Month: June 2015

Obama’s Lawless Behavior in Support of the Security State

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You may recall that the NSA bulk data collection of phone records were ruled by an Federal appellate court.

It not turns out that the Obama administration tried to get a ruling from the FISA court saying that they could ignore this ruling.

The interesting bit here is that the FISA court is technically a district court, and so is subordinate to an appellate court.

This shows a complete contempt for the rule of law:

The Obama administration has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months.

The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret court to approve, also suggests that the administration may not necessarily comply with any potential court order demanding that the collection stop.

US officials confirmed last week that they would ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court – better known as the Fisa court, a panel that meets in secret as a step in the surveillance process and thus far has only ever had the government argue before it – to turn the domestic bulk collection spigot back on.

Justice Department national security chief John A Carlin cited a six-month transition period provided in the USA Freedom Act – passed by the Senate last week to ban the bulk collection – as a reason to permit an “orderly transition” of the NSA’s domestic dragnet. Carlin did not address whether the transition clause of the Freedom Act still applies now that a congressional deadlock meant the program shut down on 31 May.

But Carlin asked the Fisa court to set aside a landmark declaration by the second circuit court of appeals. Decided on 7 May, the appeals court ruled that the government had erroneously interpreted the Patriot Act’s authorization of data collection as “relevant” to an ongoing investigation to permit bulk collection.

Carlin, in his filing, wrote that the Patriot Act provision remained “in effect” during the transition period.

“This court may certainly consider ACLU v Clapper as part of its evaluation of the government’s application, but second circuit rulings do not constitute controlling precedent for this court,” Carlin wrote in the 2 June application. Instead, the government asked the court to rely on its own body of once-secret precedent stretching back to 2006, which Carlin called “the better interpretation of the statute”.

While it is true that  the FISA court is not technically under the 2nd court of appeals, which ruled the program illegal, because they are not in the 2nd district, (technically, they are not in any district) but blithely asking the court to overrule an appeals court shows a complete contempt for due process and the rule of law.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever!™

The Political Acumen of Little Orphan Annie

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Hillary Clinton gives a major speech against Republican’s racist voter suppression plans, and Richard Hanson, who is generally considered one of the more knowledgeable academics on this phenomenon has a sad because moderate Republicans who support voting rights will be scared off by this.

My first response is, “Name 3 moderate Republicans on the national scene who have come out against voter suppression.”

My second response is that voting rights have already been politicized by the Republican Party.

Voter fraud is rarer than getting struck by lightning in the United States, and the Republicans have passed so called “Ballot Integrity” laws without regard to the facts, and in a totally partisan manner.

Dr. Hanson looks at the world, and sees it as he wants it to be, not how it is:

Hillary Clinton spoke at Texas Southern University last week, where she put forward some good and provocative ideas for improving our elections. She wants Congress to fix the part of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court gutted in 2013. She wants to expand early voting periods nationally to at least 20 days. And most provocatively, she advocates automatic universal voter registration across the country, including a program to automatically register high school students to vote before their 18th birthdays.

But the partisan way she’s framed the issue—by blaming Republicans for all the voting problems—makes it less likely these changes will actually be implemented should she be elected president. Instead, she’s offering red meat to her supporters while alienating the allies she would need to get any reforms enacted.

………

However, talking about election reform so provocatively may also doom the chances for meaningful election reform. Clinton used her speech not only to advance these ideas but to bash Republican opponents, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, both of whom passed restrictive voting laws in the last few years. “What part of democracy are they afraid of?” she asked.

Republicans are not being sincere about their concern for voter fraud.

They use it as a fig leaf to keep black, brown, and young people voting.

Republicans do not want to fix the voting system. They want to manipulate it to partisan advantage.

I Mourn Vinnie Musetto

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He wrote Amazing headlines for the New York Daily News:

V.A. “Vinnie” Musetto, a longtime former New York Post editor known for writing the tabloid’s most famous headline more than three decades ago, died early Tuesday morning at the age of 74.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, Musetto’s daughter, Carly VanTassell, told Capital. He had entered end-of-life care at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx recently after receiving a sudden diagnosis.

Musetto had a long career at the Post, where he worked for more than 40 years as an editor and later as a film critic, a position he held until August 2013. He had retired two years earlier but continued writing film reviews until the Post cut off his freelance assignments.

He is most well known for coming up with the headline “Headless body in topless bar” in 1983. It was the type of lurid, can’t-make-this-stuff-up story that the tabloids live for, about a man who fatally shot the owner of a topless bar and forced a hostage to decapitate the body.

The headline was one for the history books and remains an object of fascination among newspaper wonks. But Musetto’s personal favorite is another infamous headline that he wrote, said VanTassell: “Granny executed in her pink pajamas.”*

I aspired to be 1/10 as good at writing headlines as he was one day.

*Velma Barfield, the first women executed in the US after the death penalty came back in 1976.

