Bush Officials Warned 9/11 Commission Against Probing Too Deeply
Some people ask, “Why do conspiracy theories get such traction in people’s minds?”
Perhaps because the arguments against them are not entirely dissuasive, but I have to say, if nothing else, it’s largely because of stories like this one, that actually lend credence to people’s suspicions by providing them with objective proof of the government’s attempt to obfuscate and withhold vital information.
Whether it is done in order to prevent embarrassment, or to protect themselves from prosecution, the fact remains, Bush officials in Washington were more concerned with covering their own butts, than publicly revealing an inconvenient truth. Even if it meant that national security might be improved and a similar event avoided.
As of today, it has been revealed via a FOIA request made by the ACLU, that Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet sent a letter dated January 16, 2004 to the members of the 9/11 Commission that there was an investigatory line it was “not allowed to cross.”
The line was in questioning the terrorist suspects that the Bush Administration was busy torturing, in violation of both U.S. and international law. In other words, the Commission was not allowed to question the accused.
Hardly a high point for American jurisprudence.
New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Vermont Embrace Decriminalization of Marijuana
From the Examiner:
With numerous states facing significant budget shortages, legislators and voters across the country this month have been giving overwhelming support to measures that would reduce the penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana to a civil fine.
Yesterday in New Hampshire, the state House voted 214-137 to pass H.B. 1653, a bill that would reduce the penalty for possession of up to a quarter-ounce of marijuana with a civil fine of up to $200.
In Hawaii, the state Senate voted 22 to 3 on March 2 to pass SB 2450, a bill that would eliminate criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana and replace them with a civil fine of up to $300 for a first offense and $500 for a subsequent offense.
And in…
Juries Are Allowed To Judge The Law, Not Just The Facts
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
_____________________________________
In order to guard citizens against the whims of the King, the right to a trial by jury was established by the Magna Carta in 1215, and it has become one of the most sacrosanct legal aspects of British and American societies. We tend to believe that the duty of a jury is solely to determine whether someone broke the law. In fact, it’s not unusual for judges to instruct juries that they are to judge only the facts in a case, while the judge will sit in judgment of the law itself. Nonsense.
Juries are the last line of defense against the power abuses of the authorities. They have the right to judge the law. Even if a defendant committed a crime, a jury can refuse to render a guilty verdict. Among the main reasons why this might happen, according to attorney Clay S. Conrad:
When the defendant has already suffered enough, when it would be unfair or against the public interest for the defendant to be convicted, when the jury disagrees with the law itself, when the prosecution or the arresting authorities have gone “too far” in the single-minded quest to arrest and convict a particular defendant, when the punishments to be imposed are excessive or when the jury suspects that the charges have been brought for political reasons or to make an unfair example of the hapless defendant …
Chicago’s Pointless Handgun Ban
From Reason.com:
When Chicago passed a ban on handgun ownership in 1982, it was part of a trend. Washington, D.C. had done it in 1976, and a few Chicago suburbs took up the cause in the following years. They all expected to reduce the number of guns and thus curtail bloodshed.
District of Columbia Attorney General Linda Singer told The Washington Post in 2007, “It’s a pretty common-sense idea that the more guns there are around, the more gun violence you’ll have.” Nadine Winters, a member of the Washington city council in 1976, said she assumed at the time that the policy “would spread to other places.”
But the fad never really caught fire—even before last summer, when the Supreme Court struck down the D.C. law and cast doubt on the others, including the…
The Police Aren’t Legally Obligated To Protect You
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
_____________________________________
Without even thinking about it, we take it as a given that the police must protect each of us. That’s their whole reason for existence, right?
While this might be true in a few jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada, it is actually the exception, not the rule. In general, court decisions and state laws have held that cops don’t have to do a damn thing to help you when you’re in danger.
In the only book devoted exclusively to the subject, Dial 911 and Die, attorney Richard W. Stevens writes:
It was the most shocking thing I learned in law school. I was studying Torts in my first year at the University of San Diego School of Law, when I came upon the case of Hartzler v. City of San Jose. In that case I discovered the secret truth: the government owes no duty to protect individual citizens from criminal attack. Not only did the California courts hold to that rule, the California legislature had enacted a statute to make sure the courts couldn’t change the rule.
The Supreme Court Has Ruled That You’re Allowed to Ingest Any Drug, Especially If You’re An Addict
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
_____________________________________
In the early 1920s, Dr. Linder was convicted of selling one morphine tablet and three cocaine tablets to a patient who was addicted to narcotics. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction, declaring that providing an addicted patient with a fairly small amount of drugs is an acceptable medical practice “when designed temporarily to alleviate an addict’s pains.” (Linder v. United States.)
