Lots of pictures

Daily Show Andrew Napolitano Extended Interview

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

If Corporations Are People, Then...

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by SeaCoast Online (New Hampshire)

by Don Cavallaro 

(IndyMedia.org | Portland)

Pondering corporate personhood can make your head swim. Based on the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, corporations now have unlimited free speech rights, the same as human beings do. What has been bothering me is that in certain areas, humans have a few more rules to follow than corporations. If you are a man, you have more rules still. Take the Selective Service, for example. If you are a guy, you have to register by age 18 or you are not eligible to receive government training, a government job or eligibility for a student loan. Perhaps all male corporations should sign up with the Selective Service to be eligible for government contracts, research grants or guaranteed loans.

This brings me to the gender issue.

If corporations are the same gender and they want to merge, would that be prohibited in states that don't recognize civil unions? Recently, one presidential candidate even seems to be worried about three or more corporations merging. Would mergers between a male and female corporation be considered marriage? If you sue a corporation into bankruptcy, should that now be considered murder? If you sign paperwork to form your corporation and the financing falls through, is that a miscarriage? When humans get sick, they see a doctor or go to the hospital. When corporations get sick, they see a lawyer or go off shore.

Whereas cloning humans is illegal, cloning corporations can just be considered franchising. Corporations can also split like amoebas or merge like pieces of clay, which are abilities that humans do not possess.

The tax code gets confusing also. If corporations are "people," then why don't they use our human tax tables? Unless they are married (merged) or head of household, I'd think that they should pay at the single rate. There should be no "corporate" tax rate, since they are just like the rest of us. I don't dare to think of the tax write-offs, but perhaps the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) rule that some have to follow would be appropriate. When corporations can't exempt themselves from the AMT, they pay at a rate lower than many humans do, and that is after they file for the foreign tax credit, if they can. It does seem a bit unpatriotic to be willing to pay other countries' taxes and then complain about ones in the country that you call home. We human beings are paying for the roads that the company trucks are driving on, among other perks that some corporations get for free.

Another great thing about being a corporate person is that, in some cases, you don't even have to be "born" here to be considered a domestic corporation. As long as you set up shop in Delaware or Nevada, you can be recognized as domestic versus being considered foreign in any other state. It begs the question: If undocumented immigrants got together and incorporated themselves, would they be allowed to stay? If they were corporate people, it seems like the answer would be yes.

What makes me a bit nervous is that the corporate people may now start demanding unlimited Second Amendment rights. Some of those people can easily afford their own fighter jets, tanks, ships, cruise missiles and a well-armed militia to protect themselves with. I suppose the increased firepower would provide great incentive for paying our bills on time. One of their unmanned drones could even follow you to the bank perhaps.

We'll have to wait and see what the future brings. As long as Amendments 15, 19 and 26 are still in effect, there still may be hope for our democracy. Maybe someday, a corporation will even be elected president; as long as "it" can show a valid birth certificate and that it is at least 35 years old. The presidential seal could even be customized with the "person's" logo.

Supreme Court to rule on whether drug-sniffing dogs violate 4th Amendment

(Considering the NDAA wiped out the 4th amendment, as well as the 5th, 6th and 8th amendments, I would wager that the Roberts Court rules that drug dogs do not violate the 4th amendment--as it no longer applies to US citizens anyway.--jef)

______________________________________________________

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, January 6, 2012

 

 

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case to determine whether the use of police dogs sniffing for drugs outside homes is a violation of the constitutional rights of the residents.

The case involves a Miami homeowner accused of growing marijuana in his house, who contends the dog’s sniffing on his porch was the same as an illegal “search” of his home.

The Fourth Amendment requires police to present evidence to a judge that a crime has occurred, then obtain a warrant before they can search a home.

Miami-Dade police had no search warrant before Franky the dog signaled to his handler that he detected marijuana at the home of Joelis Jardines in December 2006.

Instead, they used Franky’s signal of sitting down as the primary evidence to obtain a warrant.

A subsequent police search found 179 marijuana plants in a hydroponic lab in the house. Jardines was arrested as he tried to flee out the back door.

The trial judge dismissed the evidence against Jardines, saying it was obtained through illegal search and seizure. A state appeals court reversed the ruling and reinstated marijuana charges against Jardines.

The Florida Supreme Court threw out the case again last April, saying lax restrictions on use of police dogs could lead to widespread abuse of homeowners’ privacy.

“There is simply nothing to prevent (police) agents from applying the procedure in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner, or based on whim and fancy, at the home of any citizen,” the Florida Supreme Court majority opinion said.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Bondi argues in her legal filings that a dog breathing air outside a home is not the same as a search.

She also says a ruling that deprives police of using drug-sniffing dogs to gather evidence would seriously interfere with law enforcement.

“And most importantly, the Florida Supreme Court’s decision strips law enforcement of an irreplaceable tool in detecting those who grow marijuana in their living rooms; construct meth labs in their kitchens; hide bodies in their basements; or make bombs in their garages,” Bondi’s petition says.

“Dogs can detect all these activities by the simple act of breathing.”

Eighteen states and the territory of Guam filed briefs to support Bondi’s petition.

The Supreme Court has traditionally held that homes are entitled to greater privacy rights than public spaces or automobiles when police use dogs to search for illegal activity.

The justices are likely to issue a ruling by June.

Hope...

POLICE BRUTALITY - Nationwide Epidemic

Another Isolated Incident 
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

This is what 54-year-old Tomas Torres looked like after Connecticut State Police served a drug warrant on his home. From the New Haven Independent:

A state police raid on a Winthrop Avenue apartment netted no drugs or arrests—but it left Tomas Torres hospitalized and his apartment in tatters.

Torres, who’s 54, said state cops broke down the door of his first-floor Winthrop Avenue apartment Wednesday afternoon, punched him in the face, stomped on his head, and then laughed at him as they tossed his apartment looking for drugs.

Police said he tried to jump out the window, then resisted their efforts to detain and handcuff him.

They had the wrong guy, said Torres. The police found nothing in his apartment and released him to go to the hospital, where he said he was told he has a fractured arm, he said.

Here comes the comedy.

Lt. J. Paul Vance, spokesman for the state police, said he had no record of state police action anywhere in New Haven on Wednesday.

That doesn’t mean that a search warrant wasn’t executed, he said.

He’d have a record if an arrest were made, he said.

“That sounds a little suspect right off the bat,” Vance said when told of Torres’ complaints. “We don’t beat people up as a regular course of business.”

The Independent wryly links the second part of Vance’s quote to this story, about another Connecticut state drug cop who recently beat someone up.

“I know that the task force had a lawful search and seizure warrant for that apartment,” [police spokesman] Hoffman said. He said he wasn’t present at the police action. Cops have to convince a judge that they have evidence that drugs are being sold at a location in order to obtain a warrant.

Hoffman said Torres tried to jump out the window when police showed up. Then he resisted detention when police pulled him back in, he said.

Cops always knock and announce when they execute warrants; Torres must have known police were at the door, Hoffman argued.
Police did not charge Torres with any offense . . .

“They way that guy was, they didn’t need to go that far,” said someone with knowledge of the incident. “They had enough guys.

They must have had at least seven. I’m talking about big guys, husky, [handling] an old man. Even the short guy [the state cop Torres said hit him]—he was stocky.”

