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Posts Tagged ‘justice’

Audit Congress

Posted by Richard on February 10, 2009

It's come to my attention recently that we seem to have quite a few elected officials and appointees to high government office who forget to declare all their income or can't understand even the relatively simple parts of the tax code. Yet, when their past failings and "oversights" come to light, they usually suffer no consequences other than having to pay up — and usually without any penalties.

This state of affairs has at least two deleterious consequences: 

  • It breeds cynicism among the citizenry and undermines confidence in and commitment to the rule of law.
  • It suggests that there are elected and appointed officials, possibly in sensitive positions, who may be susceptible to blackmail and extortion. 

Dan Murphy and Peter Langlois have an idea for correcting this corrosive situation, and they've set up AuditCongress.com to promote the idea: 

This site is dedicated to a simple proposition.  If you serve the public in a position of high responsibility, you deserve to submit to an IRS audit annually.  If you lobby congress, hold a cabinet position, or serve any federally appointed position, feel free to get in line at the IRS.  Consider it "table stakes" for establishing fiduciary credibility.  We can't afford tax cheats as Congressman and Senators, nor as federal attorneys, prosecutors, or administrators.

When you're finished cheering, go check it out.

If you have some ideas on the subject, contact them about getting posting rights on the blog and a list of topics they'd like someone to address.

But check out the guidelines first. These guys are pretty determined to keep the discussion civil, and they're just a wee bit paranoid about things like defamation and their potential legal liability. Understandable, I suppose — the law doesn't generally cut us ordinary citizens as much slack as it does our rulers public servants.

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Terror supporters convicted

Posted by Richard on November 27, 2008

The retrial of five Holy Land Foundation officials (the first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury deadlocked) has finally ended. All the defendants were convicted on all counts:

The men, Shukri Abu-Baker, Ghassan Elashi, Mohamed El-Mezain, Mufid Abdulqader and Abdelrahman Odeh, could face up to 20 years in prison for their convictions on conspiracy counts, including conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. The verdicts, read Monday afternoon, ended a two-year saga in what is considered the largest terror financing case since the 9/11 attacks.

After the first trial, I remember lots of criticism of government prosecutors for presenting a very complicated case — with scores of witnesses, lots of complex financial data, and tons of evidence — in a very disorganized and hard-to-follow manner. Someone seems to have addressed that problem effectively this time (emphasis added):

Prosecutors made a series of significant adjustments, from dropping 29 counts each against defendants Mufid Abdulqader and Abdelrahman Odeh, to adding new witnesses who could put the charity support in context. In addition, jurors in this trial saw three exhibits Israeli military officials seized from the Palestinian Authority which showed the PA also considered HLF to be a Hamas financer and that an HLF-supported charity committee was controlled by Hamas.

The result was a much more streamlined case that followed a logical narrative, said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. Seeing the Palestinian Authority reach the same conclusion as the U.S. government had to have helped, he said.

In addition, prosecutors provided summary exhibits that served as "a road map" to the case and had to help jurors deliberate, Margulies said. "The jury was able to look at the evidence and get past the perceived biases of any of the witnesses and see the evidence as a whole."

That evidence made clear that the defendants knew where the money raised in the U.S. was going despite legal prohibitions against support for Hamas.

The verdict was hailed by M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Prosecutors prevailed because they were able to "connect the ideology of political Islam and the overriding mission of Islamist organizations like the HLF to their desire to contribute to the efforts of terror groups, like Hamas," he said. "When this connection is made we will see the return of a guilty verdict. In future [terrorism financing] cases DOJ will not only have to connect the financial dots but [will have] to demonstrate an overarching common Islamist mission."

Don't forget that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — which the media (and many in the government) routinely portray as the voice of moderate American Muslims — was an unindicted co-conspirator in this case. Because the leadership of CAIR shares that "ideology of political Islam" and "Islamist mission."

BTW, those inclined to see this as just another example of the Bush administration trampling on civil liberties should take it up with members of Congress and the previous administration (it looks like many of the latter will be back on January 20th):

… Support for Hamas became illegal with a 1995 executive order by President Bill Clinton and subsequent congressional action.

