Matt Taibbi :-:

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.

The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks.

Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.

Full Story Here: Accidentally Released – and Incredibly Embarrassing – Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’ | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone.

President Barack Obama discussed JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion loss on Monday, saying the bank’s massive failure proves why Wall Street reform is necessary.

“JPMorgan is one of the best-managed banks there is,” Obama said during an interview on ABC’s “The View”, which will air on Tuesday. “Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got, and they still lost $2 billion and counting.”

Dimon, who appeared on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday, told host David Gregory he had been “dead wrong” to dismiss concerns about the banks questionable trades.

“We made a terrible, egregious mistake,” Dimon said. “There’s almost no excuse for it.”

Obama said the bank’s mistakes exemplified the reasoning behind his administration’s Wall Street policies.

“We don’t know all the details,” Obama said. “It’s going to be investigated, but this is why we passed Wall Street reform.”

Full Story Here: Obama: JPMorgan Disaster Shows ‘Why Wall Street Reform Is So Important’.

A few days after US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a “senior intelligence official” briefing reporters on the materials seized from bin Laden’s compound said the materials revealed that bin Laden had, “continued to direct even tactical details of the group’s management.” Bin Laden was, “not just a strategic thinker for the group,” said the official. “He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions.” The official called the bin Laden compound, “an active command and control center.”

The senior intelligence official triumphantly called the discovery of bin Laden’s hideout, “the greatest intelligence success perhaps of a generation,” and administration officials could not resist leaking to reporters that a key element in that success was that the CIA interrogators had gotten the name of bin Laden’s trusted courier from al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo. CIA Director Leon Panetta was quite willing to leave the implication that some of the information had been obtained from detainees by “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Such was the official line at the time. But none of it was true. It is now clear that CIA officials were blatantly misrepresenting both bin Laden’s role in al-Qaeda when he was killed and how the agency came to focus on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Full Story Here: Exclusive Investigation: The Truth Behind the Official Story of Finding Bin Laden.

The court’s new numbers, compiled during the first half of April through interviews with more than 3,000 adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, reveal similar ratings among Republicans, Democrats and independents. “There are virtually no partisan differences in views of the Supreme Court: 56% of Republicans, and 52% of both Democrats and independents rate the Supreme Court favorably,” Pew reported.

“The weak ratings for the court across party lines stands in contrast to most previous polls, in which those in the president’s party have viewed the Supreme Court more favorably than those in the opposite party,” the reported noted.

Full Story Here: Supreme Court Favorability Hits New Low In New Pew Research.

Nina Rhodes-Hughes, a key witness to the Robert F. Kennedy assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968, is making bombshell claims in a CNN interview, suggesting that convicted murderer Sirhan Sirhan didn’t act alone.

“What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right,” Rhodes-Hughes, who was feet away from RFK in a hotel service pantry during the crime, told CNN. “The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups.”

Rhodes-Hughes, now 78, claims the FBI “twisted” her statements to investigators after the incident in order to come up with the conclusion that she had only heard 8 shots, an account that was used as evidence that Sirhan carried out the act without an accomplice.

Full Story Here: RFK Assassination Witness Nina Rhodes-Hughes Says Sirhan Sirhan Didn’t Act Alone.

The Senate campaign of Florida Republican Marco Rubio has agreed to pay an $8,000 fine for accepting slightly more than $210,000 in improper contributions.

Considered a top candidate for the vice presidential spot on the Republican ticket this fall, Rubio won his Senate seat from Florida in 2010 in a race against independent candidate Charlie Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek.

Full Story Here: Marco Rubio Campaign Fined For Improper Contributions.

While delivering his remarks at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, comedian Jimmy Kimmel addressed the issue of marijuana legalization.

“What is with the marijuana crackdown? Seriously, what is the concern? We will deplete the nation’s Funyun supply?” Kimmel said. “Pot smokers vote too. Sometimes a week after the election, but they vote.”

Full Story Here: Jimmy Kimmel Addresses Marijuana Legalization At White House Correspondents’ Dinner 2012.

On March 30, a district court ruled in Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) that a loophole in FEC rules that allowed certain independent group campaign efforts to keep private the names of donors was invalid and needed to be rewritten or reset to the original language.

On Friday, the court not only refused to stay the ruling, as requested by two intervening groups that are appealing the case, the Center for Individual Freedom and the Hispanic Leadership Fund, but the court also found that its ruling invalidated the FEC loophole, which required it to be immediately closed, resetting to the original language in the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, known officially as the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA).