After 6 Months, It’s Good That People in Cleveland Have Taken the Law into Their Own Hands

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Warning,graphic content

I am not suggesting that anyone has engaged in extrajudicial violence or vigilante acts. Rather I am referring to the fact that community leaders in Cleveland are using a peculiarity in Ohio law to file charges without the police or prosecutors:

Community leaders in Cleveland, distrustful of the criminal justice system, said Monday that they would not wait for prosecutors to decide whether to file charges against the police officers involved in the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year. Instead, they will invoke a seldom-used Ohio law and go directly to a judge to request murder charges against the officers.

The highly unusual move is the latest sign that some African-Americans in Cleveland and around the country have lost confidence in a system that they see as too quick to side with police officers accused of using excessive force against blacks.

The investigation into Tamir’s shooting was handed to the county prosecutor last week, but local leaders are skeptical because of how similar cases have ended. In New York, a grand jury did not indict in the death of Eric Garner, who had been put in a chokehold by a police officer. State and federal authorities said there was no evidence to charge Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Last month, prosecutors said a white police officer in Madison, Wis., would not be charged for killing an unarmed 19-year-old man.

………

Ohio is one of a handful of states that allow residents to request an arrest without approval from the police or prosecutors. It is difficult to know how the case will play out because there is little precedent for a citizen to request an arrest in such a contentious, high-profile case.

………

By going directly to a judge, community leaders are trying to circumvent that process. Ohio law allows anyone with “knowledge of the facts” to file a court affidavit and ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant. If approved, the arrest would be followed by a public hearing, and community members said that was preferable to allowing prosecutors to make the decision in secret.

………

Tamir was fatally shot in November while he played in a park. A 911 caller had reported that the boy was waving a gun that was “probably fake.” When officers arrived, they pulled their car into the park, next to the boy. Within two seconds, an officer, Timothy Loehmann, shot Tamir in the abdomen. The boy’s gun, it turned out, was a toy replica of a Colt pistol and fired plastic pellets.

It’s been 6 months, and not only have we heard nothing from prosecutors, Officer Timothy Loehmann, who burst from the car with gun blazing at a 12 year old kid, has not even been questioned.

It’s about time someone to file charges against the cops.

ISIS’ Biggest Ally Suffers Election Rebuke

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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had hoped to get a super majority in the Turkish Parliament so that he could grant himself even more powers.

I guess that he felt that his war on the independent judiciary and freedom of the press was simply not proceeding as fast as he would like.

Well, it appears that this was the proverbial bridge too far for Turkish voters, who not only denied him a super majority, but also reduced the number of seats to a plurality in the Turkish legislature:

Turkish voters delivered a rebuke on Sunday to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his party lost its majority in Parliament in a historic election that thwarted his ambition to rewrite Turkey’s Constitution and further bolster his clout.

The results represented a significant setback for Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist who has steadily increased his power since being elected last year as president, a partly but not solely ceremonial post. The prime minister for more than a decade before that, Mr. Erdogan has pushed for more control of the judiciary and cracked down on any form of criticism, including prosecuting those who insult him on social media, but his efforts appeared to have run aground on Sunday.

The vote was also a significant victory to the cadre of Kurds, liberals and secular Turks who found their voice of opposition to Mr. Erdogan during sweeping antigovernment protests two years ago. For the first time, the Kurdish slate crossed a 10 percent threshold required to enter Parliament.

Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., still won the most seats by far, but not a majority, according to preliminary results released Sunday night. The outcome suggests contentious days of jockeying ahead as the party moves to form a coalition government. Already, analysts were raising the possibility Sunday of new elections if a government cannot be formed swiftly. Many Turks were happy to see Mr. Erdogan’s powers curtailed, even though the prospect of a coalition government evokes dark memories of political instability and economic malaise during the 1990s.

With 99 percent of the votes counted, the A.K.P. had won 41 percent of the vote, according to TRT, a state-run broadcaster, down from nearly 50 percent during the last national election in 2011. The percentage gave it an estimated 258 seats in Turkey’s Parliament, compared with the 327 seats it has now. [There are 550 seats in the Turkish Parliament]

………

The vote turned on the historic performance at the ballot box of Turkey’s Kurdish minority, which aligned with liberals and secular Turks opposed to Mr. Erdogan’s leadership to win almost 13 percent of the vote, passing the legal threshold for earning representation in Parliament.

Selahattin Demirtas, 42, a former human rights lawyer who leads the largely Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, told reporters Sunday night: “As of this hour, the debate about the presidency, the debate about dictatorship, is over. Turkey narrowly averted a disaster.”

The People’s Democratic Party, known as H.D.P., was able to broaden its base by fielding a slate of candidates that included women, gays and other minorities and appealed to voters whose goal was to curtail Mr. Erdogan’s powers.

………

Turkey, a member of NATO, has seen its relations with its Western allies deteriorate, mainly over Syria and the fight against the Islamic State, the militant group that controls vast areas of Iraq and Syria. An American-led coalition has been carrying out an air campaign against the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, for nearly a year, but Western officials complain that Turkey has not done enough, such as allowing its air bases to be used for bombing runs. Critics also partly blame Turkey for the rise of the Islamic State for its early support of Islamist groups in Syria.

