Month: April 2015

SWATing with cops

by digby

Somehow I don’t think this is what the founders had in mind when they wrote the 4th Amendment:

A Residence With Locking Doors And A Working Toilet Is All That’s Needed To Justify A No-Knock Warrant

No-knock warrants have become the strategy of first choice for many police departments. Most of these target those suspected of drug possession or sales, rather than the truly dangerous situations they should be reserved for. The rise in no-knock warrants has resulted in an increased number of deadly altercations. Cops have been shot in self-defense by residents who thought their homes were being invaded by criminals. Innocent parties have been wounded or killed because the element of surprise police feel is so essential in preventing the destruction of evidence puts cops — often duded up in military gear — into a mindset that demands violent reaction to any perceived threat. In these situations, the noise and confusion turns everything into a possible threat, even the motions of frightened people who don’t have time to grasp the reality — and severity — of the situation.

No-knock warrants are basically SWATting, with cops — rather than 13-year-old gamers — instigating the response. Judges should be holding any no-knock warrant request to a higher standard and demand more evidentiary justification for the extreme measure — especially considering the heightened probability of a violent outcome. But they don’t.

A Massachusetts court decision posted by the extremely essential FourthAmendment.com shows just how little it takes to obtain a no-knock warrant. The probable cause provided to obtain the no-knock warrant was ridiculous, but it wasn’t challenged by the magistrate who signed off on the request. What’s detailed here should raise concerns in every citizen.

The affidavit supporting the warrant contained the following representations: 1) the extensive training and experience in drug investigations, controlled purchases and arrests of the officer who made the affidavit, 2) the confidential informant’s report that the apartment for which a warrant was sought was “small, confined and private,” 3) the confidential informant’s report that the defendant “keeps his door locked and admits only people whom he knows,” 4) the fact that the defendant sold drugs to the informant only after arrangements were made by telephone, and 5) the officer’s assessment that, given the retail nature of the defendant’s operation and the fragile nature of the illegal drugs involved, “it would not be difficult for [the defendant] to destroy the narcotics if given the forewarning.”

In other words, if you have a “private” home with working toilets and locks and you don’t routinely allow complete strangers to wander around your home, you, too, could be subjected to a no-knock warrant. This description fits pretty much every person who lives in a residence anywhere. All it takes is an officer’s “upon information and belief” statement and a few assertions from a confidential informant, whose otherwise unreliable narration (if, say, he/she was facing charges in court) is routinely treated as infallible by cops and courts alike.

I was watching the show “Turn” the other night, which is about the Revolutionary War. And in the show one of the main things that really chaps the colonists’ hides is the high-handed way the government soldiers and other representatives just storm into their homes whenever they pleased. Not all that much has changed, unfortunately. And they are mostly doing it in service of the insane war on drugs.

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Sunday Funnies

by digby

From the Pulitzer Prize nominated Tom Tomorrow:

TPP for dummies:

Laboratories of failure

by digby

Paul Rosenberg has a deep dive piece at Salon today about the abject failure of GOP economic policies and how that’s likely to be a big factor in the presidential race. Here’s a bit of it:

What do Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Bobby Jindal all have in common? They’re all sitting governors who’d like to be president, sure. But what else?

How about being embarrassingly bad at job creation? That’s right. From January 2011 through January 2015, Louisiana under Jindal ranked 32nd in job creation with 5.4 percent growth over four years. Wisconsin under Walker ranked 35th, with 4.85 percent growth. New Jersey under Christie ranked 40th, with 4.15 percent growth. This compares with a national average of 8.21 percent.

Even Ohio’s John Kasich, who’s worked more with Democrats—most notably by agreeing to Medicaid expansion under Obamacare—and thus tarnished his brand with conservative purists while puffing himself up with Beltway pundits — only ranked 23rd. He’s still under the national average, with Ohio’s 6.23 percent growth. Ohio has yet to get back to 2007 employment levels, “The nation and the majority of other states reached this benchmark in 2014,” said researcher Hannah Halbert, in a statement from Policy Matters Ohio.

