This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: James Branum

  • Stop pretending that you care, at least it will make you honest.

    Once again there are stories being posted about the issue with suicide in the military and PTSD. Sounds like it could be good thing right? Yea I wish. More then anything it really reinforces that groups are willing to uses people in suffering as a means to a end. Case one is talking about 18 Veteran Suicides Every Day . It is not as bad as other that I have seen but still manages to bring in the politics.

    I commend the VA for their efforts and for the lives they are able to save, but obviously much more needs to be done. They not only need to increase their outreach to include many veterans not currently receiving care, but they also need to increase the quality and effectiveness of the care they are giving (because five suicides a day among those receiving treatment is just too many).

    Notice the quickness on pointing out a problem and saying that someone else should fix it. Kinda like watch your neighbors house burn making off hand comments about he should really need more water. If you not going to help, get out of our way and stop pretending that you are.

    The next one is even worse. Yet in the comments and story it tries to make it sound that James Branum that he cares about his clients or can do his job without putting his “cause” first.

    What this young man has had to face should be an outrage to us all. I hope that he will find his strength and begin to heal. I thank James Branum for his dedication to helping these soldiers find their way toward justice in the midst of the overwhelming intimidation that is the military culture.

    Yea I had a knee jerk reaction too. But it get better with the next two replies to me.

    Masterspork, with all do respect to having your own opinion, you nor thisainthell know what you are talking about. why don’t you come down to UtH coffeehouse and talk to some of James’ clients and people who have worked with James?

    Masterporks,

    Yes come talk to clients that got guilty charges. There are two that come to UtH daily. And they still stand behind James and the choices THEY made.

    As for having a general understanding of UCMJ and how it works does not give anyone the right to slander people.

    The problem with people like you all is that you always get your info wrong or make assumptions. All soldiers that we talk to know they can apply for CO for free. If they choose to ask an attorney for help and are low on funds there are great people out there that donate to help them. So there is nothing unethical that James is doing.

    As for Travis we know the story so there is no need to comment on it.

    Honey as we all know in the military community when you go up against the brass or institution it never goes well. You got two options… 1. You stay quiet and accept what they give you or 2. You tell them to go fuck themselves and get more time.

    Well that’s to bad you can’t visit UtH maybe when you come back to TX you can see for yourself what we do.

    So as a military blog with many members that had deployed with a few that have seen combat we collectively know nothing about how the military works. Still have not heard of any such people exist.

    There is at least one guy that seems to be doing it right. From the group that he runs to help soldiers with PTSD and any issues that they are facing. Here is something that I got off of his Facebook group, Soldiers Advocacy Group.

    More progress here at Ft Benning. Last week the actions of the Reduction Board were overturned and the rank that was taken from husband was restored. Again, this wouldn’t have happened without Chuck’s intervention. Thanks for all the prayers and good thoughts from all of you. We aren’t done yet, but it is getting better!!!

    Taking note James this is what success looks like.

  • Charity; UR doin’ it wrong

    The last we heard about Stop Loss rapper Marc Hall, he was headed to Iraq for his court martial. He faced charges that he that threatened to shoot his chain-of-command in his little recording of a rap ditty. So if he’s going to Iraq, obviously, his civilian lawyers won’t be there. Can anyone tell me why his National Lawyer Guild counselors would need to raise money for his defense?

    charity-yer-doin-it-wrong

    Now someone tell me how the anti-war Left isn’t doing what they do for profit.

  • Dahr Jamail: I said it first!

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    This picture is of Dahr Jamail (center of the picture in black glasses and dark hair), eminent journalist for Truthout.org. He seems to be leading some IVAW protesters in their march on the National Archives in March, 2008, doesn’t he? Well, this photo probably represents that truth better than any Jamail himself could pen.

