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Posts Tagged ‘U.S. SUPREME COURT’

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FETUS FANATICS UNLEASHED

In Bureaucracy, Law, Politics, Social commentary on May 11, 2015 at 11:57 am

Republicans love fetuses.

In fact, they love them so much they’re willing to jeopardize the lives of pregnant women on their behalf.

On April 23, a Republican lawmaker in the Texas State House of Representatives offered an amendment that would force pregnant women to carry to term fetuses that can’t survive outside the womb.

The debate had started on a completely different subject–how to retool the State’s social safety net for the poor.  But as usually happens when Republicans hold a majority in a legislature, the subject quickly turned to abortion–and how to ban it.

Rep. Matt Schafer (R-Tyler) proposed an amendment that would make it illegal for a woman to have an abortion after 20 weeks–even if a fetus has “a severe and irrevsersible abnormality.”

Matt Schafer

This would force a woman to carry a dead fetus to term, even if a doctor warned that this could endanger her life.

Schafer justified his proposal on the grounds that suffering has been “part of the human condition, since sin entered the world.”

A highly probable consequence of that suffering could be the death of a woman from sepsis–a whole-body inflammation caused by an infection–by carrying a nonviable fetus.

Schaefer’s amendment actually passed, but he removed it for full committee review after Trey Martinez Fischer, the House Democrat from San Antonio, filed a legislative point of order.

Rep. Jessica Farrar (D-Houston) had an entirely different take on the proposal.

She called this year’s state legislature the most misogynistic she’s seen in her 21 years as a state representative,

“Women are leaders of their families, whether some men in this room do not recognize that,” she said after her male Republican colleagues refused to support a bill that would expand access to breastfeeding.

Click here: Texas House Proposal Would Force People to Carry to Term Non-Viable Fetuses

Schafer’s is just the latest Republican to try to insert government into the vaginas of American women.

An earlier one was Scott Walker–the current governor of Wisconsin and a Koch brothers favorite for donations as a 2016 Presidential candidate.

Scott Walker

As a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, Walker introduced AB 538 in September, 1997.

This would have allowed doctors to withhold from a woman information about a fetal disability while abortion was still an available option.

In short, doctors would have been allowed to lie to her.

At the time, if a health care provider withheld information about a fetal disability while abortion was still an available option, s/he could be liable for the child’s future medical expenses. But AB 538 would have changed that.

According to the proposed bill:

“This bill creates an immunity from a wrongful birth or wrongful life action for a person who commits an act or fails to commit an act and that act or omission results in the birth of a child because a woman did not undergo an abortion that she would have undergone had the person not committed the act or not failed to commit the act.”

AB 538 was not passed, ultimately dying in April 1998 without receiving a floor vote.

So Walker and 28 colleagues tried again in 2001.

They re-introduced the same legislation as AB 360.  Although approved by the Orwellian-named “Family Law Committee,” it similarly failed to receive a floor vote.

In 1998, Walker introduced  “conscience clause” legislation that would have allowed medical professionals to cite religious reasons in denying patients medical services such as contraception.

The bill failed to pass, so he introduced it again in 1999.  This attempt also failed.  In 2001, he introduced it a third time–when it similarly failed.

During the 2012 Presidential race, Right-wing broadcaster Rush Limbaugh furiously denied that Republicans were waging a “war on women,” as charged by Democrats.

On November 5, 2012, Limbaugh said on his program:

“Now, this War on Women.  You know, it’s been fascinating to watch this in one regard, maddening, too.

“But supposedly [Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt] Romney and [Wisconsin Representative Paul] Ryan are gonna reverse Roe v. Wade and they’re gonna take contraception away from you, and that’s the essence of the War on Women.

“Romney, Ryan, Republicans are gonna take abortion away from you and they’re going to make sure that you don’t get contraception so that you have to get pregnant and you can’t get an abortion and therefore you have to stay home, stay in the kitchen.

“….Well, just as I said, reversing Roe v. Wade is nothing a president can do.  A president cannot touch it.  A president has no role in constitutional amendments.”

Click here: The Left’s War on Women Lies – The Rush Limbaugh Show

Limbaugh neglected to mention, however, that a President can appoint Justices to the United States Supreme Court–who could overrule Roe v. Wade.

He also failed to note that overturning Roe v. Wade–which legalized abortion in 1973–has been a top Republican goal for the last 42 years.

The coming 2016 race for President will doubtless see banning abortion take center stage in Republican agendas.

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FASCISTS FOREVER, JUDGES NO MORE: PART TWO (END)

In History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on May 2, 2014 at 12:00 am

If Newt Gingrich becomes President, he has big plans for the American federal judiciary: To arrest and remove all those judges who do not follow his right-wing agenda.