And then there’s Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas, once a 2016 hopeful cheered on by Grover Norquist and supported by supply-side icon Arthur Laffer in his crusade to slash (and eventually abolish) Kansas state income tax—a sure-fired job-creation move, according to the promises of all concerned. Justly dubbed a “failed experiment” for the massive deficits it has generated, the experiment also produced only lackluster job growth of 5.95 percent, ranking 28th in the nation—better than Walker and Christie, sure, but lower than its neighbors in Nebraska (25th) and Oklahoma (14th).

After years on end of House Speaker John Boehner whining, “Where are the jobs?” this is a singularly unimpressive lot of contenders, wannabes and dropouts. But it’s not an anomaly, as we’ll soon see. Nor is it an anomaly that the national press, so far, routinely ignores this abysmal record. But can they continue to ignore it going forward—particularly in the age of social media?

Historically, state governors have been the most credible candidates for president. Eight sitting governors have been elected to the White House, compared to just three sitting senators, and four vice presidents (compared to eight who took office after a president died). As chief executive of a state, governors can claim an experience most similar to that of president (though without the foreign policy part), and the potential diversity of that experience purportedly allows for an influx of proven practical state-level solutions to be ushered onto the national stage.

At least that’s how the political folklore goes. Now, however, it’s something of the opposite. With the off-year Tea Party wave of 2010 sweeping a large number of ideologically extreme politicians into office, decades of right-wing state-level institution-building reached fruition, and helped establish a high degree of uniformly mistaken economic practices—cutting taxes, public investment and much-needed services, all in accordance with a playbook that’s a proven loser. While individual presidential candidates can be expected to blow their own horns, the fact that their basic playbooks are all so similar opens them up to a broader attack: the entire framework of how they think about economic policy simply doesn’t work.

They’ll talk about tax rates as if that’s a substitute for jobs and growth and economic security. It will be interesting to watch them spin. But we’ve had a major experiment in the “laboratories of democracy” these past few years and the picture isn’t pretty.

Rosenberg presents tons of data to support this in the rest of the piece, all of which is very informative.

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What is this “appearance of conflict of interest” you speak of?

by digby

While the Village scribes were all preening about their moral superiority and pretending there’s nothing even slightly unseemly about hobnobbing with the officials they cover and kissing the rings of Hollywood celebrities, look what the Republican candidates were up to:

This weekend, Republican presidential hopefuls, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), will travel to Las Vegas to audition for billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson’s backing at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s spring meeting. In their speeches, the candidates will make their pitch to Adelson that they mostly closely share his interests.
Mega donor Adelson and his wife Miriam spent nearly $150 million on the 2012 election — more than the Koch brothers — and are likely to match that amount this campaign cycle. With his $32 billion net worth, Adelson was the single largest campaign donor in American history.

Early in the last presidential election, Adelson made a decision to give a majority of his donations to conservative nonprofits which do not disclose donors. At the time, Adelson said he believed the media’s use of the phrase “casino mogul” when discussing his contributions is not helpful to the people he is trying to elect. By the time President Obama was reelected, Adelson had given close to $50 million of his contributions to dark money groups that were created after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stream of rulings against political spending limits.
T
But even though his donations may not be disclosed, his intentions are still transparent.
Last year, the “Sheldon Adelson primary,” as it has been called, auditioned Gov. Chris Christie (R), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), among others. Those candidates and the ones speaking this year will all try to one-up each other by appealing to the policies Adelson most strongly supports.

Adelson owes hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes each year, a low amount considering his wealth that he achieves through loopholes like shifting his stock holdings in ways that exempt the transfers from federal taxes. The GOP candidates speaking at this weekend’s meeting have all proposed making his rate even lower.

Bush has called for eliminating the capital gains tax which would have given Adelson and his wife an estimated $139.7 million tax cut in 2013 on dividends from their shares in Adelson’s company alone, according to a Center for American Progress report. Meanwhile, Cruz co-sponsored a 2013 tax proposal that called for replacing all income, payroll and employment taxes with a 23 percent sales tax. If that were to pass, Adelson’s taxes would be almost completely eliminated. And Perry’s proposed 20 percent flat tax would give Adelson an almost $142 million tax cut.
One of the issues most important to Adelson is his staunch opposition to a Palestinian state and his unwavering support for Israel. Adelson owns a popular newspaper in Israel called the Israel Hayom, which is widely recognized as having the singular goal of promoting Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Although Israeli campaign finance rules prevent contributions from non-Israeli citizens, “the existence of a newspaper like Israel Hayom egregiously violates the law, because [Adelson is] actually is providing a candidate with nearly unlimited resources,” Hebrew University economist Momi Dahan told the American Prospect.

