Tipping The Scales: New American "Justice" On Display In Mississippi

Larisa Alexandrovna reports on some "justice" that's way beyond bizarre, but it happened, yesterday, in Mississippi:

Some crazy stuff went down in Mississippi today that has lawyers in Mississippi up in arms. My friend Lotus over at Folo blog does a good job summarizing the situation:

"There was a strange event at the Mississippi Supreme Court today. I’m not entirely sure what to make of the story, which we have courtesy of Patsy Brumfeld of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal this evening. Here’s how her story began:

Something unusual happened Thursday at the Mississippi Supreme Court.

It may be the first time a majority of the justices voted to prohibit a colleague from publishing a dissent in a case.

In other words, Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz of Ocean Springs disagreed with a court decision and wanted to write about it. His fellow judges said, no, he couldn’t and they apparently stopped the court clerk from filing Diaz’s statement into the record.

She goes on to note that Chief Justice Smith and justices Waller, Carlson, Dickinson and Randolph voted to prevent the publication of Justice Diaz’s dissent, and that her paper was seeking the documents on the case through the state public records act."

How bizarre! I've never heard of anything like this -- at least not in America.

Fortunately for us, Larisa is perfectly situated to provide some relevant context on this story:

Yes, you read that correctly. A dissenting opinion is censored from the public record. Why? I have no idea. But, one thing you need to remember, Oliver Diaz has been one of the judges targeted by political prosecutions. He was twice - not once - twice indicted and put on trial along with attorney Paul Minor and judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield. The Rove machine at the DOJ claimed that Diaz was accepting bribes from Minor, despite the FACT that Diaz recused himself from any and all cases relating to Paul Minor - who has been his longtime friend and now guaranteed a loan for him. All four were acquitted - Diaz on all the charges and Minor, Teel and Whitfield on most of the charges - the first trial around. Then all four were indicted and tried again - just in time for the elections. Diaz was again acquitted. The other three were not so lucky, all landing with convictions and stiff prison sentences.

What else you may not know (unless you are religiously following my reporting on this) is that of the 4, three were targets of arson and break-ins and an attorney for one of the judges was burglarized three times. In all three cases, only documents were taken and/or looked through - no valuables.

Given this context, the latest in relation to Diaz is indeed suspicious.

See my investigative series on the political prosecutions in the south, in particular those installments that relate to Mississippi:

Part Three – Running Elections from the White House

Part Four – How Bush pick helped prosecute top Democrat-backed judge

Part V: Mississippi Justice: Bush US Attorney targeted my wife, supporters and friend

Part VI: Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys

Justice Department investigating two US Attorneys for political prosecution

Part VII: Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco and the GOP teamed up to crush Democrats in the South

Think about this for a moment: Think about how devastating a dissenting opinion must be, if it cannot even be read into the public record.

Then click those links, and read all about how the Republicans are trying not just to defeat the Democrats, but to eliminate all political opposition, by any means available, beginning in the Deep South.

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Local And State Police To Be Granted New Spy Powers

According to Spencer Hsu and Carrie Johnson in the Washington Post,

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.

Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush's successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.

They're kidding, right? "Some say"? "Since the Watergate era"?

No, they're not kidding. This is post-democratic American simulated journalism at its finest -- which is to say, get used to it!

They can't (or won't) say it, but I can:

These moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush's successor and to enshrine the greatest expansion of executive authority ever!

This is much, much worse than Watergate -- which was considered a national disgrace, remember? ... which was resisted by the Democrats and by the press, remember? ... including a couple of young "reporters", one of whom was actually an intelligence officer, and as we found out years later, the whole thing was a great big charade, designed to oust the by-then completely crazy Richard Nixon and leave the reins of power in the hands of the much more pliable long-time FBI asset, Gerald Ford ... Do you remember that?

And much of this simulated national drama was played out in the editorial offices of ... [drum roll] ... the Washington Post! Do you remember that, too?

We're not supposed to remember anything anymore, apparently. Or not much, anyway. So for the the next several paragraphs, our esteemed authors give us the point of view of government supporters, and they say things like this:

Supporters say the measures simply codify existing counterterrorism practices and policies that are endorsed by lawmakers and independent experts such as the 9/11 Commission. They say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.

