Login HereA grand jury referral focusing on political meddling in the Justice Department's civil rights division has been filed in the probe of U.S. attorney firings.
The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports that the referral focuses on possible perjury by Bradley Schlozman, who left the Justice Department last year. At the time he faced criticism for bragging about hiring Republicans for career positions when he led the civil rights division. He also was criticized for bringing voter fraud charges against a liberal group shortly before an election when he was serving as interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo.
A Washington Post story published last year said Schlozman acknowledged in congressional testimony that he had bragged about his hiring but denied politics played a part in actions against career employees....
He also testified before Congress about the voter fraud case and denied that the timing violated DOJ guidelines for politically sensitive investigations, the Wall Street Journal story says....
You remember Mr. Schlozman, don't you? Desperately in need of gingko biloba, purveyor of politicized prosecutorial decisions in Missouri, vetter of political bona fides for hiring decisions, supporter of voting suppression efforts...the list goes on and on.
This is all of a piece with the perversion of the rule of law the last few years to bring it in line with ideological purity among the unilateral executive Cheneyites and the Federalist Society conservatives. And what we are beginning to see is the reversal -- a recoiling, if you will, from the excesses and unilateral power seizures of the Bush/Cheney Administration. And it is a correction cycle in which we will be living for some time to come. As Digby says, responding to a fantastic analytical piece from Hilzoy on McCain's 1974 thesis on what torture meant to him then:
She notes the difference in what McCain clearly considered torture back then, and what he considers torture now. Indeed, it would seem that it was so uncontroversial that he didn't even feel the need to "define" torture at all. I think it was pretty much universally understood that things like sleep deprivation and stress position and hypothermia etc --- were torture. I guess his thinking has evolved on this. Or he is a political whore.
What we have allowed ourselves to become in this nation is a bunch of sleeping sheep, whose lives were ordered for a time from above because we were either cowering under our covers or squabbling amongst ourselves as to how to best push back. The correction phase of this long and winding road has begun.
You can see it in the recent SCOTUS opinion on Boumadiene, just by comparing the ideologically and fear-driven rage of Justice Scalia with the measured, historical analysis of Justice Kennedy -- but it truly shows up in the bewildered irritation of Chief Justice Roberts, who petulantly whings:
So who has won? Not the detainees. The Court’s analysis leaves them with only the prospect of further litigation to determine the content of their new habeas right, followed by further litigation to resolve their particular cases, followed by further litigation before the D. C. Circuit—where they could have started had they invoked the DTA procedure. Not Congress, whose attempt to “determine—through democratic means—how best” to balance the security of the American people with the detainees’ liberty interests, see Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557, 636 (2006) (BREYER, J., concurring), has been unceremoniously brushed aside. Not the Great Writ, whose majesty is hardly enhanced by its extension to a jurisdictionally quirky outpost, with no tangible benefit to anyone. Not the rule of law, unless by that is meant the rule of lawyers, who will now arguably have a greater role than military and intelligence officials in shaping policy for alien enemy combatants. And certainly not the American people, who today lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.
We are at a point in our nation's history where the Chief Justice of our nation's highest court has reduced himself to using right-wing talking points about "unelected judges" to whine about defendants being able to challenge this: being held in US custody for years, without charge, without seeing all available evidence, with trials allegedly stacked for political purposes for the verdict, sometimes apprehended via a paid bounty, some of whom have been tortured and held in isolation for days on end in the darkness by our own nation's hand. In a systematic program of maltreatment sanctioned at the very top of our government.
Because, somehow, a full and fair hearing for a person who should start with the presumption of innocent until proven guilty under our own system of laws and justice is no longer a valid starting point.
The Geneva Conventions and the protections born from them which benefited our nation's soldiers as much as any others on the planet were begun from Lincoln's edict for humane treatment of prisoners during the Civil War. A full and fair vote is the foundation of our democratic republic. Justice, which used to be the watchword at the DOJ had become a term to be manipulated for public consumption while masking the vile stripping of rights being sanctioned underneath.