………

“The A.K.P. has lost votes, and it’s because of him. People are tired of having their lives dictated by one nutty man. It’s time for change.”

Yes, one nutty man.  Shades of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback.  (I told you that I would bring the stories together.

Erdoğan has been cut a lot of slack by the west in general, and the US in particular, because he has initiated a program of  “liberaliation”, which generally has the west ignoring all sorts of foibles of the country.  (See how we are actively courting the classically fascist BJP government in India.)

It’s easy to understand.  Neoliberal reforms to government and the economy present an opportunity for transnational corporations and Wall Street to loot the Anatolian peninsula on a scale that has not occured since the sack of Constantinople during the 4th Crusade.

BTW, just in case you wondered if my characterization of the Turkish President as, “nutty,” I present this:

Demirtas has been the target of fierce campaign attacks by Erdogan, who belittled him a “pretty boy” who is merely a front for the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Erdogan also called Demirtas an “infidel” after he pledged to abolish the government directorate of religious affairs and likened him to a “pop star” because he plays the saz, a Turkish folk lute.

But Demirtas responded to those barbs with trademark serenity, challenging Erdogan by saying: “We, as the HDP, will transform the lion in your heart to a kitten.”

(emphasis mine)

Meow, President Erdoğan. Meow.

It Is Official, Kansas Is Clinically Insane

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Sam Brownback has had a number of run-ins with the Kansas courts, and now he is threatening to completely defund Kansas courts if they continue to rule against him:

The fight between Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas and the state’s judicial branch has escalated, with the governor last week signing into law a bill that could strip state courts of their funding.

The measure, at the end of a lengthy bill that allocated money for the judiciary this year, stipulates that if a state court strikes down a 2014 law that removed some powers from the State Supreme Court, the judiciary will lose its funding.

The 2014 law took the authority to appoint chief judges for the district courts away from the Supreme Court and gave it to the district courts themselves. It also deprived the state’s highest court of the right to set district court budgets. Critics said the law was an attempt by Mr. Brownback, a Republican, to stack the district courts with judges who may be more favorable to his policies.

………

But in passing a separate budget bill to keep the third branch of government from shutting down, Republican lawmakers took the opportunity to insert language that would shield the 2014 law.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Matthew Menendez, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, which is helping to represent a Kansas judge who is challenging the constitutionality of the 2014 law. “It seems pretty clear that these mechanisms have been an effort by the governor and the Legislature to try and get a court system that is more in line with their philosophy.”

Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, likened the measure in the judiciary budget bill to Congress’s passing a law outlawing abortion and then telling the judicial branch that it will lose its funding if it finds the law unconstitutional.

“That kind of threat to the independence of the judiciary strikes me as invalid under the separation of powers principle,” Mr. Levy said in an interview on Friday.

Considering the news coming out of Turkey (more on that later), I find it kind of ironic that Sam Brownback is doing his level best to use Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s play book, which was just rejected by Turkish voters.

[on edit]

I may not have been completely clear: This bill would Completely Defund the Entire Kanasas State Court System, so basically, aside from traffic court, there would be no courts operating in the state.

Why I Did Not Want My Kids to Grow Up in Texas

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Baltimore might not be the best place in the world in terms of police professionalism (Freddie Gray), but I would not expect to see the sort of bullsh%$ that happened at the McKinney, Texas pool party:

No lives were lost. The incident played out at a suburban pool party, not an urban neighborhood struggling with crime and drugs.

 But perhaps it was that suburban setting that helped make the images so powerful and disturbing. Now a video of a police officer pointing a gun at teenagers in bathing suits and shoving a young black girl’s face into the ground has become the latest flash point in relations between the police and minorities.

 The cellphone video, taken at the community pool in Craig Ranch, a racially diverse subdivision north of Dallas, has set off another debate over race and police tactics, with activists calling for the officer to be fired and others arguing that the blame should fall at least in part on the teenagers.

 The video appears to show the officer, David Eric Casebolt, briefly waving his handgun at young partygoers who approached him as he tried to subdue the teenage girl on Friday. The officer ultimately immobilized the girl by putting her facedown on the ground and placing a knee on her back.

 Chief Greg Conley of the McKinney Police Department said that the video had prompted an internal affairs investigation and that Officer Casebolt, a patrol supervisor, had been placed on administrative leave.

 ………

 Earlier in day, activists outside Police Headquarters said the youths had been subjected to racial bias, and demanded that Officer Casebolt be fired. Dominique Alexander, the president of the Next Generation Action Network, a civil rights group, said it was an “illusion” that youths had been jumping the fence. “They had every right to be there,” he said.

 After the video spread quickly online, criticism poured in from around the country. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas said that it while it did not have all the facts about the party, “what we do know is that the police response, as seen on the video, appears to be a textbook case of overuse of force.”

