Does Somebody Whose Little Boy Suffers Induced Autism 'Deliberately Inflicted by the United States Government but Currently Unaddressed' Profit in the Prosecution of Torture, or Suffer Further Inhibition and Prolonged Denial:

The Deification of Obama and Its Impact on The Rest Of Us

Why they wanted torture incorporated into the American judicial process is much more important than which acts of torture were used; a lawyer and professor in constitutional law isn't seeing that? Of course Obama does, but his virtue leads to a dance with public awareness that in itself is hugely deceptive though he does it well and clearly enjoys it.This 'torture debate' and vindictive inquiry ignores the fact the torture here, while unfortunate, certainly isn't close to being the worst thing our government has done in the modern era [versus abandoning our own POWs in Southeast Asia and using some of them on Con Son in development of the AIDS virus for example]. Talk about prosecutions hugely inhibits release of further documentation here and makes progress from torture into abandonment or medical testing including at Dulce difficult if not impossible.
Unfortunately, it is possible that is exactly why he's doing it.

The significance of Obama's decision to release the torture memos, Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, Friday April 17, 2009.
Numerous commentators are objecting to the idea that Barack Obama deserves credit for his release of the OLC torture memos yesterday in light of his accompanying pledge that CIA officials relying in good faith on those memos won't be prosecuted. Chris Floyd is one who articulates that objection quite well and, as is always true for Chris, his criticisms are well worth reading. Many others -- including Keith Olbermann, Jonathan Turley, John Dean [took down Nixon and opened the door to the attacks on the presidency, including Carter being twice drugged and kidnapped out of the White House and the Secret Service shooting Reagan in the car] and Bruce Fein -- yesterday lambasted Obama for his anti-prosecution stance. Since I gave substantial credit to Obama yesterday for the release of the memos and believe even more so today that he deserves it (despite finding the anti-prosecution case as corrupted and morally bankrupt as ever), I want to return to the issue of Obama's actions.

Purely as an analytical matter, releasing the OLC memos and advocating against prosecutions are two separate acts. It's perfectly coherent to praise one and condemn the other.
[I support release, but of documentation going considerably farther then the torture memos; speak of medical records from Dulce, New Mexico, for instance. Those essentially are government property used by private interests in revenue schemes which continue to drive markets and health care. The basic premise of the situation being that people were kidnapped, experimented on, and ultimately killed, you aren't going to get any records if you threaten prosecutions and this sideshow over torture creates a hugely problematic blockage to release of anything].
There is an unhealthy tendency to want to make categorical, absolute judgments about the persona of politicians generally and Obama especially ("I like him"/"I don't like him"; "I trust him/I don't trust him") rather than case-by-case judgments about his specific acts. "Like" and "trust" are sentiments appropriate for one's friends and loved ones, not political leaders. A politician who does something horrible yesterday can do something praiseworthy tomorrow. Generally bad people can do good things (even if for ignoble reasons) and generally good people can do bad things. That's why I care little about motives, which I think, in any event, are impossible to know. Regardless of motives, good acts (releasing the torture memos) should be praised, and bad acts (arguing against prosecutions) should be condemned.

Beyond those generalities, I think the significance of Obama's decision to release those memos -- and the political courage it took -- shouldn't be minimized. There is no question that many key factions in the "intelligence community" were vehemently opposed to release of those memos. I have no doubt that reports that they waged a "war" to prevent release of these memos were absolutely true. The disgusting comments of former CIA Director Mike Hayden on MSNBC yesterday -- where he made clear that he simply does not believe in the right of citizens to know what their government does and that government crimes should be kept hidden-- is clearly what Obama was hearing from many powerful circles. That twisted anti-democratic mentality is the one that predominates in our political class.

In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done.
[Here Greenwald goes too far, because it has happened in the MKULTRA death of Frank Olsen for example and widespread LSD testing on people and in Bill Clinton's 'apology for Muskegee' which again were all adjudicated disinformation scenarios. Ironically, in pushing for prosecutions author Greenwald essentially condones this outcome; I would only prosecute those who have not released documentation].
American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security. When is the last time a President did that?.... [end citation]

Summarized, blocking release of documentation - or viewed the other way, withholding the documentation from the public - is a huge problem,
but it is only one aspect of a larger control function which this supposedly democratic government is assuming, in part driven by commerical interests backed by the CIA. Please OPPOSE the blatantly unconstitutional 'Endless Copyright' regime. I support the pirates on ANYTHING over fifteen years tops; more realistically half that. A compromise position of seven years, six months.