To blithely treat these protections as meaningless when it suits us is to cast aside who we are as a nation, and what we have stood for all these generations. To reverse this course and once again take up the mantle of justice and integrity will take generations of work. And it cannot start too soon -- holding Bradley Schlozman to account for his machinations is as good a place to start as any.
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F I T Z !!!
((((( Christy )))))
Drag Alvin before Congress … what fun it was last time …
Alvin’s in trouble again? Couldn’t happen to a nicer etc, etc.
I can never forget the day Pat Leahy yelled @ him. Woke up the whole SJC & home audience. Saw that one live on CSPAN. Good times…
Morning all — need more coffee. brb…
LOL!
I’m sitting here thinking to Myself ,Schlozman, Schlozman, wasn’t he like, the Chipmunk Dude?
Ayep.
Mornin’, Christy — FDL’s brinin’ the A game this morning on all threads!
That’s the one we call Alvin … *g* … and yes, I remember when Leahy yelled at him …
Okay — fresh pot of coffee on…Mr. ReddHedd had a bit mroe coffee than usual this morning and left me a cuppa short. Ooops.
So is Alvin ready to sing?
John Roberts will stand as a monument to Democratic capitulation for as long as he remains on the Court.
No word yet on which statement/issue may have led to a potential perjury count from Mr. Schlozman. But if I had to guess, I’d say that perhaps this ball got rolling on a Congressional nudge from his horrific testimony where he tried to tap dance all over the truth. Good lord, his testimony was particularly bad — and that’s saying something considering how awful AG Gonzales was, isn’t it?
Not the rule of law, unless by that is meant the rule of lawyers,…
And Mr. Chief Justice - your occupation is…?
Roberts identifies himself as self-loathing -iow, a Republic.
Or is he trying to infer that those brave souls standing for human rights are getting rich while doing so?
Chief Justice Asshat.
I am so ready to start seeing some justice being done.
But I dare not get my hopes up too high.
Gilbert and Sullivan at the ready.
“And certainly not the American people, who today lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.”
Habeas corpus is about the nation’s foreign policy? IANAL but isn’t habeas corpus about due process and the rule of law, something that nitwit Roberts should know about?
What I found so annoying—and so telling about the dissents from Roberts and Scalia is that they can’t argue based on the merits so they go for the attack using innuendo and hyperbole.
How intellectually vapid.
How Republican.
I don’t know if Roberts has ever done any criminal defense work — but it sure as hell doesn’t seem that he has. Otherwise, ,he’d have a better understanding of the need to make the government prove its case — fairly and with evidence not gained through improper, illegal means.
Having been on both sides of that aisle during my legal career, I never forgot the lessons I learned representing clients — and tried to hold my cases and the investigators with whom I worked to those standards. If we couldn’t win our case on the merits, then it wasn’t justice in my book. Maybe that was just me…
Good Morning Christy - definitely gonna need a bigger roost
his testimony came at a time when we had no toobz or teevee here - but the second I first saw that hapless visage I knew there was a target letter in his future
and now to hear that helium infused voice - dear gaia !
Further on in the WSJ article- apparently Alvin’s clammed up since his SJC testimony, though this latest turn of events may change things:
“It wasn’t clear which of Mr. Schlozman’s comments prosecutors are focusing on. He has declined to be interviewed by investigators since leaving the department. One possibility focuses on Mr. Schlozman’s 2007 testimony to Congress, one part of which he later retracted…”
Boy, the wheels of justice are turning…slowly, but turning.
That’s exactly the smear Roberts is going for. It’s the same smear the Bushies have used against the attorneys for those pursuing the telecoms. Any attorneys fighting for human rights are just in it for the money, so if they can create causes of action, like the right to file habeas petitions, it’s just to benefit them. It’s slanderous and unprofessional for any judge to say that of those who who are morely likely doing this pro bono, and even if paid, so what.
Remember the DoD lawyer who tried last year to slander those who defended detainees as unpatriotic? The Bar associations came down hard on him, and he was forced to resign. Roberts is stooping to the same level. It’s truly despicable.