HT: LGF  

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Appeals court rules against child seizures

Posted by Richard on May 22, 2008

This decision strikes me as a victory for parental rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law:

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — A Texas appeals court said Thursday that the state had no right to take more than 400 children from a polygamist sect's ranch, a ruling that could unravel one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state offered "legally and factually insufficient" grounds for the "extreme" measure of removing all children from the ranch, from babies to teenagers.

The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court approval, the appeals court said. The state never provided evidence that teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children, the court said.

"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the court said in its ruling, overturning the order to keep the children by state District Judge Barbara Walther, a former family law attorney.

The appeals court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as an individual household and that any abuse claims could apply only to individual households.

This story doesn't mention the anonymous phone calls cited at the time as grounds for the warrant. Considering what we've learned since, the state probably didn't rely on that "evidence" during the appeal.

 The caller claimed she was a 16-year-old girl at the compound who was being abused by her uncle-husband. Authorities had no idea who (or where) the caller was and no corroboration of the story, but a judge signed off on the warrant anyway.

Weeks later, investigators determined that the caller was actually a 33-year-old Colorado woman, Rozita Swinton, who's made similar hoax calls on other occasions (and is apparently very convincing).

Many of the other claims made by Child Protective Services to justify taking the 400+ kids have also fallen apart:

Roughly a third of the children taken from the west Texas ranch were babies, and only a few dozen were teenage girls.   Of the 31 originally believed to be underage mothers, 15 have been reclassified as adults — one was 27 years old — and the state conceded a 14-year-old girl had no children and was not pregnant, as officials previously asserted.

About the time that Swinton was identified, an old friend wrote me about this case, and I recall thinking I should read up on it and post something. But it was during one of my distracted periods, and I never did. I never replied to that email, either; sorry, John! I'll make amends by quoting your message, which says it as well as I could:

I am perplexed that there is no real uproar over the raid on the LDS compound in Texas. Putting aside any judgments about the issues of plural marriage and young marriages (btw, just why do we ban plural marriage?), the raid was based on a single call [several, but the point's still valid -ed.] to a non-governmental center and was anonymous at that. There was no evidence presented. There was no smoking gun. And now it seems that the call was a hoax. Where are the civil libertarians when it comes to this raid? What happened to the ACLU?

I certainly am not arguing that the call should not have been investigated, nor am I defending the compound. I do think more time and effort should have been invested in finding out if the story even made sense. The state had time to organize the raid, which involved hundreds of law enforcement and human services employees, but not enough time to find out if the call was even real. Using anonymous sources to get warrants as was done here violates our constitutional rights to face our accusers. When justice and our rights under the constitution become situational we are indeed in trouble.

And yet I see no one asking the essential question of the state of Texas, "Do you have this right?" I know this will play out in court and be settled after long years and much expense but the lives of the 400+ children are being sacrificed in the process, along with those of their parents.

Thanks to this appeals court ruling, this case may play out much sooner than John anticipated. But that doesn't change the fact that the local and state authorities acted outrageously.

I suppose it could have been worse. If Rosita Swinton had claimed that her uncle-husband-abuser had an illegal automatic weapon, the whole "compound" and everyone in it might have gone up in flames, like that other weird religious group in Texas.

UPDATE: Walter in Denver was pleasantly surprised by this ruling, too. That reminds me — I really should have congratulated Walter for winning that Vodkapundit caption contest. Outstanding! 

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Padilla guilty

Posted by Richard on August 16, 2007

Jose Padilla will spend the rest of his life in jail:

Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face life in prison because they were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas. All three were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts that carry potential 15-year sentences each.

Click here to read the indictment (FindLaw pdf).

Jurors reached a verdict Thursday and it was read at 2 p.m. before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke. The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about a day and a half following a three-month trial.

Over at Daily Kos, the commenters are weeping for poor Jose, expressing disbelief at the quick verdict, and denouncing his detention and prosecution as reprehensible. The consensus seems to be that he was tortured until he went insane. They're ignoring the evidence that his mental state predates his apprehension. And they're confusing a commitment to Islamofascism with insanity — an understandable error.