But of course it doesn’t matter. According to the Villagers, there is no “appearance of conflict of interest” in their little week-end soiree and neither is there even the slightest reason to be concerned about any “appearance” of a quid-pro-quo when Republican candidates for president openly go begging for money from billionaires who openly require them to promise to deliver on their pet issues.

All of this is evidently perfectly fine, nothing to see here. Nobody said a word about it on any of the morning shows. But then they didn’t have time what with all their pearl clutching and hand wringing over Clinton’s “appearance of conflict of interest” with the family’s global charity.

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Near certainty is in the eye of the beholder

by digby

Here’s a quote for the ages:

Mr. Weinstein’s death caused some in the White House to question whether the president’s policy was being followed. “It makes you wonder whether the intelligence community’s definition of near certainty is the same as everybody else’s,” said a senior administration official. “But the near certainty standard is the best possible standard.”

I don’t even know what to say to that. Don’t they have any criteria or do they just ask the analyst what his gut tells him? And how can you call something a “standard” if you don’t even know how it’s defined?

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CNN’s latest war porn images 


by digby

Can you see the problem with the following images?

I knew that you could. Those images are from other countries. There are no ISIS fighters taking to the streets of Oxnard waving their ISIS flags. And most people surely know that on a conscious level. But by telling these stories of American threats with this footage they create a scary, subliminal image in the minds of Americans who are watching, especially those who are only halfway paying attention, which is most of us.

I seem to recall some alleged journalistic ethic from the dark ages that said you must never use images which are not directly related to the story you are telling. Now, it’s true that in the screen shot at the top, it says “Syria” in small print, but that doesn’t get them off the hook. All day long they had “experts” from a remote location calling in to talk about this story in exactly the same way they might have a correspondent on the phone talking from a battlefield.  The whole thing was set up to look as if ISIS had invaded the United States.

Again, people certainly understood on a conscious level that this was not the case.  But subconsciously, these images are now associated with a threat to America.  CNN was telling a story with those images but it wasn’t a news story it was a fantasy, one designed to titillate its audience. Turn the sound off when one of these stories comes on and you’ll understand the plot they’re selling.

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When these guys get bored by politics it’s very bad news

by digby

Corey Robin has a good piece in Salon this morning warning about this latest expression of political ennui coming from certain writers. He warns that when people of this ilk get bored with politics it’s usually time to start a war.

Packer belongs to a special tribe of ideologically ambidextrous scribblers — call them political romantics — who are always on the lookout for a certain kind of experience in politics. They don’t want power, they don’t seek justice, they’re not interested in interests. They want a feeling. A feeling of exaltation and elation, unmoored from any specific idea or principle save that of sacrifice, of giving oneself over to the nation and its cause.

It’s not that political romantics seek the extinction of the self in the purgative fire of the nation-state. It’s that they see in that hallucination an elevation of the self, a heightening of individual feeling, an intensification of personal experience. That’s what makes them so dangerous. They think they’re shopping for the public good, but they’re really in the market for is an individual experience. An experience that often comes with a hefty price tag.

It’s the media, too, although they are moved by a simpler desire for sheer stimulation which can be delivered through tabloid stories, disasters and other major events. But little gets their juices flowing like a war. (Why else do we see all these reporters embellishing their stories of being in the battle?)

And needless to say, nothing makes right wing hawks happier than when they can march around wrapped in the flag calling everyone else a traitor.

Read the whole thing, it’s very good. And then check out this older piece by Chris Hayes talking about how so many of the Iraq war cheerleaders openly expressed a desire to be another “Greatest Generation.” This is a rather human impulse, I think.  But one that should be resisted, particularly by the leaders of the most powerful nation on earth.