Here’s Torres’ account:

He was cooking pasteles and watching “Caso Cerrado” on TV when he heard someone pounding on his door.

Torres thought it was the crack dealers or users who sometimes hang out in the hallway of the building along with prostitutes. He said he keeps a pool stick behind the door to protect himself because he’s worried for his safety with the dealers hanging around.

He asked who was there. No answer.

Torres looked out the window and saw cop cars. As he moved to the door, it flew open and cops poured in. Someone punched him in the face. They shoved him to the ground. One state cop, a short man, ground his boot into Torres’ face as he lay on the floor.

The cops kept asking him, “Where are the drugs?” Torres said he didn’t have any drugs.

The cops put Torres in a chair and handcuffed him, still asking where the drugs were. They laughed as they teased a cop who had gotten Torres’ blood on his jeans.

The cops started claiming they had fought with him because he had the pool stick nearby and it posed a threat to their safety . . .

His sister, who lives nearby, expressed outrage at the incident.

“He’s a human,” she said. “Not an animal.”

Well, no. He is—or at least was—a drug suspect. That probably does give him more rights than animals, who are summarily executed in these raids. But it still puts him far short of “human.”

“Power Corrupts…”

By Bill Bonner - Daily Reckoning

12/20/11 Baltimore, Maryland – This is the last in a series. We began by wondering how come some people get to boss other people around…

We’re not talking about wives and husbands or employees and their employers. In those cases, the bossing is legit. Husbands ask for it. And employees can walk off the job anytime they like.

We’re talking about people who have the right — by law — to tell other people what to do. The TSA agent…the policeman…the building inspector…the customs agent…the IRS clerk…the FDA…the CIA…the FBI…

It is a remarkable thing, don’t you think, dear reader? It says right there in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal.’ Equality under the law is supposed to be the law of the land. And yet, some people are clearly above the law…some give orders to complete strangers…and some people even claim the right to make laws any way they want.

There are laws that tell you not to murder…and not to steal. In the 10 Commandments given to Moses, God named 10 laws that he considered important. But the folks walking the floors of Congress, the EPA, the SEC, the IRS and a plethora of other government agencies have added 10,000 more commandments. ‘Thou shalt’ this… ‘thou shalt not’ that.

You can barely go to the bathroom without asking permission from a dozen different bureaucracies. ‘Ignorance of the law,’ is said to be an ineffective defense. But it’s a very effective explanation. There are so many laws, rules, regulations, edicts, commandments, prohibitions, interdictions, injunctions, requirements and obligations that you are bound to miss one or two of them.

The latest Defense Authorization Bill just passed by Congress shows how far the law-makers and law-enforcers will go. The doctrine of habeas corpus goes back to before the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. It was an ancient Anglo-Saxon limitation on the power of government. If the feds held a prisoner, a writ of habeas corpus required them to “produce the body.” The government had to either release the person or charge him with a crime. For more than 800 years, this gave people some protection against government.

But now, in the Year of Our Lord 2011, the Congress of the United States of America, with the complicity of POTUS, himself, has seen fit to deny the right of habeas corpus to American citizens. Henceforth, the feds can capture you, put you in prison and waterboard you every day for the rest of your life. They don’t have to charge you with murder or jay-walking or any crime at all. They don’t have to let you talk to a lawyer. Or to your spouse. Or to your Congressman… They don’t have to read you your rights or provide any evidence against you. Like the Argentines in the ’80s, they just ‘disappear’ you. And you’re gone forever.

The Guardian reports:

Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of “a war that appears to have no end”.

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the “war on terror” to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.

“It’s something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration,” said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. “It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent.”

Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said “detaining citizens without a court trial is not American” and that if the law passes “the terrorists have won”.

“We’re talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. It puts every single citizen American at risk,” he said. “Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts.”

So now the feds, whose salaries we pay, can spy on us with drones we paid for too. They can send a swat team to disappear us…and keep us in prison.

Our question is: ‘what gives them the right?’ What bread to these people eat? What air do they breathe?

We’ve seen the theories. We’ve seen them in practice too. The ‘divine right of kings.’ The ‘social contract.’ ‘From each according to his abilities…’ ‘The greatest good for the greatest number.’

What they all have in common is that they are not theories, but apologia. One claims to know God’s own plan. Another imagines that the powerless masses agreed to be pushed around. Still another pretends that it’s for their own good.

Some of the excuses are implausible or unbelievable. Others are absurd. The ‘theories’ make no sense. But the facts are undeniable. And the fact is that there are always some people who are willing, ready and able to boss others around. Some rulers — the ‘insiders’ — are smarter than others. Some are nicer. Over time, you see all sorts. Their goal is always the same — to take power and wealth away from the outsiders. How much? As much as they can get away with.

You may wonder, for example, how come the governments of the developed countries all seem to be in the same deep hole of debt. If you listened to the politicians, for example, you might conclude that France and America were an ocean apart. Actually, overall tax, spending, and debt levels are similar in all OECD nations. And tax levels, generally, are about 10 times higher than they were in the last century. And their forms of government are about the same too — even though the insiders claim to have very different ideas about how to govern.

What happened?

The genius of modern democracy is that it makes the citizen a party to his own enslavement. Rather than give up 10% of his output to his feudal lord and master, he gives up 30% to 50% to his democratically-elected bosses. They tell him what to do. And he believes he is giving the orders!

Making Citizens Enemy Combatants:

Glenn Greenwald on Bradley Manning and the NDAA
Constitutional lawyer and blogger Glenn Greenwald speaks to Amy Goodman about the Manning hearings and the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. 

By Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on December 19, 2011

AMY GOODMAN: We go right now to Rio, Brazil, where we’re joined by the Salon.com writer, blogger, attorney, Glenn Greenwald, who has expressed criticism of Adrian Lamo for revealing the contents of his correspondence with Manning to the military.

Glenn, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about what’s happening right now at Fort Meade.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, what’s happening at Fort Meade is that the individual who is most responsible for having informed the world of more journalistic scoops than every single media outlet combined, who even Bill Keller, the very anti-WikiLeaks executive editor of the New York Times, said was responsible substantially for helping to trigger the Arab Spring—this is, of course, if he’s actually has done what the U.S. government has accused him of—and, as well, has helped to bring about the end of the Iraq War, not just by showing that Apache helicopter attack video, but also by publishing documents about a U.S. air strike on a home that killed six children—or actually, they did a night raid that killed six children, and the U.S. then air-bombed that house to destroy the evidence so that they could lie about what took place, which is what the Iraqi people learned about with the release of these cables, that caused the Maliki government to refuse the release of immunity—has done more to inform the world about so many things that we ought to have known than any single person alive.

If he’s alleged to have done what he’s doing, he now faces possibly the death penalty. Although the government is not seeking it, he could still have it imposed on him if he’s convicted, as well as a lifetime in prison at the age of 23, all as a result of one of the most shameful acts of deceit and treachery we’ve seen in the last several decades, which is this individual, who he had the misfortune of befriending, assuring him on multiple occasions—go look at the chat—that nothing he was saying would ever see the light of day, that as a journalist and a minister, he could offer him complete secrecy, and then even assured him later on in the conversation, quote, "Remember, nothing—none of this is for print," and then turned over everything Bradley Manning allegedly said to the United States government. It’s an extraordinary tragedy, what has happened to Bradley Manning. The criminals whom he’s exposed have suffered no consequences. The only one who’s suffering consequences is the person who exposed these grave crimes to the world.