Hollywood scores win over Pirate Bay, 4 convicted, LOUISE NORDSTROM, Associated Press Writer, Fri Apr 17, 2009. STOCKHOLM - The entertainment industry won round one Friday in a legal battle against file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, with guilty verdicts and one-year prison sentences handed down to four men accused of running and financing the popular site.

The defendants vowed to appeal, setting the stage for a lengthy copyright dispute between music and movie corporations and an online swap shop they say has deprived them of billions of dollars in lost revenue.

In its landmark ruling, the Stockholm district court convicted Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom of helping millions of users illegally download music, movies and computer games.

"We can't pay and we won't pay," Sunde said in a defiant video clip posted on the Internet. Mockingly, he held up a hand-scribbled "I owe U" note to the camera. "This is as close as you will get to having money from us," Sunde said.

Lundstrom helped finance the site while the three other defendants administered it.

The case focused on dozens of works that the prosecutor said were downloaded illegally. They included songs by the Beatles [including the LONG DEAD ones]...

John Kennedy, the head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, called the verdict good news for anyone "who is making a living or a business from creative activity and who needs to know their rights will be protected by law."

NOTE: That is certainly not the Beatles, half of whom are dead!!!
D-E-A-D. No living or creating involved [other than parasites essentially refinancing the past glory of others][end note].

The Pirate Bay had assured users the trial wouldn't affect the site, and it remained operational after the verdict. Authorities temporarily shut it down in May 2006 after seizing servers and computer equipment during raids in several locations in Sweden. But it soon reappeared, running on servers elsewhere.

Andre Rickardsson, a computer expert and former investigator for the Swedish security police, said the ruling could encourage the entertainment industry to threaten Internet operators with lawsuits unless they block access to the site.

File-sharing wouldn't go away, he added, but users would likely turn to more advanced technological tools to hide their activities.

"It's not as if people will turn around and say 'oops, I'll have to stop file-sharing now.' Instead the reaction will be 'oops, what can I do to protect myself from getting caught'."

Sunde's lawyer Peter Althin said he was confident that higher courts would dismiss the case against The Pirate Bay, which he described as a battle between the corporate world and "a generation of young people who want to take part of new technology."

The verdict comes as Europe debates stricter rules to crack down on those who share content illegally on the Internet.

Last week French legislators rejected a plan [VIVA LA FRANCE!, VIVA LA FRANCE!] to cut off the Internet connections of people who illegally download music and films, but the government plans to resurrect the bill for another vote this month.

Opponents said the legislation would represent a Big Brother intrusion on civil liberties, while the European Parliament last month adopted a nonbinding resolution that defines Internet access as an untouchable "fundamental freedom."

Earlier this month, Sweden introduced a new law that makes it easier to prosecute file-sharers because it requires Internet Service Providers to disclose the Internet Protocol-addresses of suspected violators to copyright owners.

The country of 9 million has one of Europe's highest rates of Internet penetration, but has also gained a reputation as a hub for file-sharers.

Statistics from the Netnod Internet Exchange, an organization measuring Internet traffic in Sweden, suggested that daily online activity dropped more than 40 percent after the law took effect on April 1 [END].

I never thought I would find myself saying this, but THANK GOD for the wise men and women in the European Parliament who have struck the first decisive blows against the mindlessly draconian CIA 'endless copyright' regime. This is the territory where we find a sharp break between New Hampshire Libertarians saying 'don't tread on me', and establishment Republicans who are really nothing more than tools of big business. There are still other frontiers to push; we love Europe on reduction of the mindless copyright regime, but hate and fear Europe over their confiscation of guns. What are we doing about that? What active steps are we taking?

Would it be possible to send two year gift subscriptions of American Rifleman to scattered barbershops across Europe - Ireland through Poland - and have customers discretely check to see if they were being made available in the seating areas?

