMingle is an outgrowth of a Jewish dating site that has now branched out into other faiths and made a killing by bringing the goyim together.

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Obama Administration Secures 10 Year Sentence Against Medical Marijuana Grower

PresObamamarijuana_leafFor those insisting that President Obama is likely to turn over a new leaf in his Administration’s crackdown on medical marijuana, you might want to tell Aaron Sandusky who was just given 10 years in prison for operating three medical marijuana growing enterprises in California. Continue reading “Obama Administration Secures 10 Year Sentence Against Medical Marijuana Grower”

Michigan Justice Diane Hathaway Resigns After Agency Accused Her Of “Blatant and Brazen Violations”

HathawayMichigan Supreme Court Justice (and former prosecutor) Diane Hathaway has resigned from the state’s highest court after a judicial agency accused her of “blatant and brazen violations” of judicial ethics that include allegations of bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering and lying to investigators. The alleged facts are quite shocking and lead to the question of why Hathaway has not been charged criminally. In 2008, Hathaway launched a successful Democratic campaign to unseat conservative Chief Justice of the Court, Cliff Taylor. Her heavily negative campaign accused Taylor of failing asleep on the bench and declared “If you see justice in the name, he really belongs in the hall of shame.”

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Terror Tots III: Maryland Officials Reverse Suspension Of Six-Year-Old For Making Gesture Of Finger Gun And Saying “Pow”

220px-gesture_thumb_up_then_down_forefinger_out_like_gun1We have a development in the latest case of a student being suspended for using a finger gun.  Previously, Montgomery County suspended a six-year-old boy for making a finger gun with his hand and saying “Pow.” Now school officials have rescinded the suspension of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy who they said pointed his finger like a gun and said, “Pow.”  However, once again, there is no action to be taken against school officials for ordering such an absurd punishment in a mindless “zero tolerance” policy. Continue reading “Terror Tots III: Maryland Officials Reverse Suspension Of Six-Year-Old For Making Gesture Of Finger Gun And Saying “Pow””