AMY GOODMAN: And Adrian Lamo saying you don’t have any proof that he didn’t hurt people and that he did commit a crime?

GLENN GREENWALD: Think about how incredibly insultingly stupid that is. The United States government has been trying for the last year to justify why it is that they’ve been putting Bradley Manning into conditions so severe that Amnesty and the U.N. are investigating and condemning it. Their own State Department spokesman resigned in protest over it. They’re trying to justify why these leaks that WikiLeaks helped facilitate, that they’re now trying to prosecute them for, are so harmful. And even, they came out at first and said that WikiLeaks has blood on their hands, and then when media outlets like McClatchy started investigating, they were forced to admit that not a single person has been attacked or lost their lives as a result of the Afghanistan war documents that they originally claimed had blood on their hands. The benefits that these leaks have generated for the world are so enormous that we wouldn’t have time to discuss even a fraction of them. And there’s been virtually no harm. And the idea that there might have been harm, but the U.S. government is just too shy or modest about pointing to it, is really too absurd for words.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, the issue of the sexuality of Bradley Manning being raised in this hearing and what that means?

GLENN GREENWALD: You know, I think the important thing to keep in mind is that we, as journalists, or people who have an interest in this story, are looking at Bradley Manning as a hero and as somebody who has done important things for the world—at least that’s how I see him. But at the same time, he is a 23—he just turned 24. His birthday was yesterday. He’s a 24-year-old, young kid, essentially, who really does face a lifetime in prison. So he is—and I don’t blame him at all—trying to do whatever he can to avoid having his life destroyed, either being killed by the state or locked up in a cage for the rest of his life. And presumably, his attorney—and a lot of—all the Manning hearings have been shrouded in secrecy. Politico reported that there’s actually more transparency in Guantánamo hearings than there has been for the Manning tribunal, so it’s hard to know exactly what the evidence is or what’s taking place. But presumably, his lawyer believes that one of the best ways that they have to keep him out of prison for the next six decades is to argue that he had diminished capacity by virtue of emotional distress over the gender struggles that he had over his sexual orientation being in a military that had a policy of banning those who were openly gay. And so, part of this emotional distress that they’re raising is designed to say that he should be excused from his actions because they were not the byproduct of full choice.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Glenn, I wanted to ask you about a not wholly unrelated issue, and that is the issue of the military authorization bill that President Obama threatened to veto if it continued to contain the provisions about the treatment of terrorism prisoners, people who could be picked up, Americans in the United States, without trial, without hearing, and held indefinitely. President Obama has dropped the veto threat, saying the changes have satisfied him. Your thoughts?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, let’s remember that under the status quo, because of the way that the Bush and Obama administrations have interpreted their own powers in the original 2001 authorization to use military force, they already claim, the executive branch does, the power to indefinitely detain people. That’s what’s happening right now at Guantánamo. It’s what’s happening at Bagram and several other facilities. And the Obama administration has vehemently defended this power to put people into prison without any trial or charges for as long as they want to keep them there. Additionally, they—the Obama administration claims the power to target even American citizens as enemy combatants, and not just to detain them indefinitely, but to kill them, as well. That’s what they did with Anwar al-Awlaki, far from any battlefield, based on this theory that they already have this power, even before this bill is passed.

But what this bill will do, and it will be signed into law now by President Obama, as you indicated, is that it will be the first time that the United States Congress has codified the power of indefinite detention into the law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s. The 1950 Congress passed a bill saying that communists and subversives could be imprisoned without a trial, without full due process, based on the allegation that they presented a national threat, an emergency, a threat to the national security of the United States.

President Truman, knowing that the bill would—the veto would be overridden, nonetheless vetoed it and said that it made a mockery of the Bill of Rights. That law was repealed in 1971 with the Non-Detention Act, that said you cannot hold people in prison without charging them with a crime. The war on terror has eroded that principle, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, but Congress is now, with the Democrats in control of the Senate and a Democratic president, is about to enact into law the first bill that will say that the military and the United States government do have this power. It’s muddled whether it applies to U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, but it’s clearly indefinite detention, and there’s a very strong case to make that it includes U.S. citizens, as well, which, as we know, the Obama administration already claims anyway, and that’s what makes it so dangerous.

Battlefield America: Is Gitmo in Your Future?

A retired top CIA analyst ponders if he could be arrested and held under the Senate's new military detention policy. 

By Ray McGovern, Consortium News

Ambiguous but alarming new wording, which is tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and was passed by the Senate, is reminiscent of the “extraordinary measures” introduced by the Nazis after they took power in 1933.

And the relative lack of reaction so far calls to mind the oddly calm indifference with which most Germans watched the erosion of the rights that had been guaranteed by their own Constitution. As one German writer observed, “With sheepish submissiveness we watched it unfold, as if from a box at the theater.”

The writer was Sebastian Haffner (real name Raimond Pretzel), a young German lawyer worried at what he saw in 1933 in Berlin, but helpless to stop it since, as he put it, the German people “collectively and limply collapsed, yielded and capitulated.”

“The result of this millionfold nervous breakdown,” wrote Haffner at the time, “is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world.” Not a happy analogy.

The Senate bill, in effect, revokes an 1878 law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which banned the Army from domestic law enforcement after the military had been used —and often abused — in that role during Reconstruction. Ever since then, that law has been taken very seriously — until now. Military officers have had their careers brought to an abrupt halt by involving federal military assets in purely civilian criminal matters.

But that was before 9/11 and the mantra, “9/11 changed everything.” In this case of the Senate-passed NDAA – more than a decade after the terror attacks and even as U.S. intelligence agencies say al-Qaeda is on the brink of defeat – Congress continues to carve away constitutional and legal protections in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

The Senate approved the expanded military authority despite opposition from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller -- and a fake veto threat from President Obama.

The Senate voted to authorize – and generally to require – “the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons” indefinitely. And such “covered persons” are defined not just as someone implicated in the 9/11 attacks but anyone who “substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

Though the wording is itself torturous – and there is a provision for a waiver from the Defense Secretary regarding mandatory military detentions – the elasticity of words like “associated forces” and “supported” have left some civil libertarians worried that the U.S. military could be deployed domestically against people opposing future American wars against alleged “terrorists” or “terrorist states.”

The Senate clearly wished for the military’s “law and order” powers to extend beyond the territory of military bases on the theory that there may be “terrorsymps” (short for “terrorist sympathizers”) lurking everywhere.

Is the all-consuming ten-year-old struggle against terrorism rushing headlong to consume what’s left of our constitutional rights? Do I need to worry that the Army in which I was proud to serve during the 1960s may now kick down my front door and lead me off to indefinite detention — or worse?

My neighbors have noticed, after all, that I now wear a longish beard and, sometimes, even a hat like Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. And everyone knows what a terrorsymp he was.

“If you see something, say something!”

Worse still, a few of my neighbors overheard me telling my grandchildren that President Obama should be ashamed to be bragging about having Awlaki, an American citizen, and later his 16 year-old son murdered without a whiff of due process. “If you hear something, say something!”

A Lost Respect

Citizens of powerful countries used to have their rights widely respected — at home and abroad. “I am a Roman citizen”—“Civis Romanus Sum” – once counted for something. Even more respect tended to greet “I am an American” — because of our power abroad and our once famous adherence to a written Constitution at home.

