US Constitutional Issues – Page 25

Ferguson, Week Two

What we know: Two weeks ago, a police officer shot a man for jaywalking.

But, without any additional official information, we’ve learned a lot from Ferguson:

• The police can pretty much do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. And it’s gonna be your fault.
• Police shoot African-American men with impunity.
• Most police forces in America have been militarized by the federal government.
• Militarized tactics and behavior by police has become accepted and normalized by local and state politicians, particularly since the Boston Marathon Bomber Manhunt.
• We’re way past “free-speech zones” now. Remember them? The Occupy Movement taught us that if you’re protesting, (peacefully or not) the police now bust you up without consequence.
• Reporters and journalists can and will be arbitrarily detained and/or tossed in jail. This began during the BP oil spill, increased with Occupy New York, and now is blatant in Ferguson. The police will shoot journalists with bean-bags and rubber bullets even if the journalists have complied with police demands.
• The airspace above an area where a dispute takes place can be completely closed to the media, even if there is no risk.

What you smell is the Constitution burning. All of the above should cause us to examine what is going on with police-involved killings in the US. Addicting Info reports:

According to data compiled by the FBI, in a seven year period ending in 2012 an average of nearly two black people were killed by police every week. Even more troublesome: Almost 20% of those killed were under the age of 21, more than double the rate of whites of the same age group. If you are black, being young doesn’t seem to protect you.

Deadspin reports that the US has no comprehensive database of police shootings. And there is no standardized process by which officers log when they’ve discharged their weapons, and why. There is no central infrastructure for compiling that information and making it public. There are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, yet fewer than 900 report their shootings to the FBI. No one is keeping track of how many American citizens are shot by their police.

USA TODAY quotes University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert:

I’ve looked at records in hundreds of departments…and it is very rare that you find someone saying, ‘Oh, gosh, we used excessive force.’ In 98.9% of the cases, they are stamped as justified and sent along.

The Wrongologist reported that in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household. This means Ferguson is very reliant on revenue sourced from policing: From the Ferguson 2014 budget, here is a breakdown of The City of Ferguson’s revenues: in 2013, revenues from sales taxes were $5.8 million, while revenues from fines and public safety were $2.6 million (18% of total). In 2014, fines are expected to increase by $100k:

The increase in Fines and Public Safety revenues comes from both manned and un-manned traffic enforcement. Due to a more concentrated focus on traffic enforcement, municipal court revenues have risen about 44% or $623,000 from those in FY 2010-2011. Total court revenues are expected to reach $2,029,000 in FY 2013-2014. In the fall of 2011, the City implemented camera enforcement in three high traffic accident incidence intersections. Fines resulting from this implementation represent a portion of the increased revenues over the period, however, it should be noted that additional manned traffic enforcement also contributed to the increase.

We also learned from Ferguson that police officer safety is the number one issue on our streets today, even though officer fatalities are down. The Economist reports that in 2013, 30 cops were shot and killed—just a fraction of the 9,000 or so murders using guns that happen each year. And the primary cause for officer fatalities this year was traffic-related incidents, which claimed 46 lives. Firearms-related incidents are at the lowest level since 1887, when 27 officers were shot to death.

Sadly, the number one priority for the police used to be public safety, not police safety, and we are a coarser society because of the change.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time on what Ferguson has not yet delivered:

…a bunch of politicians and celebrities expressing sympathy and outrage. If we don’t have a specific agenda—a list of exactly what we want to change and how—we will be gathering over and over again beside the dead bodies of our murdered children, parents, and neighbors.

Could Ferguson MO become Newark NJ, 1967?

A little history:

A riot broke out in Newark in 1967, triggered by the police beating a black cab driver, who was falsely reported to have died. Five nights of rioting and looting followed in what the press in those days called the “ghetto”. Republican Governor Richard J. Hughes called up the New Jersey National Guard. When the National Guard arrived, reports began coming in of scores of black snipers roaming the city, and terrorists with dynamite and arms heading towards Newark with supplies for the uprising.

As a result, when the Police or the Guard saw people, or some shadow on far away windows, they began shooting. The results? 26 deaths and 725 wounded.

