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

Category: Legal

  • Philly Panthers investigation halted

    perreli

    Last May I wrote that the DOJ had decided to not prosecute the three Philadelphia Black Panthers who were caught on tape intimidating voters last election day. The man in the picture above is Thomas J Pirrelli, the Obama Justice Department official who decided to drop the investigation against the Philadelphia Black Panthers. The Washington Times describes the time line of events;

    Front-line lawyers were in the final stages of completing that work when they were unexpectedly told by their superiors in late April to seek a delay after a meeting between political appointees and career supervisors, according to federal records and interviews. The delay was ordered by then-acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King after she discussed with Mr. Perrelli concerns about the case during one of their regular review meetings, according to the interviews. Ms. King, a career senior executive service official, had been named by President Obama in January to temporarily fill the vacant political position of assistant attorney general for civil rights while a permanent choice could be made. She and other career supervisors ultimately recommended dropping the case against two of the men and the party and seeking a restraining order against the one man who wielded a nightstick at the Philadelphia polling place. Mr. Perrelli approved that plan, officials said.

    The reason?

    Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler told The Washington Times that the department has an “ongoing obligation to be sure the claims it makes are supported by the facts and the law. She said that after a “thorough review of the complaint, top career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division determined the “facts and the law did not support pursuing the claims against three of the defendants.

    Well, sure, as long as you disregard the fact that the video on YouTube doesn’t exist. Who needs evidence when you can just pull excuses out of your ass. Correction; I just noticed that the video on YouTube has been pulled “due to terms of use violations”. Sweet. Apparently Winston Smith is on the job.

  • Distress or disrespect

    In the space of about ten minutes, I got this article from three people last night. It’s about a business owner in Wisconsin who decided to protest his local government’s refusal to issue him a liquor license for his restaurant by flying his US flag upside down on the 4th of July along a parade route, apparently.

    The police reportedly stormed his private property and took the flag down (Daily News);

    Hours before a Fourth of July parade, four police officers went to Congine’s property and removed the flag under the advice of Marinette County District Attorney Allen Brey.

    Neighbor Steven Klein watched in disbelief.

    “I said, ’What are you doing?’ Klein said. “They said, ’It is none of your business.”’

    The next day, police returned the flag. Brey declined comment Friday.

    I don’t blame the police, by the way, they were just doing what they were told to do. But it turns out that the guy who turned the flag upside down, is an Iraq War veteran.

    Congine, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq in 2004, said he intends to keep flying the flag upside down.

    “It is pretty bad when I go and fight a tyrannical government somewhere else,” Congine said, “and then I come home to find it right here at my front door.”

    I can’t testify to his service in Iraq, but he was (is) a Marine;

    congine

    But this is probably why he can’t get a liquor license;
    congine-arrest1

    He was arrested for a theft of less more than $10k. The only thing I altered in that record was his home address.

    Anyway, last year I wrote a post about how no one was that upset when people were flying flags upside down to protest the war until after election day (the pictures in that post were all taken on Federal property and only one was removed by Capitol Police after I took thepicture). I don’t approve of folks doing that, but I approve less of using the police to squelch free speech like they were used in the case of Vito Congine. Especially when they trespassed on his private property without Congine’s permission.

    The ACLU is contemplating a lawsuit against the village of Crivitz, WI and good for them- if they plan on seeing it through. Like I said, I don’t approve of people flying flags upside down, but they certainly have the right to do so without government intervention.

    So, OK, flame me now.

    H/T to Olga, Sporkmaster and The Wolf for the story.

  • Post flakking for Sotomayor

    You’ve probably read that the Supreme Court overturned the lower appeals court decision against some New Haven, CT firefighters in what may turn out to be a landmark case. the best analysis I’ve seen of the decision is at Ace of Spades by Gabriel Malor here and here. The Washington Times describes why decision is important in the short term;

    Judge Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to fill the seat of retiring Justice David Souter, was one of three judges who ruled in favor of New Haven and part of the majority that rejected a full hearing before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    The ruling is already being seen as a hurdle Judge Sotomayor will have to overcome next month when she goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    Rep. Tom Price, Georgia Republican and chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said the ruling is a reason to slow down her confirmation process and study her record.