HT: LGF  

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Investigation clears Marine

Posted by Richard on July 12, 2007

Remember the Haditha Marines? The media covered the charges in a frenzy, calling it the worst atrocity of the Iraq war. Time magazine called the three enlisted Marines accused of shooting Iraqi civilians "symbols of a war gone bad," and Congressman John Murtha called them "cold-blooded murderers." Four officers were accused of covering up the "atrocity."

Well, the first Article 32 investigation (analogous to a civlian grand jury investigation) of one of the accused murderers has concluded, and the investigating officer recommended dismissal of the charges against Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt. A previous Article 32 investigation of one of the officers, Capt. Randy Stone, also recommended dismissal of charges.

Defend Our Marines has tons of information about the Haditha case and related matters. Gateway Pundit quoted the Fox News report, adding emphasis and editorializing a bit, and then asked what I assume is a rhetorical question about those who had so loudly trumpeted the charges:

The conclusion of the investigation was reported on Tuesday.
FOX News reported:

An investigating officer has recommended dismissing murder charges against a U.S. Marine accused in the slayings of three Iraqi men in a squad action that killed 24 civilians in the town of Haditha, according to a report.

The government's theory that Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt had executed the three men was "incredible" and relied on contradictory statements by Iraqis, Lt. Col. Paul Ware said in the report, released Tuesday by Sharratt's defense attorneys.

"To believe the government version of facts is to disregard clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, and sets a dangerous precedent that, in my opinion, may encourage others to bear false witness against Marines as a tactic to erode public support of the Marine Corps and mission in Iraq," Ware wrote. (Ya think?)

… 

Do you suppose any of the media outlets will beg forgiveness for slandering this marine?

One of the problems with this kind of conflict and enemy is that it's difficult at best, and often impossible, to determine who is a "civilian." The enemy aren't "soldiers" wearing uniforms and marching under a battle flag. They can be shooting or planting explosives one minute and unarmed "civilians" the next. Or the "civilians" could be the family members, lookouts, and logistical support for the people doing the shooting.

I'm sure there are some bad apples among U.S. troops doing things for which they should be punished.

But I'm also certain that the Islamofascists, who've beaten us badly in the public relations war, have long been encouraging their partisans to bear false witness against U.S. troops in order to erode public support for the mission.

I'm just wondering if Rep. Jack Murtha and the others who aided and abetted our enemies in this matter cynically did so as a tactic to erode puplic support, or if they're merely what the communists used to call "useful idiots"?

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Pearson loses pants suit

Posted by Richard on June 26, 2007

Well, it's nice to know that the legal system isn't totally dysfunctional. Judge Roy Pearson, who sued his dry cleaner for more than $60 million, lost his case. And it only took D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff ten days of agonizing deliberation to finally rule in favor of the defendants, Custom Cleaners and its owners, the Chung family.

Marc Fisher at WaPo called Judge Bartnoff's 23-page decision "extremely cautious and detailed" and noted that:

… the judge found that there is "nothing in the law" to support the foundation of Pearson's case, the notion that a sign saying "Satisfaction Guaranteed" is an absolute, unconditional guarantee that the merchant will do anything and everything a customer demands to create satisfaction. To the contrary, Bartnoff said, the law is clear that any claim of an unfair trade practice is limited to what a reasonable person would expect.

Gee, and just when I was beginning to despair that the "reasonable person" rule had become totally passé. 

But it's too soon to celebrate the return of sanity to our courts — if you doubt me, just spend a few minutes reading some of the recent posts at Overlawyered.

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Pardon Libby

Posted by Richard on June 6, 2007

The so-called "CIA leak" case was completely bogus from the beginning. Even before Attorney General Gonzales appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor, the Justice Department knew that it was Deputy Secretary of State (and administration critic) Richard Armitage who told Bob Novak (and Bob Woodward) that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. 

Fitzgerald either concluded that "outing" Plame wasn't a crime — that is, Plame wasn't covert, and thus her identity wasn't protected by the statute — or that he'd give Armitage a pass on that major felony, and instead try to trip up someone else on picayune perjury charges.