    Jamail has made it his life’s work to besmirch the reputation of the American soldier. We’ve compiled a fairly large number of posts about Jamail, a search on his name will demonstrate how he’s attached himself to James Branum, the IVAW and Under the Hood Cafe. Apparently, he took volumes of notes during the Winter Soldier hearing in March 2008, because he drags them out at every opportunity and repeats quotes from them like a trained bird.
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  • Branum takes another life

    James Branum, the guy who calls himself the GI Rights lawyer, has destroyed another life – this time it’s a young soldier by the name of Eric Jasinski.

    A Fort Hood soldier who failed to deploy with his unit to Iraq in December 2007 will spend at least 27 days in the Bell County jail.

    Spc. Eric Jasinski pled guilty Wednesday to a charge of desertion at his court martial on Fort Hood, said his attorney James Branum.

    Branum said mitigating circumstances that included a diagnosis of post traumatic stress syndrome after a tour to Iraq in 2006 made Jasinski decide he would not deploy.

    “He was seeing a psychiatrist for his condition and prescribed Zoloft for depression and Trazadone to get to sleep, and they handed him his gun and told him to go back to Iraq,” Branum said.

    The sentence is 30 days in jail, 27 days for good behavior, Branum said. He also was reduced in rank to private first class and had pay and benefits docked for two-thirds of one month.

    Branum spent the last several months sticking his finger in the Army’s collective eye along with his buddies at Courage to Resist and the socialists at Under the Hood Cafe until the court martial.

    Branum’s unbelievably consistent track record of getting jail time for ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of his clients remains unblemished. Now that he has the support of the Under the Hood Cafe, he’ll be putting a lot more in jail unless someone starts helping these Victims Of Branum and get them away from his self-serving legal advice and blind obedience to his anti-war agenda.

  • Travis Bishop’s uninformed BS

    Travis Bishop, the IVAW member who was sentenced to a year in prison after going AWOL before he signed his conscientious objector paperwork last year, has been released after serving nine months. Of course, he credits the campaign by Amnesty International, Courage to Resist and countless other misinformed malcontents for his early release at TruthOut.

    In February, Bishop was granted a three-month reduction in his sentence by General Cone as a result of a successful clemency application.

    In a letter to Truthout from prison, Bishop wrote this of his being granted clemency:

    “Three months clemency. Wow. I am truly astonished. Great for me? Sure. Great for future resisters? Even more so. I cannot believe that I told the Army “No,” refused to deploy, pleaded not guilty, and then indicted the entire system and blamed my command in court, and still merited clemency.”

    That’s funny that he thinks he got clemency. When Robin Long got his 15 months sentence reduced to twelve months, James Branum explained to us;

    In the military system, you get 5 days of good-time credit for every 30 days served in jail, which is why Robin got out in 12 months.

    So, really, Bishop didn’t get any real clemency reduction in his sentence, he just just got time off for good behavior. And everyone around him who he thinks is his friend that helped him get this nonexistent clemency is lying to him and taking credit for Bishop’s own good behavior while incarcerated.

    This guy has been played like a cheap fiddle by the anti-war movement and apparently he’s going to continue getting screwed – any sympathy I might have had for him and his situation has long ago dissipated.

  • AWOL Mom gets discharged

    Alexis Hutchison, the single Army Mom who went AWOL with her son to avoid deployment will get an administrative discharge and a reduction in grade as a result. She should get reduced – there’s no excuse for missing movement and going AWOL. But I blame her mother and the father of the child for the rest.

    Her mother claimed that she couldn’t handle taking care of her grandson for a year. But she had no problem taking care of twelve other kids in her day care nursury for pay. The father – well, I’ve heard rumors about who he is, but nothing I can put my finger on. He’s as culpable as the grandmother in this. Why wasn’t he trying to find care for the boy instead of putting the 21-year-old mother on the spot.

    The Army sees it a little differently;

    Larson said the Army had evidence that Hutchinson, regardless of her family situation, would have resisted deploying “by any means.” He said commanders decided a court-martial would be too disruptive to the Army, requiring soldiers now in Afghanistan to return to the U.S. to testify.

