Month: July 2013

Silly Rabbit, Extradition is for Other Countries

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Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Rome, was arrested in Panama on an Italian warrant after he was convicted in absentia for kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr and sending him to Egypt to be tortured.

Less than 24 hours later, he was on his way back to the United States, free from any legal jeopardy:

Former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady, who was convicted in Italy of kidnapping an Egyptian Muslim cleric and recently arrested in Panama, is headed back to the United States, a State Department spokeswoman said on Friday.

“It is my understanding that he is in fact either en route or back in the United States,” said Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman.

So he’ll probably never face trial for this.

In an interview, he invoked the good German defense:

He was quoted as telling Il Giornale newspaper in 2009 that he was not guilty and was carrying out orders from his superiors.

Just following orders. I thought that Nuremberg settled this matter. This is not supposed to be a valid defense.

But don’t worry, he has already suffered great punishment:

Also in that interview, he said he had wanted to stay in Italy but his retirement villa with vineyards had been seized to cover court costs.

Compare this to what is looking at Edward Snowden.

Note also the case of Posada Carriles, who blow up a civilian airliner, but lives in safety in the United States.

Went to Another Concert Tonight

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A band called Junior Doctor.

They are doing an (I kid you not) living room tour, which is why out looks like they are playing in a living room.

We drive across the Bay Bridge to Stevenville.

Good music, and the bass player/keyboardist (Davey Hoogerwerf) was particularly impressive. His bass playing was insane.

Because of the limitations of playing in a living room, the drummer, Jarrod Kearney, played a Cajón, the box like instrument that he is sitting on.

Mark Hartman does lead vocals and rhythm guitar.

It was (obviously) a very intimate setting.

Natalie got a compliment on her song writing (she had shared some songs with then a few weeks back via Facebook). This had her going “SQUEEE!” All the easy home.

Charlie got himself filmed by the band members once they saw his mad (Rubik’s) cube skills.

It was a good time for all, though there was a 45 minute hangup on the Bay Bridge going home because of an accident.

Posted via mobile.

What Stefan Svallfors Said

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He has nominated Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize as a way for the Nobel committee to atone for giving the aware do Obama:

In his letter addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Stefan Svallfors praised Snowden for his“heroic effort at great personal cost.” He stated that by revealing the existence and the scale of the US surveillance programs, Snowden showed “individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.”

“This example is important because since the Nuremberg trials in 1945 has been clear that the slogan ‘I was just following orders’ is never claimed as an excuse for acts contrary to human rights and freedoms,” Professor Svallfors wrote.

He emphasized that the decision to award the 2013 prize to Edward Snowden would also “help to save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award US President Barack Obama 2009 award.”

Not being George W. Bush is an insufficient reason to give someone a f%$#ing Nobel f%$#ing Peace prize.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever

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So, a judge rules that guards grabbing the genitals of Guantánamo prisoners who want to talk to their lawyers is interfering with their right to counsel, so they are appealing:

A federal appeals court is allowing Guantánamo guards to resume searching detainees’ genitals on their way to and from legal meetings while the Obama administration challenges a federal judge’s ruling that the searches unfairly impede attorney-client interaction.

 The order Wednesday by a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit capped 24 hours of legal wrangling: The Justice Department asked a New York lawyer to let guards search her client’s genital area, the lawyer refused and the Southern Command’s top general joined the fray with a sworn declaration that a federal judge got it wrong.

 Groin searches aren’t intended to prevent legal meetings, said Southcom’s Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, noting that his Guantánamo soldiers similarly search captives meeting with Red Cross delegates.

 Past practice of shaking a captive’s trousers to see if “nails, shanks, ragged scraps of metal” fall out “posed an unacceptable risk to the safety and security of detainees and guards,” Kelly said.

 Last week, detainee lawyers persuaded U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth that the invasive searches, adopted amid a widespread hunger strike, were discouraging some of Guantánamo’s 166 captives from voluntarily leaving their cells for meetings with their lawyers. Lamberth ordered the guards to stop it, and resume the practice of physically shaking the waistband of the pants of a prisoner to see if any contraband comes out.

 ………

 In his ruling last week, Lamberth concluded that the motivation for the searches was not to enhance security but to deter the detainees’ access to attorneys by implementing search procedures that are “religiously and culturally abhorrent” to devout Muslims.

 Lamberth’s ruling had sought to reset the search procedures to an era before Latif’s death. The judge noted that there was no proof that Latif hid the drugs in his genital area.