Were there truly black snipers? Here is some information from the report of The Kerner Commission: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In the summer of 1967, after the riots in Newark, Detroit, and 125 other cities, President Lyndon Johnson convened an advisory commission to look into what happened and why. The report of the Kerner Commission, which warned of a nation moving toward a “system of apartheid” in its cities, concluded that the so-called snipers in Newark were actually members of the police, Troopers, and Guard, who, lacking any reliable communications and possessed by fear of the specter of armed black men, often ended up shooting at each other.

The most dangerous person in the world is a frightened person. If they are armed to the teeth, and they are frightened, really bad things can happen. It is very interesting to read contemporaneous reporting from the 1967 riot. The rioters are called “terrorists” by the New York Times:

Incensed by the slaying of a white fire captain by Negro snipers, Gov. Richard J. Hughes said he was considering an appeal for Federal help in capturing the terrorists.

What happened next was urban warfare. More from the NYT of July 16, 1967:

After midnight, Springfield Avenue, the main commercial street in the ghetto, was raked by machine gun fire from guardsmen and the police, who ducked behind cars and sprayed the roofs of buildings thought to contain terrorists…The Governor again said that the riots were not caused by a spontaneous uprising against unemployment, squalid housing and a general hopelessness – as negro leaders insist – but were an outbreak by a “vicious criminal element.” Thrusting out his jaw, he promised that the rioters would receive swift and retributive justice.

Ferguson hasn’t gotten to that point yet. But it has similar elements, all waiting for a spark.

The Kerner Commission Report concluded that the trigger for the Newark riots and those in 125 other US cities, were confrontations between the local police and members of local African-American communities. It also concluded that the residents’ held a perception (often justified) of the largely white police as an occupying force which was in the community to serve and protect the interests of the privileged white communities rather than to serve and protect the legitimate interests of the local minority residents, and that the police inherently harbored racist attitudes toward residents of minority communities that they were also charged to serve.

Compare that conclusion of 47 years ago to Ferguson MO today.

Newsweek reports that 22% of Ferguson residents live below the poverty line, and 21.7% receive food stamps. The unemployment rate in the town is 14.3%, or more than double that of St. Louis County and Missouri as a whole: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

In the media commentary on Ferguson, there is little mention of the economic and social conditions that underlie both the current growth of police repression and the eruption of popular anger in response to it. We don’t hear that one out of four residents of St. Louis lives in poverty. Or that the wholesale closure of auto plants, breweries and other manufacturing facilities has led to the loss of two-thirds of St. Louis’s population since 1950.

Or, that 47% of the metropolitan area’s African American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed.

What we are seeing in Ferguson is a disturbing trend in US policing: Violence against inanimate property equals violence against “the people”. And it is not just in miniority neighborhoods. Think about the excessive force used by police all across America to break up the Occupy movement’s civil disobedience.

This is why police departments across the US are being prepared and equipped to deal with mass unrest. That is what The Powers That Be are expecting.

Along with everybody else who has seen the writing on the wall.

Thoreau, from Civil Disobedience:

…Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest…

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 17, 2014

Difficult week. Ferguson MO, Iraq and RIP Robin:

The media is making a thing of Robin Williams’s suicide. Media coverage and commentary is wall-to-wall, just like when Seymour Phillip Hoffman OD’ed.

They ignore that CNN says that there are 22 suicides a DAY among America’s veterans. What has happened to proportionality in the press?

A study published this week in Health Affairs states that spending on behavioral health disorders is expected to decline from 7.4% of total health spending in 2009 to 6.5% in 2020, while actual dollars spent are projected to increase from $172 billion in 2009 to $281 billion in 2020. More needs to be done.

From the police blotter:

We heard on Friday that Michael Brown may have stolen cigars from a convenience store. The media says that it shows the kid was no saint. But people aren’t shot for shoplifting, they get arrested and need help from lawyers like these philadelphia criminal lawyers to help reduce their charges. This is despite the fact that shoplifting costs American retailers approximately $14B annually. Once again, the media are conflating the dead boy and his possible crime with the right of the people to free assembly to protest a grievance against their government, as well as the threat that is posed to ordinary Americans by militarized police.

The Ice Bucket Challenge throws cold water on Obama:

We revise our view of Iraqi history:

Iraq owns us. 4 US presidents in row have been called to action there:

What America has Become

The world is talking about Ferguson MO. Yesterday, a group of SWAT forces in riot gear faced angry citizens who had gathered to protest the killing of Michael Brown. After nightfall, police deployed tear gas against the crowd, warning the protest was “no longer peaceful”.