Uhmmm, sure seems like it is taking an awfully long time to prosecute a crime that is so blatant. The Justice Department is not to bring case just before an election. Schlozman did. What more proof do they need?
Aside: would a wider view of the witness table show the helium balloon Alvin is huffing?
No, Christy - doesn’t look like it.
“After graduating from law school, Roberts served as a law clerk for Judge Henry Friendly on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for one year. From 1980 to 1981, he clerked for then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist on the United States Supreme Court. From 1981 to 1982, he served in the Reagan administration as a Special Assistant to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith. From 1982 to 1986, Roberts served as Associate Counsel to the President under White House Counsel Fred Fielding.
Roberts entered private law practice in 1986 as an associate at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Hogan & Hartson, but left to serve in the first Bush administration as Principal Deputy Solicitor General from 1989 to 1993. During this time, Roberts argued 39 cases for the government before the Supreme Court, prevailing in 25 of them. He represented 18 states in United States v. Microsoft.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Roberts_Jr.
BREAKING: Jimmy Choo’s on sale in Lebanon ?
Note to Roberts. You might just want to read the majority opinion, especially this part:
(h/t Glennzilla)
Simpler, in case you still don’t understand: 9/11 does not trump the Constitution. Got it?
And Roberts is just flat wrong about the “rule of law.” The whole point of the decision was to extend constitutional law to non-Americans in other lands, at least when the rights were being violated by a lawless, unaccountable executive. Either they have to call these people POWs and treat them as such under Geneva (which the Administration refused to do) or extend due process/fairness provisions to them. The Bushies wanted to do neither. The majority said you can’t have an mistreat people in an indefinite law free zone at Gitmo (and by extension they can argue, Bagram or Abu Ghraib) just because you call it a war on terrorism.
If you serve as a court clerk, you do see some fairly horrendous appeals — both as habeas cases and as straight judicial appeals come through — so he would have been privy to watching federal criminal trials as the clerk as well as researching the various constitutional and evidentiary issues that would have come up during the course of trials and such.
You cannot see these cases repeatedly and not develop some sense of empathy for these people and for the way that evidence and/or prosecutions can easily be mishandled by a prosecutor or investigator who is less than scrupulous. Just like you equally work up a healthy level of disgust for people who fall so far off the path of legal behavior and then expect to have their hands held for it. It’s a double-edged sword in the hands of justice, but both sides are equally dangerous and sharp. And the attorney or judge who forgets that cuts themselves off on the side they no longer show a healthy level of caution about…
It’s infuriating. And patently offensive to anyone who has ever worked a case in court on a criminal matter on either side of the bar — or at least it should be.
That he and the other justices who joined in his dissent couldn’t see that — but, instead, signed on approvingly — just ensured that I will work that much harder to be certain that John McCain will not be making the next set of judicial appointments to the federal bench if Roberts is his standard.
I noted the Roberts’ passage at the end of his dissent, especially the phrase “jurisdictionally quirky outpost”. This not only trivializes that most fundamental of legal concepts habeas corpus but those to whom it is extended. It is an extraordinary statement for anyone in the law let alone the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in its offhand racism. Guantanamo detainees are so many jiggaboos unworthy of his and the law’s consideration. He can’t be bothered with them.
I find it amazing that lawyers like the Fascist Four have so little understanding or respect for the law. If a foundational legal principle like habeas corpus can be bent, trimmed, or eliminated entirely so easily, then it can not be a foundational principle. It is, in fact, nothing. What part of this do they not understand?
The ability to detain people “indefinitely” with no recourse is opposite the founders intent, period. The fact the decision was 5-4 shows the depth of the schism to “compromise” the founder’s absolute intent, limitations on the actions of government and the people who control the government’s awesome powers and propensity for abuse!
The sad fact of the matter is that they don’t see it as anything but upholding the ideological principles on which their worldview is founded. This conflict between a strong-handed chief executive whose power has unfettered reach and a more democratic, individual civil-liberties based approach has been bubbling since before we became a nation. The fact that they are on the side of the Mad King George end of the history books doesn’t enter their minds, though, apparently, nor that we — and our historical antecedents all the way back before the Magna Carta — put lives on the line to achieve this right…over and over again.