    “This case wasn’t about a soldier having to choose between her duty to the nation and her family,” Larson said. “There is evidence both from Pvt. Hutchinson and her fellow soldiers to indicate she had no intentions of deploying.”

    Sussman denied that Hutchinson was exploiting her status as a single-mom to get out of going to Afghanistan.

    As I pointed out before, Hutchison’s idiot lawyer is from the Branum-chaired Military Law Task Force and just interned last summer at the National Lawyers Guild, the Communist front organization for barristers.

    We’ve tried to do right by you, our readers, but for some reason, our usually reliable contacts at the Army’s PAO didn’t return our calls on this one.

    Thanks to Jerry920 for the link.

  • Jurisprudential Special Olympics Winner! How you can help Branum defeat grammar.

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    Well, since my post yesterday went over roughly as well as a boisterous fart during the Thanksgiving Dinner blessing, I’ll hold back ridiculing the Birthers and World Nut Daily one more day.  Instead, I’ll go back to the standard classic of goofing on James Branum.

    This morning I thought I would look for something wrong with his site.  In less than 5 minutes I filled up a legal pad.

    [WARNING: What follows is an orgy of similes and metaphors. It is not intended for young children, expectant mothers, nor retarded Oklahoma based Resistance Lawyers.]

    This guy does to the written language what Chris Brown did to Rihanna and romance.  It’s like he has a jihad against spelling and punctuation.  If grammar was a human, it would have been beheaded on YouTube.  It’s like Branum writing is as out of place as Jeffrey Dahmer releasing a cook book of his favorite recipes.  (How to Serve Humans.)  So, I’ll go over a few, but let’s see if you can go over there and identify the legion of errors that populate his shitty site.  Honestly, I would rather have Michael J. Fox do my dental work than read his page, but it is a sacrifice I make for you, my angry readers. He is roughly as accurate as an epileptic sniper. Even a retarded child rises above his level of discourse so quickly that he gets the bends. I would rather run naked, greased up, and blindfolded through the San Fran pride parade than read his stuff. (Then again, I am famously and flamboyantly gay.) He does to the legal profession what Gary Glitter does in Thailand. Anyway, enough of my jackassery.

    (Ah screw it, there’s always room for Jello and Jackassery.

    I would rather shave my nuts with Greg Louganis’ bloody razor than read his page. His grammar stinks worse than Ted Kennedy’s current suit. His thoughts tumble in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. His logic is like a little boat that gently drifts across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball does. The flaws in his logic are like a suicide jumper, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. His vocabulary is as bad as, like, whatever. He towers above his peers like a Bonsai tree. I would rather do hurdles wearing skinny jeans and a fiberglass thong than try to figure out what he is saying. I would rather teabag a piranha tank too. When his blog disappears, the absence will be unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr. Pepper can. His site is like a mix between animal pr0n, midget pr0n, and snuff films except without the artistic merit. His clients get less release than David Carradine in a Bangkok closet. He’s as effective at getting his clients off as a castrati gigolo.

    (Thanks to the Sniper and The Donovan for several of those.)

    First off, just kinda funny, but he has a link to the “Joy Mennonite Church” that he is apparently VERY involved in. He serves as their “Minister of Peace and Justice.” (This reminds me of my favorite bad guy name/title of all time: Adrian Vlok, Law and Order Minister for the Republic of South Africa.) Well James, Minister of Peace and Justice….Joy Mennonite has your name spelled wrong.

    But, why should James give a shit about spelling, after all, he’s not exactly the Spelling Minister for the Republic of Douchebagistan. Take for instance his blog posting about a clemency filling for Victor Agosto. I mean, James, my man, you not only spelled “filing” wrong (he has “flling”), but you also spelled your clients name wrong. (Hint, there are very few folks names “Vcitor.”)