“This is no longer a peaceful assembly. Go home or be subject to arrest,” police warned through a loudspeaker, shortly before shooting tear gas at the protesters. Police were also shooting rubber bullets while smoke grenades and tear gas canisters fell into the crowd.

Meanwhile, some of the protesters reportedly threw rocks and bottles at the police. The police also arrested reporters, an alderman, and a state Senator. The two arrested reporters, Wesley Lowery of the WaPo and Ryan Reilly of the HuffPo, were in a McDonald’s recharging their devices and writing up reports. They had identified themselves as reporters to the arresting officers. The WaPo reported that for the past week in Ferguson, reporters have been using the McDonald’s a few blocks from the scene of Michael Brown’s shooting as a staging area. Demonstrations have blown up each night nearby. But inside there’s Wi-Fi and outlets, so it’s common for reporters to gather there. The Police closed the McDonald’s. Both reporters were released after a short time in a holding cell. Both say they were assaulted.

So, this is what America has become. SWAT teams in Ferguson, in daylight, facing unarmed civilians:

And here is a short video loop taken by HuffPo reporter Ryan Reilly on Wednesday. HuffPo, in a statement, said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Ryan, who has reported multiple times from Guantanamo Bay, said that the police resembled soldiers more than officers, and treated those inside the McDonald’s as “enemy combatants.” Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.

Police are no longer seen as members of the community dedicated to “Protect and Serve”. They are becoming domestic soldiers. Local police departments throughout have the equivalent of tanks now. They have drones. They have automatic rifles, and planes, and helicopters, and they go through military-style boot camp training.

When it comes to the up-armoring and militarization of America’s police forces, this is completely run-of-the-mill stuff.

In June, the ACLU issued a report on how police departments now possess arsenals in need of a use. The Pentagon has handed out 600 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs to them for essentially no cost, with plenty more to come. They’re surplus equipment, mostly from our recent wars, and perhaps they will indeed prove handy for a sheriff fretting about insurgent IEDs (roadside bombs) in New Jersey or elsewhere in the country.

The worst part of outfitting and training police officers as soldiers will be psychological. Give a man access to drones, MRAPs, and body armor, and he’ll believe that his job isn’t simply to protect and serve, but to eliminate danger.

If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they’re deployed in battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy.

Let’s remember that this is America, not a war zone.

The militarization of police departments has been covered by the Wrongologist here. The New York Times has reported on all of the other free military gear – like machine guns, armored vehicles and aircraft – that police are receiving from the Pentagon. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the DHS has handed out $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many for the purchase of armored vehicles and weapons. This program has created a cottage industry of companies who make militarized equipment and take checks from local towns in exchange for military hardware.

From Greg Howard:

There are reasons why white gun rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying children’s toys.

Do the police actions in Ferguson look similar to police actions during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement? National Guard soldiers, tear gas, and fire hoses were the old way of keeping protestors in line, but now the police are the soldiers. They still use the tear gas, but MRAPs and stun grenades are the new methods of disorienting protestors.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) needs to address why local police believe that it is appropriate to arrest reporters. The DOJ needs to address why local police can walk on the people’s right to peaceably assemble.

The DOJ needs to do more than “monitor” the local situation.

And the mainstream media can be complicit in this too. The people who showed up at Ted Bundy’s ranch were called “supporters” and the protestors in Ferguson are referred to as an “angry mob”, even before any looting or violence started.

And thanks a lot SCOTUS, for deciding that we didn’t need the Voting Rights Act anymore because America’s racial problems are behind us. They aren’t.

Let’s close with a quote from William O. Douglas about oppression:

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air–however slight–lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

What Happened to Our Free Press?

We have a free press, right? That freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state. With respect to government information, governments routinely distinguish between materials that are public or protected from disclosure to the public based on a classification process that protects some information from disclosure due to the information’s relevance to protecting the national interest.

Washington is making more and more information, including some that is decades-old, inaccessible except to journalists who are “trusted”. That is journalists who the Administration or an agency have invested time and effort to determine that they will put the best possible spin on whatever they are fed.

In the past, the term “access journalism” meant giving exclusive interviews (or leaks) to pet reporters who had established that they won’t bite the hand that feeds them good stories. From the perspective of the government, this is a virtuous circle: Not only can they reward reporters who play ball, but over time, these correspondents become influential, by virtue of having an inside information advantage.