It’s the Adams Alien and Sedition Act pushed by Hamilton’s chief executive power machinations to his own ends versus the Jeffersonian little “d” democratic underpinnings and the Rights of Man. All over again. How many times do we have to fight this? At least once more, it seems…
Don’t forget the Palmer raids, the imprsonment of Japanese-Americans in Calif and elsewhere during WWI, Joe McCarthy, HUAC, etc. It seems that every generation has to fight this fight. So far it has never been irreverably lost. But once lost, the “Republic, if you can keep it,” will be irreverably turned into something else.
I don’t remember Roberts showing up on any of my ballots; if he did, I’d vote for someone else (as long as the bar association didn’t rate everyone else as unqualified).
We’ve had unelected, politically unaccountable judges for two hundred years, without the country falling apart. It only became a ‘problem’ when the ‘Publicans decided they had to have a permanent majority, by hook or by crook. (And ‘crook’ seems to be their preferred method.)
That phrase struck me also. Since Guantanamo was apparently selected by the administration precisely to create such a never-before-known crevice where U.S. and international law didn’t go. Robert’s phrase seemed to me to be an admission that he is just another administration functionary, no better than Yoo or Addington.
Apparently when “powers that be forget it!” Hitler used zee Gliewitz Incident for a preemptive strike of Poland to protect the German homeland. Look what the world got! Bush used 911 as the starting point to compromised civil liberties in the name of protection of the homeland? Look what we have today? go figure…………
Justice Roberts’ path to the SOTUS bench was cleared with the help of the Democratic leadership in Congress, at a time when it was patently obvious the candidate was extremely partisan in the direction of the crypto-Nazis in the Blight House.
I agree. What strikes me about that Roberts’ sentence is this sleight of hand. He makes it sound as if the court has extended habeas to a location — a “jurisdictionally quirky outpost,” but habeas doesn’t protect property or land, it protects people — humans.
What the court did was to extend habeas to a group of humans, who happened to be detained at Gitmo only because the US thought humans at Gitmo couldn’t be protected. The court is saying, if you treat humans this way, the law will follow you, no matter where.
In the companion case, with the decision written by Roberts, he applies the correct principle to humans — but this time it’s American citizens in Iraq. Habeas applies to them as humans — though he would say, because they are US citizens — but Iraq is just as jurisdictionally quirky as Gitmo — in fact, more so, since we have long run treaty rights to be in Gitmo, but questionable and more recent legal rights to be in Iraq.
So what Roberts is saying is “Americans get rights,” but others don’t, unless the law forces me to give it to them when they’re really “in America.” His is a shriveled view of human rights. But the rationale for The Great Writ is universal.
Wait a minute - I thought one of the ‘foundation principles’ of the GOP was that they were very concerned about what they called ‘activist judges’ - I guess to THEM, that means ‘judges who don’t agree with us’, right?
The decision does not extend habeas rights to Guantanamo detainees in the sense that it gives them something that they did not already have. The decision affirms that detainees always had or should have had habeas rights or their equivalent. Since the government failed to produce a valid equivalent (after 6 years), the majority took it out of the government’s hands and reinstituted habeas.
As the Court’s opinion states where habeas can be invoked overseas depends on individual circumstances. This is why they placed such emphasis on cases like Eisentrager where the US (in the particular political situaton of post-war Grmany) had some elements of control but lacked others and so habeas did not apply. Just my reading but the Kennedy decision would probably not apply to Bagram or Abu Ghraib but probably would aboard US naval ships or installations like those at Diego Garcia.
perris - left you a note last thread
(cbl2 left you a feedback comment at 129, the end of the last thread, couldn’t post it at your site)
chair of the nrcc first hour and second hour about detainees has mcclatchy reporter
i’m gonna miss part of the second hour, the first hour has been interesting. he said bush isn’t involved in campaigning, cuz they are looking forward to the future, who wants to live in the past? yeah, right.
diane rehm has two shows today that beg ’write me a comment/question or two’……..i’ve gotten on the show, phone and emails, so, send one, you never know…….the shows are a comment-rich environment today…….
