Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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This is of course a proper decision and the right thing to do, but it seems to me it's not accurate to call something a constitutional right if you lose it when Republicans are in power and cross your fingers hoping to get it back if Democrats take charge. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that immigrants' right to legal counsel is a temporary privilege available only while Democrats are in power?
The Justice Department has asked that two former state lawmakers in Alaska be released from prison, due to prosecutorial misconduct. That's a running total, so far, of four Republicans that Attorney General Eric Holder has moved quickly to have released from prison, or, in the case of election thief James Tobin, have charges dropped. And I wouldn't necessarily complain, because you could make a reasonable case for relenting in all four cases, and it's wise, I think, to bend over backwards to avoid the perception of politicizing the Justice Department. But the question is, does Eric Holder give half a shriveled fig about the Democrats who were railroaded into prison by the crooked Justice Department during the Bush-Cheney era? To the best of my knowledge, neither Holder nor anyone else in the Obama administration has said a single word about Don Siegelman, Paul Minor, and others Democrats who were the victims of Bush-Cheney's politicized Justice Department. Remember, there were lots more Democrats than Republicans railroaded by Bush-Cheney (I don't have a link handy, but my recollection is that from 2000-08, Democratic politicians were 6+ times as likely to be prosecuted as Republican politicians). In a matched set with last week's absurd federal court ruling that cops can use force to collect DNA from people when they're arrested, a county judge in New York has ruled that it's American as apple pie to Taser someone who isn't eagerly cooperative in surrendering DNA evidence. If this isn't unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, then what does "the right of the people to be secure in their persons" mean?  Seven new residential high-rises will be going up in the north Tel Aviv neighborhood of Bavli, following yesterday's approval of the plan by the local Planning and Building Council. ... However, the site comes burdened with a long history of plans, and resultant battles between its owners and a group of squatters.
These squatters, several dozen in number, have been living on the site for decades, some since the establishment of the state. Their abodes are basically shacks. Over the years, the authorities ignored them. No permanent dwellings were arranged for them and even now that a plan has been approved for the site, no plan has been made for them. The most likely scenario is that the developers will persuade them to leave in exchange for  "... some since the establishment of the state." Could the unsaid be that these "squatters" are Palestinians and this land really belongs to them?
Remarkably, a group of genuine business executives calling themselves Business Leaders for A Fair Economy is taking a public stand for the Employee Free Choice Act. "It's important to counter the myths and misunderstandings that unions are bad for business", says the group's ad in the Wall Street Journal [pdf]. "Quite the contrary — allowing workers to freely join unions can improve morale, productivity, and retention rates, and our bottom line. Further, enabling workers to make their own choice on how to form a union helps remove unnecessary conflict from the workplace so labor and management can focus on advancing the business. ..." Honesty and common sense, from business leaders? Pinch me, I'm dreaming. "What is good for workers is good for business", says an insurance executive. Another says, "If we don't have a strong working middle class, my business isn't going to exist." No, on second thought, the dream is so sweet, please don't wake me. Radio hatemonger Michael Savage does not own Rockstar Beverage Corp, makers of Rockstar Energy Drinks. It's owned by his wife and his son, but Savage himself is, they say, not involved in that company in any way, though Rockstar Beverage Corp and Savage Productions do share the same mailing address and street address. The giant telecom companies that eagerly helped the Bush-Cheney administration with its illegal wiretapping of Americans (you're not allowed to know how many or which Americans — maybe you — were spied upon) will apparently get away with everything, as expected. A judge has ruled that Congress meant it when they passed retroactive immunity for the telecom companies (curiously un-named, in this New York Timescoverage). The judge was appointed by George Herbert Walker Bush, the legislation in question — retroactively making what was illegal legal — is unconstitutional on its face, and here comes an appeal from the good guys at the ACLU and EFF. Ex-VP Dick Cheney supports marriage equality, but I still think gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry. Studies have shown what you'd guess intuitively, that straight people have more sympathy for gay rights when they know someone who's gay(Cheney's daughter is a dyke), so again the moral of the story is, come out Iif you're gay and it's at all practical to do so, come out.. Marriage equality comes to New Hampshire. The law was signed this week, and takes effect in January. Now there's equal marriage in six of America's fifty states. An ACLU lawsuit has forced a Tennessee school district to stop blocking students' access to websites presenting facts about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. The district was, however, allowing kids access to websites explaining how horrendous and inhuman it is to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered. Nice to see this kind of officially-sanctioned stupidity dialed back half a notch, but the mindset behind such thinking is just breathtaking, ain't it? Another suicide at Guantanamo. Another life stolen, destroyed. Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh al-Hanashi had been held for seven years without charges, and American officials apparently aren't even sure what his name was, as the Associated Press says he's "known as Al-Hanashi", which seems to me rather distinct from saying that was his name. The Chinese government blocked access to Flickr, Hotmail, and Twitter during the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Because they were worried that people might, you know, complain about their dead friends and family or something. Worth noting, if you have any curiosity about America's new overlords.