 In a video posted to YouTube on Sunday, a black teenager named Tatiana said her family was hosting a cookout for friends when a woman insulted them, prompting a 14-year-old family friend to respond. Tatiana said a white woman had then told her: “You need to go back to where you’re from” and to “go back to your Section 8 home.”

 Tatiana said that she had replied, “Excuse me,” and that then another white woman hit her in the face and “both women attacked” her.

 ………

 Brandon Brooks, 15, who shot the video, told a TV station that Officer Casebolt had not confronted him, one of the few white teenagers at the party.

 “I was one of the only white people in the area when that was happening,” he told the station. “You can see in part of the video where he tells us to sit down, and he kind of like skips over me and tells all my African-American friends to go sit down.”

(emphasis mine)

There are lots of good people in Texas, but the public culture, not only in terms of race, but also in terms of wealth, social justice, and the whole idea of public good, is incredibly toxic.

Even if you are raised to hate sh%$ like this, being raised in this toxic soup inures one to it, and I do not favor complacency to injustice as a tactic to raise children.

What’s Wrong with Charter Schools in One Story

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Every time that someone looks at a charter school’s operation we find repeated instances of corruption, self dealing, and dodgy accounting:

Dennis Mope’s dream of running a network of military-themed charter schools for at-risk students ended quickly and with little warning this month in Jacksonville and Orlando.

Two of Mope’s Acclaim Academy charter schools closed abruptly, displacing hundreds of students just three weeks before the end of the school year.

A third school in Kissimmee was supposed to close in March but Osceola County’s school district took it over last month and will keep it open until the school year ends in June.

Five other of Mope’s planned Acclaim Academies never got off the ground.

Although one received district approval to open in Palm Beach next August, the plan was scrapped. Four other charter school applications in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Volusia and Lee counties were all withdrawn, some before they were rejected by the school districts involved.

In Jacksonville, the fallout was immediate and unexpected.

Parents of 229 students scrambled over three days to find new schools for their children. Some students still had to take final tests or state-mandated exams at new schools.

Duval County School Board members said they are not sure why the school “ran out of money” and had to close, saying the children were hurt most.

“They should be focused on passing their exams; they shouldn’t have to worry about what school they’re going to go to,” said Becki Couch, a School Board member, “all because their charter school [operator] didn’t have its act together.”

Scott Shine, another Duval County School Board member wrote that “The actions of Acclaim are, at minimum, irresponsible and reckless. This could go much deeper,” in an email.

Acclaim’s teachers were shocked to find out that their last paycheck, issued late April or early May, was to be their last. Some teachers, who had arranged for the school to save parts of their paycheck to repay them over the summer, were told not to expect it.

Some Duval School Board members questioned what the school district knew, and when, about Acclaim Academy’s troubles.

“We knew they were beginning the school year under a deficit,” Couch wrote in an email to Duval Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

“Do you think the Board should have been notified of the declining financial status of the school so we could make the determination how we wanted to proceed so as not to disrupt student academic learning during this pivotal time of the year? I am disturbed that we have been completely blind-sided by this when according to state statute the Charter School is required to provide an annual audit report and monthly financial statements.”

………

Through it all, Acclaim Academy’s founder has yet to answer questions.

Dennis Mope, an Orlando-area businessman, said “no comment” to news crews on the scene of the Orlando school closure, and he did not return phone calls or emails about Duval’s closure.

Public documents, including a Chapter 13 bankruptcy he filed in 2009, reveal some information about him.

………

Of the three Acclaim charter schools that operated in the past two years, the oldest was in Osceola County. Since the school opened in 2012, it had two consecutive F grades on its state report cards, triggering a law that caused the state to begin the process of shutting down the school.

Acclaim’s parent company applied for a waiver of the state law but, when it was denied, it made plans to close the school at the end of March.

………

The school started last fall with 416 students, but that fell to 332 by February. In March enrollment was down to 310 prompting Orange County administrators to request an amended school budget showing how the school could survive with fewer students than expected.

But, upon closer inspection, the district noted other irregularities in the school’s operations and finances:

  • Some teachers listed as heading classes left the school and others have become assistant principals and deans. Too many substitutes were teaching classes.
  • School reading teachers weren’t qualified for the subject, the county said, possibly violating federal Title 1 poverty funding rules.
  • The school did not employ the required instructors to serve its students with disabilities.
  • A student who missed 51 days had changes to her records to make it appear she had attended and had passed classes for that period.


………

There were financial irregularities, too.

In its April letter, Orange County said Acclaim violated state law by borrowing $350,000 when its school was already $151,061 in the hole Feb. 28.

The school also cut a deal to transfer future per-pupil state funding to a charter asset management fund. The deal promised $150,000 in April and May and $222,000 in June, though the school would likely face “severe reductions” in state funding because of enrollment declines and misrepresentations, Orange County said, adding that the deal’s promise to turn over other school assets may violate state law.

Orange County also questioned how Acclaim’s four “corporate” positions, including Mope’s, were being funded, saying it’s improper to use students’ money from the three charter schools for non-education functions.

