BP returned to profit with a bang in 2011, revealing Tuesday that it made $24 billion last year as the British energy giant prepares for a criminal trial over the US Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

BP lost $4.9 billion in April 2010 when an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers, sent millions of barrels of oil into the sea and left the company with huge compensation costs.

The many lawsuits against BP have been consolidated into one and it is scheduled to go to trial in New Orleans later this month. As the February 27 trial date nears the Sarasota (FL) Herald-Tribune reports on BP’s lawyers’ “hide-and-stall tactics.” However, the New Orleans Time-Picayune reports that negotiators for the Obama administration and the gulf states are trying to avoid a trial by reaching a settlement  before the trial even begins.

Full Story Here: As BP Profits Gush Skywards, Deal May Be Cut to Allow BP to Avoid Trial | Common Dreams.

Ellen Brown :-:

A foreclosure settlement between five major banks guilty of “robo-signing” and the attorneys general of the 50 states is pending for Monday, February 6th; but it is still not clear if all the AGs will sign. California was to get over half of the $25 billion in settlement money, and California AG Kamala Harris has withstood pressure to settle.

That is good.  She and the other AGs should not sign until a thorough investigation has been conducted.  The evidence to date suggests that “robo-signing” was not a mere technical default or sloppy business practice but was part and parcel of a much larger fraud, the fraud that brought down the whole economy in 2008.  It is not just distressed homeowners but the entire economy that has paid the price, resulting in massive unemployment and a shrunken tax base, throwing state and local governments into insolvency and forcing austerity measures and cutbacks in government services across the nation.

The details of the robo-signing scam were spelled out in my last article, here.  The robo-signing fraud and its implications are expanded on below.

Why All the Robo-signing?

Full Story Here: Why the AGs Must Not Settle: Robo-signing Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg | Common Dreams.

Three big banks were hit on Friday with yet another lawsuit related to wrongful foreclosures. Democratic New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo for deceptive and fraudulent use of a private database used to register mortgages, according to a Friday press release from his office.

Schneiderman has been outspoken in urging the Obama administration to hold the nation’s largest financial institutions accountable for their role in the foreclosure crisis, notably hesitating to join a larger nationwide case against the country’s five largest banks for mortgage fraud. States now have until Monday, according to the Iowa attorney general’s office, to decide to join that deal.

The New York attorney general has yet to announce whether New York will participate in the deal because of concerns that joining the settlement would make it impossible for him to file his own, state-based lawsuits against the banks, said sources close to the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The decision to bring this lawsuit on Friday indicates that the larger nationwide settlement is now more to Schneiderman’s pleasing, said a source familiar with the discussions.

Full Story Here: Eric Schneiderman Sues BofA, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase Over Electronic Mortgage Fraud.

Indiana’s top elections official could lose his job and his freedom after jurors convicted him of multiple voter fraud-related charges on Saturday, leaving in flux the fate of one of the state’s most powerful positions.

Republican Secretary of State Charlie White has held on to his office for more than a year despite being accused of lying about his address on voter registration forms.

A Hamilton County jury found White guilty of six of seven felony charges, including false registration, voting in another precinct, submitting a false ballot, theft and two counts of perjury. He was acquitted on one fraud charge.

Full Story Here: Charlie White, Indiana Election Chief, Found Guilty Of Voter Fraud.

The Securities and Exchange Commission investigates a Wall Street behemoth over claims that it assembled and sold a package of subprime mortgage-backed securities at the behest of hedge fund king John Paulson without telling other investors that Paulson planned to short it.

Sound familiar?

Almost two years ago, Goldman Sachs was in the SEC’s cross hairs over such an allegedly fraudulent scenario and ended up settling charges for $550 million, but not without becoming the poster boy for Wall Street shenanigans that helped crash the economy. Now, it’s Deutsche Bank that is being probed by the SEC, Der Spiegel reports, for allegedly letting Paulson help pick “junk” mortgage-backed securities that went into a collateralized debt obligation without telling other investors that the hedge funder was shorting the CDO, called START.

Deutsche Bank was the fourth-largest issuer of CDOs in the United States, but it has largely avoided the glare of a federal investigation while its competitors, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan, have all been probed by the SEC over how they marketed deals involving subprime mortgage-backed securities. The agency has come under criticism for that lapse, with particular focus on the fact that the SEC’s enforcement chief, Robert Khuzami, previously worked as the general counsel at Deutsche Bank when it was packaging such CDOs.

Full Story Here: SEC Probes Deutsche Bank’s ‘Crap’ Subprime CDOs.

The Senate advanced a bill Monday that aims to curb potential insider trading by Congress.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or Stock Act, easily passed a procedural vote 93 to 2, clearing the way for a debate and amendment process that insiders said they expected would lead to passage by week’s end.

The measure would require members of Congress and high-ranking staffers and federal employees to abide by insider trading rules that apply to everyone, and also would require members of Congress and top aides to report significant financial transactions within 30 days.

“The American people need to know that their elected leaders play by the exact same rules that they play by,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a lead sponsor. “They also deserve to know that their lawmakers’ only interest is what’s best for the country, not their own financial interest.”

Full Story Here: Stock Act: Senate Moves To End Congressional Insider Trading.

ThinkProgress Green has learned that TransCanada, the foreign tar sands company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is facing a potential inquiry into whether it deliberately deceived investors by inflating the job-creation potential of the project. Greenpeace has filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over TransCanada’s “false or misleading statements about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project.”

In the complaint, Greenpeace shows evidence from TransCanada’s Canadian filings and the State Department that the project would involve fewer than 1000 in-state jobs, and around 6000 total jobs. This evidence is contrasted with TransCanada’s (TRP) repeated public pronouncements that pipeline construction would involve 20,000 American jobs:

Specifically, TRP has asserted that each mile of KXL pipeline constructed in the U.S. would create American jobs at a rate that is 67 times higher than job creation totals given by the company to Canadian officials for the Canadian portion of the pipeline.

Full Story Here: BREAKING: TransCanada’s Dirty Keystone XL Jobs Claims Draw Complaint To SEC | ThinkProgress.

But are we safe from the next big bank bailout? Many experts are dubious and Wednesday the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen decided to test the theory in the most direct way possible. They used the administrative law process to formally petition the nation’s top bank regulators to move swiftly to break up Bank of America (BofA) asserting in their petition: “The bank poses a grave threat to U.S. financial stability by any reasonable definition of that phrase.”

“A Ticking Time Bomb”

BofA is not just big, its behemoth. With assets of $2.1 trillion, equal to more than 14 percent of U.S. GDP, it is bigger than many small countries. Yet, its stock is trading at $7.

What does Wall Street know that we don’t?

Full Story Here: Stress Testing Tim Geithner | Center for Media and Democracy.

The high court said that GPS tracking amounted to a search, and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The ruling comes as a defeat for the Obama administration, which sought have the top U.S. court overturn the ruling of a U.S. appeals court in Washington which threw out the conviction in August of a Washington nightclub owner arrested for drug dealing.

Full Story Here: Supreme Court: Warrant needed for GPS tracking | The Raw Story.

In a three-author article, the Wall Street Journal was abuzz concerning the impending settlement which will grant immunity for innumerable counts of robo-signing violations in exchange for loan “haircuts”. Quoting HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, the Journal glowingly describes the deal as the largest principal reduction of the crisis, promising a million borrowers a share of some $19 billion in relief on their loans:

“As part of the proposed settlement, Mr. Donovan said, a “number of families” who were harmed by foreclosure-processing mistakes would be directly compensated by banks.”

Full Story Here: OpEdNews – Article: Obama to Grant Banks Robosigning Immunity in Showdown With Breakaway AGs.

n 2010, Stephen Brown was living in York, Pa., and needed work. Most days Labor Ready, a temporary staffing company, had it. The company slogan highlighted one benefit of taking its often physically demanding assignments: “Work Today, Paid Today.”

But getting paid every day cost Brown a lot, according to a lawsuit he later filed in federal district court in Pennsylvania. If Brown wanted his day’s wages paid in cash, he had to use a company ATM that charged a $1 fee. Worse, the ATM rounded down. This meant if Brown was owed $44.85 for a day’s work, he received $43. Often, he took home less than minimum wage.