WOW! Really?? Did somebody actually type the phrase "independent experts such as the 9/11 Commission"? Or did the editors simply copy and paste it in, like I did?

How could you type such a thing? How could such a thought even enter your head?

Actually, it makes as much sense as "internal oversight", doesn't it?

Here's the rub:

Under the Justice Department proposal for state and local police, published for public comment July 31, law enforcement agencies would be allowed to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch a criminal intelligence investigation based on the suspicion that a target is engaged in terrorism or providing material support to terrorists. They also could share results with a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and others in many cases.

And that's not all.

On the day the police proposal was put forward, the White House announced it had updated Reagan-era operating guidelines for the U.S. intelligence community. The revised Executive Order 12333 established guidelines for overseas spying and called for better sharing of information with local law enforcement. It directed the CIA and other spy agencies to "provide specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel" to support state and local authorities.

And last week, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said that the Justice Department will release new guidelines within weeks to streamline and unify FBI investigations of criminal law enforcement matters and national security threats. The changes will clarify what tools agents can employ and whose approval they must obtain.

With the FBI having recently refused to assure Congress it wasn't protecting violent criminal informants, and in the wake of one transparent "terrorist" entrapment fiction after another, it's tough to imagine that "streamlining" the FBI's investigations could possibly be a good thing for anybody -- except the FBI.

And it's not even possible to imagine Michael Mukasey -- who wouldn't even admit that waterboarding is torture -- doing anything to protect your Constitutional rights, especially at the expense of the radical "unitary executive".

As even the Washington Post notes:

The recent moves continue a steady expansion of the intelligence role of U.S. law enforcement, breaking down a wall erected after congressional hearings in 1976 to rein in such activity.

Some other interesting points from the same article:

The push to transform FBI and local police intelligence operations has triggered wider debate over who will be targeted, what will be done with the information collected and who will oversee such activities.

To these three easy questions, the answers are: [1] Everybody, especially YOU. [2] Anything they want to do, and [3] Nobody whose interests correspond with yours.

The Post notes that

Many security analysts faulted U.S. authorities after the 2001 terrorist attacks, saying the FBI was not combating terrorist plots before they were carried out and needed to proactively use intelligence.

But rather than following up on the next logical question, namely: "Why didn't they use the intelligence they were gathering?", Spencer Hsu and Carrie Johnson protect their paychecks (certain lines must not be crossed, wink wink!, nudge nudge!), although they do admit that

civil liberties groups and some members of Congress have criticized the administration for unilaterally expanding surveillance and moving too fast to share sensitive information without safeguards.

But as always in post-democratic American simulated-journalism, nobody's allowed (or sufficiently courageous -- what's the difference?) to state a clear fact without putting it in the mouth of a speaker who is easily dismissed as "political". Thus

Critics say preemptive law enforcement in the absence of a crime can violate the Constitution and due process. They cite the administration's long-running warrantless-surveillance program, which was set up outside the courts, and the FBI's acknowledgment that it abused its intelligence-gathering privileges in hundreds of cases by using inadequately documented administrative orders to obtain telephone, e-mail, financial and other personal records of U.S. citizens without warrants.

This technique hides the obvious fact that "preemptive law enforcement in the absence of a crime" is not law enforcement at all.

It does violate the Constitution and it obliterates due process.

But the authors can't (or won't) say that; instead they attribute a watered-down version of the obvious truth in the words of anonymous "critics" and move on to quote a 9/11 cover-up insider -- sorry: independent expert -- Jamie Gorelick:

Former Justice Department official Jamie S. Gorelick said the new FBI guidelines on their own do not raise alarms. But she cited the recent disclosure that undercover Maryland State Police agents spied on death penalty opponents and antiwar groups in 2005 and 2006 to emphasize that the policies would require close oversight.

"If properly implemented, this should assure the public that people are not being investigated by agencies who are not trained in how to protect constitutional rights," said the former deputy attorney general. "The FBI will need to be vigilant -- both in its policies and its practices -- to live up to that promise."

It's beyond laughable, really. Gorelick blames the state police, emphasizes the need for oversight, and winds up with a conditional recommendation: "If properly implemented".

That's a good one. If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. But the Washington Post can't say that either.