Gun control....via ammunition control[?]. What bogusness is this? Ammo hard to get; Local gun dealers at a loss to explain shortage of bullets, Mark LaFlame, Sun Journal, 008 Apr 2009. CIA swine.

Two - conceptually unrelated - gunmen undertake slaughter in the American northeast, within twenty four hours of each other [03~04 Apr 2009].... BOTH wearing body armor/bullet-proof vests? 'Coincidental similar attack of unrelated lone gunmen'? Richard Poplawski [Pittsburgh] feared they're about to outlaw guns... so he started shooting; Jiverly Wong [Binghampton NY] took out even more people in a immigrant aid center.
CIA. Obama and I guess Holder must really be wanting to confiscate guns... and somebody isn't shy about paving the way for them. It isn't real subtle, is it?

The following story also ignores the possibility of CIA affiliation - and there might not be any - but 'the inside line' is too rarely suggested for me to ignore this. We do not usually get grainy black and white surveillance video footage from anything above a package store robbery, while this is the 'action photograph' of a fixer.

McLean Firm Was Target Of Alleged Extortion Try, David S. Hilzenrath, Washington Post, 17 Aug 2005. In May 2004, JER Partners, a McLean-based real estate firm headed by local philanthropist Joseph E. Robert Jr., was pursuing an $85 million investment from an Illinois pension fund when a fax arrived from the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The document requested an $850,000 finder's fee for a consulting firm that had not done any work for JER.

The next day, a Chicago attorney was on the phone warning that unless JER signed the agreement, it would lose the pension fund deal, according to court papers on file in Illinois.

The Chicago attorney, who had been a top fundraiser for the Democratic Party, said, according to court papers, "that this was how things are done in Illinois."

JER didn't sign -- and was still awarded the $85 million pension fund investment. But the episode nevertheless has the potential to make JER a key player in the prosecution of an alleged extortion scheme that is casting light on the role of politically connected intermediaries who help private money management firms court investments from public pension funds.

The Justice Department says it is investigating business practices at Illinois state boards, and it recently obtained indictments against two people in connection with the alleged attempt to extort money from JER. The Chicago lawyer who is alleged to have made the calls, Joseph Cari, has agreed to plead guilty and is cooperating with the government, according to his lawyer, Scott R. Lassar.

Cari served as one of the Democratic National Committee's finance chairmen during the 2000 elections and previously was finance chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Stuart Levine, who was a member of the pension fund board at the time of the alleged shakedown and is accused of attempting to extort kickbacks from multiple firms, has pleaded not guilty, said his attorney, Marc W. Martin.

Martin declined to comment further.

JER spokesman Franz Paasche said the company "refused to participate in an improper course of conduct" and has been cooperating with an investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Paasche added that the McLean firm "is not under investigation."

The JER spokesman would not say whether the firm alerted law enforcement to the alleged extortion attempt, and spokesmen for the FBI and the U.S. attorney in Chicago also declined to say.

Robert, a former amateur boxer, is a prominent member of the Washington business community. With his friend James V. Kimsey, co- founder and former chairman of America Online Inc., Robert traveled into the mountains of Colombia several years ago to try to persuade Marxist rebels to drop their guerrilla war and stop trafficking in drugs. When a stranger got aggressive with his wife at an Adams- Morgan nightclub in 2000, Robert interceded, blocking a punch and landing one of his own, as recounted in The Post's Reliable Source column.

In a statement provided by his office, Kimsey said he had no firsthand knowledge of the pension fund episode but said, "I have known Joe Robert for years, and I know he would never ever cave to this kind of pressure regardless of how much money was involved."

Robert founded Fight Night, an annual D.C. boxing gala that raises money for children's charities, and he is part of a group of investors seeking ownership of the Washington Nationals baseball franchise. His business was built largely on managing assets of failed savings and loans.

Early last year, JER was trying to do business with the Teachers' Retirement System of Illinois, which manages pension money for teachers in the state's public schools. The indictment outlining the alleged extortion attempt does not identify JER by name. Instead, it refers to "Investment Firm 4," described as a Virginia real estate investment and asset management firm that sought and received an $85 million investment from the teachers' pension fund.