Brown and a group of coworkers sued Labor Ready in 2010, contending that the fees and pay system often left them with less than the federal minimum wage and that other company practices such as charging workers for rides to their work site violated various state and federal labor laws. But late last year, a federal judge put the case on hold. The judge did so not because he thought Brown’s claims were unfounded but because when they were hired, Brown and his coworkers had signed documents agreeing to settle disputes with the company through binding arbitration, not by going to court.

Full Story Here: Workers’ Right To Sue Employers Over Pay, Other Conditions In Flux.

Chris Hedges

Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

Full Story Here: Chris Hedges: Why I’m Suing Barack Obama – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.

House of Representatives bill SOPA and its Senate counterpart PIPA are designed to punish websites that make available, for example, free movies and music without the permission of the U.S. rights holders. Opponents of the bills, however, worry that the proposed laws would grant the Department of Justice too much regulatory power. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has called the measures “draconian.” Other Internet giants who oppose the bill include Facebook, eBay, Mozilla, Twitter, and Huffington Post parent company AOL.

The White House on Saturday officially responded to two online petitions, “Stop the E-PARASITE Act” and “Veto the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information,” urging the President to reject SOPA and PIPA.

Full Story Here: White House Will Not Support SOPA, PIPA.

You double checked you have your keys, but did you remember to take your loose change?

Plenty of travelers seem to forget the couple of coins that were floating in their pockets, and it makes the Transportation Security Administration hundreds of thousands of dollars richer every year.

In 2010, travelers left behind a whopping $409,085.56. That’s $376,480.39 in pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and dollar coins, plus $32,605.17 in foreign currency, according to USA Today.

Hurried travelers should know the coins they leave in haste don’t become tips for the security agents, rather Nico Melendez, a spokesperson for the TSA told NBC San Diego, the money left in plastic bins is put in a jar and at the end of each shift they take it, count it, and send it to the finance office.

Full Story Here: TSA Made $400,000 Off Loose Change In 2010.

Matt Taibbi:-:

If there was ever a news story that crystalized the moral dementia of modern Wall Street in one little vignette, this is it.

Newspapers in Colorado today are reporting that the elegant Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado, will be closed to the public from today through Monday at noon.

Why? Because a local squire has apparently decided to rent out all 94 rooms of the hotel for three-plus days for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

The hotel’s general manager, Tony DiLucia, would say only that the party was being thrown by a “nice family,” but newspapers are now reporting that the Daddy of the lucky little gal is one Jeffrey Verschleiser, currently an executive with Goldman, Sachs.

Full Story Here: Everything You Need to Know About Wall Street, in One Brief Tale | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone.

The subpoenas have been held up by challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but now U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady has ruled that Twitter must provide the data, reasoning that the grand jury investigation is being delayed and that he does not believe the challenge is likely to succeed.

“Litigation of these issues has already denied the government lawful access to potential evidence for more than a year,” O’Grady stated. “The public interest therefore weighs strongly against further delay.”

Full Story Here: Judge rules that Twitter must hand over information on WikiLeaks supporters | The Raw Story.

Companies and individuals that settle a civil case with the SEC that also have admitted to or been convicted of criminal violations in a related matter will no longer be allowed to say that they “neither admit nor deny” the agency’s charges, according to the agency.

The policy would end a practice that allowed such celebrated villains as Bernard Madoff — who was sentenced to 150 years in prison for masterminding the biggest financial con job in history — to settle charges with the SEC without admitting or denying wrongdoing. However, it wouldn’t affect most SEC settlements, which come independent of any criminal charges.

Full Story Here: Fewer Defendants Would Deny Guilt Under New SEC Policy.

Chief Justice John Roberts used his annual year-end report to defend his colleagues’ integrity, but that defense did not move prominent critics clamoring for the justices to abide by the same ethical rules as other federal judges do.

In the 16-page report, released on Saturday, Roberts rebuffed calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt the Code of Conduct for United States Judges — which binds lower courts but not the high court — and pushed back against partisan demands that Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan recuse themselves from what may be the term’s most controversial conflict, the health care cases slated for oral argument in March.

“I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” Roberts wrote.

The chief justice might hope that would be the end of the criticism; he likely knows better.

Full Story Here: Chief Justice John Roberts’ Defense Of Supreme Court Ethics Doesn’t Soothe Critics.

The Montana Supreme Court has put itself on a collision course with the U.S. Supreme Court by upholding a century-old state law that bans corporate spending in state and local political campaigns.

The law, which was passed by Montana voters in 1912 to combat Gilded Age corporate control over much of Montana’s government, states that a “corporation may not make … an expenditure in connection with a candidate or a political party that supports or opposes a candidate or a political party.” In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its landmark Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, struck down a similar federal statute, holding that independent electoral spending by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” that such laws were enacted to combat.

That reasoning — described by the Citizens United dissenters as a “crabbed view of corruption” — compelled 23 of the 24 states with independent spending bans to stop enforcing their restrictions, according to Edwin Bender, executive director of the Helena, Mont.-based National Institute on Money in State Politics. Montana, however, stood by its 1912 law, which led several corporations to challenge it as unconstitutional.

Full Story Here: ‘Citizens United’ Backlash: Montana Supreme Court Upholds State’s Corporate Campaign Spending Ban.

Montana legal ruling a possible game-changer for states; California lawmakers introduce legislation to overturn Citizens United

Montana is proving to be a potential catalyst for change in the potential challenge to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. As Roll Call reports:

The Montana Supreme Court last week rejected a constitutional challenge to the state’s century-old prohibition on independent corporate campaign expenditures. That Montana statute was technically nullified when the U.S. Supreme Court threw out federal limits on independent corporate and union political spending in 2010.

But unlike officials in many states with election laws upended by the ruling, who took steps to repeal or amend those statutes, Montana officials rose to their state law’s defense. Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock went so far as to testify on Capitol Hill that the state’s 1912 Corrupt Practices Act “is a system Montanans continue to believe in,” effectively inviting a legal challenge.

Three Montana corporations took him up on it, arguing in Western Tradition Partnership v. Montana that the state law flies in the face of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and violates the First Amendment. A lower court agreed, but on Friday the state Supreme Court reversed that ruling, 5-2.

Full Story Here: States Take On Citizens United | Common Dreams.

US Bank NA wants to force JPMorgan to buy back the mortgage loans because of alleged breaches of representations and warranties regarding the Bear Stearns Asset Backed Securities Trust 2005-4, for which it serves as trustee.

It also said JPMorgan has refused to provide the underlying loan, as the trust documents require, so it can investigate the extent of the alleged breaches.

Full Story Here: JPMorgan Chase Sued For $95 Million Over Allegedly Misrepresenting Mortgage Loans.

State Supreme Court Issues Remarkable Ruling Against Corporate Speech

Montana’s Supreme Court has issued a stunning rebuke to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 that infamously decreed corporations had constitutional rights to directly spend money on ‘independent expenditures’ in campaigns.

The Montana Court vigorously upheld the state’s right to regulate how corporations can raise and spend money after a secretive Colorado corporation, Western Tradition Partnership, and a Montana sportsman’s group and local businessman sued to overturn a 1912 state law banning direct corporate spending on electoral campaigns.

“Organizations like WTP that act as a conduit for anonymously spending by others represent a threat to the political marketplace,” wrote Mike McGrath, Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, for the majority. “Clearly the impact of unlimited corporate donations creates a dominating impact on the political process and inevitably minimizes the impact of individual citizens.”

Full Story Here: Montana High Court Says ‘Citizens United’ Does Not Apply In Big Sky State | | AlterNet.