But there are darker ways this game is played. Some agencies block information from journalists or historians who prefer to report rather than to take dictation. The American Historical Association has an article about government agencies using the courts to keep secrets secret:

In a two-to-one decision the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, in May 2014, agreed with the CIA that a volume of its…history of the 53-year-old Bay of Pigs Invasion could “confuse the public” and should thus be kept secret.

Huh? What are we supposed to be confused about? That the invasion failed? That the CIA set it up? Or maybe that the Agency was flat-assed wrong about the popular anti-Castro uprising that was supposed to be triggered by the invasion?

To win the legal argument, the CIA successfully convinced the two Judges that any document the agency deems “predecisional” (dealing with file information developed prior to a decision to act) can be withheld permanently. To do this, they rely on the CIA Information Act of 1984. This bill was a deal made to speed the CIA’s processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests while protecting information unlikely to be released because of national security concerns. But today, the CIA doesn’t abide by Congress’s intent, it routinely refuses to search its operational files – in particular, files which have been subject to an investigation. As an example, Admiral William McRaven, the Joint Special Operations (JSOC) Commander who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid, knew about this transparency black hole when he ordered the FOIA-complying Department of Defense to purge its computers of all files on the Navy SEALs raid on bin Laden and send them to the CIA, where the Operational Files Exemption would keep them “safe” from search and review for release.

If our society wants to maintain even a veneer of democracy, we have to change the CIA Information Act, which keeps important information from the public. It seems it is used to preserve the image of the CIA and shield it from criticism, as much as it is used to protect national security.

A second dark way in which the game is played is demonstrated by the Obama administration’s pursuit of more criminal leak investigations than all previous administrations combined. The Institute for Public Accuracy reported yesterday that 14 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists have issued individual statements voicing support for New York Times reporter James Risen, who continues to refuse to name his source for information about a bungled CIA operation in Iran that appeared in his 2006 book State of War. The DOJ is considering whether to attempt to force Risen to testify against his sources.

Third, the White House occasionally threatens reporters about their methods of obtaining information. Press Secretary Josh Earnest publicly lectured the WaPo after they reported that Obama aides had early warning of a potential border crisis, and for citing an anonymous sources. At the same time, other reporters present at the lecture pointed out a familiar email that had just arrived in their inboxes: an invitation to a phone call with anonymous White House officials:

.@PressSec condemns anonymous sources. Just arriving in email: White House invitation to reporters for call with anonymous admin officials.

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 21, 2014

All of this is designed by the Administration’s spinners to produce cover stories. Because there’s always a cover story, even if it’s “nothing happened.” Cover stories are built like onions, one layer behind another, a fallback story behind every cover story.

Anti-transparency is tantamount to anti-accountability. Criticism is the only known antidote for error.

By contrast, in a competitive arena like business (or sports), ruthless postmortems, particularly of failures, often happen in public. They are believed to be necessary for improving performance.

But in Ultimate Politics, Washington can’t tolerate critiques, so they plan to be even less transparent. Forget the Constitution, folks.

Our 4th Branch of Government

Everyone knows our government has 3 branches; the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. That’s basic high school civics. But, it’s no longer true. The US government now seems to have a 4th branch: The national security apparatus, which has unfathomable power and reach.

From Tom Engelhard: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

New efforts at “reforms” will, at best, only modestly impede the powers of this [security] state within a state. Generally speaking, its powers and prerogatives remain beyond constraint by our judicial branch of government. It is deferred to with remarkable frequency by the executive branch and, with the rarest of exceptions, it has been supported handsomely with much obeisance and few doubts by Congress.

The national security apparatus is unelected. After last week’s mea culpa by Mr. Obama, apparently it has also moved beyond our Constitutional rules of checks and balances. You may recall that a report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) on the CIA’s Rendition/Detention/Interrogation (RDI) program, was held up by the CIA. Along the way, we learned that the CIA was improperly spying on the SSCI.

In March, CIA Director John Brennan said spying on the Senate was outside the realm of possibility, claiming:

As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s — that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.

Now we learn they did exactly that. The CIA Inspector General has found that:

CIA employees improperly accessed computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a report on the agency’s now defunct detention and interrogation program,

On August 1st, the administration defended the CIA and Brennan’s actions. But Brennan DID obstruct the investigation, he leveled false charges at the Senate Intelligence Committee staff, filed those charges with Department of Justice, and then oversaw the process of redacting the damning CIA report.

