i'ma goin' tell you sompin

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I would a thousand times rather have Kensley Hawkins as my neighbor than any of those who would do this to him.

Kensley Hawkins is a deadbeat, according to the state of Illinois.

He owes $455,203.14 to cover the costs of his stay at the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet. Hawkins has been in prison since Nov. 19, 1982. His jailer is also his debt collector.

Hawkins is fighting in court to stop the state from seizing about $11,000 in his bank account to partially satisfy the debt. The 60-year-old earned the money by working while he's been behind bars, making about $75 a month.

I'm not kidding.

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love, 99
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i've run out of patience

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The very weakest of my ten perfectings is patience, but enough is too much already.

A federal magistrate ruled Friday that prosecutors can demand Twitter account information of certain users in their criminal probe into the disclosure of classified documents on WikiLeaks.

Three of the five account holders targeted by the government had asked the judge to reverse an earlier order she issued requiring Twitter to turn over the information to prosecutors. The Twitter users argued that the government was on a fishing expedition and its request amounted to an unconstitutional violation of their freedom of speech and association.

But in a ruling issued Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan said the government's request was reasonable and did nothing to hamper the Twitter users' free speech rights.

"The freedom of association does not shield members from cooperating with legitimate government investigations," Buchanan wrote in her 20-page opinion.

The efforts by the Twitter users marked the first legal skirmish in the Justice Department's criminal investigation of the WikiLeaks disclosures, but is unlikely to be the last. The Twitter users' lawyers, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation - had previously said they would appeal an unfavorable ruling from the magistrate to a trial judge.

A federal law - the Stored Communications Act - allows prosecutors to obtain certain electronic data without a search warrant or a demonstration of probable cause. Instead, the government must only show that it has a reasonable belief that the records it seeks are relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

Prosecutors said the law is used routinely in criminal investigations, and that the WikiLeaks investigation is no different from any other criminal probe.

The U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which is investigating the WikiLeaks case, declined comment after Friday's hearing.

Buchanan agreed with prosecutors, and said the Twitter users had no reason to expect that the information sought by prosecutors would be kept private. The order does not seek the content of the tweets themselves, which are already publicly disseminated. Instead, it seeks certain "non-content" information, like billing records and IP addresses associated with the accounts.

"The Twitter Order does not seek to control or direct the content of petitioners' speech or association," Buchanan wrote.

Lawyers for the Twitter users had argued that people would be less likely to speak freely if they knew that doing so could result in their being subjected to a government investigation.

Twitter did not immediately respond Friday to questions about whether it now intends to turn over the information sought by prosecutors.

The original order issued by Buchanan in December 2010 at prosecutors' request sought account information from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is being held at Quantico Marine Corps Base amid allegations that he leaked classified documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to WikiLeaks.

Three other accounts belonging to American Jacob Appelbaum, Dutch citizen Rop Gonggrijp and Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland's parliament, were also targeted. Those three challenged the court order. Assange has contended that, as an Australian citizen, he is not subject to American law.

Buchanan also rejected a request that would have required the government to disclose whether it sought similar records from other social networking sites like Facebook.

Just make it stop.

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love, 99
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chevron and ecuador

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Don't ask me how the U.S. judicial system can rule on an 8.6 billion judgment in the Ecuadorean judicial system, but it seems they have. Judge Lewis Kaplan, whose record already sucks, says that attempts to collect this judgment "might disrupt the day-to-day business of a company vital to the global economy". That's the kind of stuff fascists say... but not the kind of stuff Americans say.

In the latest twist in a hard-fought international environmental case that reportedly could win a megabillions verdict for the plaintiffs, a federal judge in New York has granted a temporary restraining order banning enforcement of any judgment that might be awarded in the future by a court in Ecuador.

The request for a TRO by Chevron was part of a civil racketeering lawsuit it recently filed against the plaintiffs and a lawyer representing them, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Chevron had argued to the U.S. court that the plaintiffs, in a claimed memo that the oil company said was tied to another law firm representing them, had shown their intent to disrupt Chevron's business worldwide to try to collect any verdict, Reuters reports.