US District Judge Thomas Hogan (Reagan 1982) has ruled that the Obama administration must release the unclassified information that it claims justifies holding prisoners at Guantanamo. We're not even talking about classified information, and Obama blathers endlessly about transparency in government, so you have to ask, why did the Obama administration fight this? When left-wing extremists burn down a ski lodge or free lab animals, they're called eco-terrorists and they're investigated and prosecuted under terrorism laws. When a right-wing extremist kills a doctor, he's charged with murder. I'm not sure which charge (murder or terrorism) carries stiffer legal penalties, but in public perception and media coverage there's little doubt that terrorism is basically the ultimate scary word. And as the word is commonly used, terrorism means using fear to accomplish one's political goals. It's pretty much indisputable that the terror tactics of the right-wing have made it almost impossible to get a safe and legal abortion in many cities and entire states, but it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that eco-terrorists' crimes have accomplished any political goals. A "senior policy adviser" for Operation Rescue helped Dr Tiller's murderer keep track of the doctor's court dates, so that the future-killer could attend. Women whose lives or health were saved by Doc Tiller remembering him fondly, unlike the hatemongers who cheered for and at his death. The Bush Administration's FBI sent 18 agents in body armor to the home of a man who revealed details of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, according to a little-noticed account of the whistleblower published
Here's the Obama administration hard at work, trying to block justice and protect American officials who authorized torture and other war crimes over the past eight years. The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman — called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 — that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies — with no review possible — that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed
We're told here that newly-released documents "reveal" that former Vice President Dick Cheney pressured the DoJ to green-light torture. "Reiterate" would be more accurate than "reveal", wouldn't it? At this point, everyone who gives a damn already knows that Cheney is the Godfather for an era of American torture, and the only people who can't/won't acknowledge that are people who believe George Washington and Jesus Christ would've tortured anyone who gave 'em a sideways glance.
This week's issue of Newsweek is guest-edited by comedian Stephen Colbert. I just shake my head. I subscribed to Newsweek for a year, decades ago, and Time too, but they've both become more and more irrelevant in recent years — not because of the internet, but because there's less and less journalism between their slick covers. And now, Stephen Colbert? I like him and his show a lot, watch it four nights a week, but a stunt like this just drives home the point that whatever it is Newsweek is doing these days, it ain't journalism. New York Times business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin let loose a blistering anti-union falsehood on MSNBC's Morning Joe, claiming essentially that no company can be profitable with a unionized workforce. The red flag for me isn't that he "misspoke" or made it up, but that this guy is considered expert enough to be a business columnist for the New York Times. A judge has decided that newspapers remain free to publish pictures of a politician being arrested. Thanks, your honor. Mighty nice of you to read the constitution. CNN has aired a startlingly generous exoneration of proven charges of racism against Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama). I'll just sigh and repeat a story I've told before — when I was much younger and CNN was worth watching, I signed up for cable TV only because I wanted to have access to CNN. There are of course far more news options today than there were then, but seeing what CNN has become today is just tragic. After President Obama's big speech in Cairo, ABC News covered Sean Hannity response as if it was a newsworthy counterbalance to Secretary of State Clinton's response.