From the Booman Tribune:

By any normal standard, John Brennan would be prosecuted for his actions. But he is being protected by the administration. I don’t think this is best explained by the idea that Brennan is doing a good job in other respects. He’s a major embarrassment to the administration and protecting him makes them look extremely bad. From the very beginning of his administration, I think President Obama has simply been afraid to take on the Intelligence Community.

And remember Mr. Obama’s rationale:

…we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values. I understand why it happened…there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. And, you know, it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots…

He has clearly taken a side and it’s not that of transparency, or the Constitution. Or, do we live in a country where the President works at the direction of the head of the CIA?

Alternative Obama: If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times, look forward, because if you look backward you’re going to learn from history and then how are we ever going to continue weakening your Constitution?

Alternative Alternative Obama: John Brennan has a gun to my head. Keeps reminding me of how much my Presidency looks like that of JFK. Worries about my safety…

That might explain his lack of political courage, but, political courage is exactly what is required if we are to get off the self-destructive path this country is walking. Sadly, we aren’t seeing that. Too many are scared that they might lose their jobs if the boss saw their political action. Too many are flummoxed by how easily Congress can be co-opted by money. Too many in our media are giving right-wing politicians a pass because it’s clear that they won’t change.

There’s no excuse for the people who tortured or, who lied to Congress, even if they were under ‘enormous pressure’. They knew the difference between right and wrong. And the fact that John Kiriakou is in prison for revealing that the US tortured, while Cofer Black, David Addington, John Yoo, John Brennan and Jose Rodriquez, all of whom played a role in the torture program roam free, shows that our political elite’s ethics are upside-down.

Holding individuals, particularly direct actors (like torturers) and advisers who engineered the torture program accountable before the law would not destroy the effectiveness of the CIA or the security state. Those who violated the law should be prosecuted. But those who did not violate the law should be free to conduct operations on behalf of the US. They shouldn’t be made to feel that they are weakened or wronged.

In response to the related question that often arises: “What? Do you want the CIA to be looking over its shoulder or consulting a lawyer every time it needs to get something done? The answer is: “Of course”.

We should expect nothing less than that from every elected official from the President down to local mayors, police chiefs and commissioners. Particularly from those who have the statutory authority to harm others.

It is difficult to imagine today that what sounded like poetry at the first Obama inauguration is now mockery. Sadly, it’s not about unfulfilled expectations of more hopeful things; we understand the political dynamic at work in Washington. It is that among his “achievements” has been the further weakening of our constitutional rights through his compliant treatment of the emergent 4th branch of government.

Remember the Gulf of Tonkin Incident?

August 4th is the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an event that led to Congress giving President Johnson the legal authorization to begin the Vietnam War. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox exchanged fire with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, the Maddox fired on radar targets, which it reported had launched torpedoes at the Maddox.

And on August 10th, Congress passed a joint resolution giving the president the use of “conventional” military force against North Vietnam.

Why should we remember the Gulf of Tonkin? Because the Iraq War wasn’t the first time we went to war where the intelligence and facts were fixed to conform to the policy. Jessica Desvarieux of the Real News Network interviews Daniel Ellsberg about his experience with the decision-making about the Gulf of Tonkin incident:

For those who don’t remember the Vietnam Era, Daniel Ellsberg was the Edward Snowden of his time. Ellsberg was physically present when the Gulf of Tonkin “facts” were “fixed” to conform to Vietnam policy. Daniel Ellsberg was a highly placed adviser in the Pentagon. He had been a Marine officer, assigned to a ship in the Suez Canal during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Starting in 1964, he worked in the Pentagon for McNamara, and starting in 1967, served 2 years in Vietnam as a civilian working for the State Department. Here is part of what Ellsberg says in the video: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

…my boss–the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, John McNaughton–[was] with McNamara in his office on the morning of August 4, when I came into the office at 9 o’clock they were actually already planning the possible response to an attack…because of indications that the commodore on the spot…thought that he was being shadowed for a possible ambush…a courier rushed in…with a flash cable saying that Commodore Herrick on the patrol in the South China Sea…was under attack at that very moment, that there was a torpedo coming at him, he was taking evasive action…