Adherence? Lately not so much. Not since power-hungry politicians set out to exploit 9/11 so that “everything changed,” including even the rights formerly guaranteed us by the Bill of Rights and the habeas corpus protection in the Constitution itself.

Awlaki’s is an interesting case in point. A Muslim whose moderating influence was sought after by the Washington Establishment in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he became “radicalized” by our warring on his fellow Muslims. By noting that little-known fact, am I showing “support” for “al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces”? Will the U.S. military be obliged to target me, too?

“Not you, Grandpa,” my grandchildren reassured me at Thanksgiving. “Even with the beard and the hat, you don’t really look very much like Awlaki, or like any kind of terrorsymp. You look different; and your light skin and American citizenship should suffice to keep you safe.”

I agreed that I would probably be okay, even if I kept up my vocal criticism of what is happening. But, truth be told, I harbored doubts even on Thanksgiving. And that was before the Senate version of the defense appropriation bill passed last Thursday.

Civis Americanus Sum. Yes, I am. But does that really count for much today? It certainly offered no protection to Awlaki, or to his son. What’s to prevent one of my former colleagues at the military or the CIA — those I have roundly criticized for endorsing and cheering on the kidnappers, torturers and assassins in their employ — from adding me to the “kill-or-capture-but-preferably-kill list”?

What has been happening in this continuation of a seemingly endless “war on terror” – amid widespread public indifference – makes Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List” look like a board game. At least, the Nixon White House had a modicum of good sense not to flaunt its skirting the law and violating constitutional rights.

It is a safe bet that functionaries at the National Security Council are updating the kill-or-capture list even now that President Obama has signed the Senate version of the bill into law after it was predictably endorsed by the Republican-controlled House.

Then, what is to prevent NSC “counterterrorist” functionaries from summoning the go-to lawyers still ensconced in the Justice Department and asking them for help in navigating what appear to be deliberate ambiguities in the new bill’s language.

Backed by a John Yoo-style “legal justification,” an order could be issued to “terminate” me, while reassuring my neighbors that, yes, just as you suspected, he was a terrorsymp. Or maybe they’ll simply order some troops from the 82^nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, where I was stationed a half-century ago, to apprehend me and give me a free one-way ticket to Guantanamo.

After all, how bad could that be? Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explained to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in June 2005 that the detainees at Guantanamo were “living in the tropics. They’re well fed. They’ve got everything they could possibly want.” And would Rumsfeld lie?

Early Obfuscation

From my erstwhile colleagues at CIA, there has been more mumbo-jumbo aimed at disguising what is really afoot. According to press reports, the CIA general counsel has already said, disingenuously:  “American citizens are not immune from being treated like an enemy if they take up arms against the United States.”

But one does not need to “take up arms” in order to be labeled a “combatant,” as the government is defining such terms. Awlaki didn’t take up arms; he was said to have provided “material support to terrorism” by his alleged – but unproven – encouragement of terrorist attacks on the United States. (Under the new NDAA, a similar fate could befall someone who advocates resistance to “coalition partners,” like NATO countries or some corrupt governments that are U.S. allies, such as the Karzai regime in Afghanistan or the terror-linked government of Pakistan).

In the broad strokes of defining American “partners” and al-Qaeda/Taliban “associated forces,” will Israel fall into the first group and Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah get lumped into the second?

Could material support be nothing more than providing financial support for the U.S. Boat to Gaza, which challenged the  Israeli embargo of Hamas-ruled Gaza? If creative lawyers for this or some future administration get busy, would the new NDAA provide authority for the military to detain such a U.S. citizen under the Law of War and transfer him or her to Guantanamo or elsewhere?

Conflicting legal interpretations of the bill are now more about whether military detentions would be mandatory or would the president still retain some discretion.

In sum, the wording appears to create a parallel military justice system that, theoretically, we are all subject to. All that would be needed is an allegation by someone that we assisted someone who in some way assisted someone else in some way. An actual terrorist act would not be needed – and neither would a trial by one’s peers as guaranteed by the Constitution to determine actual “guilt.”

Should you be tempted to dismiss this as “liberal fear-mongering,” take a look at this item from FoxNews.com with its gleeful headline: “Democrat-Controlled Senate Passes Constitution-Shredding Defense Authorization Bill”:

“The bill would require military custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of Al Qaeda or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States. … The legislation also would give the government the authority to have the military hold an individual suspected of terrorism indefinitely, without a trial.

“‘Since the bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent, American citizens and others are at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial if this bill becomes law,’ said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.”

A key element in the Senate bill, like the House version, is to expand the original Authorization of the Use of Military Force Act (AUMF) of September 2001 so it no longer links exclusively to 9/11. This creates the kind of ambiguity that allows Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, to claim that the bill’s stringent provisions do apply to U.S. citizens, as well as non-citizens.

In addition, the new wording adds “associated forces” (whatever that means) to the previous AUMF’s list of targets. The language of the AUMF of September 2001 was limited to “those nations, organizations, or persons he [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

Burning the Midnight Oil

It is a safe guess that the legal pharisees were burning the midnight oil, dissecting how the draft bill can say, on the one hand, that this or that provision does not apply to American citizens — but, oops, this other provision seems to allow them to be shipped off to Guantanamo, too.

Not being expert enough to do so, I happily leave it to them to parse the language, diagram the sentences, and do surgery on each jot and tittle. There will be a veritable feast for the legal beagles.

What speaks loudest to me is the fact that two key amendments did not pass. Senate Amendment 1125 would have limited the mandatory detention provision to persons captured abroad. And Amendment 1126 would have provided that the authority of the military to detain persons without trial until the end of hostilities would not apply to American citizens. Both amendments were voted down 45 to 55.

Though President Obama has objected to the Senate bill as going too far even by his “death-to-Awlaki” standard, a more troubling question is what might these new powers mean if, say, another terrorist attack hits the United States or if a more hard-line president comes to power.

Take, for example, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, one of the Republican presidential hopefuls. Before a stump speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Perry gave us a hint of what his policies, and maybe even his Cabinet, would look like.

Perry flew in none other than racial profiler par excellence, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio. No, I’m not kidding; Perry apparently saw this as a way to strengthen his “law and order” credentials (accent, of course, on “order”).

As I sat in the audience, Arpaio’s arrival took me by surprise, so perhaps I can be forgiven for reflexively bellowing a prolonged boo, as Arpaio made his way slowly and carefully up to the lectern to warm up the crowd. Later it occurred to me that booing may be something that gets you on the chain gang in Maricopa County; Arpaio did not seem at all used to it, and he did not take it well.

Reaching the podium, he turned and demanded to know who was booing, so I stood up from my second-row-center seat and raised my hand high. Fortunately for me, he had none of his deputies along, and booing is apparently not yet banned at Town Hall meetings in New Hampshire. Only Arpaio seemed to pay much heed.

Although I knew enough about Arpaio to consider him fully deserving of a loud boo or two, I did not know the half of it. Let me treat you to some encomia from the sheriff’s own official Web site:

“Arpaio knows what the public wants, [and] has served them well by establishing several unique programs. Arpaio …  started the nation’s largest Tent City for convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in a canvas incarceration compound. It is a remarkable success story. …

“Of equal success and notoriety are his chain gangs, which contribute thousands of dollars of free labor to the community. The male chain gang, and the world’s first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs, clean streets, paint over graffiti, and bury the indigent in the county cemetery.

