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

Category: Legal

  • Lerner’s IRS Hard Drive? Oop-So.

    Remember Lois Lerner, of IRS-targets-conservative-groups scandal and 28 months of missing IRS email fame? Along with the other six IRS employees involved in same scandal whose email also appears to be missing?

    Well, the IRS yesterday indicated that recovery of any of those emails, even using forensic techniques, is likely impossible.

    Why, you ask? Per Senator Orrin Hatch, according to the IRS Lerner’s hard drive has been “thrown away”. Other sources say the drives have been “recycled”.

    Presumably the other six individual with missing email also lost theirs for the same reason (e.g., due to a “local machine computer crash”) – though to my knowledge the specific reason the other individuals’ email was lost has never been explicitly identified. If that’s the case, the same is doubtless true about their hard drives as well.

    In the IT world, “recycling” a hard drive can mean anything from running a bad-sector lockout program to find/mark as unusable bad sectors/reformatting the device/reusing the device to “disposed of to a third party and either repaired/resold” to “sold for scrap and destroyed”. Here, I’m guessing the latter was what happened.

    In any case, simply locating the device now may be effectively impossible – never mind recovering any data that might remain from 3 years ago.

    This just gets more and more . . . oh so “convenient” for those involved in the scandal with each passing day. And that’s especially “convenient” for those who might be involved, but who aren’t yet publicly known – and desperately wish to remain hidden.

    Transparent? Yeah. Just as transparent as the proverbial stonewall.

  • Prosecutor doesn’t like CO’s “make my day” law

    David sends us a link to n MSN News story about Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger who is unhappy with the fact that Colorado’s “Make My Day” law doesn’t allow him to prosecute Joseph Hoskins for the shooting death of Randy Cook. The law protects homeowners from prosecution for shooting a person if that person has illegally entered their home and intends to commit a crime.

    After a night of drinking at a party in the western Colorado city of Grand Junction, Cook and another man went to fight Hoskins outside his house. The fight moved inside and to Hoskins’ bedroom, where the homeowner said Cook tried to snatch away his shotgun. Hoskins tackled Cook and shot him, according to Hoskins’ account of the night, which was relayed to investigators through an attorney.

    “These grown men, otherwise basically upstanding, law-abiding citizens, are acting like drunken children, and as a result, a good man got killed, and I can’t hold anyone accountable for it in the criminal justice system,” Hautzinger told The Associated Press.

    The altercation began in Hoskins’ yard and Cook followed him to his bedroom. It seems to me that there were plenty of opportunities for Cook to avoid being ventilated and I don’t know how far the prosecutor expected Hoskins’ to retreat. Unless, of course, Hoskins marched Cook and his friend into his bedroom at gunpoint, I don’t see a problem.

    “It sticks in my craw to be unable to hold Joseph Hoskins accountable for his actions,” Hautzinger said. “But it’s not a very close legal call.”

    Apparently, the argument began on Facebook, FFS.

  • Deployed sailor ordered to court for custody dispute

    Someone sends us this link from KOMO News in regards to Matthew Hindes, a submariner on the USS Michigan, who happens to be deployed, but a judge has ordered that he appear in court for a custody hearing or lose custody of his daughter.

    Hindes and his ex-wife Angela are now locked in a custody dispute back in Michigan with a mandatory court hearing on Monday. It’s one he’s unable to attend because the Michigan is deployed in the Pacific.

    Hindes’ Navy commanders point to the “Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.” It says, “In an action covered by this section in which the defendant is in military service, the court shall grant a stay of proceedings for a minimum period of 90 days…”

    But circuit court judge Margaret Noe in Michigan denied that protection for Hindes. The Daily Telegram quotes the judge, “If the child is not in the care and custody of the father, the child should be in the care and custody of the mother.” But sailor Hindes argues the child was taken from the ex-wife four years ago for neglect.

    I’m wondering why we have laws to protect the rights of soldiers, sailors and Marines if the courts are going to be completely arbitrary about how those laws will be applied.

  • One Person’s Email Is Missing? Now It Looks Like That’s True for Six More.

    A few days ago, I wrote about the IRS claiming to have “lost” 28 months’ worth of Lois Lerner’s external e-mail.  At the time, the IRS was saying that was due to a “computer crash” – specifically, that Lerner’s computer had crashed, wiping out those 28 months’ worth of external emails.

    Wanna guess what they are now saying?  And no – they haven’t suddenly found Lerner’s “lost” email.