Fitzgerald apparently glommed onto the left's (and media's) baseless contention that there was a Cheney-Rove-Libby conspiracy to persecute Wilson, and decided to get to the bottom of it. Or maybe he just liked the idea of having an all-powerful, high-profile, cushy government job with an unlimited expense account.

In any case, Fitzgerald "caught" Libby claiming that a conversation took place on a Friday, when it really took place on a Tuesday. Or maybe it was a Monday, not a Thursday. Was it perjury or forgetfulness? Fitzgerald persuaded the jury it was the former (with the help of a hostile judge). But consider this: no two witnesses who testified in that case had the same recollection of whom they talked to when.

Joe Wilson has demonstrably lied about his Niger trip and his wife every step of the way. The source of the Plame "leak" has been known from the beginning. The appointment of a special prosecutor was a stupid, foolish attempt to assuage unassuageable critics, and it should never have happened. Fitzgerald's dogged pursuit of something, anything, to charge someone connected to Cheney with was unconscionable. The conviction of Lewis Libby was a gross miscarriage of justice.

Pardon him now, Mr. President. And apologize for the suffering your administration's incompetence and disunity have caused this man.  

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Speaking hatefully is now a crime

Posted by Richard on May 25, 2007

Speaking of slippery slopes, remember when the concept of "hate crimes" first developed? The idea was to add extra punishment to already criminal behavior if it was motivated by hatred of a protected group (generally race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation). I've never liked the idea. If someone beats you up because they don't like your skin color or ability to accessorize, why is that somehow worse than if they beat you up because they don't like skinny people, or people who wear black, or people who don't look at them the right way?

Now, there's an even bigger problem with the concept of "hate crime." It used to require both elements — hate and a crime. But now, the expression of hatred itself has become a crime, and the First Amendment be damned:

WOODSTOCK, Ill. – A pair of 16-year-old girls face hate crime charges after they allegedly handed out anti-gay fliers targeting a classmate at their northern Illinois high school.

The girls were arrested May 11 after handing out fliers in the parking lot of Crystal Lake South High School that depict a male student kissing another boy and contain hateful language about gays.

Officials say the fliers targeted a male classmate, who is also a neighbor of the girls. The two girls had apparently been feuding with the boy.

Earlier today, a judge rejected bond for one of the girls, citing her home environment and already lengthy juvenile record – 13 run-ins with the cops. Instead of home detention, the girl will be held at the Kane County Juvenile Justice Center while the case is pending, according to the Daily Herald.

The first girl is a pretty unsympathetic defendant:

Earlier today, a judge rejected bond for one of the girls, citing her home environment and already lengthy juvenile record – 13 run-ins with the cops. Instead of home detention, the girl will be held at the Kane County Juvenile Justice Center while the case is pending, according to the Daily Herald.

But, damn! Jailed without bond for using "hateful language"? For handing out fliers?

They warned me that if I voted for Bush, America would become a police state. Looks like they were right.

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The Stupid Party

Posted by Richard on April 27, 2007

The Washington Post reported the other day that an aide to Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) called U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton's office just six weeks before Alberto Gonzales terminated Charlton. The aide was seeking information about a federal investigation into a land deal involving the congressman's former business partner, and in accordance with Justice Dept. rules, Charlton notified his superiors of the potentially improper contact from Renzi's office. Captain Ed took a dim view of yet another Gonzales misstep (emphasis added):

First, we should point out that Charlton's removal did not end the investigation. The FBI raided Renzi's home last week, and Renzi stepped down from his committee assignments as a result. If he corrupted his office and sold out his constituents, it does not appear that Charlton's termination has kept that from coming to light.

That being said, this makes the entire process of terminations look even more suspect. At the least, it shows political stupidity on a scale so grand as to be almost unbelievable. Who in their right mind would fire a federal prosecutor who just had improper contact from the Congressman he's investigating — especially in the days after a Democratic takeover of Congress? That call should have alerted anyone with any sort of political antennae that firing Charlton would set off all sorts of red flags if that call came to light.