Full Story Here: FEC Disclosure Loophole Closes On Secret Donors As Court Won’t Stay Ruling.

Federal officials arrested a former BP engineer on charges of obstruction of justice on Tuesday, in the first criminal charges filed in connection with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Kurt Mix, 50, a senior BP drilling engineer, allegedly destroyed hundreds of text messages sent to a supervisor that described high volumes of oil flowing from the ruptured well, located 5,000 feet underwater, according to a federal affidavit.

Mix “worked on internal BP efforts to estimate the amount of oil leaking from the well and was involved in various efforts to stop the leak,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

Full Story Here: Kurt Mix, BP Engineer, Faces First Oil Spill Charges (UPDATES).

The group Common Cause leveled the allegations Monday morning, filing an official complaint with the IRS that accuses ALEC of masquerading as a charitable organization when its real purpose is to give corporations direct access to lawmakers in taxpayer-subsidized forums designed specifically for lobbying.

ALEC insists it does not lobby, but instead connects lawmakers with “job creators” in order to foster legislation that increases business competition. Federal law bans groups from claiming tax-exempt status if a “substantial” part of their activities are dedicated to “attempting to influence legislation.”

Full Story Here: Open government group accuses ALEC of tax fraud | The Raw Story.

Confronted with evidence of widespread corruption in Mexico, top Wal-Mart executives focused more on damage control than on rooting out wrongdoing, an examination by The New York Times found.

In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.

The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico.

Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”

The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation.

Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down.

Full Story Here: At Wal-Mart in Mexico, a Bribe Inquiry Silenced – NYTimes.com.

How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn’t pay a medical bill — one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” The Associated Press reports. “But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”

Although the U.S. abolished debtors’ prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don’t pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff’s deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.

Full Story Here: Jailed for $280: The return of debtors’ prisons – CBS News.

That Wells Fargo has fraudulently processed mortgage documents using a process called robo-signing has been evident for nearly two years, since scandal enveloped the mortgage industry in 2010. That it kept doing it even after the scandal broke has been known for months. The practice, at Wells Fargo and other Wall Street banks, has led to waves of improper foreclosures and a $25 billion settlement with the federal government and state attorneys general.

A new report from MSNBC, however, provided an inside account of how Wells Fargo’s robo-signing department works. Unqualified employees with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 are given titles like “vice president of loan documentation” so they can sign foreclosure documents. Actual supervisors institute quotas on employees, forcing them to sign a certain number of foreclosure files each day — sometimes telling them they can’t eat breakfast or take lunch until they’re done. Documents required for homeowners to avoid foreclosure were ignored, left sitting on an unattended fax machine.

The result: the nation’s largest mortgage servicer often improperly foreclosed on homeowners who weren’t past due or owed little interest while pushing the files out the door as fast as possible, as an insider told MSNBC:

Full Story Here: Wells Fargo Insiders Detail Foreclosure Fraud Practices: ‘It’s Exactly Like An Assembly Line’ | ThinkProgress.

Days after being rebuked by shareholders, Citigroup Inc Chief Executive Vikram Pandit and the bank’s directors have been sued for allegedly awarding outsized pay to top executives.

The complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court accuses directors of breaching their fiduciary duties by awarding more than $54 million of compensation in 2011 to the executives, including $15 million to Pandit, though the bank’s performance did not necessarily justify it.

At Citigroup’s annual meeting on Tuesday, about 55 percent of shareholders participating in an advisory vote rejected Pandit’s pay package. That marked the first time that investors had rejected a compensation plan at a major U.S. bank.

That vote “has cast doubt on the board’s decision-making process, as well as the accuracy and truthfulness of its public statements,” the complaint said. “Absent this (lawsuit), the majority will of the company’s stockholders shall be rendered meaningless.”

Full Story Here: Citigroup CEO, Directors Sued For Outsized Executive Pay Packages.

In a unanimous ruling on Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority (PDF), Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the careful text of the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1991, the way it is written “convinces us that Congress did not extend liability to organizations, sovereign or not.”

She added: “There are no doubt valid arguments for such an extension. But Congress has seen fit to proceed in more modest steps in the Act, and it is not the province of this branch to do otherwise.”

Full Story Here: Supreme Court: Law says organizations cannot be sued for torture | The Raw Story.

Approximately 182,000 beneficiaries of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program had their personal information stolen, and about 25,000 Social Security numbers were compromised, Utah Department of Health officials said.