You need to know this.  The oil barons may be held accountable after all.  A year and a half after the BP oil spill murdered 11 men and spewed 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico – the Wall Street Journal is reporting that U.S. Prosecutors are readying the first criminal charges against BP.  The Department of Justice is allegedly looking into charging engineers and at least one supervisor with providing false information to regulators – a felony charge that could carry with it one to five years in prison.  While this is a good first step – it won’t even effect the executives of an oil corporation that, from the top down, didn’t give a damn about the lives of its workers or the environment.  Following an oil spill last month in Brazil – Brazilian prosecutors are going after the President of Chevron – charging him with crimes that could lead to jail time and banning Chevron from the country.  We need to do the same things here with BP: throw some suits in jail for murder and ban BP from ever doing business again in the United States.

Full Story Here: On the News With Thom Hartmann: Justice Department to Bring Charges Against BP Over 2010 Oil Spill, and More | Truthout.

But just because not all of Paul’s theories are backed by good evidence doesn’t mean none of them are.

In 1988, while running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, he highlighted yet another conspiracy theory, and this one doesn’t collapse under investigation: The CIA, Paul told a gathering of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, was involved in trafficking drugs as part of the Iran-Contra debacle.

Full Story Here: Ron Paul Had Accurate Conspiracy Theory: CIA Was Tied To Drug Traffickers.

It’s most definitely turning out to be a “White Christmas” for Democrats in the Hoosier State this week!

Some remarkable news late today. Finding he was not eligible to be a candidate on the ballot in the November 2010 election, a Marion County Circuit judge has ordered Indiana’s Republican Sec. of State Charlie White removed from office and replaced by his Democratic challenger Vop Isili, the second highest vote getter in that election.

The order comes as part of a civil suit brought by the state Democratic Party which has long charged, both before and ever since the election, that White was not eligible to be a candidate on the ballot.

Full Story Here: The BRAD BLOG : INDIANA’S REPUBLICAN VOTER FRAUD FELONY-CHARGED SEC. OF STATE ORDERED REMOVED FROM OFFICE, REPLACED WITH DEMOCRAT.

For first time, compromised federal agency admits their previous certification was deeply flawed…

Not to say we told ya so, but, ya know, we’ve been telling you so for years (and years.)

A new finding by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — a rare finding, first of its kind, in fact, as the woeful EAC has never before taken the time to investigate and report on serious failures of e-voting systems that it has previously blessed with federal certification — reveals that ES&S paper ballot optical-scan systems used in a bunch of large swing states, result in machines freezing during elections, failing to log system events correctly, and, perhaps most troubling, ballots being misread and votes being lost entirely.

The EAC’s “Formal Investigation Report” follows on April 2010 revelations by the Cleveland Plain Dealer that some 10% of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland)’s EAC-certified ES&S Precinct Count Optical Scanner and Unity 3.2.0.0 tabulator voting systems failed in pre-election testing last year.

Full Story Here: The BRAD BLOG : U.S. EAC Finds ES&S Paper Ballot Scanners Used Across the Country Fail to Count Votes Correctly.

When he announced that the last U.S. troops would leave Iraq by year’s end, President Barack Obama declared the nine-year war a “success” and “an extraordinary achievement.” He failed to mention why he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. He didn’t say that it was built on lies about mushroom clouds and non-existent ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Obama didn’t cite the Bush administration’s “Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq,” drawn up months before 9/11, about which Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill reported that actual plans “were already being discussed to take over Iraq and occupy it – complete with disposition of oil fields, peacekeeping forces, and war crimes tribunals – carrying forward an unspoken doctrine of preemptive war.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also defended the war in Iraq, making the preposterous claim that, “As difficult as [the Iraq war] was,” including the loss of American and Iraqi lives, “I think the price has been worth it, to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world.”

Full Story Here: Bradley Manning: Hero, or Traitor? | Common Dreams.

Add up the emergency loans the Federal Reserve distributed to banks between 2007 and 2009 — when the American economy lurched closer to collapse than anyone had previously thought possible — and it’s an impressive picture.

On Friday, Bloomberg News made available the fullest version yet of its data on Fed emergency lending, a subject the news organization has written about numerous times in the past year. The Bloomberg release includes records of about 50,000 transactions the Fed made through seven different financial mechanisms.

At their peak, these seven programs represented $1.2 trillion in loans to banks and financial institutions — the high-water mark of a massive, systemic bailout whose details the country’s central banking authority has not always seemed eager to divulge.

Much of the information included in Friday’s release has been previously reported in Bloomberg coverage, but this week marked the first time that funds from the seven programs have been presented as a series of daily loans to 407 individual banks.

Full Story Here: Bloomberg Releases Most Detailed Description Yet Of Federal Reserve Emergency Loans.

– Bank of America agreed to pay $335 million to resolve allegations that its Countrywide unit engaged in a widespread pattern of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers on home loans.

The settlement with the U.S. Justice Department was filed Wednesday with the Central District court of California and is subject to court approval. The DOJ says it’s the largest settlement in history over residential fair lending practices.

According to the DOJ’s complaint, Countrywide charged over 200,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers higher fees and interest rates than non-Hispanic white borrowers with a similar credit profile. The complaint says that these borrowers were charged higher fees and rates because of their race or national origin rather than any other objective criteria.

Full Story Here: Bank Of America Countrywide Settlement: Bank To Pay $335 Million To Settle Discriminatory Lending Claims.

SEC Sues Former Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Executives For Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued six former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives on Friday for misleading the public about the mortgage giants’ exposure to risky subprime mortgages as the housing bubble deflated.

Former Fannie Mae chief executive Daniel Mudd and former Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron are the highest-ranking officials yet to be charged for their involvement in the housing meltdown that triggered the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Along with four other former executives for the companies, they are accused of fraud, under-representing the amount of exposure the finance companies had to dodgy mortgages.

The SEC action, filed in U.S. district court in New York, is the latest signal that federal agencies are cracking down on the executives who were at the helm of the nation’s largest financial firms during the housing bust. Earlier this week three former top Washington Mutual executives settled a lawsuit with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for $64 million for their actions during the subprime lending disaster.

Full Story Here: SEC Sues Former Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Executives For Fraud.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) has consistently advocated for steep budget cuts that compromise public safety and essential government services. For instance, he signed into law a budget that slashed education funding by $900 million. Instead of lawnmowers, one school district had to resort to using sheep to cut grass.

Now, The Patriot-News reports that the state’s proposed budget cuts could force the Pennsylvania State Police to layoff 500 state troopers. As a result, Pennsylvanians who call 911 for emergency assistance may have to wait days before the police can respond:

Imagine calling 911 for the Pennsylvania State Police and not seeing a trooper for hours, even days.

It’s a scenario that state lawmakers and troopers foresee if the department’s budget is cut 5 percent next year, forcing what would be the first layoffs in the state police history.

Full Story Here: Pennsylvania GOP’s Budget Cuts Mean Police Response To 911 Calls Could Take Days | ThinkProgress.

For 63 years, Brokaw, Wisconsin native Ruthelle Frank went to the polls to vote. Though paralyzed on her left side since birth, the 84-year-old “fiery woman” voted in every election since 1948 and even got elected herself as a member of the Brokaw Village Board. But because of the state’s new voter ID law, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote. Born after a difficult birth at her home in 1927, Frank never received an official birth certificate. Her mother recorded it in her family Bible and Frank has a certification of baptism from a few months later, along with a Social Security card, a Medicare statement, and a checkbook. But without the official document, she can’t secure the state ID card that the new law requires to vote next year.

“It’s really crazy,” she added. “I’ve got all this proof. You mean to tell me that I’m not a U.S. citizen?” But state officials have informed Frank that, because the state Register of Deeds does have a record of her birth, they can issue her a new birth certificate — for a fee. And because of a spelling error, that fee may be as high as $200:

Though Frank never had a birth certificate, the state Register of Deeds in Madison has a record of her birth. It can generate a birth certificate for her — for a fee. Normally, the cost is $20.

Full Story Here: Wisconsin Voter ID Law May Force 84-Year-Old Woman To Pay $200 To Get A Voter ID | ThinkProgress.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

Full Story Here: U.S. Drug Agents Launder Profits of Mexican Cartels – NYTimes.com.

Technology bloggers are asking if our cellphones are spying on us after a security researcher said a piece of software hidden on millions of phones was recording virtually everything people do with them.