Join the show: 1-800-433-8850 (drshow@wamu.org)
10:00 Rep. Tom Cole
The Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee discusses GOP electoral prospects from the Presidency to the House and what’s currently happening on Capitol Hill.
Guests
Rep. Tom Cole , Republican Representative for Oklahoma’s Fourth District, Deputy Whip, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Natural Resources Committees.
Listen to this segment
Show archives will be available approximately one hour after the program ends.
Pre-order a copy
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Transcript
11:00 Detention of Terrorism Detainees
Tuesday the Senate will hold hearings on the origins of harsh interrogation techniques and last Thursday Guantanamo prisoners won the right to challenge their detention in federal courts. We take a look at how the post 9/11 detention and interrogation system was organized and what it’s achieved. A new investigative series in McClatchy newspapers concludes that abuse and mismanagement led to the radicalization of innocent people caught in the effort to round up terrorists.
Guests
Roy Gutman , foreign editor, McClatchy Newspapers; author ”How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Hijacking of Afghanistan”
Col. Stuart Herrington , retired U.S. Army interrogator; reviewed detainee operations at Guantanamo and in Iraq for the U.S. Army
Matthew Waxman , former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs (2004-2005); also held high ranking positions in the Department of State and National Security Council; currently, professor of law at Columbia University
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Truly.
As long is there is something of value, there will be people who will try and take it, be it a mountain full of ore someone wants to strip away, or freedoms.
In some ways, this is the real war on terrorism if tyranny is the goal of terrorism– a war where you win the battle but only until the next fight, where the issues are relitigated or fought as new but merely cloaked in disguise.
As a former litigator in environmental battles, I can speak to the despair and exhaustion when a ghost you thought dead and buried resurrects.
There is progress, to be sure, but it needs guarding. What I’ve learned during the Bush reign is progress can’t be taken for granted. Alot of backsliding can occur, in fact, all or nearly all can be undone. Nothing is permanent. So we raise the next generation to pay attention, to remain prepared to defend what others have defended before us.
Sen. Leahy gave a speech to the American Constitution Society last week wherein he called the currect SCOTUS the most activist court in his memory. I think he’s right, given how many precedents they have simply mown over for partisan political reasons in order to secure a partisan outcome rather than because of societal shifts or Congressional legal changes.
This is an interesting issue as a time filler, but only for a few hours more. At 5pm today, gays can marry in CA. If the world doesn’t end at that time, the GOP will mobilize, lead by St. McCain, to rant and rave, hoping that it will carry them to yet another election victory.
Amen — very well put.
We’ll dearly miss Mr. Schlozman at out weekly meetings.
Sincerely,
-The Lollypop Guild
Oh yeah, I remember Bradley. Thanks Christy.
digg
yes ma’am…… Beat me to the point!! The Senator’s statement should have been aired on 60 Minutes…………
mwahahahahaha…that should have come with a spew alert…
Chief Justice Roberts
Justice Scalia
Justice Alito
Justice Thomas
Seem like oxymorons all. Injustice would be a better title.
I think the president is beginning to feel teh heat and teh pressure, this from think progress right now;
me thinks they will remain stateside or the skirts of dubai once out of office, and I don’t even think dubai is safe
Bush was a gem this morning with Brown. He looked rattled…
So confident in vindication by history, can someone as delusional as Bush even feel heat and pressure?
BTW if anyone is interested, selise sent me this link to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Boumediene. It’s a great link because it has a transcript box which follows the audio of the arguments.