Officials originally estimated that about 24,000 people had their records stolen after someone attacked a server beginning March 30. But the culprit actually downloaded 24,000 files, and each file contained hundreds of records, said Stephanie Weiss, spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Technology Services.

Full Story Here: Utah Medicaid Cyberattack Affected 25,000 Social Security Numbers.

Many of you have expressed an interest in the current controversy surrounding Dow Chemical Sponsorship of the 2012 Olympics. Len Aldis has received substantial worldwide support for his campaign to stop Dow from wrapping the Olympic Stadium with 336 panels of corporate advertising.

Dow Chemical was a major responsible party involved in the American Agent Orange campaign against the people of Vietnam. The front page of Len’s website contains the correspondence Len has written in support of the millions of Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange. I urge you to forward this material to colleagues and the media.

Full Story Here: ‘Len Aldis vs. Dow Chemical’ – Salem-News.Com.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is likely to sign into law a bill requiring Tennessee’s public schools to allow teachers to discuss purported weaknesses of theories such as evolution and global warming in their classrooms. Haslam has until Tuesday to sign the bill, veto it, or allow it to become law without his signature.

Opponents, including science organizations, teacher groups and the ACLU, argue the law — SB 893, “The Monkey Bill” — injects religion into public education and raises the specter of the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial”, when a high-school science teacher in Tennessee was convicted of teaching evolution. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality. The statute prohibiting the teaching of evolution remained on Tennessee’s books until it was repealed in 1967.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union have pressured Haslam to reject the bill, which they believe is an unconstitutional and unwise gateway for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in public schools.

Full Story Here: Tennessee’s ‘Monkey Bill’ Will Protect Anti-Science Teachers | Common Dreams.

Michael Morton’s case is one of dozens in which misconduct has been alleged

Although courts have confirmed that prosecutorial misconduct occurred in 91 Texas criminal cases between 2004 and 2008, not a single prosecutor among those has ever been disciplined for their misbehavior, according to new data compiled by the Innocence Proj­ect. (Allegations of prosecutor misconduct were raised in another 124 cases, but those issues were not ruled on by any court.)

This is likely just the tip of the iceberg, said Emily West, IP research director, during a public dialogue on prosecutorial oversight last week at the University of Texas School of Law. Indeed, because 98% of Texas criminal cases are resolved through plea bargain, it is unlikely that we’ll ever know the true extent of the problem – which includes withholding exculpatory or other evidence possibly favorable to a defendant. Of the 91 cases in which the courts agreed there was misconduct, 36 involved “improper” arguments during trial, 35 involved improper questioning of a witness, and eight involved a failure to disclose favorable materials, known as a Brady violation. That’s exactly what Michael Morton says happened to him.

Full Story Here: Panel Emphasizes Need for Prosecutorial Oversight – News – The Austin Chronicle.

New Bush-Era Torture Memo Released, Raises Questions About What Has Changed And What Hasn’t

A six-year-old memo from within the George W. Bush administration that came to light this week acknowledges that White House-approved interrogation techniques amounted to “war crimes.” The memo’s release has called attention to what has changed since President Barack Obama took office, but it also raises questions about what hasn’t.

The Bush White House tried to destroy every copy of the memo, written by then-State Department counselor Philip Zelikow. Zelikow examined tactics like waterboarding — which simulates drowning — and concluded that there was no way they were legal, domestically or internationally.

“We are unaware of any precedent in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or any subsequent conflict for authorized, systematic interrogation practices similar to those in question here,” Zelikow wrote. The memo has been obtained by George Washington University’s National Security Archive and Wired’s Spencer Ackerman.

Full Story Here: New Bush-Era Torture Memo Released, Raises Questions About What Has Changed And What Hasn’t.

U.S. had previously seen “the merchant of death” as “very valuable for national security operations.”

Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was been called “the merchant of death,” was sentenced today at a U.S. court in Manhattan to 25 years in prison for conspiracy and terrorism charges. But an arms trafficking expert today states that the way the case has been framed allows American officials, including Dick Cheney, and American private security firms that have used Viktor Bout’s services to avoid exposure.

Federal prosecutors stated that Bout “constituted a threat to the United States and to the international community based on his reported history of arming some of the world’s most violent and destabilizing dictators and regimes”.  And “transnational criminals like Bout who are ready, willing and able to arm terrorists transform their customers from intolerant ideologues into lethal criminals who pose the gravest risk to civilized societies.”

Full Story Here: Sentencing of Arms Dealer Viktor Bout Avoids His Connections to U.S., Dick Cheney | Common Dreams.