Several sources with knowledge of the indictment said the Virginia firm was JER, as reported recently by the Chicago Tribune. Minutes of a pension fund board meeting say that, in May 2004, the board approved an $85 million investment in JER Real Estate Partners III LP.

According to the indictment, after the Virginia firm had made a pitch to members of the pension fund staff, then-board member Levine told representatives of the firm that he would like to help but could not talk with them directly because of restrictions on contact between members of the board and parties with business before it. Levine instead "used Cari to communicate" with the investment firm, the indictment alleges.

When the real estate firm did not sign the proposed consulting agreement that arrived by fax from an unnamed source in the Caribbean, Cari made a series of phone calls, the indictment alleges.

"Cari said that if Investment Firm 4 wanted to get money from [the teachers' pension fund], the company had to hire a consultant," the indictment said. "Cari said that if Investment Firm 4 did not enter into the consulting agreement by the end of the day, the company was going to lose the . . . commitment." In another conversation, Cari allegedly told lawyers for JER that if it didn't sign, the firm would be taken off the pension fund's May agenda, the indictment alleges.

When the real estate investment firm did not sign the consulting agreement, Levine directed a member of the pension fund staff to pull the firm off the agenda for the fund's May 2004 board meeting, the indictment alleges. The staff member refused, and on May 25, 2004, the board approved the $85 million investment.

Levine joined his fellow trustees in voting to approve it, according to board records.

PREVIOUS
Unicameral representation in a bicameral legislature? Holder is bogus. Exactly how to they propose preventing the District of Columbia from getting two Senate seats if they give it voting representation in the House? When everybody else has Senate seats? That would be unconstitutional.



....While D.C. v. Heller was being heard by the Supreme Court in 2008, Holder joined the Reno-led amicus brief, which urged the Supreme Court to uphold Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban and said the position of the Department of Justice, from Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton, was that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for purposes unrelated to a State’s operation of a well-regulated militia. Wikipedia.

..."from Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton?!?"... Big damn deal. The position of the Department of Justice from GEORGE WASHINGTON TO NOW has been no representation for the District of Columbia in the United States Congress. John Adams to now; Washington never actually lived in the White House or 'Executive Mansion.'

The whole idea behind having a bi-cameral legislature is being farce-ified in our nation's capitol; standing the concepts of Jefferson and Adams, George Mason and the other founding fathers on their head. We don't even have a viable city-wide legislature - CIA Mayor Fenty allows department heads to either blow off or send weak underlings down to the Council hearings [Rhee? CIA. Lanier? Certainly CIA-affiliated - 'all hands on deck' - if she isn't root CIA. The spending guy? Again, affiliated if he isn't professional in the CIA. The tax office-as-a-CIA-funding-mechanism-people? 'In your face' with it], where they apparently cannot be forced, coaxed, begged or conjoled into 'showing the cards' [out of the CIA stacked deck] anyway.

Now Ace Holder, the top legal beagle, is carefully preparing the first step in the government-led assault on the Constitution. Hand it to that otherwise worthless nest of mean vipers deployed to protect wrongdoers in government with the Justice Department, even they recognized the effort for what it was and threw him back the first time.


A Split At Justice On D.C. Vote Bill; Holder Overrode Ruling That Measure Is Unconstitutional, Carrie Johnson, The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Apr 1, 2009. pg. A.1.

Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster.

A finding that the voting rights bill runs afoul of the Constitution could complicate an upcoming House vote and make the measure more vulnerable to a legal challenge that probably would reach the Supreme Court if it is enacted. The bill, which would give the District a vote in the House for the first time, appeared to be on the verge of passing last month before stalling when pro-gun legislators tried to attach an amendment weakening city gun laws. Supporters say it could reach the House floor in May.

In deciding that the measure is unconstitutional, lawyers in the department's Office of Legal Counsel matched a conclusion reached by their Bush administration counterparts nearly two years ago, when a lawyer there testified that a similar bill would not withstand legal attack.

Holder rejected the advice and sought the opinion of the solicitor general's office, where lawyers told him that they could defend the legislation if it were challenged after its enactment.