“Also impressive are the Sheriff’s get tough policies. For example, he banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs between 15 and 40 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers $20,000 a year.

“Another program Arpaio is very well known for is the pink underwear he makes all inmates wear. Years ago, when the Sheriff learned that inmates were stealing jailhouse white boxers, Arpaio had all inmate underwear dyed pink for better inventory control. … Arpaio looks forward to many more years as Sheriff of Maricopa County.”

Again, I am not making this up. You can check out the sheriff’s Web site for yourself for still more.

I have to concede that I find the last sentence about Arpaio’s future plans somewhat reassuring because if he plans to stay in Maricopa County, it means his policing policies would stay limited to a fairly small geographic area (although perhaps that’s not good news for the people of Maricopa County).

But things could be worse if a President Perry picked Arpaio to take over the Department of Justice and Attorney General Arpaio had a chance to incarcerate more of us in tent prisons. But Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t exactly shown himself to be a great defender of constitutional rights either.

Perry Strutting His Stuff

Back in New Hampshire, after Arpaio provided a lackluster introduction, Perry took the stage, offering unctuous thank yous to Sheriff Joe. Perry then reminded us forcefully that he is a “law and order guy.”

That resonated with me in an unusually personal way — so much so, that I missed some of his other by now notorious remarks, like his appeal for all those 21 or over (sic) to vote for him in the New Hampshire primary and those from 18 to 21 to work hard and look toward the day when they too can vote. (sic)

Still, the words “law and order” stuck in my mind. I thought under what law did Perry several months ago call on Attorney General Holder to prosecute me and the other passengers on the Audacity of Hope, the U.S. Boat to Gaza as it challenged Israel’s blockade?

Because Perry had been busy glad-handing folks off to the side when I rose to plead guilty to booing Arpaio, the governor didn’t see who it was. And, as luck would have it, he called on me for the first question of the Q & A:

“I’m Ray McGovern, and I thank you for coming here, Governor Perry. My question pertains to a letter that you wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder on the 28th of June of this year, and I quote: ‘As governor of one of the largest states, I write to encourage you to aggressively prosecute those on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, who plan to interfere with Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza.’

“You may not have been aware that, three days previous, the State Department spokeswoman was asked three times whether Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza was legal and she refused to say the blockade was legal. I was one of those passengers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, and with my co-passengers we were wondering what you, as the governor of Texas, a ‘law and order’ person … under what law did you wish to prosecute my co-passengers and me?”

Perry turned his response into a commentary on how much he supports Israel — no matter what. Like all of his rivals for the Republican nomination (except Ron Paul, who generally refuses to play this craven game), Perry is not about to let anyone outdistance him in expressing unqualified support for Israel.  And so, he began:

“The issue was that … a … I am a very strong supporter of Israel. … I’ve made my point; I must stand with Israel. … I’m going to stand with Israel. … And you’re free to go stand with who you want to, Sir, … but I will be standing with Israel.”

“No matter what?” I asked.  “No matter what” was his emphatic response that can be heard beneath a crescendo of applause from Perry supporters. [To watch the video of this encounter, click here.]

How Far Will It Go?

With the new language in the NDAA, it would appear that Gov. Perry and others might soon have all the law they need to stifle acts or words that give support to Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or any other perceived threat to Israel, at least after Obama signs the legislation and some smart lawyers get to work on the definition of “associated forces.”

Then, will the 82^nd Airborne be sent to fetch me if I continue to write and speak what I believe to be the truth on issues like these? What will I be risking if I keep hammering home little known facts like the following, which seldom, if ever, find their way into the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM)?

• Israel itself helped to create Hamas in 1987 as a Muslim fundamentalist, divide-and-conquer counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

• The bulk of Hamas’s popular appeal — like that enjoyed by Hezbollah in Lebanon — stems not from the crude rockets fired toward Israel, but rather from the tangible help Hamas provides to oppressed Palestinians.

Is James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, now treading on thin ice? This is what Clapper included as a sort of afterthought at the end of his 34-page “Worldwide Threat Assessment” before the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 10, 2011. (You guessed right; the FCM, for some reason, missed it):

“We see a growing proliferation of state and non-state actors providing medical assistance to reduce foreign disease threats to their own populations, garner influence with affected local populations, and project power regionally. … In some cases, countries use health to overtly counter Western influence, presenting challenges to allies and our policy interests abroad over the long run.

“In last year’s threat assessment, the Intelligence Community noted that extremists may take advantage of a government’s inability to meet the health needs of its population, highlighting that HAMAS’s and Hizballah’s provision of health and social services in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon helped to legitimize those organizations as a political force.  This also has been the case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.”

This, most assuredly, is not the Official Washington party line. Could the Director of National Intelligence himself be prosecuted by those who believe that any good word for those that Israel considers enemies — like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran — is tantamount to “material support” for terrorism?

(I do hope readers were not shocked by the diabolically clever way these “terrorist” movements garner public support — by providing life-saving medical care, for example.)

• It was on that public-service record (and also because of wide awareness of flagrant corruption in the PLO), that Hamas won a key parliamentary election in January 2006, defeating the PLO-affiliated Fatah party. While the election results were not disputed, they were not what the U.S., Israel and Europe wanted. So the U.S. and the EU cut off financial assistance to Gaza.

• Confidential documents, corroborated by former U.S. officials, show that thereupon the White House had the CIA try in 2007, with the help of Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, to defeat Hamas in a bloody civil war. That, too, did not go as expected. Hamas won handily, leaving it stronger than ever. [See “The Gaza Bombshell” by David Rose, in Vanity Fair, April 2008, for the entire sad story.]

• Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade on Gaza eventually reducing virtually all Gazans to a bare subsistence level, with 45 percent unemployment.

• From Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009, while President George W. Bush was a lame duck, Israel launched an armed attack on Gaza, killing about 1,400 Gazans compared to an Israeli death toll of 13. Israel’s stated aim was to stop rocket fire into Israel and block any arms deliveries to Gaza.

President-elect Barack Obama said nothing. His unconscionable silence at the slaughter should have told us at that early juncture that he, too, would feel so politically intimidated that he would mute any objections to Israeli behavior. Since then, he has retreated from even his mild objections to Israel’s expanded settlements on Palestinian lands.

Guilt by Association

The United States is widely seen as responsible for Israel’s aggressive behavior, which is hardly surprising. It is no secret that Israel enjoys financial assistance ($3 billion per year), military backing, and virtually unquestioned political support from Washington.

What is surprising, in the words of Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald, is “how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels terrorism directed at the U.S.,” and how it is taboo to point this out.

Take for example former CIA specialist on al-Qaeda, Michael Scheuer, who had the audacity to state on C-SPAN: “For anyone to say that our support for Israel doesn’t hurt us in the Muslim world … is to just defy reality.”

The Likud Lobby got Scheuer fired from his job at the Jamestown Foundation think tank for his forthrightness, and the Israeli media condemned his C-SPAN remarks as “blatantly anti-Semitic.” There can be a high price to pay for candor on this issue.

That is what those behind the noxious language in the NDAA seem to intend. Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain were the driving force behind the new language. No one in the Senate or House has received more funding from donor institutions related to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than Levin, a Michigan Democrat.

For his part, McCain loves to demonstrate his unquestioning support for Israel — no matter what. He has even called for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who is currently serving a life sentence for passing highly sensitive, highly damaging U.S. secrets to Israel.