A House Transportation Committee panel has scheduled a hearing April 19 to examine spending habits at the agency that is in charge of the federal government’s real estate.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said it wanted more information from GSA Inspector General Brian Miller. The committee asked whether Miller is aware of any disciplinary action taken against GSA employees involved in the planning or execution of the conference before the inspector general’s report was issued this week.

The White House accepted GSA chief Martha Johnson’s resignation after she dismissed two deputies and suspended other career employees over the conference, which cost $820,000.

Full Story Here: Lavish GSA Spending Investigated By Two House Committees.

Like most things that happen in America these days, the Trayvon Martin case is turning into yet another hearse trundling the Republican Party to its doom in November.

A brief outline of the facts. It’s February 26. Trayvon Martin is a 17-year old black kid watching a big basketball game in the home of his father’s fiancée in Sanford, a small-town outlier of Orlando, Florida. Sanford has a population of 55,000, about a third black. The fiancée lives in a mixed-race, gated community. At halftime Martin goes to the corner store and buys an iced tea and a bag of Skittles.

Full Story Here: You Really Think the Killers of Trayvon Martin and Those 16 Afghan Villagers Will Ever Do Time? » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

During the last day of Supreme Court hearings about the Affordable Care Act, the justices covered whether or not the entire law could stand if the individual mandate was struck down and the law’s expansion of Medicaid. But Justice Antonin Scalia seemed surprised that someone would have expected the justices to read the text of the health care reform law before the hearings:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages? (Laughter.) And do you really expect the Court to do that? Or do you expect us to — to give this function to our law clerks? Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?

Full Story Here: Scalia Says Court Can’t Be Bothered To Read Obamacare: ‘You Really Want Us To Go Through These 2,700 Pages?’ | ThinkProgress.

Joe Oliver has inserted himself into the debate surrounding the murder of Trayvon Martin, making himself the public face of the defense of shooter George Zimmerman. Oliver, a former TV news anchor, has made dozens of media appearances in the past week to defend his “friend” Zimmerman’s character, dismiss allegations of racism, and note that the shooter has suffered himself from the public outcry.

Many have wondered why Oliver has stepped up, as his connection to Zimmerman is a bit murky, and as even he said on MSNBC last night, “my role in this just doesn’t make any sense.” The interview, with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell and New York Times columnist Charles Blow, was tense and raised questions that Oliver didn’t seem comfortably answering.

But since he’s made himself a central figure in this ongoing controversy, it’s worth asking what we know about Joe Oliver:

Full Story Here: The Man Defending Zimmerman: Who Is Joe Oliver? | ThinkProgress.

It’s been more than a month since Trayvon Martin was shot dead by George Zimmerman. (Get a full rundown of the facts of the case here.)

Tonight, ABC News release video footage of Zimmerman arriving at the police station. The video depicts a cleanly-shaven man who “shows no blood or bruises” on his body.

While media coverage of the case has been intense, there are several key questions that have yet to be answered about the case. Here are five of the most important:

Full Story Here: Trayvon Martin: The 5 Key Unanswered Questions | ThinkProgress.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants the federal government to take a closer look at the “Stand Your Ground” laws that are at the center of the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.

“I’m sending a letter to the Justice Department today to ask them to expand their investigation into the general application of these Stand Your Ground laws, whether they actually increase rather than decrease violence and whether they actually prevent law enforcement from prosecuting cases where a real crime has been committed,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also said he would like to see hearings about the laws on Capitol Hill.

Full Story Here: Chuck Schumer: ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws Should Be Investigated By Justice Department, Congress.

Edith O’Brien, MF Global’s former assistant treasurer, says Corzine ordered the money shifted to one of the firm’s bank accounts overseas on Oct. 28 to cover an overdraft, according to a memo that cited the email.

The email noted that the transfer was made “per JC’s direct instructions.”

MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 31. The firm failed because of a disastrous bet on European debt. About $1.6 billion of customers’ money hasn’t been recovered.

Full Story Here: Jon Corzine, Ex-MF Global CEO, Gave ‘Direct Instructions’ To Transfer $200M From Customer Account.

Brazilian prosecutors say they will bring criminal charges against 17 executives from the US oil company Chevron and drilling contractor Transocean after a new leak of crude.

The executives have been barred from leaving the country until the investigation concludes.

Chevron halted production in Brazil after the new oil leak was found on the seabed off Brazil earlier this week.

The seepage is near a well where there was a major oil spill last November.