Those salaries and some loans among the Acclaim schools amounted to commingling funds in a way that may violate state law, the district wrote.

………

That explanation wasn’t good enough for Heyta Diaz, whose two freshman daughters were placed at Ed White High and were told they might have to take a virtual course to catch up.

Diaz said she wants to confront Acclaim’s founder and ask him and the district some questions about why the Duval Acclaim closed.

“This guy opens and closes schools like its a day care,” she said. “This is our future. This is our kids.”

Charter schools are petri dishes for corruption and looting, and they need to be regulated accordingly.

H/t Atrios

When a DA Wants to Indict a Ham Sandwich

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The ham sandwich gets indicted.

The DA in North Carolina has indicted former officer Michael Slager for the murder of Walter Scott:

Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black man, was unarmed, facing away from the police officer, and haphazardly attempting to flee — but that didn’t stop Michael Slager, a white North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer at the time, from firing his gun at least eight times at the fleeing man, killing him.

On June 8, prosecutors announced that a grand jury indicted Slager, who’s no longer with the police force, on murder charges, according to CNN‘s Shawn Nottingham. The case will now proceed to trial. If Slager is convicted, prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said he would serve 30 years to life in prison with no chance of parole.

The shooting was recorded on film by a bystander, who turned over the video footage to authorities. The video has been widely credited with leading to charges of murder against Slager, the officer’s firing from the police force, and now the indictment.

Notice how the DA gets an indictment when he isn’t trying to lose?

In New York City and Ferguson, the DAs tried to lose the case, and they succeeded.

In North Charleston, the DA chose not to give a cop a get out of jail free card for a killing.

Has John Thune Been Dining on Lead Paint?

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It is amazing just how much stupid can be jammed into just 140 characters:

Six million people risk losing their health care subsidies, yet @POTUS continues to deny that Obamacare is bad for the American people.

— Senator John Thune (@SenJohnThune) June 8, 2015

I am not a big fan of Obamacare, but to claim that Obamacare might be responsible for ending the subsidies that it created is a level of stupid that buggers the mind.

Keurig Kapitulates Koncerning K-Cup Kontrols

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Keurig, the coffee maker company, recently introduced version 2 of their coffee maker.

Among the various “upgrades” was the introduction of digital rights management systems that prevented the use of 3rd party cups and refillable cups.

Sales have cratered, and now have backtracked on their policies:

It’s been called the “razor blade business model.” A company sells a product like a battery-operated razor blade handle at a relatively low price in order to sell a complementary consumable product later, like the astoundingly costly Gillette Power Fusion Proglide cartridge, $18 for four blades, which then get thrown away.

But it could also be called the Keurig “K-Cup” business model. Once a consumer buys the coffee machine, the coffee drinker may spend as much as $50 to $60 per pound on the coffee contained in the K-Cups, considerably more than the cost of even Starbucks’s breakfast blend, which goes for about $11.95 per pound.

Some years back, thousands of Keurig single-serve machine fans found a cheaper alternative, however — refillable, non-disposable K-cups, little plastic coffee grounds holders, which the company graciously sold under the brand of “My K-Cup.”

Not only was it cheaper, but the coffee drinker had more choice, as “My K-Cup” could be filled with any brand of coffee off the shelf.

But in August 2014, when Keurig introduced its “2.0” line of coffeemakers, it stopped making “My K-Cup” for it and made the machine incompatible with any K-cups already in existence, as well as with any unlicensed disposable K-cups made by other companies.

It was $50 a pound and a trail of waste — or nothing.

That was two provocations, but two too much. The reaction was fast and furious, on sites such as Amazon, as well as on Keurig’s own social media sites.

………

Keurig’s explanation was a model of what not to tell angry consumers. The company said the change was for the consumer’s own good.

………

Clever competitors moved quickly to fill the void, with ways to, in effect, hack into the Keurig technology. The Rogers Family Company’s “Freedom Clip” was sold patriotically as “Our Gift To You and Everyone …. Freedom Of Choice!”

………

Worse for Keurig, as executives acknowledged Wednesday during its quarterly earnings briefing, sales of Keurig machines tanked and they began to accumulate on the shelves across the country. Sales of brewers and accessories declined by 23 percent, the company reported. Its stock price fell 10 percent in after hours trading.

With that, Keurig’s CEO did what he had to do. He capitulated Wednesday in a call with market analysts.

“We heard loud and clear from consumers,” said Brian Kelley, “who really wanted the My K-Cup back. We want consumers to be able to bring any brand and bringing the My Cup back allows that.

I am kind of surprised that they didn’t stick to their guns, and file DMCA cease and desist actions against their competitors.

That does seem to be the normal way of doing business in America:  Piss off your customers, and boost your profits through rent seeking behavior.

It’s a lot easier than making a better/cheaper product.  Just look at how your local phone and cable companies treat you.

This Is Unbelievably Full of Win

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In a discussion at the Stellar Parthenon BBS about the FIFA prosecutions, the discussion digressed, as it often does, into a discussion of how much of what is on cable (Sports “Journalism”, Fox News, Reality TV, etc.) is not just useless, but it is like fingernails on the chalk board.