"Helter-skelter disruption for the sake of disruption ... is not in the public interest," said Judge Lewis Kaplan as he issued the order. "The worst that can happen is that the plaintiffs are delayed in enforcing that judgment for 28 days."

Kaplan ruled from the bench, notes the Associated Press.

The ruling yesterday follows a motion by a third law firm representing the plaintiffs, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, to withdraw for unknown reasons, according to Corporate Counsel.

As detailed in an earlier ABAJournal post, one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs, Patton Boggs, is seeking permission of a federal court in Washington, D.C., to sue Chevron and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher for alleged tortious interference with its relationship with the plaintiffs.

A New York Law Journal article provides additional details about Kaplan's ruling.

I got on this to begin with at Public Intelligence, gaping at an ugly and inscrutable document they have posted for download, being reminded of Palast flummoxing Max Keiser the other day, and remembering about Greg being arrested in Azerbaijan, and wondering what he has brewing... and... well... so... ahem... just shoot me....

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love, 99
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feds helping bank smear journalists

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Not just WikiLeaks, which is an outrage in itself.

And perhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams was recommended to Bank of America's General Counsel by the Justice Department — meaning the U.S. Government is aiding Bank of America in its defense against/attacks on WikiLeaks.

That's why this should be taken seriously, despite how ignorant, trite and laughably shallow is the specific leaked anti-WikiLeaks proposal. As creepy and odious as this is, there's nothing unusual about these kinds of smear campaigns. The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to learn about it this time because of Anonymous' hacking. That a similar scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common this behavior is. The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self-evidently pernicious; that it's being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is. These highly experienced firms included such proposals because they assumed those deep-pocket organizations would approve and it would make their hiring more likely.

But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue — the full-scale merger between public and private spheres — because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector...

I'm going to have to jump into a vat of health any minute. Then maybe a nice bucket full of nice clattery ice water for my head. I'm hoping the gathering army of truthier alternatives to lies and besmirchment will have a vast array of Out There topics for me to mull when I'm done with those....

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love, 99
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good 'morning' to you

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I do not believe Bradley Manning did it. I think the whole Manning/Lamo/Wired thing was a scam.

The Glenn Greenwald / Kevin Poulsen exchanges this week have centred around a dispute over the alleged Bradley Manning / Adrian Lamo chat logs that form the sole evidence currently implicating Manning in leaking classified information.

As a little more background into Lamo's reliability at the time the chat logs were published, here is a thread on Fairfax Underground where someone posted another leaked chat log involving Lamo's wife and Nadim, a person Lamo refers to as a "disgruntled fan".

The original poster also includes the portion of the chat logs which Lamo claims he leaked to Wikileaks, further claiming they then "outed" him as their source. This thread is discussed in an article in DailyTech which contains an update at the end when they discovered that Lamo had actually outed himself "in the form of a podcast interview Lamo gave to an Australian blog site".

All of the evidence into the mental state and reliability of the sole informant in this case raises the question of why chat logs, in the hands of a self proclaimed hacker, passed on to a journalist who professes great respect for the hacking skills of this source, are being treated as reliable legal evidence. In what format were they provided to Wired (and the DoJ)? Was there third party monitoring? Why did Wired believe these logs, knowing their source? Why should anyone?

No one should.

NO ONE.

If Lamo had outed himself as a WikiLeaker, so much the more suspect his being dragged off to the bin against his will and coming back to immediately begin engaging in "online chats" with Bradley Manning that would end up, incredibly, making Manning confess to a total stranger in an insecure environment, when he was supposedly freaking that he would get busted, that he'd done this huge thing.

BULLSHIT.

It was someone much bigger, and they either can't figure out who, or who's so big they don't want it public. And if the whole thing was set up to get out to the public some information they WANT us to think, it was something they are too terrified to tell us straight out, NOT some Zionist plot against their enemies, and not even some NWO ruse to take away the intertubes. No way in hell they would have parted with those OCEANS of material to do either of those things.