More from Ellsberg: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…at about 1:30, while…McNamara…was over at the White House, and I think McNaughton was with him, conferring with the president on the exact nature of the retaliation, [in] comes a very dramatic table from Commodore Herrick saying, hold everything…All the torpedo reports except the first one are now suspect and, it turned out, he said, were reports of an overeager sonar man who was mistaking the beat of the ship’s propeller against the wake as they took evasive action, circled in the water. That was being mistaken for incoming torpedoes…

And Ellsberg tells us that the ship’s captain ultimately reported 21 torpedoes. He goes on to say that all but one were false reports, and that the captain said many years later that he was also wrong about the first torpedo: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Now, I took it for granted that anything I was seeing was, of course, also available to the president and to McNamara…So I assumed that they were quite well aware that there was a good deal of uncertainty about what had happened. The commodore at the time, Herrick, did say that there was one torpedo, but one had to take that with a good deal of salt, because he had been just as certain about the next 20 torpedoes, and it really took him many years before, looking at the evidence, he finally acknowledged that he had been mistaken about the first one as well. But even on that night, we knew that what the president proceeded to say and what McNamara proceeded to say to the press in television interviews, that the attack was unequivocal, we knew that that was false…

Just like years later, when it turned out that the assertions by Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush that they had unequivocal evidence of WMDs in Iraq, their evidence was at best, equivocal. Later, we learned it was false.

Just as there were no torpedoes in the Tonkin Gulf, there were no WMDs in Iraq.

Just like Johnson and McNamara got a blank check for war with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Rumsfeld and Bush got the Iraq Resolution, essentially a predated declaration of war given by the Congress to the president, in violation of the Constitution. We can go back further: the USA always has a pretext for war; remember the Maine! The patterns and degree of deception from Vietnam to Iraq appear to be eerily similar.

Add to that, whatever caused the downing of MH17 is not clear cut and unequivocal either. The US says it has evidence, but it has not provided that evidence to us. It is shrouded in mystery, doubt and propaganda, just as the supposed WMDs in Iraq, the Syrian government gas attacks, what started the latest Gaza/Israeli war, and many other incidents.

It is useful to add more skepticism into the current geopolitical climate. Today’s average Congressional staffer can remember GWB and WMDs, since they were 18-20 years old when that happened, while Vietnam is ancient history to them.

Both wars were started with a lie, but the equally big lie was that when the promoters got their wars, they were smart enough to know that neither war could actually be won.

So, who benefited?

And who will benefit if we engage again in Iraq? If we engage more deeply in Ukraine, or in Syria, or in Gaza?

Hint: It isn’t “freedom”.

The Steady Erosion of Due Process Rights

Do the incarcerated lose the right to email privacy when they are institutionalized? Last week, the NYT reported on a case where prosecutors were reading the email correspondence between a prisoner and his lawyers. But this wasn’t a case at GITMO, it was at a federal prison in Brooklyn, NY.

The extortion case against Thomas DiFiore, a reputed boss in the Bonanno crime family, encompassed thousands of pages of evidence, but even as he was sending daily emails to his lawyers:

…federal prosecutors informed Mr. DiFiore last month that they would be reading the emails sent to his lawyers from jail, potentially using his own words against him.

The Times says that federal prosecutors around the country have begun reading prisoners’ emails to their lawyers. The issue has spurred court battles over whether inmates have a right to confidential email communications with their lawyers — a question on which federal judges have been divided.

All defendants using the federal prison email system, Trulincs, have to read and accept a notice that communications are monitored. So prosecutors point out that defendants are forewarned. Defense lawyers say the government is overstepping its authority and taking away a necessary tool for an adequate defense. Prosecutors say there are other ways for defense lawyers to communicate with clients; defense lawyers say the other methods are very inefficient.

In Brooklyn and across the country, the issue is being decided case by case.

The Times reports on a case In Georgia, in which a man named Jared Wheat used Trulincs email to work on ads for a banned weight-loss product. The FTC used the emails as part of a successful contempt case, arguing he violated a permanent injunction barring him from making unsubstantiated weight-loss claims.

Mr. Wheat’s lawyers said the trade commission’s request for the emails was illegal. Federal regulations allow mail sent to prisons to be marked as privileged:

…and email, particularly in the 21st century, has effectively replaced US Postal Service mail for most communications, and this court should not treat it differently than traditional mail.