Adolf Hitler laid out his plans for remaking Germany and the world in his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

And would-be Fuehrer Gingrich has openly proclaimed his own dictatorial intentions.

In a December 18, 21011 appearance on “Face the Nation,” Gingrich spoke candidly with host Bob Schieffer about his hatred for much of the American federal judiciary.

Schieffer: Mr. Speaker, the old saying in legal circles is that the Supreme Court is not last because it’s right, it’s right because it’s last.

There comes a point where you have to accept things as the law of the land. How do you decide, how does the President decide what’s a good law and I’m going to obey the Supreme Court or what’s a bad law and I’m just going to ignore it?

Gingrich: I think it depends on the severity of the case. I’m not suggesting that the Congress and the President review every decision.

I’m suggesting that when there are decisions….in which they’re literally risking putting civil liberty rules in battlefields, it’s utterly irrational for the Supreme Court to take on its shoulders the defense of the United States. It’s a violation of the Constitution.

* * * * *

Schieffer: …. Next year the Supreme Court is going to take up Obama’s healthcare proposal. What if they throw it out? Can President Obama then say I’m sorry boys, I’m just going to go ahead and implement it. Could he do that?

Gingrich: The key question is, what would the Congress then do? Because there are three branches….

Schieffer: But could he do that?

Gingrich: He could try to do that. And the Congress would then cut him off. Here’s the key — it’s always two out of three.

If the President and the Congress say the court is wrong, in the end the court would lose. If the Congress and the court say the President is wrong, in the end the President would lose.

And if the President and the court agreed, the Congress loses. The founding fathers designed the Constitution very specifically in a Montesquieu spirit of the laws to have a balance of power, not to have a dictatorship by any one of the three branches.

Schieffer: ….And a number of conservatives, including two of George Bush’s attorneys general, Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mulcasey, both said and I’m going to just quote what Mr. Mulcasey said.

….He told Fox News, he said “Mr. Gingrich’s proposal is dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off the wall, and would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle.”

Now that’s a conservative judge or a conservative attorney general. How do you respond to that?

Gingrich: I think many lawyers will find this a very frightening idea. They’ve had this run of 50 years of pretending judges are supreme, that they can’t be challenged. The lawyer class defines America.

We’ve had rulings that outlawed school prayer, we’ve had ruling that outlawed the cross, we’ve had rulings the outlawed the 10 Commandments, we’ve had a steady secular drive to radicalize this country away from all of its core beliefs.

I mean what got me into this was the 9th Circuit saying that one nation under God is unconstitutional.

* * * * *

On June 30, 1934, Hitler ordered his private army, the SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squad) to purge his other private army, the S.A., or Brown Shirts.

At least 200 men and women were murdered throughout Germany.

Some died by firing squad. Others were executed in prison. Still others were shot down in their homes.

Afterward, Hitler appeared before the German parliament, the Reichstag, to justify his actions:

“If someone asks me why we did not use the regular courts, I would reply: At that moment I was responsible for the German nation. It was I, alone, who, during those 24 hours, was the Supreme Court of Justice of the German people.”

It took a six-year war that cost the lives of 50 million men, women and children to finally oust this “Supreme Court of Justice for the German People.”

Apparently Newt Gingrich believes it’s a title well worth resurrecting–here in America.

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FASCISTS FOREVER, JUDGES NO MORE: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on May 1, 2014 at 12:08 am

Republicans have a love/hate relationship with Adolf Hitler.

On one hand, they repeatedly accuse President Barack Obama of being another Hitler. They decorate his poster with the toothbrush mustache worn by Germany’s Fuehrer. They dismiss Obama’s eloquence with: “Hitler also gave good speeches.”

Adolf Hitler

On the other hand, they run candidates whose power-lust and ruthlessness match that of Hitler or any of his henchmen.

Among these in the past have been such notorious figures as Senator Joseph “Tail Gunner Joe” McCarthy, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, President Richard M. Nixon and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

And now a figure from that past is once again planning a last, desperate grasp for absolute power in 2016: Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingrich

In a half-hour phone call with reporters on December 17, 2011, Gingrich said that, as President, he would abolish whole courts to be rid of judges whose decisions he feels are out of step with the country.

“Are we forced for a lifetime to keep someone on the bench who is so radically anti-American that they are a threat to the fabric of the country?” Gingrich asked.

“What kind of judge says you’ll go to jail if the word ‘invocation’ is used? If this isn’t a speech dictatorship, I’d like you to show me what one looks like.”

And appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Gingrich said the President could send federal law enforcement authorities to arrest judges who make controversial rulings in order to compel them to justify their decisions before congressional hearings.

When host Bob Schieffer asked how he would force federal judges to comply with congressional subpoenas, there occurred this telling exchange:

Schieffer: Let me just ask you this. You talk about enforcing it because one of things you say is if you don’t like what a court has done, the congress should subpoena the judge and bring him before congress and hold a congressional hearing.

Some people say that’s unconstitutional but I’ll let that go for a minute. I just want to ask you from a practical standpoint, how would you enforce that? Would you send the Capitol police down to arrest him?

Gingrich: If you had to or you’d instruct the Justice Department to send a U.S. Marshal. Let’s take the case of Judge Biery. I think he should be asked to explain a position that radical.

How could he say he’s going to jail the superintendent over the word benediction and invocation?

Because before…because then I would encourage impeachment. But before you move to impeachment, you’d like to know why he said it. Now clearly since the congress has the power.

Schieffer: What if he didn’t come? What if he said, no thank you, I’m not coming?

Gingrich: Well that is what happens in impeachment cases. In an impeachment case, the House studies whether or not, the House brings them in, the House subpoenas them. And as a general rule they show up.

I mean, but you’re raising the core question, are judges above the rest of the constitution? Or are judges one of the three co-equal branches?

* * * * *

The politicizing of the judiciary was one of the major hallmarks of Hitler’s Germany. Those judges who refused to hand out the types of verdicts Hitler desired were quickly removed.

They were replaced by judges like the infamous Roland Freisler, who chaired the First Senate of the People’s Court, and acted as judge, jury and prosecutor.

Roland Freisler

About 90% of all defendants appearing before him were sentenced to death or life imprisonment. The sentences had often been determined before trial.

Between 1942 and 1945, more than 5,000 death sentences were handed out. Of these, 2,600 were issued by the court’s First Senate, which Freisler headed.

Freisler was infamous for humiliating defendants. Several defendants in the July 20, 1944 bomb plot against Hitler appeared before him. One of these was Ulrich-Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld.

Schwerin, brought to court without a belt and tie, tried to preserve his dignity by holding up his pants. Freisler mocked him as a pervert for “playing” with his trousers.

When Schwerin said that he had come to oppose Hitler because of “the many murders in Germany and abroad” he was furiously interrupted by Freisler, who finally shouted him down.

On September 8, 1944, Schwerin was hanged in prison in Berlin.

On 3 February 1945, Freisler was conducting a Saturday session of the People’s Court, when American bombers attacked Berlin.   A hit on the courthouse unloosed a heavy beam that crushed his skull, instantly killing him.

Adolf Hitler laid out his plans for remaking Germany and the world in his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Newt Gingrich has openly proclaimed his own dictatorial intentions.

Hitler published Mein Kampf in 1925–eight years before he became Germany’s Fuehrer in 1933.

Five years before the 2016 election, Gingrich has given warning of his own dictatorial plans for remaking the United States in his own image.

Most Germans who detested Hitler refused to take him seriously–until it was too late.

History will judge whether Americans act more responsibly than their German counterparts.

END OF PART ONE

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GOVERNMENT AS IT REALLY WORKS: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 22, 2014 at 12:40 am

In 1972, 41 years before Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was spying on the Internet, David Halberstam issued a warning about government secrecy.

As a young reporter for the New York Times covering the early years of the Vietnam war, Halberstam had repeatedly confronted government duplicity and obstruction.

David Halberstam (on left)

Halberstam arrived in South Vietnam in 1962.  Almost at once he realized that the war was not going well for the United States Army and its supposed South Vietnamese allies.

The South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) was ill-trained and staffed with incompetent officers who sought to avoid military action.

Reports to military superiors were filled with career-boosting lies about “progress” being made against Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers.

“Screw up and move up” was the way Americans described the ARVN promotion system.

Halberstam soon learned that the phrase applied just as much to the American Army as well–for reasons of the same incompetence and duplicity.

Returning from Vietnam and resigning from the Times, Halberstam set to work on his landmark history of how the United States had become entangled in a militarily and economically unimportant country.

He would call it The Best and the Brightest, and the title would become a sarcastic reference to those men in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations whose arrogance and deceit plunged the United States into disaster.

Halberstam outlined how the culture of secrecy and unchecked power led American policymakers to play God with the lives of other nations.

Out of this grew a willingness to use covert operations.  And this meant keeping these secret from Americans generally and Congress in particular.

This ignorance allowed citizens to believe that America was a different country.  One that didn’t engage in the same brutalities and corruptions of other nations.