A few weeks ago, McCain parroted Tel Aviv’s line on Iran alleged drive to acquire a nuclear weapon (for which U.S. intelligence sees no concrete evidence) and how that creates a “direct existential threat to the state of Israel.” McCain added that Israel “may feel compelled to neutralize this threat.”

Would it be risking running afoul of the language in the defense authorization bill to expose this rhetoric for what it is — rubbish — noxious rubbish that makes it easier for Israel to believe it will enjoy full U.S. support, no matter what, should Israeli leaders decide to attack Iran?

The supreme irony is that such an attack would probably bring on a major war, global economic collapse, and possibly the destruction of Israel itself. Oops, what was that sound at the door? What do you mean — the 82nd is on the front porch?

Sorry; gotta go. Send cards and letters. My wife will probably be told, in due course, where they’ve put me. My only hope now is that Rumsfeld, for once, was telling the truth about detainees having “everything they could possibly want” in that tropical resort named Guantanamo?
 

FBI to launch nationwide facial recognition service

By Aliya Sternstein 10/07/2011

The FBI by mid-January will activate a nationwide facial recognition service in select states that will allow local police to identify unknown subjects in photos, bureau officials told Nextgov.

The federal government is embarking on a multiyear, $1 billion dollar overhaul of the FBI's existing fingerprint database to more quickly and accurately identify suspects, partly through applying other biometric markers, such as iris scans and voice recordings.

Often law enforcement authorities will "have a photo of a person and for whatever reason they just don't know who it is [but they know] this is clearly the missing link to our case," said Nick Megna, a unit chief at the FBI's criminal justice information services division. The new facial recognition service can help provide that missing link by retrieving a list of mug shots ranked in order of similarity to the features of the subject in the photo.

Today, an agent would have to already know the name of an individual to pull up the suspect's mug shot from among the 10 million shots stored in the bureau's existing Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Using the new Next-Generation Identification system that is under development, law enforcement analysts will be able to upload a photo of an unknown person; choose a desired number of results from two to 50 mug shots; and, within 15 minutes, receive identified mugs to inspect for potential matches.
Users typically will request 20 candidates, Megna said. The service does not provide a direct match.

Michigan, Washington, Florida and North Carolina will participate in a test of the new search tool this winter before it is offered to criminal justice professionals across the country in 2014 as part of NGI. The project, which was awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp. in 2008, already has upgraded the FBI's fingerprint matching service.

Local authorities have the choice to file mug shots with the FBI as part of the booking process. The bureau expects its collection of shots to rival its repository of 70 million fingerprints once more officers are aware of the facial search's capabilities.

Thomas E. Bush III, who helped develop NGI's system requirements when he served as assistant director of the CJIS division between 2005 and 2009, said, "The idea was to be able to plug and play with these identifiers and biometrics." Law enforcement personnel saw value in facial recognition and the technology was maturing, said the 33-year FBI veteran who now serves as a private consultant.

NGI's incremental construction seems to align with the White House's push to deploy new information technology in phases so features can be scrapped if they don't meet expectations or run over budget.

But immigrant rights groups have raised concerns that the Homeland Security Department, which exchanges digital prints with the FBI, will abuse the new facial recognition component. Currently, a controversial DHS immigrant fingerprinting program called Secure Communities runs FBI prints from booked offenders against the department's IDENT biometric database to check whether they are in the country illegally. Homeland Security officials say they extradite only the most dangerous aliens, including convicted murderers and rapists. But critics say the FBI-DHS print swapping ensnares as many foreigners as possible, including those whose charges are minor or are ultimately dismissed.

Megna said Homeland Security is not part of the facial recognition pilot. But, Bush said in the future NGI's data, including the photos, will be accessible by Homeland Security's IDENT.

The planned addition of facial searches worries Sunita Patel, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, who said, "Any database of personal identity information is bound to have mistakes. And with the most personal immutable traits like our facial features and fingerprints, the public can't afford a mistake."

In addition, Patel said she is concerned about the involvement of local police in information sharing for federal immigration enforcement purposes. "The federal government is using local cops to create a massive surveillance system," she said.

Bush said, "We do have the capability to search against each other's systems," but added, "if you don't come to the attention of law enforcement you don't have anything to fear from these systems."

Other civil liberties advocates questioned whether the facial recognition application would retrieve mug shots of those who have simply been arrested. "It might be appropriate to have nonconvicted people out of that system," said Jim Harper, director of information policy at the libertarian Cato Institute. FBI officials declined to comment on the recommendation.

Harper also noted large-scale searches may generate a lot of false positives, or incorrect matches. Facial recognition "is more accurate with a Google or a Facebook, because they will have anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen pictures of an individual, whereas I imagine the FBI has one or two mug shots," he said.

FBI officials would not disclose the name of the search product or the vendor, but said they gained insights on the technique's accuracy by studying research from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

In responding to concerns about the creation of a Big Brother database for tracking innocent Americans, Megna said the system will not alter the FBI's authorities or the way it conducts business. "This doesn't change or create any new exchanges of data," he said. "It only provides [law enforcement] with a new service to determine what photos are of interest to them."

In 2008, the FBI released a privacy impact assessment summarizing its appraisal of controls in place to ensure compliance with federal privacy regulations. Megna said that, during meetings with the CJIS Advisory Policy Board and the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact Council, "we haven't gotten a whole lot of pushback on the photo capability."

The FBI has an elaborate system of checks and balances to guard fingerprints, palm prints, mug shots and all manner of criminal history data, he said.

"This is not something where we want to collect a bunch of surveillance film" and enter it in the system, Megna said. "That would be useless to us. It would be useless to our users."

Breaking out of Zip-tie Restraints

As a public service to protesters everywhere on the eve of greater days...

Madison WI activists' resolution to deny constitutional rights to corporations

By Sahil Kapur - RAW Story - Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Wisconsin activists are promoting a symbolic resolution in the city of Madison to build support for the belief that corporations don't deserve constitutional rights like people.

"Only human beings, not corporations, are entitled to constitutional rights," reads the terse resolution offered by the group Move To Amend. "Money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech."

The Supreme Court's decision last year in Citizens United vs. FEC granted corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections -- federal law would legally override attempts by cities and states to reverse it.

The move was covered by the local Isthmus newspaper and heralded in a letter to the editor published in another Madison paper. "It’s time to say 'no' to the court's decision," wrote Jacqueline Kelley. "On April 5, we can vote 'yes' twice for the amendment as residents of both Madison and Dane County. Our future could depend upon a proper outcome."

The full text of the resolution follows.

####

"RESOLVED, the City of Madison, Wisconsin, calls for reclaiming democracy from the corrupting effects of undue corporate influence by amending the United States Constitution to establish that:

1. Only human beings, not corporations, are entitled to constitutional rights, and
2. Money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech."

Why Judicial Corruption is Invisible

Institutional Rot
By JOHN BARTH, Jr.

We all would like to believe that, as when we were children in a family, there is in our society a final authority to whom we can turn in case we are seriously wronged. We are not predisposed to believe the accusers of the judicial process any more than the detractors of Santa Claus. Perhaps critics are merely sore losers or angry convicts, and perhaps judicial misconduct would be exposed by appeals courts or the mass media, and corrected. Why guess our way without the facts? Such pre-dispositions held by many otherwise educated adults allow pervasive institutional corruption of the judicial branch to remain hidden.