    The Washington Post Robert Barnes shows us what the next tactic to protect Sotomayor from Conservative charges that she’s out of touch with the Supreme Court and so doesn’t belong there.

    The New Haven case, Ricci v. DeStefano, has become the ruling that Sotomayor’s critics most point to for evidence that she lets her background influence her decisions, even though her role has been somewhat inflated.

    Her role was somewhat inflated? What does that even mean? If she voted on a panel of judges and she had the same number of votes as the other judges, how did Conservatives inflate her role?

    Then Barnes writes;

    The case then went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, where Sotomayor and judges Robert Sack and Rosemary S. Pooler heard the appeal. Oral arguments lasted an hour, with Sotomayor leading the questioning, as is her reputation.

    She was one third of a panel and lead the questioning. What’s to inflate about that? Stupid Washington Post.

  • Studying for the bar?

    TSO has been posting less here lately because he says he’s been studying for his bar exam. I let him slide, because I figured it takes a real smart guy and a lot of studying to be a lawyer. Until today;

    Jeffersonville attorney Larry Wilder was found asleep by police in his neighbor’s overturned city garbage can Wednesday morning, after neighbors called police when they woke to find their trash strewn on the ground and a man inside the receptacle.

    A local TV report complete with stills of the prestigious man of letters below the jump;
    (more…)

  • HuffPo diarist for concealed carry?

    Christopher Barron, chairman of the board of GOProud, an organization representing gay conservatives, writes at Huffington Post encouraging concealed carry permits so that gays can protect themselves.

    This summer, the Senate will consider the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, more commonly know as Hate Crimes legislation. Unfortunately, the bill, as currently written, will do little to actually prevent violent hate crimes from occurring. There is, however, a way to stop hate crimes before they happen: help law-abiding Americans at risk of hate crimes defend themselves from predators.

    While GOProud, the only national gay conservative group, doesn’t take a position on the current hate crimes legislation, we do strongly support empowering individuals to protect themselves – which is why GOProud urges the Senate to amend the current hate crimes legislation to include a provision dealing with concealed carry reciprocity.

    Before I start in, let me make clear my position of gay gun ownership – I don’t care. Anyone with a clean police record and a clean bill of health should be able to own a gun if they want, irrespective of their sexual proclivities, race, religion, or any other clumsily-assembled group of victims anyone can configure.

    However, the Left doesn’t see it that way. They’re apparently all ready to give gays guns to protect themselves from “wingnuts”, but they’re afraid that some law-abiding “wingnut” will slip through the cracks and get their hands on a legally-purchased gun and get a concealed carry permit and be able to protect themselves.

    Here’s a sample of the comments illustrating that;
    huffpo-comments6-10

    Notice that? Since a concealed carry permit wouldn’t have saved Dr Tiller or the security guard at the Holocaust museum, there’s no real justification – besides, it might place more guns in the hands of “wingnuts”. I suspect that this von Brunn fellow possessed his firearm illegally since he’d been arrested for gun crimes before. i also suspect that Carlos Bledsoe, the Little Rock jihadist, bought his illegally as well (because no one has mentioned how he got it – if he’d bought it legally, it’d have been all over the news).

    I love that last line in the first comment: “It’s time we monitor the wingnuts and locked them up before they do their damage.” There’s not much chance of convincing that rocket surgeon that it’s probably unconstitutional since they seem to be convinced that only their Constitutional rights should be enforced.

    Not to mention that most of the commenters would support a cpncealed carry permit for gays, but not for us wingnuts. Try to tell them that probably violates the equal protection clause…I dare you. But they’ll quickly tell you that gay rights isn’t about “special rights.”

    Oh, and for the defenders of Janet Napolitano’s DHS report – it seems in regards to this particular commenter, at least, the report has done it’s damage even though it’s been withdrawn. It allows the Left to call us names and call for monitoring us all without repercussions. Good job, Janet.

  • DOJ won’t prosecute voter intimidation case

    I’m pretty sure you all remember the case of Black Panthers intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling station last election. Well, The Washington Times reports this morning that career prosecutors at the Department of Justice were ready to drop the hammer on three men involved in the incident, but they were prevented from prosecuting by their superiors;

    Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

    The incident – which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube – had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

    Yeah, it was a slam dunk – they were caught on video declaring “A Black Man will win today” and intimidating voters. Not like those unfounded cases we heard about in the 2000 and 2004 elections that the EEOC investigated and couldn’t prove happened, yet blamed Republicans anyway.