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The plaintive cry of the perpetually oppressed
by Tom Sullivan

A somewhat misanthropic friend once said if he ever wound up as an insider in some group he would have to create an outside just to feel like himself. Even as conservative Christians insist that they are America, inhabiting a country created by God himself just for them, and as sure as the prosperity gospel that he smiles upon and blesses them, they are most comfortable posturing as oppressed outsiders. So GOP presidential wannabes were on message yesterday in Iowa:

“The single greatest threat to all of our freedoms is the threat to your religious liberty,” Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, told the crowd in a speech that at times sounded like a church sermon. “Let me be clear tonight: I’m not backing off because what I’m saying is true. We are criminalizing Christianity in this country.”

That theme was predictably popular and reverberated throughout a five-hour-long summit hosted by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition that attracted more than 1,200 Republicans and churchgoers. The event kicked off with a prayer calling on the Lord to “restore this country through godly leadership.”

“You know, in the past month we have seen religious liberty under assault at an unprecedented level,” said Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who announced his White House bid last month. He was also met with repeated bursts of applause.

You know the drill. If you won’t let us dominate you, then you’re oppressing us.

Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal this week took to the New York Times to position himself as defender of the faith:

Our country was founded on the principle of religious liberty, enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Why shouldn’t an individual or business have the right to cite, in a court proceeding, religious liberty as a reason for not participating in a same-sex marriage ceremony that violates a sincerely held religious belief?

In an America in which over three-quarters identify as Christians, a GOP that controls both houses of Congress, 31 governorships, and nearly 70 percent of state legislatures is, according to Jindal, beset on all sides by “left-wing ideologues who oppose religious freedom” and “seek to tax and regulate businesses out of existence.”

As Heather Cox Richardson observed in Salon, Jindal laid bare Movement Conservatism’s Grand Bargain when he wrote that defending freedom “requires populist social conservatives to ally with the business community on economic matters and corporate titans to side with social conservatives on cultural matters.” And what’s really got Jindal and the religious right pissed is that after Walmart and NASCAR sided with marriage equality activists against recent “religious freedom” bills, the bargain is broken. Richardson writes:

Its end has been a long time coming. The toxic amalgam of economic and social reactionaries that Jindal identified began to mix after the Second World War. Americans in that era rallied behind the New Deal consensus. Reactionary businessmen loathed business regulation and taxation, but had no luck convincing voters to turn against the policies most saw as important safeguards against another Great Depression. Then, in 1951, a wealthy young writer suggested that social issues might be the way to break popular support for the New Deal. William F. Buckley, Jr. advanced the idea that unfettered capitalism and Christianity should be considered fundamental American values that could not be questioned. According to him, anyone who called for an active government or a secular society was an anti-American collectivist in league with international communism.

With communism a fading memory except among aging Cold Warriors, and with one-quarter of the world’s population Muslim, Movement Conservatives will have a hard time getting buy-in from multinational corporations in alienating an already huge and growing market. What the religious conservatives are waking up to post-Indiana is that their former partners no longer need them.

Perhaps capitalists should have betrayed them with a kiss?

Emailgateski

by digby

After all the sturm und drang over Clinton having her private and unclassified emails on a private server, this is a wee bit ironic:

Some of President Obama’s email correspondence was swept up by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House’s unclassified computer system that was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged, according to senior American officials briefed on the investigation.

The hackers, who also got deeply into the State Department’s unclassified system, do not appear to have penetrated closely guarded servers that control the message traffic from Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, which he or an aide carries constantly.

But they obtained access to the email archives of people inside the White House, and perhaps some outside, with whom Mr. Obama regularly communicated. From those accounts, they reached emails that the president had sent and received, according to officials briefed on the investigation.

White House officials said that no classified networks had been compromised, and that the hackers had collected no classified information. Many senior officials have two computers in their offices, one operating on a highly secure classified network and another connected to the outside world for unclassified communications.

But officials have conceded that the unclassified system routinely contains much information that is considered highly sensitive: schedules, email exchanges with ambassadors and diplomats, discussions of pending personnel moves and legislation, and, inevitably, some debate about policy.

Right. So if Clinton had used the State Department email system for all unclassified work related communications these hackers would have them. And they probably do anyway since most work related emails went to people who used this system.

I dunno. This whole email thing mystified me in the first place since she would have always been making a decision about what emails were private, unclassifed work related and classified anyway. But whatever. It appears our vaunted security experts aren’t that expert … shocked, I am.