But judge Charles A. Pannell Jr. of the US District Court in Atlanta, ruled in 2012 that by using Trulincs, Mr. Wheat “consented to the monitoring and thus had no reasonable expectation of privacy.”

That’s like saying that by using the space in prison for in-person meetings with lawyers, the prisoner “consents” to eavesdropping. A prisoner has a right to communicate with his lawyer, and the burden should be on the prison to see that the right to the confidentiality is preserved through each avenue of communication provided by the prison as much as it is through other avenues.

In the DiFiore case, his lawyer, Steve Zissou, tried to persuade a judge to stop prosecutors from monitoring his client’s emails:

Regardless of whether such communications qualify for protection under the attorney-client privilege, the government’s decision to read our communications with our client is entirely inappropriate.

The judge overseeing that case, Allyne R. Ross, ruled last Thursday that the government was allowed to review the emails. She wrote:

The government’s policy does not ‘unreasonably interfere’ with Mr. DiFiore’s ability to consult his counsel.

In the case of another Brooklyn-based prisoner, Syed Imran Ahmed, a surgeon accused of Medicare fraud who is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the decision went another way. In Dr. Ahmed’s case, the judge, Dora L. Irizarry, ruled against the government last month, barring it “from looking at any of the attorney-client emails, period.”

She seemed to take particular offense at an argument by a prosecutor, F. Turner Buford, who suggested that prosecutors merely wanted to avoid the expense and hassle of having to separate attorney-client emails from other emails sent via Trulincs. The government was not otherwise interested in the contents of those messages, he said. From Judge Irizarry:

That’s hogwash…You’re going to tell me you don’t want to know what your adversary’s strategy is? What kind of a litigator are you then? Give me a break.

Communications between lawyer and client should be privileged no matter the form of communication. It is disturbing to see Americans asleep at the wheel as our civil liberties over the past decade have eroded with little resistance.

So, the crux of the matter is that if the law is denied to some, we are all at risk.

The majority who say that they “have nothing to hide” do not understand this. They do not understand that for democracy to be worth its salt, it must defend the rights of everyone, in particular, those with whom we disagree, those who live differently from us, or who think differently from the majority.

America as we know it can easily survive without everyone having access to assault rifles, but it cannot survive without everyone having access to due process.

As go our due process rights, so will go our democracy.

Did 9/11 Change Everything?

“He didn’t know what was defeating him, but he sensed it was something he could not cope with, something that was far beyond his power to control or even at this point in time comprehend.” –Hubert Selby Jr.

The Wrongologist has changed the blog’s “Quotes We Like” sidebar to add the quote above. The quote is from Selby’s Requiem for a Dream. He also wrote Last Exit To Brooklyn. These are two gritty American novels of their time and place. Exit was published in 1964 and presents a view of 1950’s Brooklyn NY. Requiem was published in 1978. Both were made into movies. Selby died in 2004.

In a Salon article in 2000, Selby is quoted about Requiem:

The dream I’m referring to in the book, of course, is the great American dream: prosperity, property, prestige, etc. And the fact that it’ll kill you dead. Striving for it is a disaster. Attaining it is a killer. It takes many forms, and the results are not happy. It’s not a feel-good thing

Selby continues:

‘Requiem’ is about the cancer of that dream…Of course, there are a lot of people who are successful who work very hard. They’re not all George W. Bush. But the point is they’re misguided. That’s not what life is about. We believe, probably more than anywhere, that life is getting all this material stuff. It’s a case of misguided ambition and desire

We can take this further. Today, America doesn’t know what is defeating it. America senses that it can’t cope, that there are things happening that are beyond our control or comprehension:
• We can no longer solve our domestic problems
• We are powerless to deal with the Malaysian airline disaster in Ukraine
• We can’t resolve the tri-partite struggle in Iraq
• We can no longer restrain Israel in its non-proportional response to Hamas
• We are no longer on the same side as our long-term Middle East allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
• We can’t figure out a non-military response for China’s initiatives throughout Asia

In fact, we no longer have a non-military response to any foreign problem. The power strategies that we employed throughout the 1950’s, continuing down to the end of the Soviet Union no longer work. Back then, we played chess, moving pieces across the board. We used whichever proxies or allies were at hand, we overthrew elected governments, thereby violating our own ideology. We supported and installed dictatorial governments. We promised freedom and prosperity, while helping to deliver hegemony, based on our military intervention, or the threat of it.