Democratic and Republican Justice Department veterans said it is unusual, though not unprecedented, for the solicitor general, who backs the administration's position before the Supreme Court, to be asked to weigh in before a case makes its way into a courtroom. Typically, legal scholars said, the solicitor general is asked whether the office can plausibly defend a law in court, rather than to opine directly on the legality of a piece of legislation. The office was asked for the opinion several weeks ago, before the Senate confirmed Elena Kagan as the new solicitor general.

Through a spokesman, Holder portrayed the basis for his override of the OLC ruling as grounded in law, not politics.

"The attorney general weighed the advice of different people inside the department, as well as the opinions of legal scholars, and made his own determination that the D.C. voting rights bill is constitutional," Matthew Miller said. "As the leader of the department, it is his responsibility to make his best independent legal judgment, and he believes that although there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the issue, ultimately the bill would constitutionally grant D.C. residents a right to elect a voting representative in Congress."

Holder's decision to get involved may expose President Obama's Justice Department to some of the same concerns raised by Democrats during George W. Bush's presidency.

Democrats claimed then that political considerations infused decisions on subjects including environmental regulations and national security policy. In particular, Bush's OLC drew criticism when lawyers allegedly shaped their analysis on harsh interrogation tactics and warrantless eavesdropping to fit the views of superiors in the White House.

M. Edward Whelan III, who was a deputy at OLC during the Bush administration, said when informed of the matter that Holder's decision to override the office's conclusions amounted to a "blatant abuse" of the office's purpose.

Questions over the constitutionality of a D.C. voting bill have dogged the proposal throughout its journey through Congress. Some legal experts say that because the District is not a state, the proposal does not square with a constitutional requirement that House members be chosen "every second year by the people of the several states." Others argue that the Constitution gives Congress broad power over the District, including the ability to grant it a full House seat.

Both Holder and Obama have expressed support for D.C. voting rights in the past. In an interview earlier this year, Obama described himself as a "strong proponent" of giving the District voting representation in Congress. As a U.S. senator, he co-sponsored a similar measure two years ago. Signing the legislation would represent a political victory for him, even if the Supreme Court later reversed the law, said sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the controversy is sensitive and ongoing.

Holder, who has lived in the District for more than two decades, co-signed a 2007 letter with other prominent lawyers supporting D.C. voting rights legislation.

The measure would create two new permanent seats in the House, one for the District and one for Utah, although that seat could transfer to a different state based on the results of the 2010 census.

In 2007 testimony before the Senate, Bush lawyer John P. Elwood said that the D.C. voting rights legislation was not constitutional because the District is not a state.

"In the absence of a constitutional amendment, therefore, the explicit provisions of the Constitution do not permit Congress to grant congressional representation to the District through legislation," he told lawmakers.

Advocates of the measure note that its constitutionality has been endorsed by powerful legal voices, including the American Bar Association, former federal appellate judge Kenneth W. Starr and former Justice Department lawyer Viet D. Dinh. Starr and Dinh have written a legal brief supporting the bill.

Supporters note that courts have often treated the District as if it were a state, addressing, for example, questions of whether D.C. residents are subject to laws governing federal taxation, interstate commerce and the right to a jury trial.

The Office of Legal Counsel remains a source of intense interest in the legal community and on Capitol Hill, where Senate Republicans have delayed a vote to confirm Dawn Johnsen, an Indiana University law professor nominated to lead the office. Johnsen, who served as acting leader of the office during the Clinton administration, has been a vocal critic of political influence there and has advocated for more transparency in the work of its lawyers.

A dispute over advice from the office inspired one of the most dramatic episodes of the Bush administration, when then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales rushed to the bedside of ailing Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in 2004, in an unsuccessful effort to get him to overrule OLC opinions about the government's warrantless wiretapping program. More than half a dozen law enforcement officials threatened to resign if the president ignored OLC conclusions that the program was illegal.

At his confirmation hearing in January, Holder promised to review OLC opinions issued by the Bush administration. "We don't change OLC opinions simply because a new administration takes over," he said. "The review that we would conduct would be a substantive one and reflect the best opinions of probably the best lawyers in the department as to where the law would be, what their opinions should be. It will not be a political process, it will be one based solely on our interpretation of the law."

Staff writer Mary Beth Sheridan, research editor Alice Crites and researcher Eddy Palanzo contributed to this report.