A Chevron spokeswoman said the company had no comment on the latest legal moves because it had not been notified of the decision.

The oil company is already facing a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit over November’s spill.

Federal prosecutors’ spokesman Marcelo del Negri told AP news agency that prosecutors would file charges including “environmental crimes” in a federal court next week.

Full Story Here: BBC News – Brazil to charge Chevron executives over fresh oil leak.

A high-profile attorney is calling for Rush Limbaugh to be prosecuted on a defamation charge, saying an obscure Florida law can be used to punish him for calling a college student a “slut” and a “prostitute” on the air.

Gloria Allred, the famed celebrity lawyer, sent a letter to the Palm Beach County Attorney’s Office on Thursday saying prosecutors should consider a charge under an 1883 law making it a misdemeanor to question a woman’s chastity.

“He has personally targeted her and vilified her, and he should have to bear the consequences of his extremely outrageous, tasteless and damaging conduct,” Allred said in a phone interview Friday.

Limbaugh had no immediate comment on the letter and didn’t address it in his radio show Friday. Rachel Nelson, a spokeswoman for Clear Channel’s Premiere Radio Networks Inc., said the network had nothing further to add.

Full Story Here: Gloria Allred: Rush Limbaugh Should Be Prosecuted For Controversial Comments About Sandra Fluke.

Elizabeth Holtzman knows something about struggles for justice in the U.S. government. She was a member of Congress and of the House Judiciary Committee that voted for articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon in 1973. She proposed the bill that in 1973 required that “state secrets” claims be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. She co-authored the special prosecutor law that was allowed to lapse, just in time for the George W. Bush crime wave, after Kenneth Starr made such a mockery of it during the Whitewater-cum-Lewinsky scandals. She was there for the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978. She has served on the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, bringing long-escaped war criminals to justice. And she was an outspoken advocate for impeaching George W. Bush.

Holtzman’s new book, coauthored with Cynthia Cooper, is called “Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law and Plotted to Avoid Prosecution — and What We Can Do About It.” Holtzman begins by recalling how widespread and mainstream was the speculation at the end of the Bush nightmare that Bush would pardon himself and his underlings. The debate was over exactly how he would do it. And then he didn’t do it at all.

Full Story Here: Un-Cheating Justice: Two Years Left to Prosecute Bush | Truthout.

As explained by the Chicago Tribune’s Megan Crepeau, “The whole thing hinges on the idea that police officers have an expectation of privacy as they perform a public, taxpayer-funded duty. This law, in effect, punishes the public for holding its officials accountable to a public standard. The original intent — to protect private conversations from being recorded — has nothing to do with that.”

Full Story Here: Illinois judge rules state eavesdropping law unconstitutional | The Raw Story.

Oil giant BP announced late on Friday that is has reached an out of court settlement with thousands of individuals who were injured financially or physically by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The spill, caused by poor drilling practices and seemingly defective equipment, was the largest in US history. The estimated figure of the settlement is $7.8 billion, but there is no cap, and the money will be disbursed by an independent claims administrator. The deal does not the mark the end of BP’s legal challenges, nor will it please everyone in the Gulf.

If the figure sounds at all impressive, note that in just nine months of 2011 BP posted profits of $15.9 billion.

According to the Associated Press, “BP said it expects the money to come from the $20 billion compensation fund that it previously set out. According to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust, current total trust assets are approximately $9.5 billion.”

Full Story Here: BP Settlement Avoids Day in Court with People Hurt by Spill | Common Dreams.

The Court was hearing oral argument in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which was brought under a founding-era law, commonly called the Alien Tort Statute, that allows foreign nationals to bring civil lawsuits in U.S. federal courts “for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” The 12 Nigerian plaintiffs contend that Shell Oil’s parent company aided and abetted the Nigerian government in its torture and extrajudicial killing of environmental and human rights protesters resisting Shell’s operations in Nigeria in the 1990s.

The Alien Tort Statute says nothing about what types of defendants — corporate, individual, state — may be sued. In the past year, the four appeals courts to take on the issue of corporate liability have divided 3-to-1 in favor of those bringing the lawsuits. But Tuesday’s oral argument reinforced the relevancy of another aspect of all these decisions: their partisan nature. Save one defection from each side, every Democrat-appointed judge held for corporate liability, and every Republican appointee found for corporate immunity.

Full Story Here: Corporate Immunity Looks Likely: Supreme Court Seems Ready To Side With Shell In Human Rights Suit (Update).

On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument on whether corporations, like real people, can be held liable in American courts for international human rights violations.