They are either trying to flush out a high level leaker, or trying to get out information to cripple VERY bad people. I'd say, oddly, that the latter is somewhat likely, because it explains why certain people have been calling for Assange's hide and why Holder is limping along with this BLATANTLY unAmerican crap. I don't think they'd go quite this far if it was only to flush someone out.

I wish they'd given everything to ME. I'd damn well read and not stop until I found the needle in that haystack.

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love, 99
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i've had to resort to ibuprofen

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My head is right in the middle of liftoff. The house is full of rocket fuel fumes. Don't click that image unless you are a Zen master or your IQ is SO low you can't understand.

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love, 99
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oh, definitely bogus, planted, state department cables, suuuure

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Someone mentioned how good propaganda is always mixed in with a healthy portion of truth to give itself more credibility. Well, then, they've seriously outdone themselves this time....

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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a clockwork

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Fancy a bit of the old in and out...? Or would you prefer it all in one?

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love, 99
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where's beach impeach?

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Hmmmmm?

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love, 99
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toadally

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I am heartened that Glenn is keeping his headlamps on liberal hypocrisy. And I really still hope you took out the time to listen to him making my case the other day.

And didn't I quote someone about the Obama Administration being the Dubya Administration on steroids at some point? I really think I did. I really think it ought to be reiterated over the Emergency Broadcast System.

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love, 99
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a little teaser of justice after years and years

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Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Bagram, black sites, how many secret bases, Argentina, Central America, everywhere... what do we care?

US judge bans Guantanamo witness
Court delays start of the first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee citing irregularities with state witness.
Last Modified: 06 Oct 2010 16:04 GMT

The first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been delayed after a judge told prosecutors they cannot call their star witness.

Lewis A Kaplan, the US district judge, blocked the government on Wednesday from calling a man who authorities said, sold explosives to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the defendant.

Defence lawyers say investigators only learned about the witness after Ghailani underwent harsh interrogation at a secret CIA-run camp overseas between 2004 and 2006.

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly," Kaplan wrote. "It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction."

The government immediately asked for a delay of the trial, which had been expected to begin with opening statements on Wednesday, so that it has time to appeal the ruling, should it decide to do so.

The judge sent a pool of 66 jurors home until Tuesday, but not before warning them to avoid following the case on the news or discussing it with anyone.

Ghailani is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa.

The attacks killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

The judge issued his written three-page ruling after a hearing three weeks ago in which Hussein Abebe, the witness, testified about his dealings with authorities.

"The government has failed to prove that Abebe's testimony is sufficiently attenuated from Ghailani's coerced statements to permit its receipt in evidence," Kaplan wrote.

The defence had asked the judge to exclude Abebe's testimony on the grounds that it would be the product of statements made by Ghailani to the CIA under duress.

On that point, Kaplan said, "Abebe was identified and located as a close and direct result of statements made by Ghailani while he was held by the CIA. The government has elected not to litigate the details of Ghailani's treatment while in CIA custody. It has sought to make this unnecessary by asking the court to assume in deciding this motion that everything Ghailani said while in CIA custody was coerced."

The judge noted that he had previously rejected defence motions to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that Ghailani was deprived of a speedy trial and that his treatment by the CIA was so outrageous as to require termination of the charges.

How much of this does it take?

I guess we can set our stopwatches on the prosecution's appeal.

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OR JUST WAIT FOR THEM TO COME FOR US....

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THEN try to stave it off....

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love, 99
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i was just certain he would fix at least this much

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I was fully prepared to be let down very badly, but this was one of the things I felt very sure he would fix. Instead, it may have received the least attention of all the things that are wrong... and... of course... when he puts his attention on it, it gets worse more smoothly than ever before. This is all by way of saying that I still believed at least SOME things were still within a president's power. It took this hopey changey thing to convince me that he is 100% spokesmodel and 0% president. Before Obama I thought we could rely on 15% and possibly even up to 20% actual president. Nope.

NOPE.