To its credit, the Post article does include some critical quotes attributed to a named individual, who hits at least one nail on the head:

[Michael] German, an FBI agent for 16 years [and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union], said easing established limits on intelligence-gathering would lead to abuses against peaceful political dissenters. In addition to the Maryland case, he pointed to reports in the past six years that undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention; that California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor activists; and that Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being discovered.

"If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more information," German said. "It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government."

But one former FBI officer's opinion doesn't carry much weight against the advancing twin waves of horse manure and tyranny:

Mukasey said the changes will give the next president "some of the tools necessary to keep us safe" ... [and that] the new guidelines will make it easier for the FBI to use informants, conduct physical and photographic surveillance, and share data in intelligence cases, on the grounds that doing so should be no harder than in investigations of ordinary crimes.

If there's one thing we don't need, it's new rules to "make it easier for the FBI to use informants".

And if there's one thing we do need, it's a complete understanding of what it means when "law enforcement" officials claim that collection of intelligence in the absence of a crime should be "no harder" than a criminal investigation.

But the Washington Post can't tell you that, either.

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It's So Easy Bein' Green: McKinney/Clemente '08 For Truth And Justice

It's So Easy Bein' Green

The Green Party's presidential ticket is set: Cynthia McKinney [top photo] has captured the nomination, and she has selected Rosa Clemente as her running mate.

According to Reuters:

The U.S. Green Party says it is a partner with the European Federation of Green Parties and the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas.

"Green parties are the first parties to recognize that our role in the world is stewardship of Earth's natural resources rather than domination and unrestrained consumption of the goods of the Earth," the party said in its proposed platform for the 2008 election.

Cynthia McKinney

CNN offers the standard media spin on McKinney's political career:

McKinney represented a suburban district of Atlanta, Georgia, as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives for six terms -- five consecutively.

First elected in 1992, she lost a primary challenge in 2002 after suggesting in a radio interview that members of the Bush administration stood to profit from the war that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

They did stand to profit, of course, and they have done so. You'll notice the CNN report doesn't deny her suggestion.

The "primary challenge" she lost in 2002 came about because of her opposition to all the 9/11 lies. You should read this [PDF] document, if you haven't already done so: "The 9/11 Commission Report, One Year Later. Did the Commission Get it Right?" It's devastating. And it's in the public record because of Cynthia McKinney.

We could sure use a prominent national politician with enough courage to speak the truth -- especially if it happened to be one they've already run out of town twice!

In 2004 she ran again and won with a low-key campaign in which she largely avoided controversy. But voters ousted her again in 2006 after she was accused of a physical altercation with a U.S. Capitol Police officer who questioned her after failing to recognize her at a security checkpoint.

How many terms must one serve in Congress before the U.S. Capitol Police officers begin to recognize you?

The dude was hassling her, and all the charges against her have been dropped, and still the cloud hovers.

This cloud is the modern media's way of saying "Uppity Nigger!" And if the modern electorate had any brains, we would all vote for her, just because of the way she's been smeared.

What is it about Cynthia McKinney that frightens the mainstream media, the mainstream Democrats and the pro-Israeli lobby? What are they all afraid of? Whatever it is, we need more of it -- very badly.

The LA Times says:

In her campaign, [Cynthia McKinney] is pushing for the impeachment of President Bush and a quick end to the Iraq war. She also advocates a human rights plan that includes reform of the nation's voting system and slavery reparations for African Americans.

Sounds good to me. What if we all have to vote Green this time? Will that kill us? Or is it about time?? As another piece in the LA Times points out: "Obama, McCain agree on many once-divisive issues".

Rosa Clemente

In stark contrast to Barack Obama's fluff and drivel, McKinney's choice of running mate shows exactly what she's thinking, as Wikipedia reports:

Rosa Alicia Clemente (born 18 April 1972) is a community organizer, journalist and Hip-Hop activist. Born and raised in the South Bronx she is a graduate of the University of Albany and Cornell University. A much sought-after commentator, political activist, community organizer and independent reporter, Clemente has been delivering workshops, presentations and commentary for over ten years.

Clemente's academic work has been dedicated to researching national liberation struggles inside the United States, with a specific focus on the Young Lords Party and the Black Liberation Army. While a student at SUNY Albany, she was President of the Albany State University Black Alliance (ASUBA) and Director of Multicultural Affairs for the Student Association. At Cornell she was a founding member of La Voz Boriken, a social/political organization dedicated to supporting Puerto Rican political prisoners and the independence of Puerto Rico.