The Stupid Party has certainly been living up to that disparaging appellation lately, and Alberto Gonzales has worked harder than almost anyone to ensure that it does so. If I were inclined toward conspiracy theories, I'd be very suspicious of people like Gonzales. Could the GOP have been infiltrated with sleeper agents who, like the Manchurian Candidate, can be activated at opportune times to do great harm to the party with their apparent cluelessness, corruption, or ineptitude?

Of course not, I remind myself. Remember Occam's Razor. The facts can be adequately explained by stupidity alone. But, hey, it might make a pretty good novel and movie!  

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Lawsuit abuse, squared

Posted by Richard on April 27, 2007

Marc Fisher at The Washington Post has the story of a Washington, D.C., lawsuit that must rank among the most insane, over-the-top, spiteful, and abusive court actions ever:

When the neighborhood dry cleaner misplaced Roy Pearson's pants, he took action. He complained. He demanded compensation. And then he sued. Man, did he sue.

Two years, thousands of pages of legal documents and many hundreds of hours of investigative work later, Pearson is seeking to make Custom Cleaners pay — would you believe more than the payroll of the entire Washington Nationals roster?

He says he deserves millions for the damages he suffered by not getting his pants back, for his litigation costs, for "mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort," for the value of the time he has spent on the lawsuit, for leasing a car every weekend for 10 years and for a replacement suit, according to court papers.

Pearson is demanding $65,462,500. The original alteration work on the pants cost $10.50.

By the way, Pearson is a lawyer. Okay, you probably figured that. But get this: He's a judge, too — an administrative law judge for the District of Columbia.

I'm telling you, they need to start selling tickets down at the courthouse.

Go read the rest. The story is compelling, the details are just unbelievable, and the way Pearson arrived at his $65 million damage claim is simply breathtaking. Judge Roy Pearson should become the national poster child for tort reform.

 

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Clinton chutzpah, continued

Posted by Richard on March 15, 2007

Today, Rush Limbaugh echoed practically everything I said in Clinton chutzpah, including the suggestion that Sen. Clinton pledge not to fire any U.S. Attorneys if elected President. He quoted extensively from today's excellent Wall Street Journal editorial, which argued that any inquiry into "the politicization of our prosecutorial system" should call Hillary and her good friend Web Hubbell as the star witnesses:

As everyone once knew but has tried to forget, Mr. Hubbell was a former partner of Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock who later went to jail for mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also Bill and Hillary Clinton's choice as Associate Attorney General in the Justice Department when Janet Reno, his nominal superior, simultaneously fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys in March 1993. Ms. Reno–or Mr. Hubbell–gave them 10 days to move out of their offices.

At the time, President Clinton presented the move as something perfectly ordinary: "All those people are routinely replaced," he told reporters, "and I have not done anything differently." In fact, the dismissals were unprecedented: Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition.

The Journal noted the troubling connection to the Rostenkowski investigation that I mentioned, but they remembered another potential motive that I'd forgotten:

Also at the time, allegations concerning some of the Clintons' Whitewater dealings were coming to a head. By dismissing all 93 U.S. Attorneys at once, the Clintons conveniently cleared the decks to appoint "Friend of Bill" Paula Casey as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. Ms. Casey never did bring any big Whitewater indictments, and she rejected information from another FOB, David Hale, on the business practices of the Arkansas elite including Mr. Clinton. When it comes to "politicizing" Justice, in short, the Bush White House is full of amateurs compared to the Clintons.

And it may be this very amateurism that explains how the current Administration has managed to turn this routine issue of replacing Presidential appointees into a political fiasco. There was nothing wrong with replacing the eight Attorneys, all of whom serve at the President's pleasure. Prosecutors deserve supervision like any other executive branch appointees.

It's not just amateurism and ineptness. I saw Attorney General Gonzales being grilled by George Stephanopoulos, and I heard clips of him being hammered by Matt Lauer. Inept certainly describes his performance in both interviews, but there's a deeper problem, and it's endemic throughout the Republican leadership. When they're attacked by Democrats or especially the media, no matter how unfair or nasty or easily refuted the attack is, the Republicans' first impulse seems to be to cower and grovel. "Please don't hate me! I'm not a bad person, really I'm not!"