    This is a bigger scandal than the Bush Administration firing a few lawyers at DOJ – the Obama Administration has decided that they won’t prosecute voter rights cases as long as the voter rights being violated are those of Republicans. So we can expect the New York Times and the Washington Post to be all over this, huh? Eric Holder will be named Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person of the Week, right?

  • Sotomayor nominated to Supreme Court

    So President Obama picked his first Supreme Court justice today – Sonia Sotomayor. You’d have thought he’d called angels from heaven listening to the media.

    As soon as the nomination was announced, Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News beclowned himself and announced that she wasn’t the first Hispanic judge on the Supreme Court – he named Benjamin Cordozo as the first. Cordozo was Jewish and about 5th generation Portuguese, so I don’t think that counts, Judge.

    But, reading the Washington Times, I found this jaw-droppingly ignorant line from our President;

    The president said he wanted a nominee with intellectual rigor and an appreciation for the limits of judicial power — “a judge’s job is to interpret, not make law.” But he said it was Ms. Sotomayor’s “own extraordinary journey” from the housing projects of the South Bronx that he thinks will give her the “common touch” he wanted in a justice.

    While I’ll agree a judge should interpret and not write law, how does a “common touch” help her interpret law? The law is what it is, it’s words on paper and a judge has to be able to read. A common touch doesn’t help her read – a common touch helps her to write new law that never existed before she applied her common touch to it. Why do we bother sending people to law school if when they become judges they rule according to their background and upbringing instead of their studies?

    On a related note, the California Supreme Court ruled to uphold the gay marriage ban. Imagine that. A US court determined that it’s OK for people to change their constitutions. How do you think Sotomayor’s “common touch” would have affected her vote?

  • Another tax criminal in the Obama cabal of tax cheats

    Yeah, how many more of these criminals are we going to tolerate (from the Washington Times);

    Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, has agreed to pay around $9,975 in back taxes from 2005 to 2007, the Senate Finance Committee said.

    Much of the unpaid taxes came from speaking fees Mr. Kirk had failed to report because he had donated the honorarium to his alma mater, Austin College, and from tickets to professional basketball games that he had deducted as professional entertainment expenses.

    The White House, however, is “confident that Mayor Kirk will be confirmed,” said spokesman Ben LaBolt.

    According to the Washington Post, he took some other liberties with his taxes, too;

    Kirk also overstated the value of a television he donated, valuing it at $3,000 instead of $1,500, the committee found. And he did not have an acknowledgment letter for a $900 donation.

    Despite these obvious lies, Max Baucus is willing to confirm him;

    “Mayor Kirk is the right person for this job and I will work to move his nomination quickly,” Baucus said. “I am confident he can successfully restore the confidence of Congress and the American people in a balanced international trade agenda.”

    And Grassley is ready to cave – he just won’t tell us;

    Baucus’s Republican counterpart, Sen. Charles Grassley, will “reserve judgment” until a hearing is completed, said to his spokeswoman, Jill Gerber. The committee plans to hold a hearing on Kirk’s nomination next Monday.

    Of course he’ll be confirmed because the Republicans are too busy being distracted by the Steele/Limbaugh death match. We’re great at tearing each other apart – we’re quick to agree with Democrats while taking pot shots at each other. That’s how you pack a cabinet with criminals and REALLY lose your civil rights.

    And Obama (along with Associated Press) is feeding the irrational BDS by releasing top secret Morocco Mole documents about fighting terrorism;

    The Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants.

    Sounds pretty serious doesn’t it? Well, if you’re not blinded by rage, the next line, one single sentence, hints that it’s not that bad really;

    The Bush administration eventually abandoned many of the legal conclusions, but the documents themselves had been closely held.

    In other words, lawyers were noodling and the people who had to actually execute the decisions disagreed and did the right thing. But you really have to be paying attention to catch that single line out of the entire article. So all this is really about is protecting the discussion, not protecting actual criminal acts. Ya know like people who don’t pay their taxes and get in charge of departments of governments who’d tear our arms off if we didn’t pay all of our taxes.