And here's Rosa Clemente herself, on being selected to run with Cynthia McKinney:

I am honored and excited to accept this invitation to run with Cynthia McKinney. Cynthia McKinney is a hero to me and many others across this country and around the world for her courage in standing up to George Bush while the Democratic Party establishment caved.

This campaign is the opportunity the Hip-Hop generation has been working for. This is our time to address the issues affecting our communities – rising unemployment, the high cost of food and housing, a lack of quality public education and access to higher education, the prison-industrial complex, and unaccountable corporate media. These issues are not being addressed by either the Republican or Democratic nominee.

I choose to do this, not for me, but for my generation, my community and my daughter. I don't see the Green Party as an alternative; I see it as an imperative. I trust that my Vice Presidential run will inspire all people, but especially young people of color, to recognize that we have more than two choices. Together, we can build the future we've been wanting.

I agree with her on that, but with one reservation: We can build anything we want ... but only if we want it badly enough.

Today's final words come from Rosa Clemente's acceptance speech:

I stand on the shoulders of a generation of young people of color that are united, that clearly understand that we are suffering from structural racism, institutional racism and capitalism.

We are fighting for survival. We fight for the faceless, the mic-less, the speechless. Black and Brown and poor faces.

We are not fighting for the right to a just vote, we are fighting for the right to a just life.

The government of America has perpetrated wars not only abroad but here at home:

• War on drugs.
• War on youth.
• War on those who fight for freedom.
  

We are faced with issues that are getting progressively worse:

• No livable wage.
• No affordable housing.
• The AIDS pandemic in the African and American and Latino community, especially with heterosexual African American women and Latinas.
• Lack of free healthcare system.
• The stranglehold of media conglomerates that do irreparable damage to marginalize communities with stereotypical, racist and sexist propaganda.
  

We can lead the nation with a microphone. Hip-Hop has always been that mic, but now the green can be the power that turns up the volume of that microphone.

When Cynthia McKinney called me and asked me to be her running mate I immediately said yes. That is my personality. To always say yes when it is a cause that relates to justice for people.

And then I got scared. Not because I was asked, but what it means.

What this means for me and my entire generation, the Hip-Hop generation. I am honored to be part of this, because it means that we have now been asked not only to step up but to act up, to act against people who would rather see us crumble than succeed.

DoJ Illegally Preferred Politically Savvy Applicants

According to a report from the Department of Justice [PDF], law students who applied for select DoJ programs were illegally screened for political acumen.

Those students who recognized that there had been a coup d'etat in 2000, solidified by an enormous false flag terror event the following September, were preferred to those who seemed oblivious, and by a wide margin. The bloggers who follow these issues with fairness in their hearts and nothing in their heads will have a field day with this one, but it makes perfect sense.

Students who were smart enough to have (or claim) Conservative leanings, Republican affiliations, and/or Federalist Society connections were -- quite predictably, in my view -- strongly preferred over those who had or claimed no political connections at all. And the students in this neutral group -- again, quite predictably -- were strongly preferred over those who were (frankly) thick enough to proclaim their Liberal bias, Democratic affiliations and/or connections with the treasonous groups which tend to support such quaint notions as civil rights, social justice, and the former alleged supremacy of the US Constitution.

Think of it this way: if you lived in 1950s Russia and you had a chance to work -- even in some dim capacity -- for the Politburo, or any of its "political" organs, would you list Adam Smith among your influences and laissez-faire capitalism among your passions?

Well, you could, but you wouldn't get the job, would you?

Oxy Morons At Work: Bush Justice

One of the questions that comes up from time to time here (and presumably elsewhere) concerns the legitimacy (or otherwise) of using 9/11 as a "litmus test". In other words, if somebody has a different view of 9/11 than you do, can you still pay attention to what he writes, and can you still take him seriously on other issues?

I have been critical of Scott Horton [photo] over his position on 9/11 and Afghanistan, which I regard as relatively uninformed.

But I'm absolutely uninformed about plenty of topics, and clearly the world has become so complex that nobody can be well-informed about everything.