Today's Democrats are perpetually outraged. Today's Republicans are perpetually apologetic. 

The Journal went on to describe some of the background to the firings. It sounds like McKay of Washington state and Iglesias of New Mexico should have been sacked long ago. The less clear-cut cases — policy differences over the death penalty, disputed managerial skills, and the like — rate a shrug, followed by "It's the President's call."

When Democrats and the media started trying to make a fuss about these firings, Republicans should have been falling all over each other to call press conferences and get in front of microphones. They should have expressed outrage that Democrats would try to interfere with the President's prerogatives regarding these appointments. They should have been contemptuous of these absurd calls for investigations. They should have cried, "How dare you, Sen. Clinton!"

The current GOP leadership consists primarily of spineless wusses with a Rodney King approach to politics: "Can't we all just get along?" No, we can't. And nobody's going to stand by you if you won't stand up for yourselves.

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Clinton chutzpah

Posted by Richard on March 14, 2007

Shortly after Bill Clinton took office, every single U.S. Attorney was forced to resign. It's not unusual for most of them to be replaced gradually by a new administration (George H.W. Bush replaced most of Reagan's U.S. Attorneys). But the Clinton administration's sudden clean sweep was, I believe, unprecedented (but replicated by Clinton elsewhere; remember the White House Travel Office?).

There was at least some speculation at the time about the reason (from the March 24, 1993 New York Times, emphasis added):

Attorney General Janet Reno today demanded the prompt resignation of all United States Attorneys, leading the Federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia to suggest that the order could be tied to his long-running investigation of Representative Dan Rostenkowski, a crucial ally of President Clinton.

Jay B. Stephens, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is a Bush Administration holdover, said he had advised the Justice Department that he was within 30 days of making a "critical decision" in the Rostenkowski case when Ms. Reno directed him and other United States Attorneys to submit their resignations, effective in a matter of days.

While prosecutors are routinely replaced after a change in Administration, Ms. Reno's order accelerated what had been expected to be a leisurely changeover.

Says He Won't Resist

At a news conference today only hours after one by Ms. Reno, Mr. Stephens said he would not resist the Attorney General's move to force him from office, and he held back from directly accusing her of interfering with the Rostenkowski inquiry.

But Mr. Stephens left the strong impression that Ms. Reno's actions might disrupt the investigation as he moved toward a decision on whether to seek charges against the Illinois Democrat, who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Stephens didn't resist because he no doubt knew that U.S. Attorneys, like all political appointees, serve "at the pleasure of the President." Today, many people in the Democratic Party and its public relations arm, the mainstream media, are either unfamiliar with that phrase or believe it has a different definition when a Republican is President.

Given that bit of history from 1993, it takes some nerve for Sen. Hillary Clinton to posture like this:

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) is calling on President Bush to explain the firings of US attorneys, days after the White House admitted that White House adviser Karl Rove acted as a conduit for complaints about federal prosecutors.

"With the White House now acknowledging a direct role in the Justice Department's U.S. Attorney firings, the president must affirmatively step forward to explain what he is doing to address the politicization of our prosecutorial system and what role he and his aides played in this controversy," Clinton said in a statement sent to RAW STORY.

"It is imperative that the president act swiftly to explain what role the White House played in this situation, hold those who acted inappropriately accountable, and take responsibility," Clinton said.

 Since she objects to the White House and Attorney General firing U.S. Attorneys, and she decries "the politicization of our prosecutorial system," I expect Sen. Clinton will pledge not to remove any U.S. Attorneys other than for cause (independently verified) if she's elected President. 

Ha! Right after the airborne ham steaks pass overhead. 

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Morally handicapped

Posted by Richard on October 30, 2006

You’re no doubt familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and you’ve probably read about some of its unintended consequences and litigation horror stories. California has an even tougher version called the Unruh Act, so it’s no wonder that the story of David Allen Gunther is from that benighted state (emphasis added):

Since 2003, Gunther has filed more than 200 lawsuits against small businesses for violations that have included accessibility barriers, no designated handicapped parking, heavy bathroom doors, or toilet paper dispensers mounted out of easy reach. Each violation carries a $4,000 fine. For all his hard work, it is estimated that Gunther has received more than $400,000 in the last 36 months, mostly from mom-and-pop shops.