………

In London, detainee attorney Crider, who works for a non-profit law firm Reprieve, called the refusal to follow Lamberth’s order “contempt of court, pure and simple. Why is it suddenly essential for the government to grope my clients in a way that been off-limits for years?”

I’m beginning to think that the Bush/Cheney regime of overt lawlessness is preferable to the protestations by Obama and His Evil Minions™ that they “respect” the rule of law and due process.

Where is the outrage?

The Final word on George Zimmerman, Care of Alex Fraser

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Dear George Zimmerman,

For the rest of your life you are now going to feel what its like to be a black man in America.

You will feel people stare at you. Judging you for what you think are unfair reasons. You will lose out on getting jobs for something you feel is outside of your control. You will believe yourself to be an upstanding citizen and wonder why people choose to not see that.

People will cross the street when they see you coming. They will call you hurtful names. It will drive you so insane some days that you’ll want to scream at the top of your lungs. But you will have to wake up the next day, put on firm look and push through life.

I bet you never thought that by shooting a black male you’d end up inheriting all of his struggles.

Enjoy your “freedom.”

Sincerely,

A black male who could’ve been Trayvon Martin

From his Facebook page.

Those Whom the Gods Destroy, They First Make Weird(er)

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So, Michelle Bachmann is under investigation for campaign finance violations, one of her staff has been charged in petty thefts in other Congressional offices, and now its been revealed that aa Conservative Christian group mailed vibrator to Michele Bachmann:

.Hundreds of pages of email and text message correspondence made public last week shed new light on the infighting and organizational disarray that have plagued America’s leading conservative Christian political consulting firm in recent months.

As BuzzFeed reported in June, the Columbus-based Strategy Group for Media — which has represented dozens of tea party and religious right Republicans, including Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, and Newt Gingrich — has been mired in lawsuits and internal tumult since last spring, when seven of the firm’s managers staged a religious intervention with their CEO, Rex Elsass. After the managers made their demands in a dramatic meeting that culminated with them laying hands on their boss and praying for his soul, Elsass fired three of his top lieutenants, including his longtime protégé and Strategy Group President Nick Everhart.

The series of emails and text messages, made public on the Franklin County Court website in the ongoing lawsuit between Everhart and Strategy Group, adds further detail to that meeting, and shows the extent to which the company’s managers were worried about Elsass’ psychological and spiritual health. They also reveal potentially embarrassing anecdotes for the company, including one incident in which an executive said Elsass accidentally mailed a “female pleasure machine” to Rep. Michele Bachmann.

………

And an email thread from May 29 — after the three managers were fired — featured Strategy Group’s former voter-contact consultant P.J. Wenzel making reference to Elsass sending “female pleasure machines” to Bachmann. The emails don’t elaborate on the incident, but one person familiar with the story told BuzzFeed that Elsass had intended to give Bachmann a vibrating head massager to help alleviate her migraines, and that the employee he sent to buy the gift accidentally purchased something that more closely resembled a sex toy — and sent it to her office.

Tyler said the item in question was purchased at Brookstone and was not a sex toy, but he declined to provide further information about the product. (Brookstone announced in 2011 that it had begun selling “pleasure objects.”)

The person familiar with the story said the firm successfully retrieved the gift before Bachmann could open it.

Seriously, have you noticed that when a political figure’s career is in a death spiral, that there suddenly emerge a plethora of stories that are even weirder than before?

By this benchmark, I think that Michelle Bachmann will be sent to Gitmo.

If the Washington Post Were to Replace Richard Cohen with Pat Buchanan………

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No one could tell the difference, except that Pat is a more interesting writer.

So, it’s OK to stalk a black boy in a hoodie because he’s a black boy in a hoodie, just like when he said that it was OK for jewelers to refuse to allow black people into their stores.

He also decided that the Polanski child rape was no big deal, basically because he likes Chinatown.  (I would note that there are legitimate issues of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, which are serious issues, but Cohen, and the almost as awful Anne Applebaum, are just horrible human beings.)

I do not understand why Cohen is not sweeping floors for a living.

Damn, This is Weird

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There have been rumors of a corruption investigation f Representative Michelle Bachmann for some time. Well, now a senior staffer of hers has been arrested for petty thefts from other Congressional offices.

Have you ever noticed that just before a political figure is frog marched out of the building in handcuffs, their staff starts getting busted for the weirdest crap?

