Month: January 2015

Yes, they can do another investigation #Ferguson

by digby

Think Progress reports that the NAACP legal defense fund has sent a letter to the Missouri judge overseeing the Grand Jury that declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson asking her to investigate the behavior of Prosecutor Bob McCullough and appoint a special prosecutor to the case:

1. McCulloch and his team “knowingly presented false witness testimony to the grand jury.” McCulloch admitted this on a radio interview on December 19. The NAACP notes this is likely a violation of the Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct. Specifically, McCulloch allowed a woman to testify as an eyewitness who he knew was not at the scene of the incident and had a history of “racially-charged rants about the incident on the internet.”

2. McCulloch and his team “presented incorrect and misleading statements of law to the grand jury and sanctioned unlawful juror practices.” Specifically, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kathi Alizadeh distributed copies of a Missouri statute that was contravened by a Supreme Court decision 30 years earlier. When Alizadeh addressed the issue weeks later she said that the statute was “not entirely incorrect or inaccurate” but the grand jury should “disregard” it. At other times, Ms. Alizadeh seems genuinely confused about what legal standards were at issue and shared her confusion with the grand jury.

Click over to the post to read the remarkable exchange in the transcript. Unbelievable.

The NAACP notes that the prosecutors also encourage the grand jury to conduct their own internet research on the case, despite explicit instructions from the judge not to do so.

Overall the NAACP finds that there are “fundamental questions about the competency of the prosecutors in this case to conduct the proceedings and the fairness of the proceedings overall.”

3. McCulloch and his team “provided favorable treatment to the target of the grand jury proceedings.” McCulloch, at the outset of the case, told the grand jury that the case was “special.” As the case progressed “the questioning of witnesses often appeared to advocate for defendant Wilson’s version of the shooting.” When the prosecutors questioned Wilson they asked him: “[I]f we are sort of done with your questioning, is there anything that we have not asked you that you want us to know or you think it is important for the jurors to consider regarding this incident?”

The NAACP concludes that the entire process “leaves deeply troubling doubts about whether about whether justice was administered in a fair, impartial and competent manner.” The NAACP encourages Judge McShane to consider “remedial action — through a new grand jury, appointment of a new special prosecutor, or other means.”

In a footnote, the NAACP cites the law — Missouri Statute 56.110 — that gives Judge McShane the power to restart the case against Wilson.

I have wondered about this since the night McCullough gave his rambling speech to the TV cameras. Why was this Grand Jury decision considered the final word — as if a trial had been conducted and Wilson found not guilty. I’m no expert but it seemed to me that it wasn’t just something for the feds to take up as a matter of civil rights violations. The Governor could have appointed a special prosecutor but being the malignant worm he is, he declined. But apparently, this law applies if the prosecutor is shown to have thrown the case (or be in some other way biased) and it certainly looks as though he did.

Anyway, it remains to be seen if anything will come of this. But it certainly appears that the NAACP legal defense fund has a strong basis for asking a judge to take another look at this.

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Deadbeat Billionaire

by digby

Harold Hamm, chief executive of oil driller Continental Resources who is embroiled in a bitter divorce, offered to pay his former wife $974.8 million, but she rejected a hand-written check delivered to her legal team, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Hamm’s offer to pay ex-wife Sue Ann Arnall immediately the full cash value of what he owes based on a November divorce ruling by an Oklahoma County judge was rejected, Hamm’s lawyer, Michael Burrage, said in an emailed statement.

“Ms. Arnall, through her counsel, stated that they were rejecting the … payment because Ms. Arnall did not want to risk the dismissal of her appeal by acceptance of the benefits,” Burrage wrote.

Both Arnall, who was formerly Sue Ann Hamm and resumed using her birth name after the divorce, and Hamm have appealed the November divorce judgment. Appeals are set to be heard by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, Reuters reported earlier.

Arnall, a former Continental executive who was married to Hamm for 26 years, contends that her award of around $1 billion in cash and assets was inadequate and allowed Hamm to keep the lion’s share of a fortune her lawyers valued as high as $18 billion.

Harold Hamm had already paid his former wife more than $20 million during the divorce proceedings.

You can’t blame her. After all, he didn’t even give her a whole billion dollars. How in the hell is she supposed to make ends meet? It’s cruel. However you can’t blame him for wanting to keep his full 18 billion either. His money has earned that money and they deserve to stay together.  The whole situation is just heartbreaking.