The issue has divided four appeals courts over the past year and a half, as Democrat-appointed judges have uniformly voted for corporate liability while all but one Republican-appointed judge has come down for corporate immunity.

If that pattern holds in the Supreme Court, then the five justices appointed by Republican presidents will surely be hit with more accusations of pro-business bias: Having all voted in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to extend to corporations the First Amendment right of actual people to independently spend unlimited sums in this country’s elections, they will in the current case have refused to hold corporations responsible, as real people are, for their roles in atrocities abroad.

That kind of application of corporate personhood would be enough to make a casual observer’s head explode.

Full Story Here: Corporate Personhood Case Forces Supreme Court To Hack New Path.

The high court on Tuesday will consider the reach of a 1789 U.S. law that had been largely dormant until 1980, when human rights lawyers started using it, at first to sue foreign government officials. Then, over the next 20 years, the lawyers used the law to target multinational corporations.

The case before the court pits the Obama administration and human rights advocates against large companies and foreign governments over allegations that Royal Dutch Shell Plc helped Nigeria crush oil exploration protests in the 1990s.

Full Story Here: Supreme Court to decide if corporations can be sued for human rights abuses | The Raw Story.

The Constitution provides that acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land” which is why states do not have the power to ignore federal law. Nevertheless, five Georgia state senators — including Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R) and senate President Pro Tempore Tommie Williams (R) — apparently do not believe that the Constitution applies to them. All five lawmakers introduced a wildly unconstitutional plan to have Georgia and its citizens simply ignore laws that its conservative leadership doesn’t want to follow:

(1) There is created the Joint Commission on Recommendation, which shall be charged with recommending and proposing for a vote by a constitutional majority the nullification in its entirety of a specific federal law or regulation which is deemed to be outside the scope of the powers delegated by the people to the federal government in the United States Constitution or at odds with the Georgia Constitution . . .

(4) Upon recommendation for nullification, the General Assembly may vote to nullify following such recommendation. The appropriate documentation reflecting the vote shall be documented in legislative journals of the House and Senate. In the event the General Assembly votes by a constitutional majority to nullify any federal statute, mandate, or executive order on the grounds of constitutionality, neither the state nor its citizens shall recognize or be obligated to live under such statute, mandate, or executive order.

Full Story Here: Georgia Senate Majority Leader & President Pro Tempore Introduce Unconstitutional Nullification Bill | ThinkProgress.

The news sparked alarm and served as a grim reminder of the 2001 anthrax attacks in which letters containing the deadly pathogen were sent to offices of two Democratic senators and several media offices. Five people were killed.

The anonymous sender “has indicated that additional letters containing a powdery substance will be arriving at more Senate offices,” Senate sergeant-at-arms Terrance Gainer said in a email to staff.

Full Story Here: Stewart, Colbert, Fox News and host of U.S. lawmakers receive threatening letters | The Raw Story.

Irony Still Not Dead Dept: Indiana’s ousted top elections official, former GOP Secretary of State Charlie White has been convicted of six felony counts of voter fraud – an almost unheard-of offense, despite a slew of voter I.D. laws nationwide and White’s support for a particularly onerous Indiana law, upheld by the Supreme Court, which turned out to be no protection against an actual fraudulent voter, ie: himself. Good thing he wasn’t black or poor or young or he never would have made it to the (bogus) polls.

“I never intentionally meant to do anything I was convicted of. All I wanted to do was to vote… Even though I have been politically active, I am human.”

Full Story Here: All I Wanted To Do Was To Vote: Indiana Official Way Worried About Voter Fraud Is Convicted of Voter Fraud | Common Dreams.

A former top Halliburton executive will serve 2 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty in Houston federal court to orchestrating a $180 million bribery scheme to secure $6 billion in natural gas deals in Nigeria, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

Albert “Jack” Stanley is the former CEO of KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary at the time of the bribes; he was tapped to run the company in 1998 by future Vice President Dick Cheney, who ran Halliburton between 1996 and 2000. Cheney was not charged in the case.

KBR, spun off by Halliburton in the wake of the scandal, called the scheme an “unfortunate chapter” in its “rich and storied history” after pleading guilty to corporate criminal charges in 2009.

Full Story Here: Albert Stanley, Former Halliburton Exec, Sentenced In Bribery Scheme.

By a 24-14 vote, the Senate agreed to a motion by Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment (R-James City County) to push consideration of the bill to next year’s legislative session. A coalition of Democrats and Republicans in the tied Senate voted for the motion; six Republican and 18 Democratic senators voted to push consideration of the bill back. Two Democratic senators abstained.