    They’ve apparently also has managed to lose email from six more individuals thought to be involved in the IRS scandal.  The six individuals include Nikole Flax, the chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller.  Miller was fired after the scandal came to light.

    Hmm.  As I said about the earlier IRS data loss:  how . . .  convenient.

     

  • Eighteen Minutes? That’s Nothing. Try 28 MONTHS.

    The IRS announced yesterday that it had a bit of computer trouble recently.

    Remember Lois Lerner? The former IRS senior executive who was accused of being at the center of a conspiracy to “slow roll” conservative groups’ applications for tax exempt status starting around 2010? And who invoked the 5th Amendment rather than testify to Congress about her role in that scandal?

    Remember that the IRS Commissioner, John Koskinen, on 26 March of this year promised the House Ways and Means Committee that the IRS would deliver to that committee “every document the agency had which might be related to the scandal”?

    Well, today the IRS said they would have a bit of a problem fulfilling that promise.  The IRS now says it’s missing a few of Lois Lerner’s e-mails to or from people outside the IRS.

    How many? Well, all of them from January 2009 to April 2011.

    Yes, you read that correctly. That’s all emails to or from Lerner to recipients/senders outside the IRS over a period of roughly 28 months.  A very critical 28 months, I might add, with respect to this particular scandal.

    Do I need to remind anyone just how much business is conducted via email these days?  Or how much planning is conducted using same?  Email has essentially replaced the telephone and hardcopy correspondence as the principal form of business communications.  So yeah – this missing email is a “big (freaking) deal”.

    During Watergate, eighteen minutes of one of critical tape was erased due to “technical issues” or “human error” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).  Here, we have close two and a half years worth of email to outside correspondents that has been lost.  I’d guess that would be equivalent to somewhere around every fourth tape Nixon made being erased.

    Sheesh. By comparison, Nixon and his cronies were pikers.  Hell, there were less than 28 months between the Watergate break-in and Nixon’s resignation.

    The IRS says the lost email was due to a “computer crash”.  Uh-huh.  Sure.  Riiiight.  How . . . convenient.  Looks more to me like the Administration is telling us “it’s raining again” while p!ssing on our leg.

    GMAFB.

  • Brevard County Court justice

    Brevard County Judge John C. Murphy took a public defender to the woodshed Monday according to Florida Today;

    Murphy and assistant public defender Andrew Weinstock exchanged words in a hearing Monday morning. The exchange escalated, and video records Murphy challenging Weinstock: “If you want to fight let’s go out back and I’ll just beat your ass.”

    […]

    Public Defender Blaise Trettis said Judge John Murphy grabbed Assistant Public Defender Andrew Weinstock and punched him in the head.

    Shouting can be heard in the background of this video;

    If the judge’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the judge who presided over Phil Monkress‘ DUI trial for six years and his conviction earlier this year.

  • Restraining order news

    Well, the restraining order hearing is over and we prevailed. The judge said that “the evidence doesn’t meet the statutory requirement of continuing the order” so it’s been vacated. I’m going to drink a little rum and smoke a cigar. Remember that any comments that you make will probably be read in our next courtroom adventure.

  • So Much For “We Didn’t Know”

    The more that comes to light, the more it’s apparent that senior officials in the VA years ago knew damn well that games were being played with patient scheduling.

    Why?  Because as this Army Times article states, in April 2010, the VA’s Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations and Management, William Schoenhard, wrote a memo to regional directors “calling for ‘immediate action’ to review scheduling practices to eliminate “inappropriate” strategies.”  He wouldn’t have done that had senior VA leadership been clueless regarding the problem.

    This means that senior VA leadership knew about the problem at least 4 years ago.  Dunno about you, but 4 years seems like long enough to get that one problem fixed.

    Shinseki claims he “had not seen” the memo in question.  While that may be technically true, I bluntly do not believe he was ignorant of the problem.

    Robert Petzel, the VA’s designated scapegoat in the matter, has indicated he was aware of the memo.  Maybe that’s why he ended up being the designated scapegoat – lack of “plausible deniability”.

    Time to uphold the bushido code of your ancestors, Shinseki.  As well as to display the honorable conducted expected from a former US military officer.

    It’s time for you to resign. Now.

    Oh, and to anyone who may have falsely told investigators they were unaware of the problem, I have some free advice.  You really might want to “lawyer up”.

    Because as I’ve said before:  it wasn’t the break-in that ended up putting many of those involved in Watergate in jail. It was their participation in the cover-up.