In 1962, the Court heard the case of a man who had been sent to the clink under a California state law that made being an addict a criminal offense. Once again, the verdict was tossed out, with the Supremes saying that punishing an addict for being an addict is cruel and unusual and, thus, unconstitutional. (Robinson v. California.)
Six years later, the Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles in Powell v. Texas. A man who was arrested for being drunk in public said that, because he was an alcoholic, he couldn’t help it. He invoked the Robinson decision as precedent. The Court upheld his conviction because it had been based on an action (being wasted in public), not on the general condition of his addiction to booze. Justice White supported this decision, yet for different reasons than the others. In his concurring opinion, he expanded Robinson…
U.S. Supreme Court Set To Extend Gun Rights
Handguns. Photo: Joshuashearn (CC)
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a landmark gun rights case that could apply the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms to both cities and states. Warren Richey reports for the Christian Science Monitor:
The US Supreme Court appears to be on verge of extending the constitutional protection of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms to every jurisdiction in the nation.
During an hour-long oral argument at the high court on Tuesday, several justices exhibited a willingness to enforce their landmark 2008 gun-rights decision at the state and local level.
If they do so, the decision may doom not only the Chicago handgun ban at the center of Tuesday’s case, but other handgun bans and some of the toughest state and local gun-control laws in…
Utah Aborts Logic and Reason, But They Weren’t Using Them Anyway
Mutterhals writes on the Black Sun Gazette:
For most Americans, science is akin to magic. We don’t know how much of this shit occurs, but as long as everything keeps humming along smoothly we feel some sense of peace. The problem with this state of being is that it allows for all sorts of rival interpretations on things that are basically cut and dry.
I’ve had many arguments with religious types regarding abortion, and most cannot wrap their heads around the fact that the gestating fetus is indeed a part of the woman whose belly it’s in, which seems fairly straightforward. I don’t mean to go all Amazon woman on you, but I have to believe the fervently religious who protest in front of abortion clinics and wish death on doctors who…
PETA’s Ad Plan Torn Apart by Tiger Woods’ Attorneys
Via the Boston Herald:
Animal-rights group PETA is backing off plans for a billboard about pet-population control that poked fun at Tiger Woods’ sex scandal — after hearing from the golfer’s lawyers.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ message would have matched an image of Woods with this ad copy: “Too Much Sex Can Be A Bad Thing … for little tigers too. Help keep your cats (and dogs) out of trouble: Always spay or neuter!”
PETA told the Orlando Sentinel Wednesday that it was searching for an advertiser to put up the “fun, tongue-in-cheek” billboard near Woods’ home in Windermere, Fla., where his November car crash sparked a shocking infidelity scandal that led to last week’s public apology.
But yesterday a PETA spokeswoman said the plan was on hold “in light of…
‘Internet Enforcement’ Copyright Treaty Leaks Online
Cory Doctorow writes on BoingBoing:
Someone has uploaded a PDF to a Google Group that is claimed to be the proposal for Internet copyright enforcement that the USA has put forward for ACTA, the secret copyright treaty whose seventh round of negotiations just concluded in Guadalajara, Mexico.
This reads like it probably is genuine treaty language, and if it is the real US proposal, it is the first time that this material has ever been visible to the public. According to my source, the US proposal is the current version of the treaty as of the conclusion of the Mexico round.
I’ve read it through a few times and it reads a lot like DMCA-plus. It contains, for example, a duty to technology firms to shut down infringement where they have “actual knowledge” that…
The Ten Commandments We Always See, Aren’t The Ten Commandments
The following is the first chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
_____________________________________
First Amendment battles continue to rage across the US over the posting of the Ten Commandments in public places — courthouses, schools, parks, and pretty much anywhere else you can imagine.
Christians argue that they’re a part of our Western heritage that should be displayed as ubiquitously as traffic signs. Congressman Bob Barr hilariously suggested that the Columbine massacre wouldn’t have happened if the Ten Commandments (also called the Decalogue) had been posted in the high school, and some government officials have directly, purposely disobeyed court rulings against the display of these ten directives supposedly handed down from on high.
Too bad they’re all talking about the wrong rules. Every Decalogue you see — from the 5,000-pound granite behemoth inside the Alabama State Judicial Building to the little wallet-cards sold at Christian bookstores — is bogus. Simply reading the Bible will prove this. Getting out your King James version, turn to Exodus 20:2-17. You’ll see the familiar list of rules about having no other gods, honoring your parents, not killing or coveting,
and so on. At this point, though, Moses is just repeating to the people what God told him on Mount Si’nai. These are not written down in any form.
Should We Clone Neanderthals?
Zach Zorich examines the scientific, legal, and ethical obstacles for Archaelogy:
If Neanderthals ever walk the earth again, the primordial ooze from which they will rise is an emulsion of oil, water, and DNA capture beads engineered in the laboratory of 454 Life Sciences in Branford, Connecticut. Over the past 4 years those beads have been gathering tiny fragments of DNA from samples of dissolved organic materials, including pieces of Neanderthal bone. Genetic sequences have given paleoanthropologists a new line of evidence for testing ideas about the biology of our closest extinct relative.
The first studies of Neanderthal DNA focused on the genetic sequences of mitochondria, the microscopic organelles that convert food to energy within cells. In 2005, however, 454 began a collaborative project with the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany,…
‘Obscene’ U.S. Manga Collector Jailed For 6 Months
David Kravets writes in Wired’s Threat Level:
A U.S. comic book collector is being sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to importing and possessing Japanese manga books depicting illustrations of child sex and bestiality.
Christopher Handley was sentenced in Iowa on Thursday, (.pdf) almost a year after pleading guilty to charges of possessing “obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children.”
The 40-year-old was charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Handley was the nation’s first to be convicted under that law for possessing cartoon art, without any evidence that he also collected or viewed genuine child pornography.
Without a plea deal with federal authorities, he faced a…
Hundreds Forced into Labor and Sex Trade in Ohio Every Year
MATT LEINGANG writes in the Washington Post:
COLUMBUS, Ohio — About 1,000 American-born children are forced into the sex trade in Ohio every year and about 800 immigrants are sexually exploited and pushed into sweatshop-type jobs, a new report on human trafficking in the state said Wednesday.
Ohio’s weak laws on human trafficking, its growing demand for cheap labor and its proximity to the Canadian border are key contributors to the illegal activity, according to a report by the Trafficking in Persons Study Commission.
“Ohio is not only a destination place for foreign-born trafficking victims, but it’s also a recruitment place,” said Celia Williamson, an associate professor at the University of Toledo who led the research.
Formed last year by Ohio Attorney General Richard Condray, the commission also found that hundreds more in the state…
Christians Claim Hate Crimes Law an Effort to ‘Eradicate’ Their Beliefs
Stephen C. Webster reports on RAW Story:
A Christian group in Michigan has filed a lawsuit alleging that a package of hate crimes laws named after murder victim Matthew Shepard is an affront to their religious freedom.
Far from the intended purpose of severely punishing criminals who commit unspeakable acts against a persecuted minority group, the religious activists claim the laws are a guarded effort to “eradicate” their beliefs.
Filed by the Thomas More Law Center — which bills itself as the religious answer to the American Civil Liberties Union — the complaint claims that protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people “is an effort to eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy.”
The suit…
Ten Executions That Defined The 2000s
Executed Today, the site from which I get all of my news, has its rundown of the “ten executions that defined the 2000s.” The earliest one on the list is Timothy McVeigh, who comes in ranked only seventh:
The Gulf War veteran was the face of terrorism in the U.S. from the time of his arrest for the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s Murrah Federal Building, until three months after his June 11, 2001, execution.
John Stewart: ‘Corporations Now Have More Rights Than Gay People.’
Congress needs to challenge this ruling now. It seems like the most important things that presidents have done for the last forty-five years is appoint Supreme Court judges (notwithstanding declaring unlawful wars). Via the Daily Show:
Does the Fourth Amendment Cover ‘The Cloud’?
James Urquhart writes on CNet News:
One of the biggest issues facing individuals and corporations choosing to adopt public cloud computing (or any Internet service, for that matter) is the relative lack of clarity with respect to legal rights over data stored online. I’ve reported on this early legal landscape a couple of times, looking at decisions to relax expectations of privacy for e-mail stored online and the decision to allow the FBI to confiscate servers belonging to dozens of companies from a co-location facility whose owners were suspected of fraud.
However, while I’ve argued before that the government has yet to apply the right metaphor to the modern world of networked applications and data, there has been little literature that has actually dissected the problem in detail. Even worse, I’ve seen…
U.S. Supreme Court Rules Against Mumia Abu-Jamal
Breaking news from Reuters:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday granted an appeal by prosecutors and set aside a ruling that invalidated the death sentence of black political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.
His case has become a prominent cause for many death penalty opponents.
In a brief order, the Supreme Court sent the case back to a U.S. appeals court based in Philadelphia for further consideration in view of the high court’s recent decision in an Ohio case that had raised similar issues.
The Supreme Court in the Ohio case unanimously reinstated the death sentence of a neo-Nazi convicted of murdering three men. The court’s action, which was not a ruling on the merits of the case, could lead to Abu-Jamal’s death sentence being reinstated, too.
The…