The bill was expected to pass the Senate with Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) providing a tie-breaking vote. Norment said he believed the bill needed more study.

The bill passed a Senate committee, with Republican support, earlier in the day, and it passed the Republican-dominated House of Delegates last week. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) had indicated that he would sign the bill.

Full Story Here: Virginia Personhood Bill: State Senate Defeats Bill.

Affirmative action is heading back to the Supreme Court, and this time its prospects for survival are poorer than ever.

The Court announced on Tuesday that it has agreed to hear a challenge to the University of Texas’ affirmative action program, which is used in sorting through applications after the automatic admission of all in-state applicants who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

The state’s top 10 percent law was passed as a race-neutral way of facilitating diversity on campus after a federal appeals court in 1996 banned affirmative action in Texas’ public universities. Then in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court — in a majority opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for herself and the Court’s four liberals — approved of certain types of race-conscious admissions practices in higher education for the purpose of achieving a diverse student body. In response, the University of Texas reinstated affirmative action, this time to assess applicants who would not be automatically admitted under the top 10 percent law.

Full Story Here: Supreme Court To Revisit Affirmative Action In University Of Texas Case.

On Friday night, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Montana Supreme Court’s December, 2011 decision upholding the state’s century-old ban on corporate political spending. The implications of this are huge, as it paves the way for a potential re-opening of the disastrous Citizens United decision that has spawned billionaire-sponsored super PACs. And if that happens, Chief Justice John Roberts better buckle up for a grassroots mobilization unlike any the court has seen in years.

Friday’s decision was in response to a request by the American Tradition Partnership (ATP) to reverse the Montana ruling. ATP — a conservative group that that says it fights “the radical environmentalist agenda” — has six weeks to formally ask the Supreme Court to review the case. If they don’t, the Montana ban on corporate spending will stand.

Since the Citizens United ruling over two years ago, millions of dollars have flowed from the super-rich and corporations to elect or defeat candidates. A handful of billionaires have manipulated election outcomes in a matter of days, buying vicious ads through super PACs that candidates pretend are independent from their own campaigns — while their former colleagues and pals run those PACs. As Ari Berman reported in The Huffington Post, some 196 individual donors have provided nearly 80 percent of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each. Secret donors using 501C4′s have purchased 40 percent of total GOP primary ads with no disclosure of who is signing the checks.

Full Story Here: Citizens United Revisited? Buckle Up, Chief Justice Roberts | Common Dreams.

The fate of Montana’s century-old ban on corporate political spending is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up a possible sequel to the hotly contested Citizens United decision handed down two years ago.

In 2010, a five-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations’ independent spending in elections does not corrupt — or even appear to corrupt — the political process. On Wednesday, Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock submitted a brief to the Court with facts that suggest otherwise as he urged the justices to uphold his state’s ban on corporate political spending.

The case, Western Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, comes up from the Montana Supreme Court, which in December adopted the attorney general’s arguments to hold that the state’s history of corporate-driven corruption dating back to the Gilded Age justified that Montana’s Corrupt Practices Act is still valid. The law, passed by voter referendum in 1912, says 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.”

Full Story Here: Citizens United Part II: Montana Supreme Court Collides With U.S. Supreme Court.

A 51-page criminal complaint [PDF] (the “Rindfleisch complaint”), which formally charges Kelly M. Rindfleisch with four felony counts of misconduct in public office, contains factual allegations which implicate a number of individuals, listed as “interested parties,” including WI’s controversial Republican Governor, in a wide-reaching criminal conspiracy to misuse public employees and resources for partisan political gain.

The Rindfleish complaint was filed in the Milwaukee County Circuit Court on Jan. 26, 2012 by Milwaukee County District Attorney John T. Chisholm. It’s the product of an ongoing criminal investigation (the “John Doe” investigation) of the Milwaukee County Executive Office during Walker’s tenure as County Executive there. The complaint specifically involves the period during which Tim Russell and then Rindfleish served as Walker’s Deputy Chiefs of Staff.

Full Story Here: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Implicated in Criminal Complaint Against Aides | Truthout.

As state governments wrestle with massive budget shortfalls, a Wall Street giant is offering a solution: cash in exchange for state property. Prisons, to be exact.

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for “challenging corrections budgets.” In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post.

The move reflects a significant shift in strategy for the private prison industry, which until now has expanded by building prisons of its own or managing state-controlled prisons. It also represents an unprecedented bid for more control of state prison systems.