Amid a broad outcry, Sen. Al Franken (D- Minn.) is calling for an investigation. A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the software’s maker, Carrier IQ Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.

The software, which Carrier IQ says is used on some 150 million mobile devices, appears relatively innocuous. It does watch what owners of Sprint Nextel Corp. and AT&T Inc. smartphones do with them, including what people type and the numbers they dial. But it doesn’t seem to transmit every keystroke to the company. Instead, it kicks into action when there’s a problem, like a call that doesn’t go through, and it lets the phone company know.

Full Story Here: Carrier IQ Hit With Class-Action Lawsuit After Privacy Outcry.

Full Story Here: 40,000 People Call On Mayors To Stop Arresting Journalists At Occupy Events | ThinkProgress.

Did Sears.com pad the bill for major appliance orders by automatically tacking on a service contract even when it is not requested?

Edgar Dworsky, a nationally-respected consumer advocate and founder of the website ConsumerWorld.org, made that claim Thursday. Sears said on Friday that it will change the way its website operates.

Dworsky says he went on the site on Black Friday weekend looking for a refrigerator. He found a model he liked, put it in his cart and noticed that a five-year service contract for $469 had been added without his consent.

“I’m really upset and I think it’s a very sneaky practice,” Dworsky tells me. “A consumer should not have to opt-out of buying something they never asked for to start with.”

Full Story Here: Life Inc. – Sears reverses ‘sneaky’ up-sell policy.

“The single most important thing we can do to return to a healthy economy is to address this foreclosure crisis,” Coakley said in a statement Thursday. “Our suit alleges that the banks have charted a destructive path by cutting corners and rushing to foreclose on homeowners without following the rule of law. Our action today seeks real accountability for the banks illegal behavior and real relief for homeowners.”

The lawsuit, filed against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Ally Financial and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System in Suffolk Superior Court, targets banks’ using fraudulent paperwork in the foreclosure process, foreclosing without actually holding the mortgage, corrupting the local land recording system and failing to uphold promises of loan modifications.

Full Story Here: Massachusetts AG Lawsuit: Five Major U.S. Banks Accused Of Deceptive Foreclosure Practices.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)

Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue.

Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable.

Full Story Here: How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word – Bloomberg.

The subpoenas to six senators and five representatives, all Republicans, were issued on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Florida and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic voter advocacy group, by their attorney, Daniel O’Connor of the Washington, D.C., firm Bryan Cave LLP.

Both organizations have been working to prevent the U.S. government from approving the changes, which they say will disenfranchise voters and make it harder to register new voters in Florida headed into a critical 2012 presidential election.

Full Story Here: Eleven Florida lawmakers get subpoenas in election law case – St. Petersburg Times.

Full Story Here: Up with Chris Hayes on lack of consequences for Bush era war criminals – YouTube.

OccupyTVNY on Nov 22, 2011

An intrepid journalist defends his first amendment rights against a series of attempts to intimidate him by NYPD officers.

Category: Rights Police How-to Cops police state Occupy Wall Street Stock Market Constitution 99% protest press civil liberties Yes Men Igor Vamos NYPD Free speech United States Constitution America

Full Story Here: AMAZING video of a journalist not taking crap from NYPD – YouTube.

Wisconsin recall supporters outed an anonymous Facebook group called Operation Burn Notice on Tuesday as a coordinated effort designed to destroy petitions signed to force Gov. Scott Walker and other Wisconsin Republicans out of office.

Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now, denounced the anonymous group, in a Madison press conference.

“We cannot allow democracy to be threatened by those who would illegally destroy recall petitions with valid signatures on them,” Ross said. “We intend to keep the public informed about its rights during the signature gathering process and alert those who would engage in illegal conduct that they do so at their own peril.”

Full Story Here: Pro-Recall Group Outs Facebook Page That Boasts About Destroying Signatures – Caledonia, WI Patch.

Content talked about in this video:

’60 Minutes’ Blows The Lid Off Congressional Insider Trading

Breitbart.tv » ’60 Minutes’ Ambushes… Nancy Pelosi.flv

Rick Perry on Congressional Insider Trading

Scarface – Say Hello To My Little Friend

Full Story Here: Congress Insider Trading – YouTube.

The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against peace and humanity when they invaded Iraq in 2003 in blatant violation of international law.

The judges ruled that war against Iraq by both the former heads of states was a flagrant abuse of law, act of aggression which amounted to a mass murder of the Iraqi people.

In their verdict, the judges said that the United States, under the leadership of Bush, forged documents to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

They further said the findings of the tribunal be made available to members of the Rome Statute and the names of Bush and Blair be entered into a war crimes register.

Both Bush and Blair repeatedly said the so-called war against terror was targeted at terrorists.

Lawyers and human rights activists present here say the verdict by the tribunal is a landmark decision. And the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Foundation said it would lobby the International Criminal Court to charge former US president George Bush and Former British prime minister Tony Blair for war crimes.

Full Story Here: Bush, Blair found guilty of war crimes in Malaysia tribunal – YouTube.

An order from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has revealed the FBI lied to the court about the existence of records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), taking the position that FOIA allows it to withhold information from the court whenever it thinks this is in the interest of national security. Using the strongest possible language, the court disagreed: “The Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court.” Islamic Shura Council of S. Cal. v. FBI (“Shura Council I”), No. 07-1088, 3 (C.D. Cal. April 27, 2011) (emphasis added).

This case may prove relevant in EFF’s ongoing FOIA litigation against the FBI. As discussed further below, one of the issues in Shura Council was the FBI’s extensive and improper use of “outside the scope” redactions. The agency has also used these heavily in at least one of our current cases — in areas where it is highly unlikely the material blocked out is actually outside the scope of our FOIA request. (see example to the left from our case seeking records on the government’s push to expand federal surveillance laws). We’ll be writing more about that case in the coming weeks and posting the documents we received on this site soon.

Full Story Here: FBI Sanctioned for Lying About Existence of Surveillance Records | Common Dreams.

The negotiated settlement, which includes resolution of civil cases, was the latest of a series of fraud cases brought by federal and state prosecutors against major pharmaceutical companies.

By the time Vioxx, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1999, was pulled off the market in 2004 because evidence showed that it posed a substantial heart risk, about 25 million Americans had taken the drug.

Full Story Here: Merck to Pay $950 Million Over Vioxx – NYTimes.com.

Two University of California, Davis police officers involved in pepper-spraying seated protesters are being placed on administrative leave as the chancellor of the school accelerates the investigation into the incident.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi on Sunday said she has been inundated with reaction over the incident, in which an officer dispassionately fires pepper spray on a line of sitting demonstrators.

Video of the incident was circulated widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on Saturday, in which protesters flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked, as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

Full Story Here: Officers in pepper spray incident put on leave – CBS News.

The chancellor of the University of California, Davis described the video images as “chilling” and said she was forming a task force to investigate even as a faculty group called for her resignation because of the incident Friday.

“The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school’s web site on Saturday.

Full Story Here: UC Davis launches investigation after pepper spray video; chancellor calls video ‘chilling’ – The Washington Post.

Newt Gingrich calls it giving advice. Most people would call it cashing in on his prominent name.

The former House speaker has raked in millions of dollars since leaving office more than a decade ago. Now as a rising GOP presidential candidate he’s facing renewed scrutiny of the intricate network of consulting firms, advocacy organizations and other businesses that, taken together, some have called Newt Inc.

“I do no lobbying of any kind. I never have. A very important point I want to make. I have never done lobbying of any kind,” Gingrich told Fox News Channel this week, defending himself over questions about his time since he left the speaker’s office under a political cloud in January 1999.

He has said he welcomes the scrutiny and questions over potential conflicts, yet his campaign declined an interview request from The Associated Press.

Full Story Here: Newt Gingrich’s Business Network Getting Second Look.

An Idaho man accused of firing two shots at the White House last week has been charged with attempting to assassinate President Barack Obama or his staff.

Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, made his first court appearance before a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh on Thursday, one day after he was arrested at a western Pennsylvania hotel. He will be taken back from a federal court in Pittsburgh to face the charges in Washington, D.C.