Re Leahy, seriously he can bite me. I wrote what was probably my first letter to a Senator to him over the Roberts’ nomination. Leahy supported Roberts even though he had no idea beyond Roberts’ say so that he would respect stare decisis, an idea that seems laughable now.
and christy–one thing i keep thinking about all of this is–because some justices DARED to go against them, scalia and roberts in their state of privation are saying things and stating things in writing that are so relevatory about their thinking that they can no longer deny where they stand. before, they could slide around certain things, was just opinion, not written in stone or defined specifically, but now? they can’t deny what they said and how atrocious it really is…..they’ve derobed themselves and now are as naked as the emperors- bush and cheney.
so, i keep thinking in a way that’s a good thing. truth, like cream, rises to the top.
Excellent!
and didn’t know if anyone heard this or not—
cnn news alert thing–
Subject: CNN Breaking News
– UK to send more troops to Afghanistan, says PM Gordon Brown during press conference with U.S. President George W. Bush.
have a good monday
bbl
there were reports late last week that Chimpigula was to ’scold’ Brown in to keeping British troops in Iraq.
reminded me of something from a FDL fave
Yes in England…
http://news.scotsman.com/polit.....4187382.jp
Opus Dei and it’s war upon every aspect of the Reformation is the base
cause for the “misunderstanding”… secterian conflict in the highest
court is very dangerous to the survival of the Constitution and all other
noncanoniacal law.
Bush probably thought it was a crowd like the ones the Beatles used to attract.
BTW has anyone else noted the similarity between Bush’s response to Katrina and the submrgence of Iowa? As the Midwest drowns Bush engages in meaningless photo-ops on a contentless trip to Europe. Maybe when he gets back he can find the time to fly over Iowa’s flooded cities in Air Force One.
On a different but related note, oil is back up to near $138/bbl despite those statements by the Saudis that they would increase production. This is very much not about supply and demand but rather about speculation for speculation’s sake.
Bush to Brown, “Help !!!”
Ooops! I forgot to include the link for the oral arguments. Not to self: Must eat breakfast now!
http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000...../argument/
The follds in Iowa have destroyed a large portion of the corn crop for
this year, so watch the speculators take that one for a ride.
Hello, disaster capitalism in action…
So I wonder—IF Obama makes it past the fire breathing dragons in the election cycle and possibly manages to thwart all of the efforts of the republican owned ballot counting devices and manages to get himself elected (that’s a lot of “ifs”—will the facist four accord him the same executive powers they are so eager to bestow upon the shrubbery?
We did get Cherthoff to cluck over the campsite where 4 Boy Scouts were killed. Stay away Bush and FEMA Please!
No. This has been another edition of… (At least, not bloody likely, anyway.)
I just think we ought to get that one on the record and shout it loudly and often.
Jim — I saw that more rain was expected, too — please stay safe as possible.
Anent this general topic, I was searching on the story of Dr. Samual Mudd, who was sent to a tropic prison after a military tribunal convicted him of aiding and abetting a fleeing John Wilkes Booth by mending his broken leg and not reporting the whereabouts of Booth to the government in Washington. He was imprisoned for four years in “Fort Jefferson, a military prison located on a small Gulf of Mexico island about 70 miles west of Key West, Florida. In 1869.” He was eventually pardoned. It had been remarked upon that a real case against Mudd had not really been made. Makes you wonder what sort of cases were made for those who were sent to the gallows.
Dr. Mudd had done good works while imprisoned, practicing his profession, treating scores who’d contracted yellow fever in that tropical setting. As with the assurances of the Dalai Lama that Carl Spackler would achieve total conscienceness on his death, Dr. Mudd had that going for him. But apart from that there was no questioning of the process that led to Dr. Mudd’s arrest, conviction, and imprisonment in a hostile environment; not to mention others alluded to.
At any rate, in searching this story, I came upon a Heritage Foundation article which uses just this precedent for their apologies in behalf of the Bush/Cheney Junta policies of extreme cruelty, extolling the virtues of swift military tribunals. They swoon at the idea of martial law and the fruit they could yield by its declaration in the pursuit of people of color in Third World countries getting the way of the U.S.’s efforts to seize their lands’ mineral resources.
Just thought I’d mench.
