Now is the time for a state to legalize marijuana upfront. Call it the repeal of the second prohibition. Do it.
Tag Archives: justice
Income and wealth inequality in the US
Part of what is holding our economy back from growth is the huge concentration of wealth and income at the top. For a vibrant economy, the middle class has to share in income and wealth growth in order to create the demand for goods and services that in turn fuel additional investments and job growth.
But here is what has happened over the past thirty years:
The share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which stood at 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007, but during the same period, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage declined by more than 7 percent.
The tax rates for the richest Americans (say, those earning over $250,000 as the President suggests) should be allowed to return the rates in effect prior to the Bush tax cuts. This would (very slightly) reduce income inequality, help reduce the deficit and would be a more than fair charge for the huge returns already bestowed on this demographic.
Related articles
- A Timeline of Income Inequality in America
- Income Inequality Makes The Poor More Conservative: Study (huffingtonpost.com)
- Ray Brescia: Reducing Income Inequality: The Next Phase of True Financial Reform (huffingtonpost.com)
- Income Inequaity, Ctd (themoderatevoice.com)
- The source of income inequality and a cure? (professorbainbridge.com)
Federal judge orders end to DADT (updated)
Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court for the Central District of California issued an injunction banning enforcement of the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” law and ordered the military to immediately “suspend and discontinue” any investigations or proceedings to dismiss gay service members.
Obama had promised to end this counterproductive policy. So far, two years in there has been no action from him. Once again the Federal judiciary does its job.
Update: Also yesterday, the Obama administration appealed a judicial ruling overturning the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional. That ruling would mean that same-sex spouses would be entitled to the same federal benefits as heterosexual spouses.
Related articles
- Federal Judge Orders Military To Stop Enforcing DADT (crooksandliars.com)
- Judge Orders Suspension of DADT (reason.com)
- Federal Judge Blocks Military From Enforcing DADT (tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com)
Unbelievable bigotry (updated)
This guy, Andrew Shirvell, is a Michigan Assistant General. He hasn’t been fired, but has taken a “leave of absence.”
His vicious blog has been placed beyond a log in, but you can view how vile it is by checking out the Google cache here.
Related articles
- Michigan Assistant AG Andrew Shirvell Goes On LeaveAnd: Should AG Mike Cox Fire Shirvell? (abovethelaw.com)
- Mike Cox Slams Andrew Shirvell For Blog – Chris Armstrong Watch (nowpublic.com)
- Mich Ass’t Attorney General cyberbullies gay student body president (boingboing.net)
- Andrew Shirvell (buzzfeed.com)
Update: More from today’s New York Times.
Mr. Shirvell, will face a disciplinary hearing when he returns to work, a spokesman for the attorney general said Friday. Mr. Armstrong, 21, has filed for a personal protection order against Mr. Shirvell.
University officials and students have come together to support Mr. Armstrong. The university has banned Mr. Shirvell from campus, and its president, Mary Sue Coleman, called his behavior reprehensible. “As a community, we must not and will not accept displays of intolerance,” Ms. Coleman said in a statement.
And here is Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox defending Shirvell.
Why has it taken so long?
So now even large mortgage lenders are being forced to acknowledge that the documentation and procedure that is being (and has been used) to foreclose on millions of American families may well be seriously flawed.
As more defaulting homeowners become aware of the lenders’ problems, they are expected to hire lawyers and challenge the proceedings against them. And if completed foreclosures were not properly done, families who bought the troubled homes could be vulnerable to claims by the former owners.
Apparently alarmed about such a possibility, one of the major title insurance companies, Old Republic National Title, has sent a bulletin to agents saying that “until further notice” it would not insure title to properties foreclosed upon by GMAC Mortgage, the country’s fourth-largest home lender and one of the two big lenders at the center of the current controversy.
GMAC declined to comment, and Old Republic representatives did not return calls.
GMAC has acknowledged legal missteps in processing mortgages, and JPMorgan Chase has acknowledged the possibility of missteps, and both have suspended all foreclosures in the 23 states where they need a court’s approval. That’s 56,000 in the case of Chase alone; GMAC declined to provide a number.
Attorneys general in half a dozen states are demanding action or opening investigations. The Treasury Department said Thursday it was asking regulators to look into “these troubling developments.”