At this point, Greg Muir (his blog is here), notes:

I have taken to straight out unplugging televisions in waiting rooms.

There is so much win in doing this.

You Have Got to Be F%$#Ing Kidding Me

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On a number of occasions over the past few weeks, the temperatures in Fairbanks Alaska has been higher than those of Phoenix Arizona:

Alaska, along with the rest of the Arctic, has been warming even faster than other regions of the world due to climate change. That was the findings of a report this spring from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which found that the rate of warming will only continue to increase in the coming decades.

The signs of rapid warming in Alaska were everywhere this past winter. The Iditarod was moved north 300 miles to Fairbanks because Anchorage had record low snowfall. A ski resort outside of Juneau had to close because of low snowfall and warm temperatures that inhibited snow-making.

Now the 49th state experienced a heat wave at the end of May. Over Memorial Day weekend, while Texas was being inundated with floods, parts of Alaska were warmer than Arizona. On May 23 in Fairbanks, the temperature reached 86 degrees Fahrenheit, while Phoenix topped out at 83 for the day, reports Al Jazeera. Even the town of Bettles, which is north of Fairbanks and falls within the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 82.

That same day, Eagle, Alaska hit 91 degrees Fahrenheit, marking the earliest 90-degree day in state history, according to NASA Earth Observatory. And it wasn’t just one unusually warm day. “Between May 16 and May 24, Eagle hit 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher daily—its second longest such streak on record for any time of the year,” says Al Jazeera.

I understand that weather is not the same as climate, but repeated instances of abnormally f%$#ed up weather are an indicator of climate issues.

And Republicans still deny climate change, because they don’t want to admit that Al Gore was right.

We are completely f%$#ed.

Oh, Snap!

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In arguments before the Supreme Court, Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia presented the case of convicted murderer Henry Lee McCollum as a perfect justification for the death penalty.

It turns out that McCollum was innocent:

A little over two decades ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was dismissive of then-Justice Harry Blackmun’s concerns about the death penalty. In fact, Scalia had a case study in mind that demonstrated exactly why the system of capital punishment has value.

 As regular readers may recall, Scalia specifically pointed to a convicted killer named Henry Lee McCollum as an obvious example of a man who deserved to be put to death. “For example, the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat,” Scalia wrote in a 1994 ruling. [Callins v. Collins, which involved Texas, not North Carolina] “How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!”

 For Scalia, McCollum was the perfect example – a murderer whose actions were so heinous that his crimes stood as a testament to the merit of capital punishment itself.

 Yesterday, McCollum was pardoned. Scalia’s perfect example of a man who deserved to be killed by the state was innocent. North Carolina’s News & Observer reported:

Gov. Pat McCrory on Thursday pardoned two half-brothers who were exonerated of murder after spending three decades in prison.

The governor took nine months to make the decision, saying he thoroughly reviewed the pardons sought by Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. Both men are intellectually disabled.
If this story sounds at all familiar, it was last fall when a judge ordered the men released. The confessions appeared to have been coerced 30 years ago and new DNA evidence implicated another man whose possible involvement had been overlooked at the time.

As recently as 2010, the North Carolina Republican Party used a McCollum photo on campaign fliers to attack a Democratic candidate as “soft on crime.”

 McCollum hadn’t done anything wrong.

(emphasis mine)

Scalia’s habit of assuming facts not in evidence is really starting to wear thin.

This is something that judges, at least judges outside of Texas, should never do.

John Brennan Has a Surprise Attack of Honesty

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John Brennan just said that some American policies may contribute to terrorism:

John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, went on “Face the Nation” last Sunday and did something weird: he acknowledged that U.S. foreign policy might sometimes cause terrorism. Of course, he didn’t word it exactly like that, but close enough:

BRENNAN: I think the president has tried to make sure that we’re able to push the envelope when we can to protect this country. But we have to recognize that sometimes our engagement and direct involvement will stimulate and spur additional threats to our national security interests.

This is notable because the people who run our foreign policy usually tell us that terrorists are like zombies, driven by some incomprehensible force to kill and kill and kill until we take them out with a head shot/drone strike. Brennan himself did this five years ago while “answering” questions from the late reporter Helen Thomas about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian man who tried to blow up a Northwest flight over Detroit:

………

I’m shocked that Brennan is even capable of telling the truth in such matters.

Your Not so Liberal Media

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It turns out that the revelations about Denny Hastert raping a child has been told to many media sources for years, but they chose to ignore credible reports:

As an enthusiastic young teacher and wrestling coach at the high school here, former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert reliably had one student at his side, former classmates say. Stephen Reinboldt, a smart, slender, likable student who rose to become class president, was the wrestling team’s equipment manager. For four years, he arrived at practice early and stayed late, traveled with Mr. Hastert to overnight tournaments, even when only one wrestler was competing, and went for long rides in the coach’s sports car, sometimes driving it.