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love, 99
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before i speak, i have something important to say

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I. Hate. To. Be. The. Kind. Who. Says. I. Told. You. So. But. I. Told. You. So.

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Also foreseen....

Who needs a frickin crystal ball?

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Another breathtakingly fine example of nobrainertude for all psychics....

U.S. attorney firing ruled political

WASHINGTON, July 22 (UPI) — A special prosecutor ruled that the firing of a U.S. attorney in 2006, while politically motivated, didn't warrant criminal charges being filed.

Special prosecutor Nora Dannehy spent nearly two years investigating whether the firing of U.S. attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico broke the law and whether Justice Department officials lied to Congress about it, touching off a scandal that hounded President George W. Bush's administration and spurred the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Dannehy determined that Iglesias's firing was politically motivated, which violated Justice Department principles, but wasn't criminal, and concluded that misleading statements Gonzales and other Justice Department officials made to Congress didn't rise to a criminal level, an investigation summary sent to Congress by the Justice Department indicated.

An investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility that wrapped up in September 2008 found at least three of the nine firings of U.S. attorneys were politically motivated. The report said it found Iglesias's firing particularly troubling because there were indications he was let go because he wouldn't bring criminal charges involving accusations of voter fraud and Democrats before the 2006 elections.

Dannehy, appointed by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate, distinguished between firing Iglesias for political reasons and doing so to influence an investigation that could harm Democrats, which would be illegal, the Times said.

"The weight of the evidence established not an attempt to influence but rather an attempt to remove David Iglesias from office, in other words, to eliminate the possibility of any future action or inaction by him," the summary said.

Maybe I will just keep listing these until YOU go screaming naked off a cliff....

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good

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I am personally appalled that our so-called justice system would have stooped so low as to make a go of this cheap trick. It was bad enough, the malarkey they pulled at the time, but the latest was pandering to America's obsession with child molestation... and a pretense that such an egregious crime—which was NOT deemed that egregious at the time—will haunt the perps until we finally catch them.

We have a bunch of guys whose crimes are SO radically more egregious and RECENT and not only unprosecuted, but not even contemplated being prosecuted and we pull this crap?

He DID his time. He made amends with his victim. The judge was a monster. It happened a thousand years ago. I'm sorry, Roman. I wish you every success and a happy old age.

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oscar's verdict is pulling me out of my near death experience

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Nothing like moral outrage to put the spark of life back in a body.

BB2 added this link to the mix on the post below, and it's just typical of all the evidence at trial that was screaming for any free and decent juror to return a flat Second-degree Murder verdict, with commentary to the affect that it was SO obviously gratuitous as to make it verge on FIRST-degree Murder. BB2 also says the feds are looking into the feasibility of taking on some "hate crime" bullshit to "involuntary manslaughter" and much as I want this pig to rot in prison for a very, very long time, I don't want those fuckers putting this crap on top of already too much crap. It's just an effort to take political advantage at the price of further ruining our quite nearly DEAD justice system.

We should as stridently reject the DOJ on this as we do the filthy verdict in the COLD-BLOODED MURDER of Oscar Grant. We should try to take comfort that the guy's karma is permanently ruined. He will be a pariah for the rest of his life, barring some transcendental enlightenment and transcendental atonement for his crime. And we should be dragging those fucks at Main Justice out from behind their desks and never letting them back.

[I chose this image for Oscar because the facial expression is that of a true human looking at the dangerous twits, aka wasichu, who do this sort of thing... one third amusement, two thirds contempt... in the expression, of course... because the contempt is unquestionably wholehearted.]

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mister despicable: rahm emanuel

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He's George W. Obama's Karl Rove.
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the scotts horton hold forth some more

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Extremely important stuff, and this is the end of my batch of narcissistic image "doodles" for the day... and the gap in my glued cheaters' rim break gets wider by the minute.... Thank you for your patience.
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this is frank fascism

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Yes, it damn is.
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we're not in kansas anymore

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Tell me you have the picture. Please.
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still deep fat frying me

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