Keith Olbermann suggests an indirect boycott of Fox News. When you see Fox News on the omnipresent TVs in more and more retail establishments and restaurants, he says you should politely tell the shopkeeper or store manager that you'll be taking your business elsewhere, and why. This is pretty much what I've done for years, only I don't say anything on the spot, because I assume the staff is told by the business's manager or owner to play the propaganda channel. Instead I use and recommend TV-B-Gone for fast relief, and when I get home I'll write a polite but brief letter to the proprietor, which has more impact (I think) than a verbal complaint to whomever is working the front counter while you're there. The New York Times has come up with a new way to lie, calling torture at Guantanamo "intense interrogations", which makes it sound like an extended but utterly polite Q-and-A. Well, it wasn't "intense interrogation", it was torture. It's an embarrassment that the New York Times is considered the best of American mainstream journalism, and it's an even bigger embarrassment that it's true — yeah, the New York Times really is just about the best of American mainstream journalism, but even the New York Times will bend over backwards to avoid reporting the truth about American torture. Former Vice Presidential daughter Liz Cheney continues her media tour, appearing on 22 "news" shows in 24 days, not to promote a book or act as spokesperson for some agency or group, but to issue lies and half-truths to explain away her father's torture policies. It's weird and, to my limited knowledge, unprecedented for someone's daughter to become a media icon solely for her willingness to act as public defender for someone who's alive and healthy, someone who's capable of speaking for himself, and who is speaking for himself in almost as many venues as his daughter. Here's another massive narrative fail from Fox, this one led by anchor Megyn Kelly and vice president of news Bill Sammon, both of whom falsely claim President Obama didn't discuss terror in his speech to the Muslim worldIt took 'em two weeks to do it, but the New York Times has issued a half-hearted "editor's note" semi-correction for instantly accepting and reporting as fact the DoD's bogus claim that "74 prisoners released from Guantánamo have returned to terrorism". Of course, the correction won't get a fraction of the attention that the original report did, and for the rest of our lives we'll hear pro-torture and pro-war Republicans citing the New York Times report on recidivism as grounds for arresting and imprisoning any Muslim anywhere who's not wearing an American flag lapel pin. Amidst last year's endless and widely reported claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim, I don't think I saw more than one or two low-key media reports that actually stated, clearly and unambiguously, that Obama is not a Muslim. So I was prepared to be pleasantly surprised and impressed with my fellow Americans, when I saw this headline announcing that only 11% of Americans think Obama is a "secret Muslim". More careful reading of the text, however, reveals that another 13% of Americans say they're unsure whether Obama is a Muslim, and another 22% say they don't know enough about the President to be sure whether he's a Christian or a Muslim. Air America, the liberal radio network, has made two smart moves in recent weeks. First they opened their own advertising sales department (in the past, Air America has sublet this work to a giant radio syndicate), and now they've leased a station in Washington, DC to put left-leaning talk radio on the dial in our nation's capital. Air America has been so ineptly-run since the day they went on the air, I'm seriously taken aback by seeing them do two things in two weeks that aren't astoundingly stupid, but I mean that in the kindest way possible. Max Blumenthal says he's been censored by The Huffington Post. He posted video of a bunch of Israelis making racist comments about President Obama, and it was taken down. I'm of the general impression that Arianna Huffington sucks and her Post is an overrated collection of stolen material masquerading as journalism, but this sounds more like editing than censorship. Unless they have some agreement to publish whatever any of their regular contributors submits The Huffington Post is right this time — a bunch of Israelis calling the US President a "nigger" isn't any more newsworthy than a bunch of white Alabamans or Iowans doing the same thing. Fact-checking George Will leads to the results you'd expect, but it's amusing. The Pirate Party has won at least one seat, possibly two, in the European Parliament. They want major-mondo reform to copyright law and the end of patent law, and I'm not sure that's all a good idea — but I'm sure it's a good idea to hear a perspective on such questions that isn't backed by billions of corporate dollars.
Need something weird to worry about? A fungus is causing bats to drop like flies. Those dratted bad guys in North Korea have sentenced two American journalists to 12 years at hard labor for trumped-up charges of spying. We're all supposed to be outraged and indignant, but this is a scenario we've seen before. Just from America's long track record of giving spies cover as reporters, it's more likely than not that these American reporters were American spies. It's fairly well understood that lack of effective regulation is what allowed the banking industry collapse that's costing US government trillions and sinking the economy into a quagmire, and the lesson to be learned is that there are no consequences. It's becoming quite clear that Democrats in Congress aren't going to pass serious regulatory oversight of the banking industry. Economics ain't my strong suit, but this news isn't hard to grasp. As part of the ongoing bailouts for banks, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) offered a billion-dollars to start buying banks' bad assets at artificially inflated prices. The banks weren't interested, because