On Friday, Mr. Reinboldt’s younger sister, Jolene Burdge, said her brother, who died in 1995, was also sexually abused by Mr. Hastert, but hid the fact for years because he thought no one would believe him.

………

In the interview on ABC, Ms. Burdge called Mr. Hastert, who taught and coached at Yorkville high school from 1966 until 1981, a father figure to her brother. She said she learned of the years of abuse when her brother revealed to her that he was gay eight years after he left high school.

“I asked him, ‘When was your first same-sex experience?’ ” she said. “He looked at me and said, ‘It was with Dennis Hastert.’ I was stunned.”

She continued, “And he just turned around and kind of looked at me and said, ‘Who is ever going to believe me?’ ”

………

She also said she confronted Mr. Hastert when he unexpectedly came to her brother’s funeral, telling him, “I want you to know that your secret didn’t die here with my brother.”

Ms. Burdge said she tried for years to get news organizations, including ABC News, and advocacy groups to pursue the story. She began in 2006 after it was revealed that Mr. Hastert had covered up claims that Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, had sent sexually explicit emails to congressional pages.

She said she had given up on exposing Mr. Hastert. Then, two weeks ago, just before Mr. Hastert was indicted, she was contacted by the F.B.I.

………

In interviews, former students say Mr. Hastert was popular, partly because his classes often consisted of little more than watching movies, and because his teams kept winning. He also seemed to have a new Porsche almost every year, each a different color, and would let certain boys drive it — not just around the parking lot, but on long rides.

“Some guys got to drive the Porsche and some didn’t,” said Jeff Nix, who was a student at the time. “We always wondered what you had to do to get to drive the Porche. Steve got to drive the Porsche.”

(emphasis mine)

There appears to have been noothing even remotely close to what could be called journalistic due diligence in response to Ms. Burges reports.

It appears that her brother was right about being ignored.

But until Hastert had his, “They got Al Capone on tax evasion,” moment, no one wanted to hear this.

H/t Atrios.

Another Cop Actually Convicted by a Jury

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LAPD Officer Mary O’Callaghan was convicted of “assault under color of authority” for repeated kicking a woman that she had already handcuffed:

The camera captured the Los Angeles police officer hissing a cruel threat at the handcuffed woman, striking at her throat with an open hand and kicking her in the crotch.

The video of the arrest, recorded by a patrol-car camera, persuaded jurors to convict Officer Mary O’Callaghan on Friday of assault under color of authority.

During the two-week trial, in which the defense argued that O’Callaghan hadn’t used excessive force, the video gave jurors an unvarnished view of what happened, one said.

“It played a big role,” said Deedra Garcia, the jury forewoman. “It gave us a lot of evidence.”

………

The prosecution’s case centered on the video, which showed O’Callaghan jab at Thomas’ throat with an open hand and threaten to break her arms and kick her in the crotch. In the video, O’Callaghan then raises her boot and strikes Thomas, whose body shakes in response.

The recording captured Thomas — who asked officers for an ambulance more than 30 minutes before one was called — breathing heavily and repeatedly saying, “I can’t.”

A video from a dashboard camera in another patrol car, which was also played during the trial, recorded O’Callaghan laughing and smoking a cigarette as she peeked inside the car at Thomas, whose legs were tied with a nylon hobble restraint.

“That ain’t a good sign,” O’Callaghan says out loud in the video.

Assistant Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Shannon Presby told jurors that O’Callaghan was “immune from any empathy” and that the video clearly showed the officer kicking Thomas in the crotch and the stomach.

Even 5 years ago, it would have been unlikely that the Jury would have voted to convict, and if they had it would have taken much longer than their two days deliberating.

I expect her to get no jail time, though.

I doubt that the recent push-back against police impunity has permeated the judiciary.

Deliberate Destruction of Public Schools in East Ramapo by Orthodox Jewish Community Hits the New York Times

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The NPR program This American Life covered this a few months ago, but it is nice that the concerted effort to destroy and asset strip the public schools in East Ramapo has found its way into an editorial in the New York Times: (Full disclosure, Sharon* graduated from a public high school in the East Ramapo school district)

New York State has a proud tradition of local decision making in public education. However, students in the public schools in East Ramapo, about 30 miles north of Manhattan, in Rockland County, are being denied their state constitutional right to a sound basic education by a board that has grossly mismanaged the district’s finances and educational programs.

When there is overwhelming evidence that a local school board has persistently failed to act in the best interests of its public school students, the state must act. The Legislature will adjourn on June 17, so time is running out.

East Ramapo is a divided community. Of the roughly 32,000 school-age children enrolled in schools in the district, about 24,000 attend private schools, nearly all of them Orthodox Jewish yeshivas. Of the more than 8,000 children in the public schools, 43 percent are African-American and 46 percent are Latino; 83 percent are poor and 27 percent are English-language learners.

The East Ramapo school board, dominated by private-school parents since 2005, has utterly failed them. Faced with a fiscal and educational crisis, the State Education Department last June appointed a former federal prosecutor, Henry M. Greenberg, to investigate the district’s finances.