Today, we have no answers, only posturing from all of our leaders. We have become the kind of people who criticize, not the kind of people who can solve problems.

We are no longer king-makers in the third world, the neo-conservative approach of use of military power cannot stand in the face of asymmetric warfare and the devastating superiority of IEDs to up-armored military vehicles.

From Ian Welsh:

Deny the fruits of western ideology to those who reach for them, and of course they will turn against you. Pervert them even within your own countries by undermining your own democratic principles and by concentrating wealth and income in the hands of a few, while impoverishing the many; make it clear that modern neo-liberal capitalism doesn’t spread prosperity to even the core nations, and you have set up one of the preconditions of not just hegemonic collapse, but of internal collapse of a civilization

And here is Welsh’s money quote:

People who do not believe in the genuine goodness of what they are fighting for, hardly fight for it at all

That is what we see in Iraq. More importantly, that is what we see in America. Today, no one believes in the genuine goodness of what they are fighting for, be they job-hunting Millennials, unreconstructed 1960’s liberals, or today’s money-grubbing Republican and Democrat politicians.

When you no longer know how to solve problems, you turn to what is easy. You buy the next shiny object, you live through the lives of the rich and famous. Snark and incivility replace facts and discussion.

There was a display in the 9/11 Museum that showed a piece of debris about 3’ high by 6’ wide and 12’ long. It was rusty and seemed to be sedimentary in nature, visibly comprised of metal, concrete, and wires. It is actually part of 5 floors of the Trade Center, compressed by weight and softened by intense heat. Nothing of the desks, computers, phones and people are distinguishable in this artifact. The Museum calls it a “composite”. It brings home the destructive power of the falling towers on 9/11:

Photo is from before the “composite” went on display

After the Towers’ fall, the news media said that 9/11 changed everything, and we believed it. But changes to our view of the world, and its view of us, had started long before that. We stopped learning about geopolitics in the 1960’s, substituting false analogies and military aid to local strongmen for true knowledge of how to change the world.

Since then, we have been compressed by the heat and weight of events we cannot understand. If you think about it, our decline after 9/11 came because we panicked, spent all of our money on pointless wars, and gave up our core values in the name of an illusion of safety, and pure vengeance.

So, yes, America doesn’t know what is defeating it. America senses that there are things happening that are beyond its control or comprehension.

But these things are knowable, and fixable. Hopefully, by Americans.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 13, 2014

“As things now stand, we could easily become the first people in history to lose democracy and its constitutional freedoms simply because we have forgotten what they are about”– Sam Smith

Young children illegals could reach nearly 100,000 this year:

On the other hand, perhaps Texas can be convinced to keep a few:

Not that Texas wants them. All across Texas the fear of the diseased immigrant is reaching near epidemic proportions. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said recently:

…we don’t even know what all diseases they have…Our health care systems can’t withstand this influx

Err, wrong again, Louie. According to the Texas Observer, UNICEF reports that Guatemalan kids are more likely than Texans to be immunized for most infectious diseases. Guatemala has universal health care. Vaccines are 100% percent funded by the government. Overall, 93% of kids in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are vaccinated against measles. That’s slightly better than American kids (92%), and certainly it shows that there is no tsunami of sick crossing our border. BTW, according to the World Health Organization, neither Guatemala nor Honduras has had a reported case of measles since 1990.

Not so, here in America, where we have 500 measles cases this year. Why? Because, freedom.

In other news, Mr. Boehner has a lawsuit:

The 38th time that the House Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they passed the Authority for [Employer] Mandate Delay Act. That demonstrated the House’s willingness to delay the employer mandate. Then the Health and Human Services Department did exactly that, delayed the employer mandate. Strangely, that is EXACTLY what the Speaker’s lawsuit will say is the reason to sue Mr. Obama. Some of the GOP want to impeach Mr. Obama. They basically view a mechanism that was built in to deal with abuses of power as a way to nullify election results that they don’t like.

Sarah Palin was up front with her view:

If the House votes to impeach Mr. Obama, the Senate would then rule on the validity of the charges. It takes a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove a president from office. Even if the Senate goes to the Republicans, that isn’t happening. So maybe they should move on:

Israel continues their drive towards Palestine:

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: US Constitutional Issues