It’s this sort of bullshit that turns ordinary people into radicals…

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-harold-hamm-offers-975-million-divorce-check-ex-wife-rejects-it-2015-1#ixzz3O5Obo3Fl

No girls allowed

by digby

I just don’t even know what to say to this:

Kay Hagan just wanted to swim. It was late 2008, and the Democrat was newly arrived on Capitol Hill as North Carolina’s junior senator-elect. But Hagan was told that the Senate pool was males-only. Why? Because some of the male senators liked to swim naked.

It took an intervention by Senator Chuck Schumer, head of the Rules Committee, to put a stop to the practice, but even then “it was a fight,” remembers pollster Celinda Lake, who heard about the incident when the pool revolt was the talk among Washington women.
[…]
In the entire history of the United States Senate, a mere 44 women have served. Ever. Those few who have were elected to a club they were never meant to join, and their history in the chamber is marked by sexism both spectacular and small. For decades in the 20th century after women first joined, many male senators were hardly more than corrupt frat boys with floor privileges, reeking of alcohol and making little secret of their sexual dalliances with constituents, employees and any other hapless subordinate female they could grab. But perhaps more striking is what I found after interviewing dozens of women senators, former senators and their aides over the past several months: Even today, the women of the Senate are confronted with a kind of floating, often subtle, but corrosive sexism, a sense of not belonging that is both pervasive and so counter to the narrative of real, if stubbornly slow, progress that many are reluctant to acknowledge this persistent secret.

That article in Politico is a must-read for anyone who thinks that all of us beyotches are just whining all the time. Note the date that this swimming pool incident happened. It wasn’t 1938. It wasn’t 1968. It was 2008.

Those elite Senators are fairly typical of men at the top of the heap. They can’t imagine having to give up even the slightest privilege — like not being required to wear a bathing suit in a communal pool. Indeed, the more likely explanation is that they just didn’t want to share the pool with a woman at all and used that as an excuse. In either case, they behaved like pigs when confronted with losing even the slightest bit of their superior privilege over women.

Once again I’m compelled to point out just how infuriating it is to hear such men complain about women or minorities wanting “too much.” It’s one thing for average guys to be unaware of the sort of authority they have (and women don’t have) in normal human interactions. Often women aren’t exactly sure exactly what that is either even though they feel it. But when elite males with these attitudes pat themselves on the back for being the avatars of freedom, equality and democracy in action it just galls.

We are half the population and yet only 44 women have ever served in the US Senate over the course of more than two centuries. No woman has ever been nominated by one of the major political parties to be president. What do you suppose girls think when they hear that?

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Another day another tantrum

by digby

Oy. Here we go again. Unless the mayor grovels at the feet of the police department in every way and demands that they be honored like conquering heroes and obeyed like overseers at their every demand, they are going to hold their breath until they turn blue.

One of the cops wounded in a wild Bronx shootout didn’t appreciate a hospital sympathy visit from Mayor Bill de Blasio, the wounded officer’s dad told The Post on Tuesday.

The mayor accompanied NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton to St. Barnabas Hospital overnight to see wounded plainclothes officers Andrew Dossi, 30, and Aliro Pellarano, 38.

“He wasn’t too happy about the mayor’s visit,” Dossi’s dad, Joe, told The Post at the family’s home in Rockland County.

“He (Dossi) deals with some crappy people every day and getting no support (from the mayor), come on. These are the guys in the trenches dealing with anything and everything.”

It’s terrible that this officer was shot just as it’s terrible when anyone’s shot. I’m against gun violence. I understand the perpetrators are in custody and this officer will be fine so there’s that.

But it’s now clear that even if Mayor DeBlasio got down on his knees and begged for forgiveness, it still wouldn’t be good enough. They don’t like him. He needs to go and the city needs to replace him with someone who understands that the cops are in charge of New York City.

The article states that the officer served two terms in Iraq so perhaps he hasn’t fully adjusted back to civilian life yet. Perhaps the department could help him with that problem. But police officers acting like petulant children day after day over the mayor’s alleged failure to kiss their feet isn’t going to garner them the respect and admiration they crave. It’s making them look like people who need to find a line of work in which judgment, patience, maturity and professionalism aren’t required. Perhaps they could all join boy bands.

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If only wingnuts could claim “black privilege”

by digby

They just can’t get anything they want anymore because the African Americans run everything these days:

On his radio program Monday, Limbaugh chastised incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his statement that his goal over the next two years is to convince American voters that electing a Republican president in addition to a Republican Congress in 2016 need not be a “scary outcome.” Though McConnell pledged to confront the administration on issues like health reform, energy, and the environment, Limbaugh decried the Kentuckian’s remarks as evidence that the GOP will “throw in” with Obama and the Democratic Party.