the artificially inflated price FDIC was willing to pay wasn't artificially inflated enough, and because selling these bad assets would require the banks to actually book the sales, and the sales would (of course) all be losses, and the banks' balance sheets would thus come uncomfortably close to reflecting reality. As the economy continues spinning out of control, why hasn't Congress or the Obama administration done whatever it takes to declare a moratorium on home foreclosures? It's a rhetorical question, because it's pretty dang obvious that Congress and the Obama administration care a hell of a lot more about protecting bankers' millions than about protecting non-millionaires' homes. This probably won't be news, let alone unknown news, by the time you read it here, but Penske Automotive Group is buying the Saturn nameplate, and will — for now — use GM labor to produce the cars. This is one of the first positive economic indicators I've seen in ages. Penske is a respected company, I suspect the price (as yet not announced) will be good, and this looks to me like a little of that old-fashioned American initiative. Plus, bottom line, it's good for America to have four, seven, or seventeen US automakers instead of three. Countrywide founder and former CEO Angelo R. Mozilo has been charged with fraud and insider trading, in the subprime meltdown. Cue Etta James, "At Last". Microsoft wants you to know that if its taxes go up a nickel, it'll outsource another 20,000 jobs. Exactly what I'd expect from Microsoft. GM and Citigroup are no longer part of the Dow Jones industrial average, which ought to help the average go up. Here's someone with some real initiative. No, I don't mean the homeless guy who's put together a shoeshine business so successful that he's hoping to rent a cheap apartment. I mean the San Francisco rule-enforcer who read about the shoeshine man in the Chronicle and promptly sought out the shoeshine man to tell him he needs to pay $491 for a sidewalk vendor permit. Want to get frugal? Here's a good start. I strongly disagree with the Obama administration on three or four out of every ten major decisions, and scowl at another three or four out of ten that seem like shallow, unprincipled, half-hearted compromises, which leaves me agreeing with this administration about a third of the time. That's about what I expected when Obama won the election last year, so I'm not disappointed, just frustrated. Barack Obama doesn't believe in the same things that I do — punishment for criminals, principled peace when possible (which is almost always), equal rights, a public safety net that works, etc. He has little that I recognize as any kind of moral or political principle, but he has a ton of charisma, a way with words, and a super-sized sack of political savvy. Even as he makes me want to picket almost daily, I sometimes have to acknowledge that Obama dances the DC dance better than anyone I've ever seen. Witness his repeated choice of Republicans for second-tier political posts, where they can't do too much damage but their presence leaves the Republican Party befuddled and bolsters Obama's claims of bipartisanship.
Or witness this, his insistence on a half-assed public option in his health care proposal. It's barely a fraction of what's needed to make health care healthy in America, but it's the best we're going to get, and I suspect it'll be a camel's nose in the tent — after a few years, when people see that a publicly-funded option is cheaper (no millionaires in the executive suite), at least as efficient (it could hardly be less), and far more concerned with making people healthy (again, it could hardly be less) than private insurance, people will start gravitating toward the public option. And that will lead more and more toward universal health care, albeit gradually. Which is why Big Medicine and Big Pharma will go nuclear to stop it. But on this and numerous other issues, you can see what Obama's thinking and it's at least obvious that he is thinking, which is in itself an improvement over the administration that came before. Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) criticizes the program to get the White House more helicopters, and the Obama administration immediately scuttles the program. I rather agree with McCain that the program looks like a boondoggle, but Obama responding to McCain's leadership just looks weak. Who won the election again? A poll of Pennsylvanians reveals, unsurprisingly, that by a 2-1 margin, most Pennsylvania Democrats want an honest-to-gosh Democratic Party primary for the Senate seat currently held by recent Republican turncoat Arlen Specter. The hierarchy of the Democratic Party, of course, wants Specter coronated with no challenges at all, because the Democratic Party is the biggest impediment to progressive politicians and progressive politics. Here's a microcosm of the health care problem: Millions of people who have poor or failing eyesight don't have the money to see an ophthalmologist, get a prescription, and buy a pair of glasses. "The economic gains that could be made if eyeglasses were provided to everyone in need are substantial," said Kevin Frick, author of the study and an associate professor with the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management. "Our research estimates $269 billion in productivity lost and nearly 158 million people are vision-impaired because of uncorrected refractive error — which is correctable." Frick is talking about fixing the eyesight of everyone in the whole world, and of course that would be wonderful, but I have an inarguably more selfish perspective. In America, we have the extraordinary advantage of been born in one of the world's wealthiest nations ... where I was lucky enough to find a used pair of glasses at Salvation Army that comes close to the prescription I need. Thank cripes I have these glasses 'cuz if I lose them I won't be able to see across the street, in this fabulously wealthy nation that doesn't give a fat damn in hell about poor people.