Full Story Here: Private Prison Corporation Offers Cash In Exchange For State Prisons.

OPS: extremely dangerous, and wrong.

The telecom industry is squeezing more money out of customers without delivering any new or improved service.

As a New Year’s present to its subscribers, Verizon Wireless announced a plan to start charging a $2 “convenience fee” for payments subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit or debit cards. 

To Verizon’s chagrin, and in the spirit of the spreading Occupy Wall Street movement, people across the country railed against the new fee. Molly Katchpole, who had led a campaign against Bank of America’s effort to impose a $5-per-month fee for debit-card use, kickstarted an online petition against the Verizon fee on Change.org. The petition generated nearly 100,000 signatures and pushed Verizon to drop the new fee.

Verizon’s capitulation over the new payment-processing fee, like the battle against Bank of America debit fee, illustrate the power of ordinary people to contest corporate greed. However, it’s important to recognize that the convenience fee is but one of a growing number of charges and fees that telco and cable providers are charging unsuspecting subscribers.

Full Story Here: Telecom Rip-Off: The Hidden Fees in Your Wireless and Phone Bills | Economy | AlterNet.

Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper was fighting to contain the damage after five employees at The Sun tabloid were arrested Saturday in an inquiry into the alleged payment of bribes to police and other officials.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns the newspaper, said police had searched their homes and the group’s London offices, potentially deepening the scandal over British tabloid wrongdoing.

The Sun’s deputy editor Geoff Webster, picture editor John Edwards, chief reporter John Kay, chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker and reporter John Sturgis were those arrested, News International CEO Tom Mockridge said in a message emailed to staff.

Full Story Here: Rupert Murdoch Flying To London After Eight More Arrested In Tabloid Bribery Scandal.

Federal and state officials today will finally announce that they’ve reached a settlement with the nation’s biggest banks over the banks’ various foreclosure fraud abuses, such as “robo-signing” foreclosure documents and submitting falsely notarized documents to courts. The settlement has been in the works for several months, as a few key states — most notably California and New York — were holding out for tougher terms against the banks.

Here are some of the key numbers in the settlement, which is being officially announced at 10 a.m.:

49: States that have reportedly signed onto the settlement. The lone holdout is Oklahoma, as Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) feels that the terms are too hard on the banks. Attorneys General Eric Schneidermann (D-NY), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Beau Biden (D-DE) have thrown their support to the agreement, after opposing earlier versions for being too easy on the banks.

5: Banks covered by the settlement: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial.

Full Story Here: The Foreclosure Fraud Settlement, By The Numbers | ThinkProgress.

The Obama Administration has followed a predictable pattern: Leave No One Accountable

The Obama administration announced this morning that the five largest U.S. banks have agreed to a $26 billion ‘settlement’ to end lawsuits over abusive practices that forced millions of families from their homes and helped bring about the nation’s financial meltdown.

After months of talks with state and federal officials, the banks have reportedly agreed to help some homeowners reduce their mortgage debt or refinance their homes at lower rates. Over 4 million familes lost their homes to foreclosure yet just 750,000 people who lost their homes to foreclosure will receive a one-time check for just $1,800 to $2,000, which for many will barely cover the cost of moving. The deal will only help a fraction of the struggling homeowners affected by the bank’s practices.

New York and California have reportedly signed off on the deal after initially holding it up in protest of lenient treatment of the banks.

Full Story Here: Bank Bailout 2: Obama Lets Mortgage Abusers Off the Hook | Common Dreams.

“It’s hard to see any state staying out of the deal if California is in,” said the source.

The settlement resolves allegations that five of the nation’s largest banks forged documents and wrongfully foreclosed on borrowers in what has come to be known as the “robo-signing” scandal. Schneiderman and Harris have been outspoken in urging the Obama administration to hold the nation’s biggest banks accountable for their role in the housing crisis and have resisted signing on to the settlement until now over concerns that it would go too easy on the banks and provide too little homeowner relief. The two states’ participation had widely been seen as necessary to a successful deal.

California has been one of the hardest hit states during the foreclosure crisis, and because of this was considered a key state when it came to securing a deal. The five banks participating in the settlement — Ally Financial, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase — agreed to contribute a total of $25 billion to help struggling homeowners if California joined the deal. Without California, that figure would drop to $19 billion. The deal is being negotiated between the state attorneys general, the Obama administration and the banks.

Full Story Here: National Mortgage Settlement All But Inevitable As California, New York Join Deal.

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.