Judicial corruption is invisible to citizens, because lawyers are trained and motivated to deny and cannot safely speak of it, because mass media corporations agree with judicial prejudice and live in fear of judicial whims, because non-lawyers cannot obtain the facts without prohibitive cost and effort, and because the infantile myth of judicial salvation has broad appeal and is propagated as an opiate by the mass media. Judicial corruption is discovered by those of its victims willing to do years of tedious research, and only they will speak of it.

Lawyers do not speak against judges, on whom they depend for income stability and success, and often aspire to be judges. They do not criticize law practice and precedent, which they are selected and trained to accept regardless of validity, and which they could not otherwise use successfully. The mass media are silent because they and their advertisers are big businesses in agreement with judicial prejudice, advised by lawyers, and dependent upon judicial whim for protection from libel suits. They do not investigate judicial corruption.

The persistent citizen can only see judgments written by the selected winner to sound plausible. The other facts and argument are costly to obtain, and mountains of cases must be studied in each area to see how rules are misapplied and facts fabricated, and how false "principles of law" are abstracted from bad precedents. So we are dependent for information upon rare lawyers like Gerry Spence and the few independent citizens with persistent involvement in federal cases.

I had once sponsored a dozen orphans in Latin America, and had acquired the campus of the former Nasson College in Maine to establish an independent nonsectarian coeducational school, whose students would sponsor about 2000 orphans in developing nations to teach responsibility to the less fortunate, using my engineering income and extensive study of the founding and administration of schools. After twenty years of planning and renovating buildings, all this was destroyed by the nearby town encouraging the racing of ATVs on an abandoned railroad bed alongside the school. Many ignorant villagers had long harbored malice against the middle class, outsiders, and the former college, which they transferred to our school to preserve their devil. Dozens and later hundreds of them created an intolerable noise nuisance (92 to 112 dBA at the center of the campus) and committed hundreds of crimes annually large and small, including murder attempts, arson, ransacking our buildings, rifle fire into the campus, destroying all of our vehicles, and grand theft, to prevent us from using our facilities, with the enthusiastic help of their town government. The causes named were "elitism", "outsiders", and conflation with the hated college, but the motives were the local recreation of bullying, harassment, vandalism, and gang activity. After several years of social amelioration, political efforts, and enforcement, matters had only become worse. All laws and sensible precedents were on our side. Any honorable court would have jumped at the opportunity to defend a charity from such obvious wrongdoing.

But there were no honorable courts. I discovered in the eight-year legal battle to defend the school's right to use its facilities, that the judiciary is utterly corrupt from bottom to top, so completely that I would not have undertaken the defense, or my life-long effort to found the charity, if I had suspected the staggering corruption exposed. I had been deceived by popular myth and my belief that wrongs would be corrected where there was great gain to society and no significant cost. The experience of defending Springvale School against the hoodlums and town government of Sanford, Maine, and researching and fighting the legal cases all the way to the supreme court of Maine, and three times to the US Supreme Court, taught me not only the relevant law and procedure, but more about the corruption of the judicial branch than most want to know. The pervasiveness of such corruption had been invisible to me throughout my life and these efforts of so many years.

The Motives of Judicial Corruption

The motives of judicial corruption are the prejudices of wealth and power shared by judges, lawyers, and favored parties; the concealed economy of favors between lawyers and judges; and actual bribes by indirect cashflows.

The prejudices common among judges and lawyers favor interests and parties with whom they share beliefs, circumstances of ethnicity, sex, or income, and aspirations of wealth, power, and prestige. Most struggle for upper class luxuries to measure up and overcome guilt: the grand residence, Mercedes, second homes and finest restaurant meals. Rejecting as unprofitable the moral dedication which deserves respect, they pretend that money and power measure respectability, that people without those merit contempt, that their duty is to trash cases without lawyers, and see that big businesses, wealthy persons, and sometimes government agencies (in that order) win their cases regardless of the facts. They do not criticize judges without major public pressure, and they do not defend constitutional rights against government or business unless the public is in rebellion. The many ordinary cases which do not trigger judicial prejudice conceal an underground river of prejudice. Law firms must match lawyers to the ethnicity and sex of the judge, and often try to match physiognomy, personality, and preferred style.

There is a concealed economy of favors and intangible benefits which influences judgments either through the judge or between opposing lawyers. This is apparent with long observation of the conduct of lawyers and judges. Lawyer favors to throw the case include technical mistakes, poor arguments, concessions, and omissions. Judge favors include the means of corrupt judgment stated. Lawyers and judges often "owe you one" and pay up invisibly.

The least quantifiable corruptions are bribes by indirect cashflows via law firms, relatives, and seemingly unrelated transactions. Judges, lawyers, law partners, and their relatives and agents have many investments which may be more or less favorable if someone "owes one", before or after a case has been thrown. A simple case is the judge's relative with high-profit speculations such as land, art, or securities. Smaller cashflows buy false transcripts and critical secretarial errors such as lost evidence and delays.

The Hypocrisy of the Judiciary

Although the middle class is threatened primarily by subsidies of the wealthy like wars, financial scams, inflated healthcare, and lawsuits, many are recruited to serve their exploiters by promises of wealth, and hypothetical threats like terrorists, communists, fair taxation, and social welfare programs. Within the judiciary and among lawyers, as within large business corporations, middle class aspirants see the path to wealth and power impaired by virtue and cleared by hypocrisy, and become evangelists for their overlords, despite their own middle class status and prospects. Most judges and lawyers seek to please and protect the wealthy and powerful, and will betray every moral code and public duty to humanity, in hope of advancement and indirect bribes. Most pretend to believe, and religiously ensure, that wealth and power to help or harm themselves should decide all legal contests.

There is a natural hierarchy of contempt among those who have earned little, but hold wealth or power by accidents of birth and business, or by collusion and scheming. Throughout history wealth and power have concealed their true sources, seeking to sanctify themselves by acquiring symbols of respectability, and creating myths of superiority of race or class. If wealth and power are the measure of respectability, then less is less respectable, and little is contemptible, unless in the service of wealth and power. And so most judges and lawyers believe that those who do not have the wealth and power to help or harm them deserve to lose their rights.

The Means Of Corrupt Judgment

It is usually a simple matter for a judge to choose the most wealthy or powerful party in a legal case, or the outcome which serves himself, and to allow or dismiss the case, corrupt the facts, and instruct the preferred side to write a judgment within the pseudo-law of precedents and rationalizations favorable to the wealthy, which is the chief product of lawyers.

The simplest corruption is systematic abuse of procedure rules to allow or dismiss cases. For example, a judge claims format defects, demands removal of the critical claims, facts and arguments, and dismisses the case as too lengthy if the plaintiffs refuse, or for insufficient fact if they comply. The judiciary does not allow appeals of fact judgments or dismissals for format issues, so as to establish themselves as an unconstitutional aristocracy, and outsiders cannot find the truth.

The next stage of judicial corruption is false statement of the facts. The judge simply states a false set of "facts" which would lead any other court to the desired conclusion, and the resulting judgment not only looks plausible but cannot be appealed. The corrupt side submits the judgment you will be allowed to see, which is rubberstamped without effort or risk of appeal. Any case not favored by the judiciary requires a jury trial and an intense battle over evidence, but the judge simply refuses to admit evidence which contradicts his prejudice. If enough facts are deleted, the case is given his "summary judgment" without trial. If tried, the outcome is determined by the false picture of fact.