While even a belated acknowledgement of the problem is better than none, some judges and housing advocates have been publicly pointing this out for two years or more. Where was the justice in the justice system? Why did the Federal government find the wherewithal to transfer huge amounts to lenders, and then the lenders turned around cut corners in foreclosure of innocent homeowners.
Related articles
- You: JPMorgan Suspends Foreclosures Amid Document Review (nytimes.com)
- GMAC Mortgage Halts Some Evictions and Foreclosed Home Sales (abcnews.go.com)
- Banks Foreclose First, Ask Questions Later (businessweek.com)
- GMAC’s ‘Robo-Signers’ Draw Concerns About Faulty Process, Mistaken Foreclosures (propublica.org)
Update: And now Bank of America has stopped all foreclosures to look for possible errors.
Republican bigots
In the Senate.
The true face priest child abuse
The abuse was bad enough, but when victims came forward they often were abused again. ( Via John Perry Barlow)
Outrage of the day
Read this. (Via John C. Dvorak)
Political quote of the day 2
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
You’ve got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]. And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action.
– former CIA director Michael Hayden, fairly chuckling with glee as the torture coverup continues under Obama. (via Andrew Sullivan)
Political quote of the day
It can fairly be said that the Bush administration made torture the law of the land and the Obama administration is making impunity for torture the law of the land.
– Ben Wizner of the ACLU. He represented the plaintiffs in the recently-decided Ninth Circuit case upholding the state secrets privilege to block claims of torture.
DADT ruled unconstitutional
US District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips has ruled that the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy violates the fundamental rights of service members and also undermines military readiness. The Federal judiciary is recognizing more frequently that discrimination against gays is simply that, and that such discrimination has no rational basis.
The case was brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group.
Meanwhile, in the latest developments in the Federal case regarding gay marriage in California:
California’s highest court on Wednesday refused to order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state’s attorney general to appeal a federal ruling that overturned the state’s gay marriage ban.
The state Supreme Court denied a conservative legal group’s request to force the state officials to defend the voter-approved ban.
Related articles
- Federal Judge: DADT Unconstitutional, Will Issue Injunction Against Enforcement (seminal.firedoglake.com)
- Federal Judge Declares DADT Unconstitutional (slog.thestranger.com)
- Federal judge says “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is unconstitutional (salon.com)
- Judge Rules “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Policy Unconstitutional (blogs.abcnews.com)
Ninth Circuit upholds “state secrets” privilege
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Marc Ambinder, politics editor of of The Atlantic, highlights the disturbing actions of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in precluding a recovery for victims of torture under the Bush Administration. Of course, it is the Obama Administration that asserted so-called “state secrets” to block a judgment. Ambinder outlines the huge and growing number of individuals with power to classify actions as “secret” so as to block future judicial inquiry into the validity of the actions.
Today, the Ninth Circuit court of appeals essentially conceded that law and precedent do not give, and should not give, the judiciary branch an equal claim to determine whether the government correctly classified information. They did so in an en banc ruling in the case of five men, including Binyan Mohammed, who alleged that Jeppesen Dataplan, a flight logistics company, helped the CIA render them to other countries where they were tortured. The U.S. government had asserted the State Secrets Privilege. The plaintiffs insisted the government asserted the privilege to cover up its complicity in torture. The court today held that, in essence, it does not matter if the information in the case was used to cover up torture, so long as the privilege was properly asserted.
So what does the court have to say about who gets to make that judgment? By way of background, judges have routinely, in recent years, been asking to at least see the classified information that the government insists is so sensitive that even the protections afforded to classified information in other trials are not sufficient. It says very little. The majority cites previous decisions that are, essentially, fist shakers: the government must not use the privilege capriciously; courts must regularly review the underlying information; the executive branch is not the “sole” determinant of whether information is properly classified. But at the same time, the court acknowledges, or, rather, asserts, based on precedent, that only the executive branch is capable of making that determination. So the effect is that the government will almost always have a trump card.
You should also read Jane Mayer’s piece in The New Yorker about the case and the crimes covered up.
Much has been written about the denial of due process for the five plaintiffs who claim to have been victims of the extraordinary-rendition program. But equally disturbing is the message that this verdict sends to individual American citizens, like the former Jeppesen employee, who felt a call to conscience that made him speak out, even at the risk to his own future employment, because he believed that secret kidnapping and torture were crimes in a country founded on the idea that all people, not just Americans, have inalienable rights, including protection from cruel and inhumane punishment. That his allegations could receive a public hearing in the press, but not a legitimate hearing in the American system of justice—even under an Administration headed by a former professor of constitutional law—is a daunting reflection of the clout wielded by the national-security bureaucracy in Washington, in the age of the Long War.