Summer book list (haven’t had time this past year, what with the job and all):
Shock Doctrine
Commonwealth
Before the Storm & Nixonland
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
The Real McCain
and hopefully something or other for amusement.
Wow, that quote truly unmasks the ideology of Roberts.
This sounds like a supremacist’s rant.
…a fascist rant!
Yep, “no tangible benefit to anyone” except the person who has been held indefinitely on no charge, with no access to evidence being touted against him, and while being tortured by our government all the while, whether or not he’s innocent of his non-charges. I guess holding governmental officials to account for wrongdoing has no benefit for any of us, either.
Don’t get me started all over again on that one…
Anybody notice the change in the credit card transaction fee rates? Seems that credit card lenders have been permitted to remove the cap on transaction fees for cash advances. Typically, a transaction fee would be 3 percent of the loan with a $75 maximum fee. Now its 3 percent with no cap. For example: if you borrow $4000, it will cost you $120 instead of $75.
Was this a good economic stimulator provided by congress?
Marcy’s on the scene
Why do all these Bush./Cheney DOJ shills, sound like they need a sippy cup when they testify before congress?
Can Scalia be deemed “unfit” by reasons of insanity? Yes I guess impeachment sets a bad precedent, but we really have some crazy ideologues in high places.
sure stimulates the credit card companies.
not sheep, sheeple. The couch potato nation=sheeple, and the wolves have taken over from the sheeple dogs in protecting the flock=US
Wow, the poor credit card companies must really be hurting.
/s
That is irritating. Last time I heard lawyers could barely see their “enemey combatant” clients. And when it comes down to it, Bush/Cheney thumbsuckers in high places have been making all the decisions, including who gets to be president.
Well on the bright side, we won’t have to wait for the collapse as long . . .
Hi Christy. I’ve coined a new nickname for Scalia that seems more in line with his recent behavior. I’m no historian but when was the last time a Supreme Court justice acted in such an undignified manner?
I read an article and based on my own experience I have to agree that Citibank is doing funny things. Like people who have never been late on payments all of a sudden find that the date of the “payment due” has changed, etc. That happened to me. It’s like they want us to be late.
I for my part am convinced that all the detainees are innocent vacuum cleaner sales people etc. Unless the government proves otherwise with real honest to goodness evidence and not the torture extractions, I have no reason to believe otherwise. Innocent until proven guilty has really be turned upside down, and I find that appalling.
I’ve noticed over the last several years they have narrowed the window of due dates—no longer 30 days on anything, and mailed the bills out very close to the due dates.
It can’t be legal, but then again these are the Bush years where “legal” no longer means anything.
oh shit.
Am I surprised?
“Loco” might be more apt.
Yes! I just got a statement a week and a half before due date. When I complained to Citibank about processing my check as “late,” They said that the check has to be sent out at least a week before the due date. So what? We have to run and jump and pay them as soon as they deign to mail those statements out?
I wonder if CNN dared say anything about this, also pertaining to our soldiers and Afghanistan.
According to story in McClatchy Newspapers, Gitmo abuses by coalition forces pale in comparison to Bagram Prison in Afghanistan.
http://www.ohio.com/news/top_stories/19966039.html
[Caution: graphic descriptions]
The fields of eastern Iowa and western Illinois are the most productive in the world. The excessive rain and flooding have seriously compromised their ability to produce this year.
World grain stocks are low. Corn was less than $2.00/bu in 2006. It is now pushing $7.00/bu and may reach $10/bu within the next year.
This will cause pain for grocery shoppers here and hunger in the Third world.
Come fall the number one issue will be food and fuel.
Screw that. Anything paid by taxpayers like that should be FOIA.
he is not confident in that at all, it is his only excuse, it is all he has
Great Post, Christy. I know I am in EPU land now but does anyone know if Monica Goodling will be named as well? If I recall, she admitted to Political Litmus tests in hiring decisions as well.
Also, I have heard about a new documentary titled “Standard Operating Procedure” - It is an in depth investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal. Anyone know where I can find it?
though we are not surprised it is still a shot to my gut for sure