Targets of Gunther suits included a car wash whose bathroom mirror was a few inches too high and a flower shop where he claimed he couldn’t find a wheelchair ramp — even though the shop owner herself was confined to a wheelchair and depended on the ramp. In both cases (and presumably the others as well), his court filings claimed these businesses caused him “anguish, anxiety, humiliation, anger, frustration, distress, embarrassment, apprehension and disgust.”

It looks like — maybe, just maybe — this litigation blizzard is too much even for California. Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has met with a group of small business owners sued by Gunther, and he’s looking into what can be done about this litigation abuse. Gunther said he’s not worried because the law is on his side.

According to the OC Weekly, one of the people who met with Rackauckas was restaurant owner Jin Kim, who wept because he may lose his business:

… He recounted the shock of getting the lawsuit without warning, how Mehrban [Gunther’s attorney] had coldly refused to negotiate despite pleas, and that he had to sell his wife’s ring and a vehicle to pay Gunther $16,000—and his own attorney another $4,000 in fees. His crime? His restroom mirror was allegedly mounted a few inches too high and the door was a few pounds too heavy to push.

“Why did I get hit by this person?” Kim told the Weekly. “If he had asked for any help with anything, me and my wife would have gladly helped him. We work very hard to please our customers.”

The experience has likely ruined any chance for a profit this year. Kim thinks he may have to sell the restaurant that he’s poured his life’s savings into. “I told that lawyer [Mehrban] that I would immediately fix any problems he saw and give him $6,000, and on that same day he sued me again using Karl Roundtree for the same thing,” said Kim. “I was going to fight back, but there is so much money involved in fighting a lawsuit against these people. We get lots of senior citizens in here and nobody has ever complained before. Something is wrong in this country when that guy can get away with this. The whole thing has made me think about moving back to Korea.”

If you’re inclined to be sympathetic toward the disabled, restrain yourself. Gunther has been seen by credible witnesses getting out of his wheelchair and walking. He’s told multiple contradictory stories of how he was hurt. And his extensive adult record seems short only of honest work:

A Weekly investigation traced Gunther’s activities around the western U.S. during the last quarter of a century, uncovering evidence that not only has he exaggerated his reliance on a wheelchair, but he’s also whitewashed his own history of chronic unemployment, multiple drug addictions, narcotics trafficking, assaults, petty thefts, burglaries, a decade of missed child support payments, and more than a dozen arrests and stints in jail.

But here’s the punch line to the sordid story of David Allen Gunther and Morse Mehrban, the scumbag shyster who represented him in all these lawsuits: when Gunther meets with Mehrban, presumably it’s not in Mehrban’s office:

Ironically, one businessman he hasn’t sued is his own lawyer. Like so many businesses Gunther has sued, Mehrban’s Koreatown office is located in a converted house. It’s on the second floor, and to get there, a person in a wheelchair faces an insurmountable hurdle: 15 steps up a narrow hallway.

Mehrban says it would not be practical to make his office accessible to the handicapped.

Unbe-frickin-lievable.
 

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Saudi slaveholder sentenced

Posted by Richard on September 1, 2006

Hooray! Colorado’s notorious Saudi slaveholder, whose arrest and conviction I blogged about, was sentenced Thursday:

CENTENNIAL (AP) – A man convicted of sexually assaulting an Indonesian housekeeper and keeping her as a virtual slave was sentenced Thursday to 28 years to life in prison.

Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, denied the charges and blamed anti-Muslim prejudice for the case against him. He said prosecutors persuaded the housekeeper to accuse him after they failed to build a case that he was a terrorist.

Prosecutors and FBI agents said Al-Turki and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, brought the woman to Colorado to care for their five children and to cook and clean for the family. An affidavit said she spent four years with the family in the suburban Aurora home, sleeping on a mattress on the basement floor and getting paid less than $2 a day.