Any cases remaining to be thrown are corrupted by false legal arguments. Judges and most lawyers spend their lives creating and searching for plausible deceptions and rationales for the most selfish and wrongful acts, which they celebrate as a professional skill. These are concealed by stating and misapplying corrupt "principles of law" from prior inadequate, irrelevant, and corrupt judgments. Threads of bad precedents form a fabric of false legal "principle" leading to any result desired, just as better precedents form reasonable legal arguments. So the resulting corrupt judgment seems logical and in accord with tradition despite irrational results, and reinforces the bad precedents. As "case law" accumulates to favor wealth and oppose the rights of citizens, the whole body of legal precedent becomes irreparable, and ever more defended by its adherents.

Corrupt Judges Destroy the Lives of Thousands

The legal contest between my charity school, Springvale School, and a small town in Maine went on for eight years, one case to the Maine supreme court and three cases all the way to the US supreme court, but none of the civil rights issues ever emerged in court, due to judicial prejudice that towns (and the US) beat charities regardless of the facts. "They're just going to dismiss it anyway" said the clerk of the federal court. Civil rights complaints were systematically dismissed, ordered to delete fact or argument until insufficient, or falsely claimed to be identical to prior cases. Nearly every statement by the many judges and lawyers involved was an astounding lie about the facts or the arguments, excuse after cover-up after excuse, the principal life skill of the judges and lawyers. The evidence is conclusive in case after case after case: corruption and only corruption drove the process. The result of this corruption was that the school could not be opened, even as its facilities were becoming ready for use.

The denial of fundamental rights to a charity is the lowest form of hypocrisy. The searching for pretexts to do so proves the intent of vindictive hypocritical attack upon the foundations of civilization. Such intent on the part of a judge indicates the most extreme abuse of public trust, and is grounds for removal and barring from any position of responsibility. The judiciary has established an hypocrisy and arrogance so extreme, that to spare themselves one second of work they would destroy the life of an orphan.

This is an utter disgrace to the judiciary, the cold-blooded destruction of lives like our own, for no gain and no principle of justice, at a rate seven times the murder rate for the entire state of Maine, which will now continue forever. Ten thousand children’s lives every fifty years. There is nothing more I can do to save these children; the judiciary has destroyed them. There is no particle of honor nor decency in the being of any of the numerous judges and lawyers; their hypocrisy, corruption and wickedness are absolute. Be proud, America: neither I, my school, nor any citizen can defend civil rights unless the denial of defense threatens the wealthy.

The Myth of Judicial Defense of Constitutional Rights

A first look at the failure of the federal government to enforce the constitutional rights of individuals suggests that the political will disappeared after the early federal era, with the transition from farming to trade, industrialism, and the lead-up to the Civil War. But the Bill of Rights was an afterthought tacked on to the Constitution to keep the more principled and educated delegates in the fold. To the majority who wanted the military security and economic gains of union, it was a pleasant declaration of noble sentiments, with little risk of actual enforcement.

The Constitution specified no means of enforce the Bill of Rights, and federal courts denied for almost a century that they had that power without specific federal laws, and then refused to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1872 for almost another century. When they did enforce, they were motivated solely by the fear of increasing riots in the streets, rebellion threatening the wealthy and powerful. And they promptly afterward eviscerated the principle in those decisions to prevent less powerful minorities from enforcing the same general rights.

The wealthy and powerful of industrial democracies have little need for individual rights, a costly inconvenience in business: they can buy influence and respect, and their interests are granted as needed by sympathetic judges. Judges loudly declare their defenses of constitutional rights for the rich and powerful, and for others only when they are sufficiently numerous and angry that judges must appease them, but scorn the same rights when asserted by the poor, the few, or those without a voice.

Unfortunately, the Constitutional Convention also neglected to provide significant checks and balances upon the judicial branch. There were to be only 12 federal judges then versus about 900 today, and the much greater numbers of the Legislative and Executive branches, who controlled judicial pay, suggested to the delegates that the Judicial branch had better behave. The Constitution provides only that “judges shall serve during good behavior” without providing a definition or specifying who would exercise that power. So the judicial branch created a Judicial Conference in judgment of itself, denies that any other branch may provide checks and balances of itself, and claims privately to be an aristocracy prohibited by the Constitution and serving only themselves. Nothing could be further from the intent of the framers of the Constitution.

What Reforms Are Needed?

Numerous problems have emerged with the judicial branch of the federal government since its formation under the Constitution, some dealt with by legislation such as 28 USC. But fewfundamental reforms have been made to meet its many deficiencies. Law is now the only profession subject to no effective standard of performance, no reporting or monitoring to prevent corrupt practices, and no effective recourse for its malpractice victims. Fundamental reforms are long overdue.

There are inherent problems with any justice system regardless of reforms, such as problems of evidence quality, and conflicting principles of justice in complex situations, where any solution may seem arbitrary. Reform cannot change the fact that one side wins and the other loses. But many serious problems can be solved by well proven methods to improve the quality of justice.

Citizens, lawyers and courts must have access to a federal Legal Advisory Service, to provide mandatory guidelines for conduct and judgment, both in general and for any specific case, based upon multi-partisan research and reports compiled by a College of Legal Advisors in the legislative branch, structured to guarantee diversity of opinion. Judges and lawyers must be strictly monitored for compliance with the guidelines for judgment, and their financial and all other transactions reported and monitored for corrupt influence. Procedures must eliminate the ability of lawyers, police officers, and crime labs to influence evidence according to their prejudices. Citizens must be enabled to conduct actions without a lawyer by procedures ensuring that the best professional advice is available and that no tricks or penalties can be imposed, with a lawyer assigned at public expense when meritorious. No lawyers may be required for small or nonprofit corporations or class actions. Maximum lawyer fees must be regulated by type of case, service performed, and quality of work. No action should be dismissed without judgment on the merits. Appeal of any judgment including findings of fact should be allowed at least twice with judges of distinct legal philosophy, with or without new evidence or legal theory.

Except during public emergency, any government entity must be allowed to be sued without its consent and without recourse to any immunity statute or special procedures, for all offenses including negligence, failure to enforce and selective enforcement. By a new form of action, limited only to prevent redundancy, a citizen should be allowed to sue any government entity including the judicial branch for noncompliance with law, without its consent and regardless of any involvement of the party bringing suit, and no judgment thereunder in favor of government should be final.

In addition, the personnel of the judiciary, lawyers, and the instructors and administrators of law schools must be thoroughly cleansed. Most are just the wrong people with the wrong motives to perform these functions. They have selected their careers and have caused these problems for personal gain, and have mastered skills which would enable them to ruin any reform and to restore their corrupt aristocracy. Their complete removal and replacement, regardless of the delays involved, would not cause significant injustice in comparison with the existing system in operation. The reforms of legal education and judge selection recommended by Gerry Spence in With Justice For None are good starting points.

Most of the existing body of "case law" must be discarded as the foundation of judicially fabricated "principles" on which corruption is based. The process of deciding cases on the basis of precedents is poor because Congress has legislated few guidelines. That situation can be corrected by the College of Legal Advisors, using the best legal precedents as the basis for legislated principles of law.

If these reforms are done well, the judicial branch could begin to serve the people rather than the wealthy and itself.