“What do you think that means? That means throwing in with the Democrats,” Limbaugh said.

“We don’t want to be scary. We don’t want to be seen as extremist kooks. Remember, all you have to do to be seen as an extremist kook is oppose Obama, pure and simple,” he added.

Limbaugh’s broadside then took a bizarre turn, as he proceeded to connect the establishment GOP’s alleged betrayals with the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

Then he said this:

“But it’s easier to throw in with Obama. His race, by the way, is a clear factor in this. Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s much easier to throw in with the first African American president than to oppose him because you know what’s going to come. Even if you pay off Al Sharpton, you still might face allegations of racism.”

That’s a human rights abuse, obviously. And it’s led to Obama running roughshod over the GOP for years as they’ve supplicated themselves to his every whim. Look at Obamacare! (Well, ok. No Republican voted for it but still …) At this point the Republicans are so afraid of being called racists that the only David Duke acolyte they could put in their leadership was third in line.

These poor elites just get no respect anymore. It’s quite clear that a fabulously rich white man being called a racist is pretty much the same thing as slavery. And the highway to the Hamptons is the new underground railroad.

We all have a dream that someday rich white men will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their stock portfolios….

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Official torture opposition’s last gasp

by digby

This would not be enough, but it’s something:

In a letter last week to President Barack Obama that was just made public, Feinstein called for sweeping changes that would put into law the anti-torture guidelines that Obama laid out in his first week in office. Some of the measures the California Democrat suggested, such as reevaluating the effectiveness of intelligence operations, have already been broached by the Central Intelligence Agency itself. Others, such as a legislative ban on the CIA holding long-term detainees, would codify President Obama’s efforts to change the intelligence community’s approach to interrogations. Feinstein told the president her recommendations would “make sure that the United States never again engages in actions that you have acknowledged were torture.”

Feinstein said that she would introduce legislation at the beginning of the next Congress — which starts Tuesday — to put into law many of the measures that Obama established by executive order in 2009. That includes making U.S. Army guidelines on interrogation binding for not just the military but for the entire intelligence community; requiring the United States to give the Red Cross timely access to all prisoners; and prohibiting the CIA from detaining prisoners. Additionally, Sen. Feinstein is seeking to close outstanding legal loopholes that enabled government agencies to sidestep existing domestic laws banning the use of torture.

At the same time, Feinstein is seeking to throw plenty of sunshine onto the intelligence community in a bid to ensure that questionable techniques don’t reappear. She argued that torture took place in part because of lawmakers’ limited ability to receive timely intelligence briefings. In her letter, she asked Obama for enhanced oversight of covert programs by Congress and the CIA inspector general, and recommended that the National Security Council improve its oversight of covert programs.

Fabulous. Great idea. It’s a start. It shouldn’t be necessary since torture is clearly illegal in both US and International law and we should be able to count on the government adhering to it, but there you are. After all, John Brennan himself told us that we couldn’t count on the CIA not to torture in the future so …

Unfortunately, this is not going to pass. The new congress has a Republican majority and they love torture. They love it so much that it doesn’t matter if a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House. Sadly, a whole bunch of Democrats love it too.

And frankly, President Obama has not been a profile in courage on this either. Yes, he officially abandoned the policy and admitted that “we tortured some folks” but his behavior around the release of the report and his unwillingness to take a strong stand on whether or not it represented the truth is a permanent stain on his legacy. I don’t think it would be smart to count on any White House bucking the intelligence system.

But good for Feinstein for putting this out there. There’s a chance that some elements of this to which the Intelligence services aren’t completely opposed could pass and anything’s better than nothing. The downside is that the government will then say they “fixed” the problem when, in fact, they will have normalized the practice and legalized much of the program. But that ship sailed when a large part of the US Congress and administrations of both parties basically shrugged their shoulders and nobody was even fired, much less prosecuted for having broken the laws against torturing people in the first place. The precedent exists and if a president wants to use it in the future it’s unlikely that it will cause much of a stir.

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She seems nice

by digby

The “crown jewel” of the new Senate freshman class (as Luke Russert calls her) isn’t quite as linguistically challenged as Sarah Palin but she’s got the same attitude:

The night after her historic election, she was watching the volleyball team from her native hometown of Stanton as it tried to make the state tournament when her cellphone rang with an unknown number. Ernst, who now lives in nearby Red Oak, ignored it a couple of times, but the caller’s persistence caught her attention.