Ortega will remain in federal custody at least until a magistrate in Washington can determine if he should remain jailed until his trial on the charge, which carries up to life in prison.

Full Story Here: Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, White House Shooting Suspect, Charged With Attempting To Assassinate Obama.

A new judge was assigned Wednesday to handle the child sex abuse charges against former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, whose televised defense earlier this week drew a rebuke from a lawyer for one of his accusers.

The change removed a State College judge with ties to a charity founded by Sandusky for at-risk children, The Second Mile.

Harrisburg attorney Ben Andreozzi said he represents a client who will testify against Sandusky, who is accused of abusing eight boys, some on campus, over 15 years.

Full Story Here: New judge assigned in Penn State sex abuse case.

Protestors in the “Occupy Fort Myers” encampment in Centennial Park in Fort Myers will be allowed to stay after a late-night ruling in federal court.

Judge John Steele granted a preliminary injunction against the the City of Fort Myers, saying it is likely the city violated the First Amendment by requiring protestors to have a permit and kicking them out of the park.

“They’re on our side,” said Occupy protester Jeremy Walker.

About a dozen tents were set up at the park as of midday Wednesday, and people have been staying in the park 24 hours a day – sometimes sleeping there – during the protest.

Full Story Here: Federal judge rules against city in ‘Occupy’ lawsuit – NBC-2.com WBBH News for Fort Myers, Cape Coral & Naples, Florida.

The suit is an attempt to compel Oakland police to follow their own crowd control guidelines.

The National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California filed suit on Monday against the Oakland Police Department, and any local agencies assisting them, for its widespread use of excessive force against Occupy Oakland protesters on October 25 and during the night of November 2.

That OPD has shown contempt for the rule of law in its violent crackdowns on dissent, and departed dramatically from what the department itself views as best practices for balancing public safety and free speech, is evident from the nature of the lawsuit: the civil rights attorneys are trying to compel OPD to follow its own crowd-control policy.

“Generally, the issue with excessive force cases is whether the force applied was reasonable under the circumstances,” Linda Lye, an ACLU staff attorney on the case told AlterNet. “And law enforcement will often argue, ‘well, we needed to apply the force in a given circumstance because it was necessary to achieve our legitimate law enforcement goals.’ Here, when OPD is systematically violating specific provisions in its own crowd control policy, there can be no argument that they need to do this, because the guildelines already represent what OPD thinks is reasonable in these circumstances.” She added: “It’s outrageous.”

Full Story Here: Police Being Sued for Violent Crackdown on Occupy Oakland | Civil Liberties | AlterNet.

Last week, a federal court in Mississippi sentenced a key figure in a $3 million mortgage fraud scheme to two and a half years in federal prison. Just a few days earlier, however, a Mississippi federal judge imposed a significantly harsher sentence on a woman who lied on her benefits applications in order to receive just $4,367 in food stamps to help feed her family:

[I]n moments of desperation, a lie can seem like the only option. Anita McLemore, a Mississippi mother of two, faced one of those unfortunate moments when filling out her application for food stamps — and now she’ll pay the price, by spending three years of her life behind bars in federal prison.

Thanks to a federal ban on food stamps for people with felony drug convictions, people like McLemore are out of luck when it comes to getting assistance with putting food on their tables. Though states can opt out of the ban, those that don’t (like Mississippi) deny food stamps even to individuals who have already served their sentences or overcome previous addictions. It’s true that McLemore’s past isn’t perfect — she has four felony drug convictions and one misdemeanor, which place her firmly in the category of people the federal government has declared unfit to receive public benefits. Hence, faced with the prospect of being unable to feed her family, McLemore lied on her application.

Full Story Here: Mississippi Woman Receives Three Year Prison Sentence For Feeding Her Family | ThinkProgress.

Full Story Here: Papantonio: Sandusky and Friends Continue Sex Abuse Cover Up – Pt. 2 – YouTube.

Apparently, feeding your child is something to be ashamed of — at least according to one district court judge. Michigan resident and mother of a 5-month-old baby, Natalie Hegedus, was reportedly “called out” for breastfeeding in front of an entire courtroom, leaving her humiliated and in tears.

Writing on the community forum, BabyCenter, after the incident, Hegedus said she only brought her son to court in the first place because he had an ear infection. As they were waiting to be called, he got hungry — and so naturally, she decided to feed him. Hegedus says her breasts were fully covered and she was sitting at the back of the courtroom.

When the court bailiff noticed what she was doing, WoodTV reports that he wrote a note to the judge about it. Hegedus was called up, and the judge asked her whether she believed it was appropriate to be breastfeeding in court. She shared her response with WoodTV:

Full Story Here: Natalie Hegedus, Mom, Kicked Out Of Courtroom For Breastfeeding.

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.

The occasion was last Thursday, when all nine justices met for a conference to pore over the petitions for review. One of the cases at issue was a suit brought by 26 states challenging the sweeping healthcare overhaul passed by Congress last year, a law that has been a rallying cry for conservative activists nationwide.

The justices agreed to hear the suit; indeed, a landmark 5 1/2-hour argument is expected in March, and the outcome is likely to further roil the 2012 presidential race, which will be in full swing by the time the court’s decision is released.

Full Story Here: Scalia and Thomas dine with healthcare law challengers as court takes case – latimes.com.

Full Story Here: Maddow: Herman Cain To Women: Think Twice Before You Accuse Me And Be Afraid – Be VERY Afraid! – YouTube.

Oakland police appear to have violated their own guidelines, and now they’re refusing to release documents to civil rights attorneys as required by law.

After three notably violent crackdowns on protesters in as many weeks, Oakland Police Department officials have refused a request by the ACLU of Northern California to release police reports documenting their use of force as required by law.

“We saw events that we found extremely troubling, and which violated provisions of Oakland’s own crowd control policy,” Linda Lye, a staff attorney with ACLU of Northern California told AlterNet.

After recent police actions in Oakland gained national attention, “there was a lot of lip service paid to transparency and accountability and the public’s interest in monitoring the situation,” she said. “But then OPD proceeded to say that it was invoking one of the statutory exceptions to the Public Records Act for the vast majority of our requests.”

Full Story Here: Why Is the Oakland Police Department Hiding the Truth About Its Violent Crackdown on the Occupy Protests? | Occupy Wall Street | AlterNet.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a split opinion upholding the lower court’s ruling that found Congress did not overstep its authority in requiring people to have insurance or pay a penalty on their taxes, beginning in 2014. The requirement is the most controversial requirement of Obama’s signature domestic legislative achievement and the focus of conflicting opinions from judges across the country. The Supreme Court could decide as early as Thursday during a closed meeting of the justices whether to accept appeals from some of those earlier rulings.

The suit in Washington was brought by the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson. It claimed that the insurance mandate is unconstitutional because it forces Americans to buy a product for the rest of their lives and that it violates the religious freedom of those who choose not to have insurance because they rely on God to protect them from harm. But the court ruled that Congress had the power to pass the requirement to ensure that all Americans can have health care coverage, even if it infringes on individual liberty.

Full Story Here: Obama Health Care Reform Ruling: Appeals Court Upholds Law.

The investigation could delay the White House’s final decision on the project, which is currently due by the end of the year.

Environmental groups and 14 members of Congress recently requested an investigation into potential conflicts of interest such as TransCanada’s successful recommendation that Cardno Entrix, a massive contracting firm and major client of TransCanada, conduct much of the federally mandated environmental review of the pipeline project.

Full Story Here: Inspector General Will Investigate Keystone XL Decision | Truthout.

Schuette’s office filed a complaint Monday in Eaton County Circuit Court seeking to dissolve Health Care Clinic Inc. in Delta Township and Women’s Choice Clinic Inc. in Saginaw. The attorney general’s office says an investigation included evidence of improper medical records disposal at the clinics owned by Richard Remund.

Full Story Here: Metro and State | Michigan AG sues to shut down 2 abortion clinics | The Detroit News.

Full Story Here: Papantonio: Voting Machines Still Dangerously Vulnerable to Hackers – YouTube.