Well, it looks like Bachmann is on the hit parade:

That’s Javier Sanchez back in June of this year with his then-boss, Michele Bachmann. [Not bothering with the picture here] They’re headed for a closed briefing on the NSA disclosures. Javier Sanchez was a high-level legislative director for Michele Bachmann, assisting her with issues such as immigration reform, the farm bill, and her oxymoronic assignment to the House Intelligence Committee.

On July 11, Mr. Sanchez was arrested on charges that he burglarized several offices belonging to other House members. From news reports, it appears that some thefts took place back in 2012 and others in 2013.

It has been noted that, “Sanchez has been charged with Theft II,” which is for amounts less than $1000.00.

If this is the indicator that I think that it is, then Michelle Bachmann is toast.

I Think that Carl Levin Just Suggested that Obama Fire James Clapper

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Seeing as how Levin is one of the most intelligence agency friendly Senators, so the fact that he is subtly suggesting that DNI Clapper be fired is a significant thing:

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Tuesday that he was “troubled” by the testimony of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and was unsure how Clapper could be held accountable.

………

The testimony prompted criticism from lawmakers and led to some calls for his resignation over the false testimony.

Levin said he wouldn’t go that far but suggested that the only way Clapper could be held accountable was if President Obama fired him.

“I’m troubled by that testimony, obviously,” Levin said at a breakfast roundtable hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

“How do you hold him accountable? I guess the only way to do that would be for the president to, somehow or other, fire him,” Levin added. “I think he’s made it clear that he regrets saying what he said. I don’t want to call on the president to fire him, although I’m troubled by this.”

Actually, the distinguished gentleman from Michigan does want Clapper fired, he would not have brought it up, and then dismissed the suggestion, if he did not want Clapper gone.

Not a Great Day for Jews

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It is Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month Av, and a small subset of the nasty bits of Jewish history follows:

  1. The report of the spies from Canaan, resulting in the people of Israel spending 40 Years in the Desert.
  2. The destruction of the 1st Temple.
  3. The destruction of the 2nd Temple.
  4. The Romans razed Betar, killing 100,000 Jews.
  5. The Romans plowed the temple mount.
  6. The start of the 1st Crusade.  (You see it as a coming together of Christendom.  I see it as a pogrom with years of murder and rape.)
  7. The expulsion of Jews from England.
  8. The expulsion of Jews from France.
  9. The expulsion of Jews from Spain.
  10. Germany entered the WW I. (Can be legitimately claimed to have directly led to the Shoah)
  11. Formal approval of the “Final Solution” by the Nazis in 1941.
  12. Deportations to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto begin in 1942.

Excuse me while I find something sturdy to cover my head with.

    Crap

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    The Commodities Futures Trading Commission could have instituted real and effective rules on swaps trades by doing nothing, but they caved to the banks, because the banks refused to prepare for the deadline:

    I’m going to be brief, in part because the CFTC’s probable demonstration of lack of gumption is still in play, while the SEC’s was expected but nevertheless appalling. But the bottom line is that even though we seem some intermittent signs of the officialdom recognizing that big banks remain a menace to the health and well-being to the general public*, the measures to constrain them continue to be inadequate.

    As readers may recall, CFTC chairman Gary Gensler was in a position to stare down bank efforts to water down critical provisions of Dodd Frank on derivatives (see here for details of the issues at stake). The short version is that Gensler did not have the votes among his commissioners to support his position since the Administration had managed to appoint a bank stooge as one of the Democrats. However, Gensler controlled the agenda. That meant he had the option of not putting the matter to a vote of his fellow commissioners at all, which meant Dodd Frank would become effective as written (mind you, normally legislation does legitimately require some tweaking since the legislative language may be imprecise or not mesh well with existing rules).

    What appears to have forced Gensler to relent was not the CFTC politics, but bank refusal to prepare, which meant they could stamp their feet and say if Gensler did not back down, the markets would blow up and it would all be his fault.

    Read the rest, and you will not just be disgusted by the CFTC, you will want to replace the SEC with a trained monkey as well.

    Barack Obama Gets a Warning from Dianne Feinstein*

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    If there is one constant in the US Senate, it is that Dianne Feinstein is friendly to an expansive and intrusive state security apparatus.

    Thus her signing onto letter to Obama suggesting that his allowing the force feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo is illegal is a big deal:

    Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin sent Obama a letter yesterday, using Kessler’s [The Federal Judge who condemned the force feeding, but said that she had no standing to rule] ruling to connect the two explicitly.

