Carmen Ortiz, the US Attorney in Massachusetts, appears to be feeling some of the heat of the global anger over her prosecution of Aaron Swartz — an unrelenting prosecution that many (including the family) blame for his suicide. Ortiz is attempting to portray this abusive and unnecessary prosecution as prosecutors merely enforcing the law in compliance with their oath. They were, according to Ortiz, something akin to a legal version of Inspector Javert — committed to the enforcement of the federal law without discretion or judgment. Ortiz, who had remained silent, appears to have accepted that the case is presenting a serious problem for her and begins with a statement of sympathy that was entirely absent in the treatment of Swartz by her office and Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann who has been linked to another suicide of a defendant.
Category: Society
I have previously written about the trend in our schools to use arrests as substitutes for school discipline for students. A new report highlights this trend and leaves a particularly shocking account of the situation in the Mississippi school system which remains 50th on teacher salaries but leads the nation in putting its students in jail.
Continue reading “Mississippi’s Policy of Matriculation Through Incarceration”
Notre Dame’s athletic director Jack Swarbrick has given a tearful account of how he has determined that his football star Manti Te’o was a victim of being “catfishes” in mourning the death of a girlfriend who never in fact existed. I must confess an insurmountable level of skepticism regarding Te’o’s account, but I am more concerned not with his veracity (which seem entirely gone) but with the ethics of Notre Dame. Even without considering the Catholic values of the university, the response of the University to this matter is predictable and depressing given the known facts. We have previously discussed how football programs warp the academic mission and ethics of universities. This appears to be a towering example of the corrosive effect of such programs. Notre Dame admitted that it was made aware of the hoax but said nothing as reporters gushed over the bravery of Te’o in facing the death of the “love of his life.” Yet, the university insists that it had no obligation to tell the truth during the season while Te’o was being considered for the Heisman Trophy. Moreover, it concluded that Te’o had no ethical obligation to come forward immediately with the truth — even if we accept that he did not know that the “love of his life” did not exist.
We previously discussed the tort action filed by John Coomer against the Kansas City Royals and its mascot Sluggerrr after he was hit in the eye by a hot dog thrown into the crowd. Coomer suffered a detached retina and other injures. A jury ruled against him in favor of their popular mascot in a verdict that I previously questioned since it seems to be clearly negligent to fire these projectiles into the crowd. It appears that the Missouri appellate court agrees and reversed the verdict. The case is Coomer v. Kansas City Royals, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 46.
There is an interesting case out of San Antonio where a car owner shot and killed one alleged car thief and wounded another outside of a home of a friend. What is interesting is that response of the police that, since he was defending property, he was in the right.
Continue reading “Texas Man Cleared Of Wrongdoing In Killing One Car Thief And Wounding Another”
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.
Continue reading “Federal Court Set To Hear Final Arguments In Sister Wives Case”
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.
Continue reading “Prosecutor of Aaron Swartz Linked To Another Suicide Of Defendant”
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.
This headline captured my interest from my home town: “17 human heads found at O’Hare; no foul play suspected.” It appears that the Customs and Border Protection staff made the gruesome discovery which may not be “play” but certainly are “foul.”
Continue reading “Head Room: 17 Severed Heads Found At O’Hare Airport”
John 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.
The 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.
Continue reading “Aaron Swartz And The Obama Administration’s War On Public Access To Information”
In 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.
While 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.
Continue reading “Beijing’s Pollution Literally Goes Off The Chart”
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 . . .
Continue reading “Propaganda 102 Supplemental: Holly Would “Zero Dark Thirty””
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Those 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?”