And today’s New York Times editorial: Torture is a Crime, Not a Secret.
All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known.
Related articles
- “Ninth Circuit Dismisses Suit Against Boeing Subsidiary for Allegedly Arranging CIA Flights in “Extraordinary Renditions”" and related posts (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
- Citing Obama’s ‘State Secrets’ Privilege, Court Tosses Torture Case (wired.com)
- Ninth Circuit Rules 6-5 to Toss Rendition Case Against Boeing (blogs.wsj.com)
- Court dismisses suit alleging ‘torture flights’ (sfgate.com)
- U.S. court bars suits over alleged torture in CIA prisons (theglobeandmail.com)
- Court Denies Justice For Torture Victims (criminaljustice.change.org)
ACLU challenges border seizures
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The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging the seizure of electronic devices (cellphones, computers, cameras, etc.) from persons entering the United States. Such seizures occur even from individuals who are not suspected of any wrongdoing whatsoever.
The government has claimed the authority to undertake these suspicionless searches and seizures of electronic devices under a policy issued in August 2009 by the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. This policy is a rewording of the same policy that came into effect during the Bush administration. Between October 1, 2008, and June 2, 2010, over 6,500 people were subjected to this policy — nearly 3,000 of them U.S. citizens.
We are not saying that the government can never search or seize electronic devices at the border, but only that border agents should have some suspicion that the search will turn up evidence of wrongdoing before looking through all the private information that people have stored in their devices. Americans travel internationally more than in the past, and usually with private information and intimate details of our lives condensed in small, electronic devices. We hope that the court will recognize that Americans don’t give up their right to privacy at the border, and strike down the DHS’s policy as unconstitutional.
This has to stop. If you travel for work purposes and want to be sure that confidential business information stays that way, be sure to securely wipe your devices before returning to the US.
Related articles
- Homeland Security Sued Over Search Policies (online.wsj.com)
- ACLU, Other Groups Sue US Gov’t Over Border Laptop Searches (nytimes.com)
- ACLU Sues Over Warrantless Laptop Border Searches (wired.com)
- ACLU Sues To Block Searches Of Electronic Devices (techdailydose.nationaljournal.com)
- Privacy watchdogs challenge laptop seizures at US borders (go.theregister.com)
Political quote of the day
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The First Amendment is not, so far as I know, a “privilege” earned by some Americans and not earned by others. It is a right. And it applies as powerfully to Muslims as to Catholics and Mormons and Jews and evangelicals alike.
There have been fewer more distressing experiences these past couple of months than witnessing the casual conflation of al Qaeda with American Muslims. It is obviously counter-productive in winning the war; but it is also a statement that even the most moderate of American Muslims are guilty until proven innocent. I’m sorry but I find that deeply unfair to a community that has, unlike some in Europe, integrated and succeeded in this country and deserves respect and inclusion, not suspicion and fear.
– Andrew Sullivan, on his blog today.
Related articles
- You: American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong? (nytimes.com)
The impact of islamaphobia
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The disparaging and viscious claims about Islam are taking their toll. The free exercise of religion in this country is under real threat. Demagogues are actually inciting violence. And now actual violence is happening:
After a suspected arson and reports of gunshots at an Islamic center in Tennessee over the weekend, nearby mosques have hired security guards, installed surveillance cameras and requested the presence of federal agents at prayer services.
Muslim leaders in central Tennessee say that frightened worshipers are observing Ramadan in private and that some Muslim parents are wary of sending their children to school after a large fire on Saturday that destroyed property at the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Federal authorities suspect that the fire was arson.
Where are the statements from those on the right supporting free religious exercise and condemning hateful and violent actions against muslims in this country?
Related articles
- Fire at Tennessee Mosque Site Ruled Arson (littlegreenfootballs.com)
- Tennessee Mosque Site Fire Was Arson, Police Say (huffingtonpost.com)
- Shots fired near Murfreesboro mosque site (knoxnews.com)
- Fire at site of future Tenn. mosque troubles city (sfgate.com)