    U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Gladys Kessler also expressed concern about the force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay detainees. The Court denied detainee Jihad Dhiab’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop force-feeding due to lack of jurisdiction, but in her order, Judge Kessler noted that Dhiab has set out in great detail in his court filings “what appears to be a consensus that force-feeding of prisoners violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.” The United States has ratified the ICCPR and is obligated to comply with its provisions. Judge Kessler also wrote, “it is perfectly clear from the statements of detainees, as well as the statements from the [medical] organizations just cited, that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating, and degrading process.” (emphasis added).

     The judge concluded by correctly pointing out that you, as Commander in Chief, have the authority to intercede on behalf of Dhiab, and other similarly-situated detainees at Guantanamo. The court wrote: “Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that ‘[t]he President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. …’ It would seem to follow, therefore, that the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority—and power—to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.”


     Feinstein only by association makes the next part of her argument. We comply with these treaties by complying with our Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel or unusual punishment. And the government has long said that if we can do something elsewhere in a our gulag system, we can do it in Gitmo.

    ………

    Say what you will about DiFi (lord knows I’ve often said the same, where I thought it appropriate), but she has just told a President from her own party that he’s breaking the law.

    This is what you call a, “statement against interests.”

    When DiFi is implying that your intelligence activities are over the top, you have jumped the shark.

    I would also note that the Snowden matter might very have something to do with this, she also sent a letter expressing concerns to SecDef Hagel about a month ago (about a week and a half after the Snowden revelations).

    The US state security apparatus still thinks that this will blow over, but even DiFi realizes that something has changed.

    *Full disclosure, her grandfather, Sam Goldman, and my great-grandfather, Harry Goldman, were brothers.

    Back Loaded Bribery

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    If you play ball with the monied people who want law and regulation structured to ensure that their wealth increases even more, then they reward you with lucrative jobs, like a high paid lobbyist, or, as in the case of Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, an absurdly lucrative speaking gig:

    During his tenure as Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner was constantly dogged by the belief that he was spawned from Wall Street. This thinking was false: If you need a refresher, Geithner had actually spent most of his career in government, and none of it at a bank. When he left office this year, Geithner said that it would be “extremely unlikely” for that to change.

    But as it turns out, Geithner is now being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by massive financial organizations. It’s just that he isn’t being paid to work on Wall Street; he’s just being paid to talk every now and then.

    The Financial Times reports that Geithner, like countless former public servants before him, has hit the highly lucrative speaking circuit. He’s already made about $400,000 in just three engagements. And that tab is being footed by financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank and Blackstone, which paid him about $200,000 and up to $100,000, respectively.

    No one ever explicitly told Geithner that if he protected the banksters, he woud get a payoff, but this is explicit in Washington, DC’s revolving door.

    He knew that he would get rewarded, and he has not been disabused of this belief.

    H/t Gaius Publius.

    Bummer of a Birthmark, Boeing

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    A Boeing 787 caught fire at Heathrow, though there are no indications that batteries are involved:

    Investigators classified the fire that broke out on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner parked at London’s Heathrow airport as a “serious incident” but have found no evidence it was caused by the plane’s batteries, Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said on Saturday.

     The question of whether the fire was connected to the batteries is crucial because the entire global fleet of Dreamliners, Boeing’s groundbreaking new flagship jet, was grounded for three months this year due to battery-related problems.

     The AAIB designation fell just short of a full-blown “accident” on the scale it uses to describe investigations. The agency’s preliminary probe is expected to take several days, opening up Boeing to more questions about its top-selling plane.

    When Boeing decided that it would be a good idea to outsource most of its expertise to “risk sharing partners”, it was pretty much inevitable.

    As I noted 2 years ago in the case of Dell Computer, this is penny wise and pound foolish:

    So the decline of manufacturing in a region sets off a chain reaction. Once manufacturing is outsourced, process-engineering expertise can’t be maintained, since it depends on daily interactions with manufacturing. Without process-engineering capabilities, companies find it increasingly difficult to conduct advanced research on next-generation process technologies. Without the ability to develop such new processes, they find they can no longer develop new products. In the long term, then, an economy that lacks an infrastructure for advanced process engineering and manufacturing will lose its ability to innovate.

    Boeing’s problems are further complicated by the fact that its partners did not have the time to develop the expertise to do the job right, so now we have a troubled airliner where the sum of the parts is less than the whole.