Physicians and medical associations are now speaking out against Mississippi’s personhood amendment, warning that it is “a dangerous intrusion of criminal law into the provision of medical care.”

Specifically, by criminalizing abortion, the measure could “criminalize routine medical practice that intentionally or not terminates a pregnancy” because, according to the measure, any fertilized egg — regardless of if and where it implants — could be considered a “person.” And because the measure has no exceptions for health of the mother (let alone rape or incest), Mississippi physicians are worried that termination of such a life-threatening pregnancy could still be considered a form of homicide:

[Mississippi Medical Association President Dr. Tom] Joiner and other opponents of Initiative 26 are concerned that by attempting to criminalize abortion, the initiative will criminalize routine medical practice that intentionally or not terminates a pregnancy. There is no mention in the initiative of an exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, nor for the health of the mother, as in the case of life-threatening conditions such as ectopic or molar pregnancies. (In an ectopic pregnancy the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, most often in the fallopian tube; in a molar pregnancy the fertilized egg becomes an abnormal growth such as a tumor rather than a fetus.)

Full Story Here: Mississippi Personhood Bill Could Criminalize Doctors Who Perform An Abortion To Save A Woman’s Life | ThinkProgress.

Currently, if a requested document is so sensitive that it would be dangerous to acknowledge its very existence, the government is allowed to tell you that it can neither confirm nor deny whether there is such a document.

Last month, the Justice Department proposed a rule revision that would let government agencies tell requesters there is no such document — even if there is. According to the proposal, which was retrieved by the nonprofit investigative project ProPublica, agencies would be allowed to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist.”

Full Story Here: Open Channel – US reconsiders, now says it’s not really OK to lie to reporters.

The government sued Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp and two top executives for at least $2.5 billion, accusing the company of fraud for misleading the government into believing its loans qualified for federal insurance, causing losses.

The civil fraud lawsuit seeks triple damages under the federal False Claims Act against Allied, Chief Executive Jim Hodge and Executive Vice President Jeanne Stell.

It contends that the poor quality of Allied mortgages insured by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) caused nearly one in three loans to default, causing more than $834 million of insurance claims.

Full Story Here: Allied Home Mortgage Faces Multi-Billion Dollar Lawsuit From Government.

In one North Carolina town, some residents may not get an answer to their 911 calls because the police are running out of gas money.

In a town council meeting Tuesday night, Smithfield, North Carolina Police Chief Michael Scott will ask officials to let him use $30,000 meant for office supplies to buy gas for patrol cars, the Raleigh News and Observer reports. If he doesn’t get the money, Smith said the police force may stop responding to some 911 calls and investigating misdemeanors because he’s already cut patrols.

Smithfield isn’t the only town looking for ways to cut costs to contend with budget woes. High unemployment and a struggling housing market have pushed more than half of U.S. cities to cut staff, boost fees or cancel infrastructure projects, according to the National League of Cities. The situation has gotten so dire that deep state and local budget cuts may be slowing U.S. economic growth, according to The Associated Press.

City officials in Allen Park, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, announced Tuesday that they would lay off more than 30 police officers, firefighters and city workers, the Detroit Free Press reports. In Santa Ana, California a budget analysis found that the city may need to take steps including closing some fire stations at night to close a projected $30 million budget gap, according to Voice of OC.

Full Story Here: Smithfield, North Carolina Police May Ignore ’911′ Calls If Not Provided More Gas Money.

Full Story Here: Hartmann: It’s time to Occupy the Courts – YouTube.

A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order today requiring the state to stop enforcing a hastily drawn up policy that set a curfew for gatherings at Legislative Plaza and resulted in about 50 arrests of Occupy Nashville protesters.

Local attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee filed a lawsuit this morning against Gov. Bill Haslam and other state officials and requested a temporary restraining order to prevent any further arrests. U.S. District Judge Aleta A. Trauger granted the request. The state did not object to the restraining order and agreed to work out its differences with protesters.

After tolerating the protest for three weeks, Haslam approved a crackdown on demonstrators last week, citing safety and sanitation concerns at the plaza. The state instituted a new use policy for Legislative Plaza that included a curfew and permit requirements.

Full Story Here: Federal judge orders TN to stop arresting Occupy Nashville protesters for curfew violation | The Tennessean | tennessean.com.

“The state cannot arbitrarily create restrictive policies just because it does not like how people are using a public space,” said ACLU-TN Legal Director Tricia Herzfeld. “Today’s decision is the first step in restoring demonstrators’ free speech rights.”

The protesters had been camped at Legislative Plaza in downtown Nashville to protest the economic and political consolidation of power since October 9.

Full Story Here: Judge blocks restrictions on ‘Occupy Nashville’ protest | The Raw Story.

When Anthony Cooper shot a fleeing woman in the thigh and buttocks back in 2003, his lawyer advised him to reject the prosecution’s deal because those below-the-waist wounds would shield him from any suggestion he tried to kill her. The advice was absurd.

The question before the Supreme Court on Monday morning was whether it was absurd enough to violate Cooper’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.

The facts of Lafler v. Cooper are straightforward enough: Michigan prosecutors offered Cooper a lower sentence in exchange for his pleading guilty to assault with intent to murder. His lawyer told him to reject the deal, and he did. At trial, Cooper was convicted and received a stiffer sentence than the one initially offered by prosecutors.

Full Story Here: Supreme Court Looks At Plea Bargain Advice: How Much Bad Lawyering Is Allowed?.

After no objections previously, the nation’s largest e-voting company attempts to kibosh computer scientists’ forensic examination in Venango County, PA…

Despite failing to object for months prior, the nation’s largest electronic voting system vendor, ES&S, is now attempting to stop a landmark independent examination of their e-voting systems in a Pennsylvania county dead in its tracks.

An October letter from the company, obtained by The BRAD BLOG, charges that Venango County, PA, is in violation of their contract agreements with the Omaha-based e-voting Goliath, even as two volunteer Carnegie Mellon computer scientists are in the midst of a forensic audit of the county’s May 17 primary election. The county’s investigation comes on the heels of apparent failures of the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting system during their recent primary and several other recent elections in Venango.

Full Story Here: The BRAD BLOG : EXCLUSIVE: ES&S Attempts to Block PA County’s Independent Audit of Failed Touch-Screens.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the number of people indicted and convicted by the U.S. for bribery, theft and other reconstruction-related crimes in both countries is rapidly rising, according to two government reports released Sunday.

“This is a boom industry for us,” Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, or SIGIR, said in an interview.

“Investigators and auditors had a productive quarter,” said a report on the theft of Afghanistan aid by Steven Trent, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR. The report covered August through October.

Full Story Here: Excite News – Reports: Prosecutions going up for war zone crime.

A new lawsuit accuses Goldman Sachs of purposely unloading $93 million in mortgage-backed securities it knew to be junk onto a client, then betting against those same securities in the lead-up to the financial crisis.

Basis Yield Alpha Fund, an Australian hedge fund, filed the lawsuit against Goldman Sachs on Thursday, asking for more than $1 billion in damages. The lawsuit alleges that Goldman Sachs overcharged for two sets of mortgage-backed securities that it sold to Basis; lied about the securities’ expected performance; did not provide timely, accurate information about the securities’ true value; and failed to disclose that the firm was actively betting against the securities at the time of the transaction — all which the hedge fund says contributed to its collapse.

“They were lying to clients in order to get junk off their books,” said Eric Lewis, the Washington-based attorney who is leading the Basis Fund’s lawsuit against Goldman. “They were basically selling a time bomb … and what they sold blew up in our face, but what they couldn’t sell blew up in their face.”

Full Story Here: Goldman Sachs Sued By Hedge Fund For Knowingly Selling Toxic Mortgage-Backed Investments.

“It is a lot of things that we already knew, now that this indictment has been unsealed against Rajat Gupta. One count of conspiracy, five counts of securities fraud, facing a maximum penalty of five years in prison on the conspiracy count and 20 years on each of the fraud counts.”