“It was the White House switchboard. I was a little embarrassed that I’d been rejecting the president’s calls,” she said in an interview on Des Moines’ WHO Radio on Dec. 29. “He was very cordial to me. Of course, he makes all those calls to new incoming senators. He did state he will always have a special place in his heart for Iowa.”

Talk about a begrudging acknowledgement. He was very “cordial” (which is unexpected from a demon Kenyan usurper.) But let’s not get carried away. He’s “cordial” to all the new Senators even though it pains him to do it. It’s just part of the job. And he did say he likes my state, which is ridiculous because he hates all of Real America, but there it is.

I have a feeling that she’s going to be a great source of that patented nasty, passive-aggressive right wing dialog we’ve come to expect from the likes of Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. If she’s good at it she really will be a star. The beltway loves this stuff as much as the Tea Party types do.

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Thank you for not voting your best interests
by Tom Sullivan

At a party over the weekend, a couple of guests asked the question I hear time and again from friends frustrated that so many working-class people vote Republican: Why do they vote against their best interests?

It’s a question that honestly perplexes and frustrates them as much as this particular verbal tic frustrates me. It’s obvious to them how conservative policies hurt working people and undermine the middle class. Yet, people continue to vote Republican. But you know this.

Well, first off, people don’t vote their interests. They vote their identities. This is standard Lakoff stuff. People vote for candidates they believe share their social views, not necessarily their economics. People vote for candidates they feel they can trust. People wanted to have a beer with recovering alcoholic, George W. Bush, for godssakes.

Second, step back from that question a moment and look at “voting your best interests” dispassionately. Do we really want our neighbors to go into the voting booth and vote what’s best for No. 1? For their bottom lines?

Seriously. Is that who we are? Is that the kind of country we want? Does that reflect our values?

Because by posing the same question over and over, and by using it as an accusation against working-class, white voters, are we not sending the message that that is exactly how we think people should vote? Bottom line? Every man for himself?

I understand people’s frustration, but that is just the Randian, social Darwinism we oppose. Counter it. Don’t reinforce it. Complaints that people are voting against their best interests are not reinforcing a more progressive message, that as Americans we are all in this together and should vote with an eye for the general welfare. Maybe we should stop voicing them.

Worse, the fact that so many on the left frame the question in “best interests” terms suggests that we ourselves have unconsciously internalized our opponents’ messaging.

And while we may think it a legitimate, innocent question, family members, coworkers, and conservative sparring partners hear it as arrogant and condescending — a liberal dog whistle. “You’re voting against your best interests” sounds like a snooty, intellectual’s way of saying, “You’re stupid.” If we’re looking for reasons they don’t vote with us, we may have found one.

It’s godawful messaging. I wish we would stop it.

Classy salad

by digby

In response to criticism of her parenting for allowing her son Trig to use the family dog as a stepstool, Sarah Palin proves that she’s a mature, rational person and a fine role model for children everywhere:

“Chill. At least Trig didn’t eat the dog. Did you go as crazy when your heroic Man-of-Your-Lifetime, Barack Obama, revealed he actually enjoyed eating dead dog meat?”

This reminds me of an insult I once read on a wall of my elementary school bathroom. (It used the term “green-monkey meat” but the idea is pretty much the same. In fact the 5th grader was funnier and more original.)

Then she calmed down a little and embraced her victimization:

Our pets, including Trig’s best buddy Jill Hadassah, are loved, spoiled and cared for more than some people care for their fellow man whose politics may not mesh with nonsensical liberally failed ways or don’t fit your flighty standards.

Ok.

Do you think she was trying to say that she cares more for her dog than liberals care for people with politics that have flighty nonsensical standards? Or is it that she loves her fellow man more than flighty people with  nonsensical liberally failed ways love their dogs? It’s hard to know.  She was obviously very upset and kind of lost control of herself there. In any case, she’s certainly better than other people, that’s clear.

But Jill Hadassah????  Had she and Bristol had a few too many Moscow Mules in the back of the limo one night when they named the dog that? Is it a tribute to Jill Biden and Hadassah Lieberman?  An insult? Whaaa?

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Nice little fundamental human right you have there …

by digby

To those who insist that once their rights are acknowledged in law and exerted by millions of people over many years that there is no way they will ever be rolled back, think again: