"Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?" (MLK Jr.)

This week The Center has been featuring quotations from pioneering activists, writers and political leaders on social media that speak to the cause of social justice and equity. As we enter a period of uncertainty, one in which the signs of a hardening culture are already apparent, I find myself thinking of another.

Writing from a Birmingham jail cell in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked the following:

Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice
or for the extension of justice?

-- from an e-mail sent out this morning by Glennda Testone, executive director of New York's LGBT Center (known as The Center)

by Ken

I have my day pretty well blocked out activity-wise so that I won't have to deal directly with, you know, that stuff going on today. Naturally I recognize that this doesn't change the reality of, you know, that stuff the least little bit. Still, it's my way of coping, at least for a day.

In this morning's e-mail, though, I found and actually clicked through to the letter sent out by Glennda Testone, executive director of The Center, from which I've lifted the above Martin Luther King Jr. quote, which indeed seems mightily appropriate to the day.

I think it's an extraordinary letter, and I'm passing it along, not particularly because of its concern for issues of LGBT justice over the coming years, but because of the way it frames the issue of justice generally, which is obviously of concern to many other groups -- and individuals -- who find ourselves likely targets of the ugliness that the 2016 presidential campaign brought out, or maybe just reflected. So while the specifics, so smartly set out by Ms. Testone for the LGBT community, will vary for other at-risk groups and individuals, the general theme and of course the need to band together to fight the threat seem to me to have widespread application.

The only note I want to add is that while the letter is clearly, in a general sense, a fund-raising letter, with its repeated references like "the support of thousands of people like you," it approaches the day in the spirit of a dedication, a mission statement, a call for solidarity. The closest it comes to a direct appeal for, you know, money is that little tan button, "Support Our Work," in the header box. And since what you see here is a screen-shot graphic, with no live link, I do want to include that link, for anyone who may be inclined to follow it: gaycenter.org. (And the small-type links at the end of the letter should be live.)

Dear Center Friends & Supporters,

A few hours from now, a new President will take the oath of office. The transition will usher in an administration with more than a few officials whose careers have featured discriminatory policies and rhetoric aimed at the LGBT community. As the heart and the home for our community in New York City, we must be prepared for a fight in which LGBT equality is at stake.

By now, the catalogue of proposals that target or disproportionately affect the LGBT community may be sadly familiar. To name but a few: a sanctioning of anti-LGBT discrimination under the guise of the First Amendment; a repeal of the Affordable Care Act that extends essential protections to the transgender community and coverage to so many in the LGBT community; an attack on our parental rights in states across the country; talk of so-called conversion therapy for LGBT youth and tepid enforcement of protections ensuring their safety within schools; and, finally, an agenda that will leave LGBT immigrants at greater risk.

Because of you we're ready to meet any challenge.

The Center will double down on its commitment to serving some of the most vulnerable LGBT New Yorkers through our transgender livelihood program, immigrant opportunities initiative and youth development continuum. We'll continue enrolling community members in health care and linking them to affirming care while providing substance use treatment and HIV/AIDS prevention and support.

And, in the months ahead, with the support of thousands of people like you, we will continue to care for one another and to provide a home for a community dedicated to justice for all.

This has always been The Center story. It has its origins in our founding when brave women and men came together out of a commitment to one another and to future generations.

Thank you for all that you do to ensure opportunity and equality for our community.

This week The Center has been featuring quotations from pioneering activists, writers and political leaders on social media that speak to the cause of social justice and equity. As we enter a period of uncertainty, one in which the signs of a hardening culture are already apparent, I find myself thinking of another.

Writing from a Birmingham jail cell in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked the following:

Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice
or for the extension of justice?

The commitment carried out here every day at The Center, and made possible by you, is and always will be squarely on the side of love, and in service of justice.

Yours in love and service,


Glennda Testone
Executive Director

Become a Member | Donate | Subscribe | MyCenter

gaycenter.org

This message was sent by
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center
208 W 13 St, New York, NY 10011 | 212.620.7310

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How 'bout a round of cheers for the New England Cheaters and QB Tom "I Got Away with It, Suckers" Brady?

The New York Daily News points out: "Brady wasn’t wearing his wedding ring Tuesday night at a Patriots gala."



by Ken

Since I have devoted a certain amount of attention to the case of Tom "The Cheating Man" Brady (aka DeflateGate), it seems only fair to take formal note of the slapdown administered this week by federal judge Richard Berman of the Southern District of New York to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (see "After Tom Brady's Deflategate suspension tossed by judge, Gisele steps out looking relaxed"), voiding The Cheating Man's four-game suspension and reinstating him to the eligible roster of the New England Cheaters. Though he  sat out the Cheats' final preseason game against the NY Giants, he's expect to be taking snaps for the regular-season opener against the Steelers Thursday night in Foxborough.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took a beating for procedural high-handedness in the judge's ruling, though neither the judge nor the NFL Players Association, which is solidly behind The Cheating Man in his legal battle, seems to care about The Cheating Man's cheating. What's more, in complaining about the commissioner's procedural violations, the judge set out steps that should have taken which aren't part of the league's prescribed procedures either.

And there are legal naysayers. On HuffPost, Portland (OR) criminal defense attorney Kevin Sali cautions that "Tom Brady's Legal Victory May Be Short-Lived," arguing that "there's a good chance that ruling will be reversed on appeal." (The NFL has already said it will appeal.)

I have no idea what role Brady had in deflating footballs, or whether he did anything improper in connection with the investigation. Let's assume, for the moment, that as a factual matter he's entirely innocent. Let's assume, further, that the NFL's hearing and appeal processes were riddled with errors and that commissioner Roger Goodell incorrectly interpreted the collective bargaining agreement and made multiple other legal mistakes.

Under the law, even if that's all true, it still may be insufficient to justify vacating the suspension. The reason relates to the way the law treats arbitration agreements such as the NFL's CBA.

Meanwhile, the nice thing is that the ongoing dust-up (the NFL has already said it will appeal) makes it even more likely that the thing The Cheating Man will primarily be remembered for is being The Cheating Man. Then there are the rumors that The Cheating Man has, as the New York Daily News's Ethan Sacks characterized the rumors, "fumbled his six-year marriage to Gisele Bundchen over the tensions from his legal battle with the NFL." We take no position on Cheatin' Tom's possible marital woes, and offer him the consolation that even if his marriage is kaput, he still has his memories -- the memories of a Cheating Man. And a reminder that there are probably lots of hot babes out there who don't care about a player cheating as long as he's a player, and especially a star player.

So let's hope that Tom ("I Got Away with It, Suckers") Brady and the New England Cheaters can look forward to a season of spending as much of their time as possible thinking and talking about, well, you-know-what. There's reason to hope that everywhere they go they'll hear crowds chanting (come on, join in!): "Winners never cheat, and a winner never cheats."


IN THE INTEREST OF FAIRNESS, THERE'S A
SCHOOL OF THOUGHT SAYING, "TOM WON!"

The New Yorker's Ian Crouch claims, "Tom Brady Wins the Long Game," arguing that The Cheating Man --

managed, by prolonging Deflategate, to rather unexpectedly rehabilitate his image. The longer it stayed in the news, the more ridiculous the entire scandal began to seem. The more the evidence from the N.F.L.’s investigation was parsed in print and on talk radio, the more flimsy and bizarre it appeared. And the longer that the N.F.L.’s clumsy handling of the case was put on display, the more that people began to turn against the league and its commissioner. Even before Thursday’s ruling, the seemingly impossible had happened: people from places other than New England and San Mateo, California, had begun, begrudgingly, to root for Tom Brady.

I've always thought Ian's kind of a dim bulb, and this seems to me kind of nuts. Then again, when it comes to the perceptions of the public, it may be that a dim bulb is exactly the right sort of illumination.

All the same, I think The New Yorker is on firmer ground with this eye-opening Borowitz Report:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Minutes after overturning Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for the 2015-16 N.F.L. season, federal judge Richard M. Berman raised eyebrows by admitting that he had the Patriots quarterback on his fantasy team.

Responding to reporters’ questions, Berman said that Brady’s inclusion on his fantasy roster “played no role whatsoever” in his judicial decision.

“As a federal judge, I made this ruling based strictly on legal precedents and the merits of the case,” Berman said. “But, as a fantasy-team owner, sure, it’s going to be awesome to see Tom in there for all sixteen games.”

The judge said that he was especially looking forward to seeing how Brady takes advantage of what he called “an amazing array of offensive weapons.”

“Gronk is going to have a big year, and even if Julian Edelman isn’t ready for Week One, I think Reggie Wayne is going to surprise a lot of people,” Berman, who also has selected Wayne for his fantasy team, said.

For his part, Brady minimized the role that Berman’s fantasy team might have played in Thursday’s legal victory. “A win’s a win,” he said.

COME TO THINK OF IT, POSSIBLY
IAN CROUCH IS RIGHT AFTER ALL

What could be more American than that eloquently stated principle: "A win's a win"?

What was it that The Donald tweeted? "Tom Brady is my friend and a total winner!" That pretty much settles it, dontcha think?

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A "scathing, exuberant indictment of the many misdeeds of the nation's highest court" -- that's Jeffrey Toobin on Ian Millhiser's new book, "Injustices"

"Injustices tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the people that it has hurt the most -- the young people stripped of their childhoods, the freedmen forced into peonage, the men and women who will die needlessly if the Supreme Court guts Obamacare."

-- Ian Millhiser, about his new book, Injustices: The Supreme Court's
History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted

by Ken

This is going to be an unusual sort of book plug -- it comes from the author. The only less impartial source of information about a book I can imagine than an author is an author's mother. But then, authors are also well-placed authorities on what their books are designed to do, and this is a special author. Anytime legal breezes blow in or around the Supreme Court, you can pretty well bet that we're going to be turning to Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress. (Ian is the editor of ThinkProgress Justice.) We always count on Ian to set us straight, so I don't see why we shouldn't do the same thing with his new book, Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, published by Nation Books.

Besides, the e-mail Ian sent out to the ThinkProgress mailing list comes with a blurb from The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, our other top-tier legal guru. We'll get to that in a moment. First let's read what Ian has to say about Injustices:

Dear ThinkProgress Reader:

For the last five years, I've covered the Supreme Court for ThinkProgress. I've chronicled the justices' decision to open the floodgates to corporate election spending, and I've reported on the rash of voter suppression laws that followed after the Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. I've shared your bewilderment when the Court held that a woman's choice whether to use birth control could be given to her boss, and I've shared your terror at the prospect that the justices could rip health care away from millions of Americans.

Yet, as I explain in Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, these cases are hardly anomalies in the Supreme Court's history. To the contrary, the justices of the Supreme Court shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state officials. The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy.

Injustices tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the people that it has hurt the most -- the young people stripped of their childhoods, the freedmen forced into peonage, the men and women who will die needlessly if the Supreme Court guts Obamacare. In my coverage of the Court over at ThinkProgress, I've strived to provide clarity on what the law provides and how the justices should decide their cases in accordance with that law, but I've also strived to reach beyond arcane legal arguments to show how the Court's decisions shape the lives of millions of Americans. I bring that same ethic to over 150 years of Supreme Court history in Injustices. I urge you to check it out.

Sincerely,
Ian Millhiser

NOW FOR THAT BLURB FROM JEFFREY TOOBIN

In case you think Ian's trying to put one over on us, here as promised is Jeffrey T:

They won't be selling Injustices at the Supreme Court gift shop. Ian Millhiser's scathing, exuberant indictment of the many misdeeds of the nation's highest court is a necessary, and highly entertaining, corrective to the mythology that has always surrounded the work of the Justices.

P.S.: (1) I didn't make any effort to find out whether Ian's mother is available for comment.

(2) If you don't trust Ian and Jeffrey, there's a preview of the book available on Amazon.

#

Shakeup Coming At MSNBC

Analysis you'll never hear on MSNBC

by Gaius Publius

I don't know what to make of this news — in the sense that I don't know for sure what it augurs — so I'll just present it. I do know what to make of MSNBC — it's the Party-first equivalent of the Movement-first Fox News (note the difference) — though that varies from host to host. That is, some hosts will be more aggressive in criticizing Democrats than others, but only on narrowly selected topics. Ed Schultz, to my knowledge, is the only one covering the biggest billionaire-fueled wealth-transfer story of the day — TPP — though if I'm wrong, please do send me links.

Maybe if the geniuses at MSNBC are wondering why people like me are less eager to tune in, it's because when it comes to coverage of the Democratic Party, mostly what you get is the party line (literally), and that's as predictable as the taste of your morning coffee, and a lot less necessary in daily doses.

Politico:

As ratings plunge, MSNBC faces shakeup

Insiders say to expect more news, less bombast, and fresh voices.

It would be hard to imagine a news event better tailored to MSNBC’s Venn diagram of “lean forward” liberals and “place for politics” political junkies. Yet when Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ presumptive 2016 presidential nominee, held a news conference about her private email use last week — a media frenzy that functioned, albeit inadvertently, as the informal launch to her highly anticipated campaign — less than 13 percent of the total cable news audience was tuned to the network.

The low turnout wasn’t a fluke: Year-to-date, MSNBC’s daytime viewership is down 21 percent overall and 41 percent in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic, putting it in fourth place behind Fox News, CNN and CNN’s sister network HLN. Its prime-time ratings are down 24 percent and 42 percent, respectively. In both daytime and prime time, MSNBC is bringing in its smallest share of the demo since 2005, the year before Keith Olbermann’s scorched-earth admonitions of the Bush administration ushered in the current era of Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton.

In a memo to staff in December, MSNBC President Phil Griffin conceded that the network is suffering: “It’s no secret that 2014 was a difficult year for the entire cable news industry and especially for MSNBC,” he wrote. But change was coming, Griffin promised, with “more announcements in the New Year.”

Stop briefly and reread the first paragraph. Does Griffin, or Politico, really not know why Democrats aren't tuned to MSNBC for Clinton email news? Does anyone really expect anything but Dem-protection (and in this case, Clinton-protection) in their coverage of the story, especially with Republicans on the attack? There is a scandal there, several of them, just as there's a scandal in the Loretta Lynch nomination (see video at the top). But I could write MSNBC's coverage of the email news in my sleep, just as I could write their throaty praises of Loretta Lynch. I just wouldn't publish them as analysis.

MSNBC is vague about what's coming:

The extent of that change could be vast: In the months ahead, MSNBC is likely to shake up the bulk of its programming, moving some shows and canceling others, high-level sources at NBCUniversal told POLITICO. With a few exceptions — notably “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “Morning Joe” — every program is at risk of being moved or canceled, those sources said. “All In with Chris Hayes,” a ratings suck that currently occupies the 8 p.m. time slot, will almost certainly be replaced. Network execs are also considering moving some weekday shows, like “Politics Nation with Al Sharpton,” to weekends.

“The plan is to re-imagine what the channel is,” one high-level NBCUniversal insider with knowledge of the network’s plans said, “because the current lineup is a death wish.”

Note that the guy who's going to drive those changes thinks MSNBC has "drifted left" (my emphasis):

The changes, which Griffin has already set in motion with the cancellation of the little-watched daytime shows “Ronan Farrow” and “Reid Report,” are likely to be hastened by the arrival of new NBC News Group Chairman Andrew Lack, who will serve as Griffin’s boss.

Lack, a former NBC News president, is likely to rein in MSNBC’s ever-leftward drift and focus instead on creating more news-driven programming, with more involvement from NBC News talent. This could become a radical change of course for MSNBC, where partisan, opinion-based programming has come to dominate the vast majority of the network’s lineup in both daytime and prime time.

"Partisan"? Certainly. "Leftward"? Not so much.

The Network Covers Justice Issues Well

I don't want to minimize how valuable much of MSNBC's coverage is — Chris Christie corruption (yes, I know; low-hanging Republican fruit, but still, good coverage of an important story); prosecution-free killings by FBI agents (huge props to Maddow for those stories); relentless killer cop–after–killer cop exposés by Chris Hayes — to name just a few examples of the excellent work they've done.

But note — this is not left-leaning coverage. These are stories of corruption and murder. This is coverage of justice. True left-leaning coverage attacks the uses of great wealth by both parties to serve the interests of great wealth and undermine the interests of everyone else in the country. Of that, I've seen almost none on MSNBC.

Are they covering Rahm Emanuel's rape of Chicago? As news, but not as analysis; and certainly not with an Obama endorsement in Emanuel's pocket. Do they cover TPP and the attempted corporate rape of national sovereignty? Not that either; and certainly not with a full-court press by Obama and big corporate CEOs (like Comcast's?) as an ongoing part of the story. Have they covered the relationship between carbon wealth and fact that the administration's "solutions" to the climate crisis involve ... enriching holders of carbon wealth? That would violate almost all of MSNBC's apparent restrictions.

What does Phil Griffin, or Andrew Lack, think of Rahm, or TPP, or Exxon's push to sell methane? Can you guess?

The real market for cable television — its owners (source)

Where will this go, this move for change at MSNBC? I can't say, though I can begin to guess. The clue, for me, is here:

This could become a radical change of course for MSNBC, where partisan, opinion-based programming has come to dominate ...

"Opinion-based programming" at MSNBC consists, in practice, of calls for justice — prosecution of murder by police, for example — not calls to respond to the world in a Chomskyite, genuinely leftish way. Justice always discomforts the unjust and comfortable. Perhaps that's what they'll offer less of — fewer stories about killer cops and the ravages of carbon-caused climate change. We'll just have to wait and see.

Me, I want more "capture by wealth" stories, but then again, I'm watching the actual news.

GP

Yet Another Republican Claims to Speak for God

By Noah

In a move that would make Mike Huckabee and any number of republican nutballs proud, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has just banned judges in his state from issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

Judge Moore, if you remember, is the infamous gay-bashing judge who, back in 2002, refused to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama state courthouse, invoking the usual “We are a Christian Nation” clause that apparently only exists in the Republican or FOX "News" version of the United States Constitution. He even defied a court order on the matter and was removed from his position.

In 2012, the brilliant voters of Alabama gave Moore his job back, and the chief justice has, since then, upped his ante and even called for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage for the entire country. Doth Moore protest too much?

If I wanted to be snarky (who, me?), I could say something about the very concept of putting "Alabama" and "justice" so close together. Certainly, in the annals of Alabama’s proud history -- well, let’s just say the word "justice" often doesn’t apply. So, can it be at all surprising that Moore, an official elected by Alabama voters, has issued his ban?

In the recent past, Moore has also stated, at a local Teabagger convention, no less, that President Obama’s support of civil rights for gay people, allowing gay people to serve openly in our military, and his presidential proclamation for a “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Month” back in June 2010 have all “elevated immorality to a new level.”

Moore’s order also bans the recognition of any same-sex marriages. Which has now set up a constitutional crisis between the federal government and the government of Alabama. Moore isn’t the first Alabama official to invoke state’s rights and stand in front of the doorway to justice and civil rights. Clearly, he is channeling Gov, George Wallace, a 1960s bigot from back in the day before bigoted Southern Democrats became republicans. Perhaps it’s still 50-plus years ago in Alabama.

So here you have it: yet another republican wackjob claiming to speak for God. Just look at this freak, standing there in this picture with his hand on the Ten Commandments.

Try as I may, I just can’t remember anything about a “Thou shall not marry a person of your sex” commandment. Maybe that one was on that third tablet that Moses dropped when he came down from the mount.

Even Jesus never spoke about homosexuality, but, hey, this is the great Judge Roy Moore we’re talking about, and he surely must know better than Jesus!

My personal advice to to the people of Alabama, and republicans in general, would be that maybe they should look into something more useful: like banning same-family marriage. Just sayin’.

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Are Missouri Dems engineering a Republican-style grand-jury report in the Ferguson case?

Demonstrators outside the Ferguson PD on August 30

by Ken

I don't know whether Ferguson (MO) police officer Darren Wilson should be indicted in the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, or if so what me should be indicted for. Rather obviously I don't have all the information or know all the relevant law.

The thing is, the St. Louis County grand jury now hearing the case is going to have masses of information and law dumped on them, but may not be in a much better position to answer thes e questions. What's disturbing, though, is the suggestion that "the fix is in," a possibility that worries Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank ("Ferguson traged becoming a farce"). "It’s a good bet the grand jurors won’t charge [Wilson]," Dana writes, "because all signs indicate that the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, doesn’t want them to."

Dana cites the report by the Post’s Kimberly Kindy and Carol Leonnig, "In atypical approach, grand jury in Ferguson shooting receives full measure of case," which notes that prosecutor McCulloch's office, quite unusually, apparently intends to make no recommendation to the grand jury, instead trusting to the jurors to make sense of all the information dumped on them.

McCulloch’s office claims that this is a way to give more authority to the grand jurors, but it looks more like a way to avoid charging Wilson at all — and to use the grand jury as cover for the outrage that will ensue. It is often said that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it to. But the opposite is also true. A grand jury is less likely to deliver an indictment — even a much deserved one — if a prosecutor doesn’t ask for it.

"One might give McCulloch the benefit of the doubt," says Dana, "if not for his background."

His father was a police officer killed in a shootout with a black suspect, and several of his family members are, or were, police officers. His 23-year record on the job reveals scant interest in prosecuting such cases. During his tenure, there have been at least a dozen fatal shootings by police in his jurisdiction (the roughly 90 municipalities in the county other than St. Louis itself), and probably many more than that, but McCulloch’s office has not prosecuted a single police shooting in all those years. At least four times he presented evidence to a grand jury but — wouldn’t you know it? — didn’t get an indictment.

Dana takes a closer look at one of the four cases when McCulloch did present evidence to a grand jury but didn't get an indictment --

A 2000 case in which a grand jury declined to indict two police officers who had shot two unarmed black men 21 times while they sat in their car behind a Jack in the Box fast-food restaurant. It was a botched drug arrest, and one of the two men killed hadn’t even been a suspect. McCulloch at the time said he agreed with the grand jury’s decision, dismissing complaints of the handling of the case by saying the dead men “were bums.” He refused to release surveillance tapes of the shooting. When those tapes were later released as part of a federal probe, it was discovered that, contrary to what police alleged, the car had not moved before the police began shooting.

For the record, McCulloch -- although declining to withdraw from the new case -- has distanced himself from it by having other attorneys in his office do the presenting to the grand jury, and he presumably won't try the case himself in the event that there's a case to try. Still, Dana notes that his spokesman, "asked by The Post’s Wesley Lowery about those remarks," said that the slain men "should have been described as 'convicted felons' rather than 'bums.' " Pointing out that the Post's Wesley Lowery "gained national attention last month when he was unjustly detained by Ferguson’s out-of-control police while covering the demonstrations," Dana notes:

He has since asked McCulloch’s office for a list of cases in which prosecutors pursued charges against a law enforcement official. McCulloch’s office ultimately came up with only one case over 23 years that The Post could verify of the prosecution of a white officer for using inappropriate force against a black victim, and it wasn’t a shooting.

Then there's the awkward political dimension to the case. If you suspect that the political actors involved are Republicans, gaming the system to produce a Republican result, the facts, alas, are otherwise. "Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon — like McCulloch, a Democrat — is refusing to appoint a special prosecutor," and "Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has issued a statement in support of McCulloch. Dana doesn't claim to know any more than I do what Darren Wilson is guilty of, and he understands that "proving a case of excessive force against a police officer is difficult."

But that doesn’t justify declining to prosecute such cases. There’s no dispute that Brown ran away after Wilson shot him in a scuffle and that Wilson shot Brown several more times after that. Several witnesses — including those in a newly discovered video showing the immediate aftermath of the shooting — claim that Brown had his hands up in surrender. The alternative account offered by Wilson — Brown charged at him — requires us to believe that the unarmed and wounded man ran away, reconsidered and ran back toward the man pointing a gun at him.

And McCulloch won’t have his prosecutors recommend even involuntary manslaughter? If he persists and if the governor won’t intervene, their behavior will confirm suspicions that justice is rigged.

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Why Do Our Elites Keep Behaving Like Criminals And Sociopaths?

I've always been a law-and-order kind of guy. And yesterday I was horrified-- though not surprised-- when CIA Director John Brennan admitted the CIA had hacked Senate computers. Government officials do these kinds of things with alacrity because they know that even in the unlikely chance that they get caught, nothing happens to them anyway. Has Brennan been fired? Indicted? Jailed? Anything? Maybe given an award by Obama?

Our elites don't suffer the consequences of their criminal behavior. Oh, maybe .0001% of the time but, basically, never. This week the NY Times clutched its worry beads over ethical lapses on (an unregulated, all-powerful) Wall Street but it took a commenter to get to the heart of the matter, entirely missed by The Times: where there is no meaningful punishment-- where the rule of law has been bought off--  where crime pays big!-- crime and criminals flourish. Oliver Budde:

I was a Wall Street lawyer at Skadden and then Lehman, so allow me to speak on behalf of myself, Jamie, Lloyd and my other former compatriots, and reveal for you our ethos in a nutshell: grab every dollar you can, for as long as you can, using every scheme you can think of, and pay out to yourself and your cronies as much as you possibly can, as quickly as you can. You don't sweat morals or ethics; if it looks doable without getting caught or at least without serious risk of penalty to the executives (who couldn't care less if the corporation has to kick back some of the loot later), you do it. So subprime MBS and CDOs rated safe as mothers' milk, lying to and stealing from clients, misleading investors and the public (including Congress, even under oath), cheating on taxes, financing drug lords, laundering terrorist and Ponzi cash, ripping off the central bank that just saved your bacon, hell, even proclaiming love for America while simultaneously raking in hundreds of millions persuading American corporations to move offshore or even driving your own bank right off the cliff if the money's right: it's all good in the 'hood if you like the odds. If you can just not think about the morals and ethics-- very easy to do when you are paid in the hundreds of thousands or more-- it's a sweet life. For the players, that is. As for the rest of the country, hey, tough luck; you should've gone to work on Wall Street.

Caveat: it is an ethos endemic throughout corporate America, not just Wall Street. Companies that discourage this kind of ethos-- really discourage it and keep it from taking root-- are rare and outliers. After a year at CBS Records (SONY) I decided to drive to South America. Luckily for me, I was recruited to work for Warner Bros Records, the music company that did consciously fight that way of thinking. Once they were bought by AOL-- I was a president by then-- we were clearly told that those days were for suckers and that they were over. At that very moment I decided to quit a 7-figure job. The company changed completely and went from the most profitable music company in history to a basket case that keeps its doors open by selling bonds to marks who are lured in by… Wall Street.

And speaking of music industry tolerance for criminal behavior, Joe Isgro, the Mafia figure who was the bribery go-between with bribe-taking radio stations (i.e. all of them), was finally arrested-- after 40 years. He's using the same "defense" another Mafia associate, Republican Congressman Michael "Mikey Suits is using: deny everything, even the most obvious, and scream about having been a patriotic marine. You may have never heard of him but nothing got on mainstream radio-- NOTHING-- unless the Mafia, through Isgro, got their cut. And that includes every superstar from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to Elton John and Madonna.

He has long been a reputed soldier in the Gambino crime family and recently promised to tell all about his life in a film still being developed, titled Hit Man.

On Wednesday, Mr. Isgro, 66, added a new line to his biography, as he was arraigned in Manhattan on state charges that he helped run a sports book ring for the Gambino family.

Mr. Isgro, who was arrested last week in Los Angeles, wore a red Marine Corps T-shirt and flip-flops as he pleaded not guilty to gambling, conspiracy and money laundering charges before Justice Bonnie G. Wittner in State Supreme Court.

Mr. Isgro, who was released on $250,000 bond, declined to comment as he left the courtroom. His lawyer, Aaron M. Rubin, said Mr. Isgro “strenuously denies the charges.”

An indictment unsealed last week characterized Mr. Isgro as a Gambino soldier who conspired with Joseph Giordano, a Gambino capo and bookmaker, to set up an operation that used offshore wire rooms in Costa Rica, under the names Elite and Cristal, and took bets from people in the United States. Mr. Giordano died of cancer in prison in October.

…Prosecutors tried to revive the case for several years, but never managed to indict Mr. Isgro again. He continued to produce music, releasing albums by James Brown, Rick James and even a posthumous album from Tupac Shakur. He also got into movies, producing “Hoffa,” which starred Jack Nicholson.

In 2000, he was accused of lending money at interest rates of up to 5 percent a week and sending thugs to beat borrowers who failed to pay. He pleaded guilty to extortion and was sentenced to 50 months in prison.

Now the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has said he has evidence that Mr. Isgro, after leaving prison, conspired with Mr. Giordano to help set up the offshore sports book in July 2009.

“These charges go back more than five years,” Mr. Rubin said. “It looks to be an ancient, ancient investigation, so we are looking forward to having our day in court.”

Neil Irwin tried explaining Wall Street ethics at The Times but he went after them with a toothpick instead of a howitzer.

The financial crisis that nearly brought down the global economy was triggered in no small part by the aggressive culture and spotty ethics within the world’s biggest banks. But after six years and countless efforts to reform finance, the banking scandals never seem to end.

The important question that doesn’t yet have a satisfying answer is why.

Why are the ethical breaches at megabanks so routine that it is hard to keep them straight? Why do banks seem to have so many scandals-- and ensuing multimillion dollar legal settlements-- compared with other large companies like retailers, airlines or manufacturers?… The latest British banking scandal was enough to make [Bank of England Governor Mark] Carney, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, sound like an Occupy Wall Street populist.

…Carney has company among top bank regulators. Bill Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a speech last November that “there is evidence of deep-seated cultural and ethical failures at many large financial institutions.” The Financial Times reported this week that New York Fed officials were putting the screws to major banks in private meetings, insisting they strengthen their ethical standards and culture.

It is telling that two of the regulators who have become most publicly angry at the banking industry for its repeated lapses are also those with the most experience with the industry. Mr. Dudley is also a former Goldman Sachs executive, and his role at the helm of the New York Fed puts him at the front lines of overseeing the biggest and most complex American banks.

You know it is a sign that things are bad when people like Mark Carney and Bill Dudley think the banking industry has an ethics problem, and feel so strongly about it that they say so publicly. You might have thought that the 2008 crisis would have scared everybody in the banking industry straight-- and resulted in less pushing of the ethical boundaries. But many of today’s scandals involve actions that happened post-crisis; the Lloyds interest rate manipulation that Mr. Carney assailed this week took place in 2009.

The fact that these scandals have all occurred since the crisis raises the uncomfortable possibility that these problems go deeper than a few executives in a few banks who push boundaries, and involve something fundamental about how the industry is organized.

A study of Citigroup’s ethics policies in the wake of several dot-com era scandals, by Justin O’Brien of Queen’s University in Belfast, revealed the problem. In effect, Citi created a range of rules and internal controls to try to stop the kind of fast-and-loose practices in its research department that landed the bank in legal trouble. It might not be enough, Mr. O’Brien argued in the International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics.

Ethical programs “must be linked to material incentives in order to be effective,” he wrote. Any deviation from the ethics program, “even if financially lucrative, must be punishable by nonpayment or clawback of bonuses,” he said, adding, “Sharp practice that complies with the law but causes reputational damage should be penalized.”

…For a darker view of why there is so much fraud in banking, consider this from Richard Posner, the federal judge and University of Chicago professor, who offered one answer in a 2012 blog post titled “Is Banking Unusually Corrupt, and if So, Why?”

Both a bank’s financial capital and its human capital are short-term propositions, Mr. Posner wrote, meaning both investors and employees can readily jump to a better opportunity at a moment’s notice. “Any firm that has short-term capital is under great pressure to compete ferociously, as it is in constant danger of losing its capital to fiercer, less scrupulous competitors, who can offer its investors and its key employees higher returns,” he wrote.

“Such a business model attracts people who have a taste for risk and attach a very high utility to money. The complexity of modern finance, the greed and gullibility of individual financial consumers, and the difficulty that so many ordinary people have in understanding credit facilitate financial fraud, and financial sharp practices that fall short of fraud, enabling financial fraudsters to skirt criminal sanctions.”

In other words, the ethical breaches that Mr. Carney and other regulators assail may just have deeper roots-- and thus more elusive solutions-- than anyone might like to see.

Does "fact-checking" done by idiots and ideologues count as, you know, fact-checking?

If you're going to pretend to check facts relating to the criminal-justice system, shouldn't you know something about the criminal-justice system?

"The ironic thing about the Republican disdain for criminal defense attorneys is how many Republicans eventually end up needing one."

-- washingtonpost.com's Radley Bilko,
in his post "When fact-checking fails"

by Ken

Washingtonpost.com blogger (on "criminal justice, the drug war and civil rights") Radley Balko offers a really interesting post today called "When fact-checking fails."

Two issues sort of intersect here, and they're both interesting.

First is that term "fact-checking," a version of which is now being performed, sort of, by more news media than before, but is being performed  by idiots. And it's hard to argue with the notion that fact-checking by people who don't understand anything about the facts is, well, likely to be counter-factual if not actually anti-factual.

Second is the very basis of our criminal-justice system, and the role of defense attorneys, which are taking a beating at the hands of:

(a) people who don't know the basis of our criminal-justice system or the role of defense attorneys therein, and

(b) demagogues who know they can score phony but easy points by pressing the buttons of easily duped Americans.

AT ISSUE IS THE VETTING OF A
SOUTH CAROLINA CAMPAIGN AD . . .

. . . in which the Republican Governors Association "accus[es] Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen of 'protecting criminals' " and says he "got a sex offender out of jail time, defended a child abuser and represented others charged with violent acts."

Greenville, S.C., news station WYFF recently reviewed the ad and proclaimed most of it “true.” And indeed, as a one-time criminal defense attorney, Shaheen did all of those things. But this is what criminal defense attorneys do. A zealous defense of people accused of crimes is a critical component of our adversarial criminal justice system. You could just as easily have run an ad stating, “Vincent Sheheen spent part of his career defending the very principles that separate the United States of America from authoritarian countries.” A bit lofty, perhaps. But still technically “true.”

Just to be clear here, the obvious fact -- obvious to anyone who knows anything about the subject -- is that the RGA ad is categorically false. I'm not even sure I would accept Balko's concession that "Shaheen did all of those things. Assuming he was the defense attorney for the individuals in question, he wasn't defending "criminals" or "a child abuser," he was defending defendants, and if you don't understand the difference, then you are committing a fundamental offense against human sense and decency by voicing any opinion whatsoever about the criminal-justice system.

In a slightly different category would be "[getting] a sex offender out of jail time," since presumably by that point in the proceedings the individual would have been a convicted sex offender, and also "represent[ing] others charged with violent acts" -- both of which I would assume Sheheen actually did. However, both of these, as Bilko explains are integral parts of a defense attorney's "zealous defense of people accused of crimes," which "is a critical component of our adversarial criminal justice system." And again, if you don't understand this, it is important to have it pointed out that you have no understanding of our criminal-justice system and any comments you make about it are likely to be false.

Obviously, we've slipped already into the second issue, the fundamental misunderstanding demonstrated by WYFF's imaginary fact-checker of how our criminal-justice system works. Balko makes the intersting connection that the RGA South Carolina ad --

comes fresh off the successful GOP-led effort to block Debo Adegbile, Obama’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division. The objection was over Adegbile’s efforts on behalf of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal when Adegbile headed up the NAACP’s legal defense fund.

"These attacks," says Bilko, "are, of course, primarily motivated by partisanship."

But they’re more dangerous than the typical attack ad. The implication is that anyone who works in legal defense is, by the very nature of the job, unfit for any other public office. At their core, they’re assaults on the very notion that people who are accused of crimes should get legal representation at all.

Frankly, we need more people with criminal defense experience in policy-making positions. We certainly need more of them sitting on the bench, particularly at the appellate level and on the U.S. Supreme Court. Currently, judgeships are overwhelmingly occupied by people who have only served as prosecutors.

IF YOU WANT TO BE DISCOURAGED, LOOK
AT THE SHEHEEN CAMPAIGN'S RESPONSE

AS Bilko notes, "these sorts of attack can be potent, especially in a conservative state like South Carolina." This is just the sort of thing I was thinking of when I established my (b) category of people at whose hands "the very basis of our criminal-justice system" is "taking a beating": "demagogues who know they can score phony but easy points by pressing the buttons of easily duped Americans."

And in this connection, it's hard not to be discouraged by this published response, quoted by Bilko, from Sheheen campaign manager Andrew Whalen:

As a former prosecutor, Vincent has seen what families and victims go through and he has worked with law enforcement to hold criminals accountable and achieve justice. This dishonest ad by Nikki Haley’s DC friends is a disgusting and desperate attempt to distract from children being abused and dying because of the reckless leadership at Haley’s Department of Social Services.

"Note what’s missing, here," says Bilko.

There’s no articulation of why criminal defense is an important and honorable profession. Instead, the campaign refers to Sheheen’s time as a prosecutor and his dedication to holding criminals accountable. Criminal defense isn’t even something the campaign of a former criminal defense attorney is willing to defend.

Of course we don't know what Andrew Whalen actually said. It could be that he offered an eloquent argument based on the crucial role of defense attorneys in our criminal-justice system, and this is what the bumbling "WYYF News 4 Truth Check" chose to print.

But the "Truth Check" did include this bit:

The South Carolina Bar Association has also lashed out against the ad. The group, which represents lawyers across the state, launched a website to refute "the misinformation that is being spread ... about the legal profession and the service provided by lawyers to the citizens of South Carolina."

It's a pity the "Truth Check" team had apparently zero interest in the issues raised by the SCBA about "the legal profession and the service provided by lawyers to the citizens of South Carolina."

Why, there might actually have been a story there.


ALL OF WHICH ASSUMES, OF COURSE . . .

. . . that the WYYF News 4 Truth Checkers were actually interested in checking the truth of the right-wing attack ad. As opposed to, say, supporting the righteous cause of the heroes who want to throw people accused of crimes in jail and throw away the key against the rascals who get rich working to set vicious criminals free to roam the streets. That's not, strictly speaking, "fact-checking," and it's not the way our criminal justice system is designed to work (you know, as in "truth, justice, and the American way"), but it may be that in South Carolina -- and elsewhere -- truth, justice, and the American way don't matter.

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This Michigan judge cracks down on his own danged cell-phone-abusing self

"Why would I treat myself any different?" says Judge Clarke. "That would make me a hypocrite."

by Ken

Here's a touching little story I wanted to make sure you saw. There's one detail in the HuffPost Tech account, one that happened to bother me, which isn't quite right, as you'll see by referring to Judge Clarke's actual courtroom sign, reproduced above.

Michigan Judge Hugh Clarke Holds Himself In Contempt After Smartphone Rings In Court

Anyone who's ever visited Judge Hugh Clarke's courtroom in Lansing, Mich. knows the rules -- turn off your cellphone or silence it before entering inside.

Violators will have their phone seized by the judge and will be fined $50, according to the Lansing State Journal. It's happened five or 10 times since he created the policy in May. Friday morning, a man Clarke was sentencing for unlawful use of credit cards had his cell phone go off while his attorney was making arguments. The judge took his phone.

So when Clarke's own smartphone went off just a few minutes later during the same sentencing hearing, the Lansing State Journal reports, he upheld the law to the best of his abilities.

He held himself in contempt, pulled $50 out of his pocket and gave it to a court officer.

"Why would I treat myself any different?" asked Clarke, who has served on the 54A District Court since 2010. "That would make me a hypocrite."

He isn't the first judge to have punished himself for an unlawful use of technology in the courtroom. In April, an Ionia, Mich. judge named Raymond Voet held himself in contempt and fined himself $25 after his smartphone went off in the courtroom. But these two judges have got nothing on the "shirtless judge," Wade McCree of Wayne County Circuit Court in Detroit, when it comes to cellphone-courtroom scandals. McCree, who was rebuked for sending topless cellphone photos of himself to a courtroom deputy, was recently removed from the bench.

“What’s the moral of the story?" Clarke told the Lansing State Journal. “Leave my damn phone in the office."

NOW, AS TO THAT DETAIL THAT'S NOT QUITE RIGHT

The HuffPost account says, "Violators will have their phone seized by the judge and will be fined $50." Which left me thinking, well, fine and dandy as far as paying the fine is concerned, but what about the damned cell phone seized? Is Judge Clarke a hypocrite (his own word, remember) after all?

Fortunately the actual sign is clearer. The seizure of the phone is "subject to a $50.00 fee for return of phone." So the judge's $50 duly ransomed his phone. Of course the sign also promises "a contempt citation," and it's not absolutely clear that he issued himself one of those.

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

Anthony Lewis (1927-2013)

Anthony Lewis in 1963, after winning his second Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, this one focused on his coverage of the Supreme Court

"I was probably made to be a lawyer. It just didn’t turn out that way."

-- Anthony Lewis, quoted by WaPo obituarist Emily Lang

"There's a kind of lucidity and directness to his prose. You learned an awful lot of law just from reading Tony Lewis’s accounts of opinions."

-- former NYT executive editor Joseph Lelyveld,
quoted by Adam Liptak in his Times obit

by Ken

This is another one that hurts. Not because longtime New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis didn't live a rich and rewarding life (though the standard obituaries are obliged to identify him as 85, since he died two days short of turning 86, we'll think of him as 86, since after all he died a mere two days short of his birthday), but because he carved out a journalistic niche that made him awfully hard to replace, all the more so as newspapers, even the NYT, feel obliged to be apologetic about maintaining opinion writers who are unabashedly and unapologetically liberal -- certainly not without "balancing" their voices with gibberish-mongers from the Right.

To say that Lewis was "unabashedly and unapologetically liberal" doesn't mean that he had a reflexive or in any way un-fully-reasoned viewpoint, even though that's the way your average right-winger would read it, because that really does seem to be the only way right-wing "thinkers" think, at the jerk of a reflexive knee, which after all is right close to where most of their thinking is done. No, all I mean is that Lewis had thought through the issues and arrived at deeply held convictions that any sensible person would recognize as "correct."

And what was special about Lewis's liberalism is that it was expressed most frequently in terms of the law -- he really believed that the law could be challenged into deliver justice. Here are some nice paragraphs from Emily Lang's Washington Post obit:

By the time he retired in 2001, Mr. Lewis was widely recognized as the dean of liberal American columnists and had written a book that is regarded as the seminal account of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright.

As a Times columnist for 32 years, he wrote his most noted work on First Amendment rights and the American justice system. In a crowded field of columnists, many of whom were at times enticed to bloviate, Mr. Lewis distinguished himself with the consistent lucidity of his writing and his reportorial approach to the job. . . .

Taken together, [his two Pulitzer Prizes] reflect the two most salient themes of Mr. Lewis's career: a self-professed affinity for the underdog and seemingly infallible command of the law, despite his limited formal training in the field. "I was probably made to be a lawyer," he once said. "It just didn't turn out that way."

The WaPo obit, by the way, is titled "Anthony Lewis, indefatigable champion of civil liberties and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, dies at 85." My initial reaction was to pooh-pooh the Pulitzers and focus on the "indefatigable champion of civil liberties" part. But reading the obit, I was reminded that the Pulitzers were won, not for columnistic thumb-sucking (where Pulitzers have notoriously much to do with where you are and who you've pleased) but reporting, before he became a columnist. The first one, in fact, came before he was brought to the Times.

He received his first Pulitzer for national reporting in 1955, at age 28, while working for the now-defunct Washington Daily News. The award recognized his series of articles that cleared a Navy Department employee who was fired for alleged security risks during the Red Scare stoked by then-Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.).

Meanwhile, in the Times obit, Adam Liptak writes in part:

Anthony Lewis in 1970

Mr. Lewis brought passionate engagement to his two great themes: justice and the role of the press in a democracy. His column, called "At Home Abroad" or "Abroad at Home" depending on where he was writing from, appeared on the Op-Ed page of The Times for more than 30 years, until 2001. His voice was liberal, learned, conversational and direct.

As a reporter, Mr. Lewis brought an entirely new approach to coverage of the Supreme Court, for which he won his second Pulitzer, in 1963.

"He brought context to the law," said Ronald K. L. Collins, a scholar at the University of Washington who compiled a bibliography of Mr. Lewis's work. "He had an incredible talent in making the law not only intelligible but also in making it compelling."

Before Mr. Lewis started covering the Supreme Court, press reports on its decisions were apt to be pedestrian recitations by journalists without legal training, rarely examining the court's reasoning or grappling with the context and consequences of particular rulings. Mr. Lewis's thorough knowledge of the court's work changed that. His articles were virtual tutorials about currents in legal thinking, written with ease and sweep and an ability to render complex matters accessible.

IT'S BEEN A TOUGH TIME ON WHAT I MIGHT CALL
THE "LEGAL JUSTICE" JOURNALISTIC BEAT

It was just on February 14, at 81, of Ronald Dworkin (left), who contributed so much dazzling comment to the New York Review of Books, describe in his Guardian obit as "widely respected as the most original and powerful philosopher of law in the English-speaking world."

I've missed Anthony Lewis's columns since his retirement in 2001 (though he soldiered on as a valued NYRB contibutor), and reading Ronald Dworkin's final NYRB piece, "Religion Without God" (an excerpt from the first chapter of his forthcoming book with that title), arguing that it's possible to hold moral viewpoints with the passionate conviction of religious belief without believing in an accepted deity, has been depressing. Fortunately, NYRB has no shortage of other able legal commentators, and for ongoing coverage of law and justice issues I'm infinitely grateful to Jeffrey Toobin for the diligent work he does both in The New Yorker and on newyorker.com.

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The presumption of innocence is crucial to us. It just seems like rich folks get more of it

by Ken

And it doesn't hurt if you're on the favored side of an ethnic divide either.

Let me say that I'm nervous about jumping into blogprint about this story, with so much unknown. There isn't, after all, anything at all in evidence, because you only get evidence in a trial, and it appears that Mr. Jennings isn't going to face one of those.

I assume that from the prosecutor's standpoint the case involves too much "he said"-"he said," and then when there's talk of contradictory and false statements, it's understandable that prosecutors are reluctant to prosecute a case they don't feel they can prove. At the same time, it's hard not to notice that one of the parties was a hot-shot banker with a $3.4 million house and the other was a cabbie who's an Egyptian immigrant. And there doesn't seem to be much contradiction that the drunken-bum banker who plunked himself into the cabbie's cab for a ride from the West Side of Manhattan to Darien, Connecticut, never did pay for the ride, or that the cabbie had his hand attacked.

This account by John Dillon was posted this afternoon on Bloomberg. (Links onsite.)

Ex-Morgan Stanley Executive’s Stabbing Charges Dropped

By John Dillon - Oct 12, 2012 2:08 PM ET

Charges against William Bryan Jennings, the former Morgan Stanley (MS) U.S. bond-underwriting chief accused of stabbing a New York cab driver over a fare, will be dropped, police said.

“I’m aware that the charges are being dropped,” Detective Chester Perkowski of the Darien, Connecticut, police department said today in an interview. He declined to comment further.

Jennings was accused of attacking the driver, Mohamed Ammar, on Dec. 22 with a 2 1/2-inch blade after a 40-mile (64 kilometer) ride from New York to the banker’s $3.4 million home in Darien. Ammar, a native of Egypt and a U.S. citizen, said Jennings told him, “I’m going to kill you. You should go back to your country,” according to a police report.

Jennings faced assault and hate-crime charges, each of which brings a maximum sentence of five years in prison. He was also charged with not paying the fare, a misdemeanor. He pleaded not guilty March 9.

Eugene Riccio, Jennings’s attorney, wouldn’t confirm that the case had been abandoned.

“All I’m saying is we’re showing up,” he said today in a phone interview. “We have a court date Monday, and we’re going to be there.”

Left Bank

Jennings no longer works at New York-based Morgan Stanley, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who declined to be named because the information isn’t public.

Pen Pendleton, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley, the sixth- largest U.S. bank by assets, said in March that Jennings had been placed on leave. Pendleton didn’t immediately return a call for comment today.

Riccio declined to comment on his client’s employment. Jennings didn’t immediately return a phone call to his home.

Steven Weiss, the supervisory state’s attorney, didn’t return a call seeking comment on the status of the case.

“Mr. Ammar is outraged by the prosecutor’s decision and continues to demand justice,” Ammar’s attorney, Hassan Ahmad of Ahmad Navqi Rodriguez LLP in New York, said in a statement. “He was anxiously awaiting trial this month and had no indication that the prosecutor would take such a drastic turn nearly a year after this crime was committed and within days of the trial.”

‘Seriously Undermine’

On March 28, Jennings filed a motion seeking to have the case dismissed, arguing that Ammar contradicted himself in statements to the police. The arrest warrant contained false statements and omissions that “seriously undermine” Ammar’s credibility, according to the filing by Jennings. That motion was still pending and was to be the subject of an Oct. 15 hearing.

Jennings flagged Ammar down in front of Ink48, a hotel on Manhattan’s West Side, sometime before 11 p.m. after the banker said his car service didn’t appear, according to the police report. Jennings had been attending a company Christmas party.

Ammar told police that once they reached Jennings’s home, he refused to pay the $204 fare they had agreed on. He said he drove away to find police and that during the ride the banker stabbed him in the hand. Jennings said that they never agreed on an amount and that Ammar had demanded $294, which he viewed as exorbitant.

The case is State of Connecticut v. Jennings 12-0176761, Superior Court for the State of Connecticut (Stamford).

To contact the reporter on this story: John Dillon at Connecticut Superior Court in Stamford at jdillon@snet.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

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Reckless disregard for due process got the gov't into the Guantánamo mess, yet they keep thinking more reckless disregard will get them OUT of it

Judge Lamberth in 2009 (spelling doesn't seem to be C-SPAN's
strong suit) -- he didn't sound like a happy camper yesterday.

"It is a sad reality that in the ten years since the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay not a single one has been fully tried or convicted of any crime. Despite this, the Government has fought to deny detainees the ability to challenge their indefinite detentions through habeas proceedings. In a litany of rulings, this Court and the Supreme Court have affirmed that the Federal courts are open to Guantanamo detainees who wish to prove that their indefinite detentions are illegal."

-- D.C. District Court Chief Judge Royce Lamberth, slapping down the latest gov't end run around due process for Guantánamo detainees

by Ken

Ouch! Chief Judge Lamberth sure doesn't sound like a happy camper, does he?

This whole chunk of his ruling is quoted in Michael Doyle's McClatchy report on the judge's slapdown, "Judge sides with Guantanamo detainees." To get us up to speed on the story, here's how Doyle's account begins:

Using strong words, a federal judge has rejected the Obama administration's efforts to change the rules under which Guantanamo Bay detainees are represented by lawyers.

Denouncing what he called "an illegitimate exercise of Executive power," U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said in his 32-page ruling that an existing 2008 court order will continue to guide detainees' access to counsel, even in cases where there is not an active habeas corpus petition.

"It is clear that the government had no legal authority to unilaterally impose a counsel-access regime, let alone one that would render detainees’ access to counsel illusory," Lamberth declared.

It's just a shame that the U.S. District Court's powers don't extend to punishing the gov't thugs and/or legal cretins who have been burdening the federal courts with their flagrantly abusive perversion of both the military and the civilian legal systems. I'm thinking along the lines of someday -- actually, tomorrow would work fine for me! -- having all the officials of the Bush and Obama administrations who've participated in the perversion of the administration of justice rounded up and dumped in the hold of a cargo ship for transport to their own wing at Gitmo, where they will be treated, not merely under the flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional conditions they have instituted for their prisoners, but better still, under the very worst conditions they've attempted to impose, including all those already struck down by Judge Lamberth's court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The net effect would be de facto permanent incarceration with essentially no contact with the outside world. Boo-hoo.

It can be argued that some, at least, of those U.S. officials have acted not out of a will to criminally subvert, or to cover up a history of governmental criminal subversion, but simply out of their own sniveling incompetence. Fair enough! I'm not sure that's exactly excuplatory, but there should be adequate opportunity for them to make their case at, er, some point --to, um, somebody, although the only somebodies they'll ever have access to are the ones who put them there, and those somebodies have a powerful interest in making sure their victims are never heard from. And don't forget, under the most extreme theories advanced by the U.S. injustice authorities, it may well constitute an intolerable breach of national security even to tell them why they're there!

Not to worry, though. During their essentially permanent stays at Gitmo, the U.S. injustice officials will be treated . . . well, with all the consideration they wanted to extend to their prisoners, which is to say pretty much none. Fortunately, they won't have to worry about outright torture, unless some unnamed functionary thinks they would benefit from being tortured.

LET'S TAKE A MOMENT HERE TO REFLECT
ON THE CONCEPT OF "DUE PROCESS"

If the actual Gitmo detainees had arrived there via a rigorous process of investigation and lawful detention, they would still be entitled to due process. This is what we as Americans pretend to believe in. But the reality is that overwhelmingly those people wound up in this inescapable black hole through a diabolical combination of bad luck and military and law-enforcement dishonesty and ineptitude -- dishonesty and ineptitude that have also made it virtually impossible to try even the legitimately implicated defendants in anything resembling an actual legal procedure. It's almost funny. In the cases of the minuscule percentage of the detainees who are actually still suspected of committing some sort of crimes, the record of abusive detention minimizes the possibility of actually pressing legal cases in court.

The fact is, however, that most of the detainees should never have been detained, and even in the case of those for whom there may once have been some reason for further scrutiny, the grounds for suspicion have mostly fallen apart. But because of the government's need to cover all those exposed butts, hardly any of the detainees have much hope of release anytime soon. And this is also almost funny: How many of the detainees who had no connection to terrorism before they were shanghaied into the system can be expected, if they're finally released, to head for their nearest terrorist recruiting office?

Of course the career butt-coverers have powerful allies among right-wing pols who are either (once again) too stupid or too dishonest to acknowledge the monumental, probably irrecoverable botch we have made of this whole situation. And for a public that has embraced thuggery and imbecility as virtues, the magic words "national security" cover all sins.

IF YOU'RE CURIOUS WHAT EXACTLY THE
GOV'T TRIED TO GET AWAY WITH THIS TIME . . .

Here's Michael Doyle's explanation:

The Obama administration has sought to impose a new requirement that detainees' attorneys sign a "memorandum of understanding" in order to meet with their clients. Six detainees challenged the new requirement, which covers those who no longer have an active or pending habeas petition.

The MOU, Lamberth noted, strips counsel of their “need to know” designations, and explicitly denies counsel access to all classified documents or information which counsel had “previously obtained or created” in pursuit of a detainee’s habeas petition. Counsel can obtain access to their own classified work product only if they can justify their need for such information.

"At its heart," Lamberth wrote, "this case is about whether the Executive or the Court is charged with protecting habeas petitioners’ right to access their counsel."

Well, yes, that's the legal heart of the case. But Judge Lamberth himself made it clear that the real heart of the matter is larger. Let's look again at what he wrote:

It is a sad reality that in the ten years since the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay not a single one has been fully tried or convicted of any crime. Despite this, the Government has fought to deny detainees the ability to challenge their indefinite detentions through habeas proceedings. In a litany of rulings, this Court and the Supreme Court have affirmed that the Federal courts are open to Guantanamo detainees who wish to prove that their indefinite detentions are illegal.

There oughtta be a law!

Right-wing demagogues like to pretend that Gitmo detainees are there for a reason, and are being treated with more consideration than is called for even by such quaint principles as the Geneva conventions, and in any case terrorism can only be dealt with by "national security" procedures that override the mere tenets of law enforcement. Once again this right-wing demagogues are either too stupid or too dishonest to know or acknowledge that the most effective rooting out of terrorists has been accomplished by competent and vigorous law enforcement.

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The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin worries about "Judges for Sale"

from the Center for American Progress (download pdf here)

"In 1990 candidates for state supreme courts only raised around $3 million, but by the mid-nineties, campaigns were raking in more than five times that amount, fueled by extremely costly races in Alabama and Texas. The 2000 race saw high-court candidates raise more than $45 million."

-- from a new Center for American Progress report
by Billy Corriher, "Big Business Taking Over Supreme Courts"

"When you enter one of these courtrooms, the last thing you want to worry about is whether the judge is more accountable to a campaign contributor or an ideological group than to the law."

-- retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,
in a May 2010 NYT op-ed piece, "Take Justice Off the Ballot"

by Ken

Both of the above quotations come from an important new blogpost by The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, "Judges for Sale." Yes, ladies and germs, while we've been watching open-mouthed as all that right-wing money is poured into the presidential contest, and now more and more into congressional and even state-legislative races, it turns out that the moneyed elites have been buying up state supreme courts all over the country at relative discount prices.

Last night, in quoting from Adam Gopnik's new New Yorker piece on the history of Mormonism and how it's expressed in today's Top Mormon ("I, Nephi: Mormonism and its meanings"), in the section about Willard Inc. I focused on the portions that suggested a religious basis for his "any responsibility to his own past -- the consuming sense that his life and opinions can be remade at a moment's need." But I was also careful to include Gopnik's sense that the who-and-what of Willard doesn't require a religious explanation, beyond his own faith's utter congeniality with a culture of money-making.

Yet class surely tells more than creed when it comes to American manners, and Romney is better understood as a late-twentieth-century American tycoon than as any kind of believer. Most of what is distinct about him seems specific to the rich managerial class of the nineteen-eighties and nineties, and is best explained so -- just as you would grasp more about Jack Kennedy from F. Scott Fitzgerald (an Irish and a Catholic ascending to Wasp manners) than from St. Augustine. In another way, though, this is precisely where faith really does walk in, since commerce and belief seem complementary in Romney's tradition. It's just that this tradition is not merely Mormon. Joseph Smith's strange faith has become a denomination within the bigger creed of commerce. It's unfair to say, as some might, that Mitt Romney believes in nothing except his own ambition. He believes, with shining certainty, in his own success, and, more broadly, in the American Gospel of Wealth that lies behind it: the idea that rich people got rich by being good, that the riches are a sign of their virtue, and that they should therefore be allowed to rule.

Then again, almost every American religion sooner or later becomes a Gospel of Wealth. . . .

We don't usually study U.S. history from the vantage point of how much, at any given moment in that history, the economic elites are getting their way. (We probably should. I'm just saying we usually don't. If we could plot it on a graph, I'm guessing we would see the elites having their way pretty overwhelmingly through much of our history and then over the course of the 20th century suffering some of the slings of democratization. Clearly by the Age of Reagan they were asking themselves why they were allowing their will to be thwarted by people who just didn't have enough economic clout to warrant anywhere near that kind of say. And while the Reaganite Right was narcotizing moronified non-elite right-wing enablers with heapings of simpatico crackpot ideology, our former masters were retaking the reins.

We saw the effect on a supreme court of this mixture of crackpot ideology and Daddy Warbucks-style wealth in the electoral vengeance wrought on the Iowa justices for their temerity in failing to capitulate to sociopathic Christian Right hate-mongering. But that turns out to have been merely a more visible manifestation than many others.

Here's Jeffrey Toobin in his current New Yorker blogpost:

Thirty-nine states elect judges to their highest courts. (Fortunately, New York does not, though many lower-court judges in the state stand for election.) State courts decide about ninety-five per cent of the cases in American courts. The federal courts, where the judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, hear only about five per cent, though those appointments get far more attention. Criminal prosecutions, civil lawsuits, child-custody matters, personal injuries -- almost all are decided in state courts, under rules established by each state supreme court.

For many years, these contests were rather sleepy affairs, followed mostly by lawyers (and not many of them). The big changes began in the nineteen-eighties, and the partisan lines were clear. Plaintiffs' lawyers in personal-injury cases funded Democratic candidates for judgeships; defense lawyers in these cases -- especially those representing insurance companies and large corporations -- supported Republicans. For a time, the battle was something of standoff, but Republicans gained the upper hand in the nineties, especially in the South, where they were making big gains across the board. (Karl Rove first became famous because of his victories in Texas judicial elections.)

A new report, issued yesterday by the left-leaning Center for American Progress, shows that the race for control of state judiciaries has become a rout. The report, entitled "Big Business Taking over State Supreme Courts," found that,

Fueled by money from corporate interests and lobbyists, spending on judicial campaigns has exploded in the last two decades. In 1990 candidates for state supreme courts only raised around $3 million. . . .

[Then the quote continues as above.]

As we already know, by 2000 that $3 million had exploded to $45 million.

In the subsequent decade, the numbers have only grown bigger. As the report notes, "more than 90 percent of special interest TV ads in 2006 were paid for by pro-business interest groups. Conservative groups spent $8.9 million in high court elections in 2010, compared to just $2.5 million from progressive groups.”

"The problem of money in judicial elections has a straightforward solution," Gopnik writes. "Appointive state judiciaries."

The systems vary in states without supreme-court elections. Some, like New Jersey, give a great deal of power to the governor; the “Missouri plan,” which has also been adopted by several other states, uses non-partisan commissions to present finalists to the governor; other states, like California, allow the governor to choose supreme-court justices, who are then subject to occasional retention elections by the voters. Any of these are preferable to the grotesque spectacles that pass for judicial elections in states like Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, and (of course) Texas.

Then Toobin quotes Justice O'Connor, who has been "in recent years" -- since her retirement from the Court in 2006 -- "the leader of the fight for an appointive judiciary." Maybe we should hear once again what she had to say:

When you enter one of these courtrooms, the last thing you want to worry about is whether the judge is more accountable to a campaign contributor or an ideological group than to the law."

"But it’s clear now," Gopnik writes, "that in many states you should worry -- a lot."

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