Mr. Greenberg’s report, released in November, documented the impact of the board’s gross mismanagement and neglect. Since 2009, the board has eliminated hundreds of staff members, including over 100 teachers, dozens of teaching assistants, guidance counselors and social workers, and many key administrators. Full-day kindergarten, and high-school electives have been eliminated or scaled back. Music, athletics, professional development and extracurricular activities were cut.

………

While slashing resources in its public schools, the school board vastly increased public spending on private schools. The cost of transporting children, including gender-segregated busing, rose to $27.3 million in 2013-14 from $22 million in 2009-10, a 24 percent increase. Public spending on private school placement for special education students grew by 33 percent between 2010-11 and 2013-14, and the district placed students in private schools when appropriate spaces were available in public ones.

The report also exposed disturbing practices by board members. The board conducts 60 to 70 percent of its meetings in closed-door executive session. It does not tolerate, and is overtly hostile to, the complaints of public school parents, students and community members. Public protests against the board are now commonplace.

The report proposed the appointment of a state fiscal monitor, who would oversee all of the board’s financial and educational decisions and have the authority to override the board, when necessary, to protect the interests of the public-school community and improve education outcomes for public-school students. The report also recommended additional state funding to restore essential staff and services, but only if a monitor was in place to make certain the money was used effectively and efficiently to benefit all of the students.

A bill in Albany — introduced in the Assembly by Ellen C. Jaffee and Kenneth P. Zebrowski and in the Senate by David Carlucci, who all represent parts of the school district — would implement a fiscal monitor for at least five years. It is a crucial step toward reversing the district’s disastrous decline and repairing the deep rifts in the community. The New York State School Boards Association has found that the measure “respects the democratic electoral process by leaving the elected board of education in place.”

………

In recent weeks, in response to a lobbying campaign by the school board, momentum for the bill appears to have slowed. Advocates for the local school board and some leaders in the Orthodox community have accused supporters of state oversight of having anti-Semitic motives.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The legislation is not about punishing one group because of its religious beliefs; it is about acting to make sure that the civil rights of a community of overwhelmingly low-income minority children are not denied and that their constitutional right to a sound basic education is enforced.

Note that, in response to claims of antisemitism, the ADL has come out in favor of appointing a state monitor.

The context here, particularly when reviewing the This American Life coverage, is that the  East Ramapo school board (יש”ו) is attempting a genteel form of ethnic cleansing directed at the poorest and least powerful amongst them, with the board chairman literally telling non-Jews to leave town.

It is disgusting, and it is against Halacha.†

The members of the school school board are both miserable excuses for human beings, and bad Jews.

As an aside, this also is not, “Good for the Jews.”

Any plans to expand or build a Yeshiva in any other town will likely be viewed with the same enthusiasm as constructing a toxic waste dump next to a town reservoir, and the longer that this goes on, the worse this will get.

One reform that is not mentioned, and should be considered, is to move the dates of the school board elections to the same time as the Congressional elections. (Currently they are held in the spring of odd numbered years).

Higher turnout would mitigate against sh%$ like this.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
†Jewish religious law.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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In yet another case of prosecutorial overreach, we have motions by the prosecutors in another of the FBI’s entrapment efforts forbid defense counsel from putting forward their case:

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has become such a powerful symbol of government overreach that federal prosecutors in a terror case in Chicago are asking the judge to forbid defense attorneys from even mentioning his name during trial, for fear that it would lead the jury to disregard their evidence.

The upcoming trial is of Adel Daoud, a slow-witted Chicagoland teenager caught in yet another FBI terror sting aimed at someone vulnerable to manipulation. An undercover federal agent provided Daoud with a fake car bomb parked outside a downtown Chicago bar, and then let him push the detonator.

Much of the evidence in the case — involving Daoud’s online explorations into Islam and jihad — was gathered through surveillance conducted using secret warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago asked Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman on Wednesday to prohibit the defense from mentioning Snowden’s name — along with a number of other things, such as the existence of the National Security Agency, or a speech by Senator Dianne Feinstein in which she cited “a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar” as an example of one that was thwarted thanks to FISA authorities.

Their concern: Those topics “are irrelevant and would tend to elicit jury nullification, so the defendant should be barred from inquiring of witnesses, presenting evidence, or arguing to the jury about them.”

A key issue in the case has already been extensively litigated. Judge Coleman in January 2014 ruled that Daoud’s security-cleared lawyers should be allowed to see all the classified materials the government submitted in order to get their FISA warrants.

………

For good measure, the prosecutors also don’t want the defense to claim entrapment, either:

[T]he defendant should be precluded from arguing or suggesting that the undercover technique the government used in the underlying investigation was improper. Any argument attacking the government’s investigative techniques would not only be improper, but it should also trigger an instruction that such investigative techniques are entirely proper.

This is crap.

It is corrosive to concept of a fair trial that has developed in the US, and England before it, over the past thousand years.