    Regarding your links to your law schools and other stuff. Well done in the link to the University of Oklahoma City Law School. That one worked like a champ. You will no doubt be pleased to note that your school moved into the 137th place out of roughly 170 this year. (My law school is only 98 places ahead of yours.) However, your link to New College of California School of Law of San Francisco really ought to come down. The school was so ate up it lost its accreditation. Oh, and the second attempt you made at linking to the Oklahoma Center for Conscience…that isn’t a URL. I don’t know what in the hell you were going for, but not working.

    His sentence structure alone makes me want to stab myself in the brain with a crayon dipped in hydrochloric acid. Let’s just start with this sentence:

    I take cases based from servicemembers in the South Central Region of the US (see map below) as well as limited G.I. resistance cases from around the world

    Dude, what in the holy mother of Spongebob does “cases based from servicemembers” mean? You do know that in English declarative sentences end with a period, right? And how is it you claim here that you do the South Central Region and “limited” GI cases from around the world, and then later that:

    I have clients who reside in almost every state of the union and several foreign countries (many members of the US military today are not US citizens).

    Anyway, moving on.

    Actually, that’s about it for now I suppose.

    Oh, except for this, yes, he really did spell “Lawyer” wrong on his facebook page no fewer than 3 times.

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    NOTE: All spelling and grammatical errors in this post are due to the fact that I am like an FBI profiler of stupid. I had to get inside the head of Branum to see how he thinks. And now, if you will excuse me, I will go and eat my frosted flakes out of a bedpan.

  • The bravery of anonymity

    Ever wonder how you can call yourself brave without having to identify yourself? Well, James Branum, lawyer to more imprisoned soldiers than anyone else would be proud to represent, has it all figured out. He puts a prospective client on YouTube wrapped up in some really snazzy duds;

    Of course, Branum begins the video with a commercial for more money. Probably because he’s run out of people from whom he can leach. This particular person (I won’t call him a soldier because he’s not brave enough to identify himself, so we don’t know if he’s really a soldier or not) tell us that he just returned from Iraq and he’s filing for conscientious objector and a medical discharge.

    Here’s some unsolicited advice; If you just returned, apply for CO status now – you don’t even need Branum. You have lots of time to get it approved (if you’re really a CO) so you don’t have to go AWOL the day of the deployment and get tossed in jail like Travis Bishop.

    He claims he’s anonymous to avoid retribution – well, if you don’t tell anyone who you are, how are you going to file for CO status? That’s just ridiculous – who is going to attack him? Me? It sounds like Branum is using the Matthew Alexander technique to hide something.

    The veil represents all of those soldiers who have come to the realization that our current wars and all future wars aren’t worth human life. The veil covers his conscience. WTF? The veil represents his fear…period. He claims that he speaks for “many” soldiers. So I guess he thinks he’s the only one smart enough and brave enough to hire James Branum to screw up his young life.

    The rest of the diatribe of this fellow basically calls the troops racists and murderers – well, not the troops specifically but he blames “the Army” who makes us racist and blood thirsty killer. He says he’d return to Iraq “to make [Iraqis] lives better” – looks to me like we’ve done that and there’s very little fighting going on in Iraq now. So what is he opposed to about our mission there now? Since we don’t know who he is and what unit he “recently” served with, we don’t even know what he’s talking about, do we?

    Branum is also using this fellow for raising funds on Facebook, and says the guy is an active duty Iraq Veterans Against the War. More than likely in Fort Hood and a member of the coven of Coffee Strong Under the Hood. The word is that Coffee Strong Under the Hood, and their mentor Cindy Richardson Thomas has swung over completely into the activism camp and their concern for soldiers is over shadowed by the anti-war aspect.

    Thanks to Casey Porter for the links. He wanted to write this post, but I couldn’t resist since Branum is so eager to use this as a fund raiser and is so set on screwing this guy to the wall (if he’s a real vet).