At a Senate hearing on an immigration bill, those present heard testimony from a 12-year-old American boy whose mother, a Filipino woman, is on the verge of being deported. The kid cried, and Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) leaned toward an aide and said, "Enough with the histrionics." Here's a good explanation of how President Obama's moderate choice of judicial nominee David Hamilton, intended as an olive branch to the Republicans, has only brought the administration grief. It's definitely worth a click and a read, but here's an excerpt: Given this, I'd just remind the administration that there's no real reward for nominating moderates. If the president selects obvious centrists, Republicans will label them unacceptable ideologues, and oppose their nomination. If the president selects unwavering liberals, Republicans will label them unacceptable ideologues, and oppose their nomination.Obama might as well pick the best available people for the federal bench, without regard for the GOP reaction, because it's likely to be the same, no matter who he
The Anti-Defamation League has fired off a letter of complaint over a line in Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" about Biblical moneychangers. Apparently, if you mention Biblical moneychangers you're smearing the Jewish people. I am not making this up. And I guess I'd better make it plain where we stand, else we'll get a letter from the ADL ourselves. Anti-Semitism is bad, mmmkay? But the ADL is the boy who cries wolf, constantly. This kind of hyper-diaper-sensitivity just makes it hard to take the ADL seriously when there's actual anti-Semitism.
Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) proposes that a sliver of stimulus funding be diverted toward the operating costs of transit systems. I'm an enormous public transit geek — cars are dirty, dangerous, inefficient, polluting, and expensive — and this is a good idea. Transit routinely gets the shaft in funding at the local level. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has boldly acknowledged something that's been obvious for twenty years, but now it's so obvious she can say it out loud: There's a lot more future (at least if America has a future) in using Detroit's manufacturing capability to build streetcars and buses, than to build cars. Antenna-users get more channels and less reliable reception, as America's conversion to digital TV finally happens on Friday. You've been hearing about it for years, and 98% of the reports have been rosy (and obviously written by cable or satellite subscribers), and we're told that 98% of the public is prepared for the big switch. Of the two percent of Americans who use rabbit-ears but aren't ready for the conversion, most will be able to either get friends or family to help them get a converter box or they'll spend $40 a month on cable or satellite TV. The rest, easily amounting to a million or more Americans — the very rural, the elderly, and of course the poor — will be unable to receive some, most, or all of the television stations they used to watch, but you won't hear much about them after Friday, because they're people who don't matter to the powers that be. Veep Joe Biden and other Obama administration officials have cancelled plans to participate in the US Conference of Mayors in Providence, Rhode Island, because they don't want to cross a picket line of striking firefighters. It's a small and insignificant act, but it's a good thing and it's appreciated. Former Senator Norm Coleman (ret'd R-Minnesota) is encouraging his party to increase its appeal to young folks by reaching out on the ethernet. Is irony even the word for this? The president created a new online "open government" system in which people were free to brainstorm and vote proposals up or down. Far and away the leading proposal in the category of "Legal and Policy Challenges" as of the scheduled end of brainstorming was End Imperial Presidency. You can still find it, but it's been removed from that category and from the list of all proposals. Unless you have the direct link to it, you cannot find it, and when you do you can no longer vote for it. It has a label at the top with a closed lock and the words "pending moderator approval." When voting was scheduled to end on the 28th, this proposal was at the top in its category and ranked #3
White-collar fugitives such as Sam Israel and Marcus Schrenker often fail to escape the law because of what prosecutors and bounty hunters say is a lack of preparation for the rigors of life on the This is an interesting article about why white collar criminal fugitives get snagged. Also, it provides excellent clues about how to "break" through to people, say, if we were to set up re-education camps for ex-government officials after the revolution. AIG wants money from charities to pay executive bonuses. Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, makers of the fake male enhancement pill that's amusingly marketed to suckers in "Smiling Bob" TV ads, has been ordered to forfeit $500-million — its estimated sales from the pills. Steve Warshak (the guy who ran the company, though the New York Times can't be troubled to tell you that) gets 25 years in prison. And how stupid is American justice? The company is allowed to remain in business. The ads are still running — I saw it on TV just last weekend. And there's no penalty for the TV stations all across America that made untold millions selling ad time and bilking average Americans.
Here's a Burger King franchise-holder that put "Global climate change is baloney" on the signs in front of all their BKs. BK was not amused. The franchise holder says corporate HQ was "kinda like cockroaches" running from controversy. Delightful. After an angry mob beat a man senseless in Philadelphia, the Mayor and the President of the police union boldly endorsed vigilante justice. TV news in Philadelphia is a lot more interesting than it is in Madison, Wisconsin. Internet mouth Hal Turner has been arrested for inciting violence after telling listeners to "take up arms". I'm somewhat familiar with Turner and he's an absolute freak, and from the excerpts posted in this news account his arrest seems appropriate. There is a line where screaming lunacy becomes a direct danger to society — a line even Fox News knows better than to cross — and Turner crossed it. Cruel and inhuman treatment causes more mental damage than physical torture.
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