The prosecution says Gupta called Rajaratnam with privileged information likely to impact stock prices: information that Rajaratnam then traded on, reaping illicit gains. But that could become difficult to prove, as The New York Times reports:

Full Story Here: Rajat Gupta Indicted.

This week marks 10 years since the Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush. The ACLU is hosting a blog series that will address some of the sweeping changes to surveillance laws over the past decade. To learn more about the Patriot Act, visit www.aclu.org/patriot.

This Wednesday will mark 10 years since the Patriot Act was enacted. Pushed through Congress without debate, the massive surveillance bill was hastily passed just 45 days after 9/11, and was the first of many changes to surveillance laws over the past decade that made it easier for the government to spy on innocent Americans.

Since the Patriot Act was first enacted, lawmakers have authorized extension after extension, refusing to make any meaningful changes to the law. This is despite the fact that — according to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) — there are two versions of the Patriot Act: one that the public sees, and a secret interpretation that the government keeps to itself. Senator Wyden has stated, “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.” Furthermore, since its passage, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General has repeatedly found widespread blatant abuse of the statute. Yet, earlier this year, Congress passed a four-year extension of expiring Patriot Act provisions, which are now set to expire on June 1, 2015.

Full Story Here: The Patriot Act, 10 Years Later » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Wall Street tycoons have destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world—yet they haven’t faced the slightest legal repercussions.

—By Glenn Greenwald

As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding—indeed, an integral part of it.

Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades. As journalist Tim Noah described the process:

“During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth—the ‘seven fat years’ and the ‘long boom.’ Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of total increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 percent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads.”

Full Story Here: How the Legal System Favors the 1 Percent | Mother Jones.

Rajat Gupta, Former Goldman Sachs Director, Expected To Face Criminal Charges: Source.

The situation intensified late Friday evening when Jennings, who has cultivated a strong relationship with Cuomo, directed his department to arrest protesters who refused to leave the city-owned portion of a large park that’s across Washington Avenue from the Capitol and City Hall.

At the Capitol, in anticipation of possibly dozens of arrests, a State Police civil disturbance unit was quietly activated, according to officials briefed on the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. But as the curfew neared, the group of protesters estimated at several hundred moved across an invisible line in the park from state land onto city property.

Full Story Here: Under pressure to make arrests, police and troopers push back – Times Union.

 Thom Hartmann :-:

On this, Gingrich agrees with former President Thomas Jefferson – and most of the other founders of this country. Let’s break it down.

First, Newt’s assertion that the Congress can pass laws that limit the powers and behavior of the Supreme Court. The Constitution, in Section Two of Article Three which establishes the Judiciary, does give Congress the power to define and limit what the Supreme Court can and can’t do. Here’s the exact language, “The Supreme Court shall have appelate jurisdiction both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.” Yes, that’s what the Constitution says – in plain black and white. If Congress disagrees with – for example – the Citizens United decision, or the Bush v. Gore meeting – they can simply pass a law that says that the Supreme Court has overstepped its authority and that’s the end of that.

Why, you may ask, did the Founders write it this way?

The answer is really simple. They wanted the greatest power to be closest to the people – and Congress is up for election every two years. It’s the body in our representative democratic republic that is closest to the people. It’s where they wanted most of the power, which is why it’s defined in Article One of the Constitution – the first among equals. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1820 letter to Mr. Jarvis, who thought Supreme Court justices should have the power to strike down laws, ”You seem to consider the judges the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy….The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal… I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves.

Full Story Here: OpEdNews – Article: Thom Hartmann: Important! Newt is right about the Supreme Court.

One of the most famous signs to come out of Occupy Wall Street stated simply: “I will believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”

That was sort of a joke.

But in fact, for the benefit of real live human beings, some corporations ought to be executed.

My guess is that most of the occupiers at Wall Street would be in favor of the corporate death penalty.

Some – like Richard Grossman – would criminalize the corporate form.

But if you want to take the incremental approach, here’s my list of five candidates for the corporate death penalty.

Full Story Here: Single Payer Action.

Four of the defendants convicted in August in the Danziger Bridge police shootings and a subsequent cover-up got a small measure of relief from a federal judge this morning.

U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt, who presided over the six-week trial, threw out convictions on three of the 25 counts at issue in the case, saying the government failed to meet its burden of proof for certain defendants on those specific counts. A jury in August returned convictions on all 25 counts, although none of the officers was charged in all counts.

Engelhardt’s 13-page ruling was perhaps most notable for the tart language the judge used at times in criticizing the federal government’s witnesses and its lawyers.

It’s not clear how the ruling will affect sentencing for the five officers, which is set for Dec. 14. The effect is likely to be minimal, because the charges on the most serious counts remain in force. But lawyers for the convicted officers hailed the tossed charges as a rare bit of good news for their camp.

Full Story Here: Federal judge throws out 3 charges in Danziger Bridge case | NOLA.com.

The President says he understands the frustration behind the Occupy Wall Street movement. That’s nice. But the anger will keep growing as long as the government keeps handing out free passes instead of perp walks to bankers at serial corporate criminals like Citigroup.

The Administration is finally talking the talk, but without criminal investigations it’s not walking the walk. It’s still not too late. While the SEC’s latest deal should outrage you, the Administration can makes things right with two decisive actions.

Get-Out-of-Jail Free Card

The SEC announced Wednesday that Citigroup agreed to pay $285 million to settle charges that it misled (synonyms for that word include deceived; lied to; tricked and defrauded) investors in a mortgage securities deal, telling them it was a good investment when it knew otherwise and was secretly betting it would fail.

Full Story Here: Another Corporate Thief Gets Off the Hook — 5 Reasons to be Outraged at the SEC’s Ruling on Citigroup’s Scams | Occupy Wall Street | AlterNet.

Full Story Here: Max Keiser: ‘US bankers stole billions’ – YouTube.

One of the major complaints made against the financial sector by demonstrators who began their occupation of Wall Street one month ago today is that there have been few major prosecutions of banking executives and other financial actors for financial frauds and other crimes related to the economic crisis. The handful of serious enforcement actions that have been made include an 11-year sentence against Goldman executive Raj Rajaratnam for insider trading and the conviction of the chairman of Florida-based mortgage-lender firm Taylor, Bean & Whitaker for $3 billion in fraud. Major players at the upper echelon of most banks remain untouched for their role in the crisis.

Yet while state and federal law enforcement officials — with a handful of exceptions, like New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — have largely strayed away from major lawsuits prosecutions in the financial sector, thousands of Americans have faced arrest for misdemeanors — including simply staying in a public park overnight — they committed while protesting Wall Street and corporate greed. ThinkProgress has assembled a short summary of just some of the well over a thousand arrests that have taken place across the country during occupations and other protest actions over just the past month:

Full Story Here: Over 1,000 Americans Have Been Arrested Protesting Wall Street, While Bankers Have Dodged Major Prosecutions | ThinkProgress.

Taibbi and Keith Olbermann discuss whether it’s possible to break apart “too-big-to-fail” institutions.

Video at link:

Taibbi: First of all, nobody asked my advice on any of this and they’re doing great without the advice of people like me. But …

Olbermann: It’s a democracy, everybody has a voice, take your platform.

Taibbi: Everybody has a voice. But there are a lot of people who have been following this whole issue of Wall Street corruption for years. There’s a small community of those people and we’ve been talking amongst each other for the past few weeks — trying to think about, what would the demands be? What would a good demand be if it came time to make one?

And the one thing everybody can agree on is that you have to break up the too-big-to-fail companies. You gotta go in and get rid of those companies because they’re above the law and above the market. They have the implicit support of the United States government, which is a disastrous, deadly situation for everybody. So that’s thing one, and that’s something they could actually get to –

Olbermann: How?

Full Story Here: Matt Taibbi: Break Up the ‘Too-Big-to-Fail’ Financial Behemoths that Destroyed the Economy | Economy | AlterNet.

A growing number of former government insiders — all responsible officials who served in a number of federal posts — are now on record as doubting ex-CIA director George Tenet’s account of events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Among them are several special agents of the FBI, the former counterterrorism head in the Clinton and Bush administrations, and the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, who told us the CIA chief had been “obviously not forthcoming” in his testimony and had misled the commissioners.