So I don't buy the "litmus test" approach, and Scott Horton provides an excellent illustration of my reasoning: on issues he knows well, Horton paints huge, vital scenes, and he does it with powerful strokes.

In "Bush Justice Department Goes After Another Democratic Lawyer (And Why This is Bad News for Yoo and Bradbury)", Scott Horton gives yet another example of the Bush administration's use of the rule of law -- as a political weapon.

If applied to their own, it would mean prison time for the lot of them.

So instead they use it capriciously against the people who dare to cross their path. How quaint!

It’s beginning to sound like a stuck record. Another strike by the Bush Justice Department, keeping the country safe. Who’s the target this time? A crack dealer? An al Qaeda terrorist? No. It’s a wing-tip shoed Miami lawyer, who served as president of the bar association, is held in universally high esteem (outside, of course, of the political hacks who run the Bush Justice Department) and who advised Al Gore in the 2000 Florida recount battle. According to the Justice Department, the lawyer’s involvement with Democratic politics has nothing to do with his being charged. Quite a few of his contemporaries are having problems buying that, and still bigger problems understanding his supposed “crime.”

What? Who? What's the crime? What's the charge? And what does this all have to do with Yoo and Bradbury?

The crux of the matter is this: Yoo and Bradbury gave legal opinions, widely held to be erroneous, which are now being used to shield torturers from accountability.

But Bush's department of "justice" is prosecuting a Florida attorney because of an opinion he gave which they say was incorrect and led to a crime.

Absurd? That's not the half of it. You have to read the whole piece. Horton spells it all out very clearly.

It's hypocrisy of the highest order, as we've grown (shrunk?) to expect from the Criminal Elite who run this country -- accusing a political opponent, on the flimsiest of evidence (or none at all), of something they do all the time, and quite openly.

Glug glug glug. Wake up and smell the Kool-Aid!

Bugged: British Prisons Spy On Lawyers, Visitors

In the UK, the Telegraph has yet another blockbuster story about yet another way in which the rule of law has been eviscerated since 9/11 -- not by terrorists (who could never do such a thing) but by governments:

The full scale of a nationwide policy to bug British jails can be disclosed today after a whistleblower revealed that hundreds of lawyers and prison visitors had been secretly recorded.

The covert eavesdropping of the MP Sadiq Khan is alleged to be just the first case in a far wider operation to bug terrorist suspects and other serious criminals introduced after the September 11 attacks.

Lawyers, including the human rights solicitors Gareth Peirce and Mudassar Arani, were allegedly "routinely bugged" by police during visits to see clients at Woodhill prison. Listening devices were said to have been concealed in tables at the jail.

Well, what do you know? [Click the image to enlarge it.]

The scandal came to light after Mr Khan, a Muslim Labour MP, was covertly recorded during two visits to a terrorist suspect held at Wood­hill prison in Milton Keynes in 2005 and 2006.

It led to a political outcry as the bugging of MPs has been prohibited since the 1960s. Mr Straw was forced to set up an inquiry. He insisted he had known nothing of the operation before last weekend, although it later emerged that officials in his department had learnt of the allegations two months ago.

Now someone with detailed knowledge of the operation claims that Mr Khan's visits were allegedly among "hundreds of conversations" bugged by Det Sgt Mark Kearney during his time with a four-man intelligence team based at the prison since early 2002.

The recordings are deemed so sensitive that copies are stored at a secret facility protected by armed guards.

Initially, only a handful of prisons implemented the alleged bugging policy - including Woodhill and Belmarsh - but over the past 18 months the secret policy is alleged to have been rolled out across Britain.

At least 10 solicitors had conversations recorded at Woodhill while dozens more are thought to have been monitored across the country, the insider claimed. Hundreds of prison visitors were also targeted.

The whistleblower said: "Mark [Kearney] didn't feel what was going on was right or legal. Every person who came in and saw these terrorist suspects was the subject of an eavesdropping operation. He was put under huge amounts of pressure. Initially, it was just one or two machines but it steadily increased and now covers other category A prisoners such as murderers."

Documents seen by The Daily Telegraph reveal that Mr Kearney's team was also ordered to search and copy the contents of prison visitors' bags including keys and mobile phone sim cards.

These allegedly included confidential documents left by lawyers. It is also alleged that senior Woodhill prison staff were extremely unhappy with the practice.