Here’s the money quote from the story, though (emphasis added):

Al-Turki said he treated the woman the same way any observant Muslim family would treat a daughter.

"Your honor, I am not here to apologize, for I cannot apologize for things I did not do and for crimes I did not commit," he told the judge.

"The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution," he said.

That was a rare moment of openess, revealing the ugly, barbaric truth behind the civilized facade of the Saudi brand of Islam. Women are chattel, and men treat them — use them — like cows or goats.

I’m going to repeat yet again what I said last year and this past July because it can’t be said often enough:

Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and radical Islam in general should be all the evidence anyone needs to demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of the leftist multicultural BS about no culture being better than any other. These people still defend and practice slavery, and we’re supposed to worry that making a jihadist uncomfortable might bring us down to their level??

Yes, we had slavery in this country. And our society is still paying the price today. But look at the historical context: Slavery existed and was accepted as normal in every human society throughout history — until the 18th century, when voices in the United States and Great Britain were raised against it. Those voices spoke of liberty and natural rights and free will, and they proclaimed slavery to be a moral outrage.

In a hundred years, those ideas and moral values had swept through the Western world and made people ashamed of a practice they’d accepted for thousands of years. Those ideas and values are part of — are fundamental to — Western culture. And, by damn, it IS morally superior to the barbaric 8th-century culture that still enslaves people, that declares women property, that flays people’s flesh for dancing, that imprisons Christians for praying in their homes, that saws people’s heads off with a dull knife for being Jewish.

No, it doesn’t bother me that interrogators at Gitmo may have failed to show sufficient respect for the beliefs of their jihadist captives. It bothers me that they haven’t expressed contempt for those barbarous beliefs.
 

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What is income?

Posted by Richard on August 30, 2006

Bruce Bartlett’s pretty excited about a recent D.C. Circuit Court decision regarding how the IRS defines income for tax purposes:

What is important about the decision is that it is the first one in decades saying that the Constitution itself limits what the government may tax. If upheld by the Supreme Court, it could significantly alter tax policy and possibly open the door to radical reform.

In the case, a woman named Marrita Murphy was awarded a legal settlement that included compensation for physical injury and emotional distress. The former has always been tax-exempt, just as insurance settlements are. … But under current law, compensation for non-physical injuries are taxed.

The court agreed with Murphy’s claim that the payment for emotional distress merely made her whole for her loss, so it wasn’t income under the 16th Amendment. According to Bartlett:

Tax experts immediately recognized the far-reaching implications of the Murphy decision for other areas of tax law. Tax protesters have long argued that the 16th Amendment did not grant the federal government the power to tax every single receipt that it deems to be income. Yet in practice, that is what the Internal Revenue Service does.

The problem is that the very concept of income itself has never been defined in the tax law. It is pretty much whatever the IRS says it is. …

But because tax analysts implicitly accept the Haig-Simons definition of income, even though it appears nowhere in law, there has been a long-term tendency for the IRS to push the limit of what can be considered taxable income. Now, a federal court has said there is a constitutional limit.

I suspect Bartlett’s enthusiasm and optimism are more than a little bit premature. The result of the Murphy decision, if upheld, is likely to be some modest pushing back of those limits that the IRS has been pushing. I’d be surprised — but delighted — if it led to profound changes. But Bartlett’s fantasizing about the logical implications of Murphy for the taxation of interest are well worth reading.

Orrin Kerr posted about this decision at Volokh Conspiracy, and he had some yummy details (emphasis added):

Murphy drew a very favorable panel for this sort of claim — Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg, Judge Judith Rogers, and Judge Janice Rogers Brown — and the panel held, in an opinion by Ginsburg, that the text of the Internal Revenue Code does not exclude such compensation but is unconstitutional for not doing so.

If I had a question of Constitutional rights — especially economic rights — before the D.C. Circuit, I think that’s the panel I’d want to have hear it. Read the excerpt from Ginsburg’s decision that Kerr quoted. Pretty good stuff.

I still greatly regret that Doug Ginsburg didn’t make it to the Supreme Court — and just because he inhaled in college!
 

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