These doubts about the CIA first emerged among a group of 9/11 victims’ families whose struggle to force the government to investigate the causes of the attacks, we chronicled in our 2006 documentary film “Press for Truth.” At that time, we thought we were done with the subject. But tantalizing information unearthed by the 9/11 Commission’s final report and spotted by the families (Chapter 6, footnote 44) raised a question too important to be put aside:

Did Tenet fail to share intelligence with the White House and the FBI in 2000 and 2001 that could have prevented the attacks? Specifically, did a group in the CIA’s al-Qaida office engage in a domestic covert action operation involving two of the 9/11 hijackers, that — however legitimate the agency’s goals may have been — hindered the type of intelligence-sharing that could have prevented the attacks? And if not, then what would explain seemingly inexplicable actions by CIA employees?

Full Story Here: Did Tenet Fail to Share Information That Could Have Prevented the 9/11 Attacks? Insiders Voice Doubts About the CIA’s 9/11 story | World | AlterNet.

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

Full Story Here: We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies.

Her presentation amounted to an indictment of Lender Processing Services, or LPS, a company near the center of ongoing state investigations into claims that foreclosures have been rushed en masse through the legal machinery, without proper documentation. She flashed images of paperwork on a screen under the heading “forgeries,” asserting that LPS’ former subsidiary, Docx, had produced phony documents to justify unlawful foreclosures.

The legal association later sent Clarkson a thank-you note, calling her tutorial “invaluable.” Word of her presentation reached New York, where a state Supreme Court judge cited it in a harshly-worded ruling that a bank lacked the right to foreclose on a Brooklyn home.

Full Story Here: Florida AG Pam Bondi Pressured By Targets Of Investigations To Soften Approach, Critics Say.

At least one utility company in Alabama posted a sign informing its customers that a section of Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant law prohibits them from providing water service to undocumented immigrants. According to the sign at Allgood Water Works in Blount County, Alabama, customers must have “an Alabama driver’s license or an Alabama picture ID card on file” by the date that the immigration law went into effect; otherwise, they risked losing their water service.

Sadly, the picture for Alabama’s immigrants is even grimmer than this sign suggests. Indeed, under one provision of the state’s immigration law, HB 56, it is a felony for an undocumented immigrant to even attempt to do business with Alabama’s state-run water agencies:

An alien not lawfully present in the United States shall not enter into or attempt to enter into a business transaction with the state or a political subdivision of the state and no person shall enter into a business transaction or attempt to enter into a business transaction on behalf of an alien not lawfully present in the United States. [...]

A violation of this section is a Class C felony.

Full Story Here: Alabama Law Makes It A Felony For Undocumented Immigrants To Have Water At Their Homes | ThinkProgress.

Full Story Here: Koch Brothers Destroyed By Bloomberg Report – YouTube.

But the doctor was too busy to select patients for this “study.” So, the salesman, Dean McClellan, combed through the confidential patient files himself, searching for a few human guinea pigs to enroll. He found his subjects and, over the ensuing weeks, tracked their reactions to the high doses of the anti-anemia drug Procrit. “Cancer to the brain was worse,” the rep wrote in one patient chart. “But anemia was better.”

Let us count the ways in which this was illegal. First, the payments were bribesused to seduce doctors to pump Procrit doses to levels not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Procrit helps cancer patients produce enough red blood cells so they can avoid blood transfusions and withstand chemotherapy. Yet, some patients in McClellan’s “trials” weren’t undergoing chemo. Many didn’t even know they were being used as guinea pigs. Worse, there was no investigative review board, control group or protocol as there’d be in a bona fide scientific study. If there had been, someone might have noticed that three out of five people were dying in McClellan’s jerry-rigged trials.

Full Story Here: Anatomy of a $30 Billion Medicare Crime | Truthout.

“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”

She immediately notified her supervisors in the U.S. A week later, Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries dispatched an investigative team to look into her findings, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue.

Full Story Here: Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales – Bloomberg.

The nine justices on the highest court in the land already have 50 cases on the table for the new session, which runs until the end of June 2012.

The court has dealt with up to 75 cases in past sessions, so the extra space could be interpreted as leaving extra room to tackle the sweeping health care reform that Obama championed and signed into law in early 2010.

Full Story Here: Health care reform tops Supreme Court docket | The Raw Story.

Rachel Maddow raised a series of questions about the legality of the killing of the U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on her Friday show.

Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. airstrike on Friday morning. While many lawmakers and pundits celebrated the death, others were troubled by the precedent that might be set by killing an American citizen without any trial or evidence presented against him.

Maddow ran through the long list of operations that al-Awlaki was allegedly involved in. She noted that there were “a lot of ‘allegedlys’” in the list, and that “none of those allegations was ever made in court.” The only due process involved in al-Awlaki’s killing, she says, was that President Obama ordered him to be killed.

Full Story Here: Rachel Maddow Questions Legality Of Anwar al-Awlaki Killing (VIDEO).

Settlement documents released by the district show the families of three girls will each get $100,000. Other details of the settlement were confidential.

Full Story Here: Iowa District Pays $300K Over Strip Searches | KCRG-TV9 | Cedar Rapids, Iowa News, Sports, and Weather | Local News.

Tallahassee, Florida circuit court judge sided with a union today in ruling that a prison privatization scheme lawmakers included in the state budget violates Florida’s constitution. The Florida Police Benevolent Association, which represents correctional workers in the state, filed a lawsuit saying the method in the which lawmakers planned to privatize 29 prisons in southern Florida violated state law, arguing that it should have been done via a separate law, not through the budget. Tallahassee Judge Jackie Fulford agreed, adding that lawmakers rushed the process:

Full Story Here: Judge Rules Florida Prison Privatization Unconstitutional | ThinkProgress.

What really happened to the retirement benefits of millions of Americans at thousands of companies.

In December 2010, General Electric held its Annual Outlook Investor Meeting at Rockefeller Center in New York City. At the meeting, chief executive Jeffrey Immelt stood on the Saturday Night Live stage and gave the gathered analysts and shareholders a rundown on the global conglomerate’s health. But in contrast to the iconic comedy show that is filmed at Rock Center each week, Immelt’s tone was solemn. Like many other CEOs at large companies, Immelt pointed out that his firm’s pension plan was an ongoing problem. The “pension has been a drag for a decade,” he said, and it would cause the company to lose 13 cents per share the next year. Regretfully, to rein in costs, GE was going to close the pension plan to new employees.

The audience had every reason to believe him. An escalating chorus of bloggers, pundits, talk show hosts, and media stories bemoan the burgeoning pension-and-retirement crisis in America, and GE was just the latest of hundreds of companies, from IBM to Verizon, that have slashed pensions and medical benefits for millions of American retirees. To justify these cuts, companies complain they’re victims of a “perfect storm” of uncontrollable economic forces—an aging workforce, entitled retirees, a stock market debacle, and an outmoded pension system that cripples their chances of competing against pensionless competitors and companies overseas.

Full Story Here: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers | Books | AlterNet.

 Anonymous sources try to discredit Bloomberg article on Koch Industries before it’s even published

Here’s a rule of thumb about public relations: When P.R. pros begin furiously spinning a story before it has even come out, there’s a pretty good chance the story is going to be damaging to the reputation of said P.R. pros’ bosses.

And that’s exactly what we’re seeing right now, as an anonymous person or persons in the orbit of the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch try to discredit a forthcoming story in Bloomberg Markets magazine.

Based on the prebuttal items appearing this week in the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller, and U.S. News and World Report, the Bloomberg story focuses on alleged malfeasance and/or fraud and/or bad behavior by the conglomerate Koch Industries.

Full Story Here: Koch brothers spooked by forthcoming story – Salon.com.

OPS: let’s not forget that these guys pay 2 PR firms to scrub their Wiki references on a daily basis

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.”

After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today (and it was the U.S.). It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from murdering his own citizens to help the U.S. murder its. The U.S. thus transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world. The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced.

Full Story Here: The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality – Salon.com.