Thus, President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed to be the peace candidate during the 1964 election.  Meanwhile, he was secretly sending U.S. Navy ships to attack coastal cities in North Vietnam.

When North Vietnam responded militarily, Johnson feigned outrage and vowed that the United States would vigorously resist “Communist aggression.”

The history of covert operations has had its own in- and -out-of seasons:

  • During the Eisenhower Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency overthrew the governments of Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954).
  • During the Kennedy Administration, the CIA repeatedly tried to assassinate Cuba’s “Maximum Leader,” Fidel Castro.
  • During the Nixon Adminisdtration, the CIA plotted with right-wing army leaders to successfully overthrow Salvador Allende, the Leftist, legally-elected President of Chile (1973).
  • In 1975, the CIA’s history of assassination attempts became public through an expose by New York Times Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh.
  • Following nationwide outrage, President Gerald Ford signed an executive order banning the agency from assassinating foreign leaders.

After 9/11, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney decided to “take off the gloves.”

The CIA drew up an ever-expanding list of targets and used killer drones and Special Operations troops (such as SEALs and Green Berets) to hunt them down.

Predator drone firing Hellfire missile

And when these weren’t enough, the CIA called on expensive mercenaries (such as Blackwater), untrustworthy foreign Intelligence services, proxy armies and mercurial dictators.

In his 2013 book, The Way of the Knife, New York Times national security correspondent Mark Mazzetti traces the origins of this high-tech, “surgical” approach to warfare.

Within the course of a decade, the CIA has moved largely from being an intelligence-gathering agency to being a “find-and-kill” one.

And this newfound lethality came at a price: The CIA would no longer be able to provide the crucial Intelligence Presidents need to make wise decisions in a dangerous world.

While the CIA sought to become a more discreet version of the Pentagon, the Pentagon began setting up its own Intelligence network in out-of-the-way Third World outposts.

And, ready to service America’s military and Intelligence agencies at a mercenary’s prices, are a host of private security and Intelligence companies.

Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel, warns of the potential for trouble: “There is an inevitable tension as to where the contractor’s loyalties lie.  Do they lie with the flag?  Or do they lie with the bottom line?”

Mazzetti warns of the dark side of these new developments. On one hand, this high-tech approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a low-risk, low-cost alternative to huge troop commitments and quagmire occupations.

On the other hand, it’s created new enemies, fomented resentments among allies and fueled regional instability.  It has also created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability in wartime.

Finally, it’s raised new and troubling ethical questions, such as:

  • What is the moral difference between blowing apart a man at a remote distance with a drone-fired missile and shooting him in the back of the head at close range?
  • Why is the first considered a legitimate act of war–and the second considered an illegal assassination?

In time, there will be answers to many of the uncertainties this new era of push-button and hired-soldier warfare  has unleashed.  And at least some of those answers may come at a high price.

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GOVERNMENT AS IT REALLY WORKS: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 21, 2014 at 1:03 am

Millions of Americans are outraged to find that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been running a program to spy on the Internet.

National Security Agency

Created in 1952, the NSA is the largest signals-intercepting and code-cracking agency in the world, using specially designed high-speed computers to analyze literally mountains of data.

Headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, the NSA dwarfs the better-known Central Intelligence Agency in both its budget (which is classified) and number of employees (40,000).

NSA’s program–entitled PRISM–collects a wide range of data from nine Internet service providers, although the details vary by provider.

Here are the nine ISPs:

  • AOL
  • Microsoft
  • Google
  • Yahoo
  • Skype
  • Facebook
  • PalTalk
  • Apple
  • YouTube

And here is what we know (so far) they provide to the ever-probing eyes of America’s Intelligence community:

  • Email
  • Videos
  • Stored data
  • Photos
  • File transfers
  • Video conferencing
  • Notification of target activity (logins)
  • Online social networking details
  • VolP (Voice Over Internet Porocol)
  • Special requests

“Trailblazer,” NSA’s data-mining computer system

The program has been run by the NSA since 2007.  But its existence became front-page news only in early June, 2013, when a former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, leaked its capabilities to The Guardian, a British newspaper.

While millions of Americans were surprised at this massive electronic vacuuming of data, at least one man could not have been.

This was Neil Sheehan, the former New York Times reporter who, in 1971, broke the story of the Pentagon Papers.  A secret Pentagon study, it documented how the United States became entangled in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.

Its existence had been leaked by Daniel Ellsburg, a former defense analyst for the RAND corporation.

Among the Pentagon Papers’ embarrassing revelations:

  • Four Presidents–Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson–had misled the public about their intentions.
  • At least two Presidents–Kennedy and Johnson–committed increasing numbers of ground forces to Vietnam out of fear.  Not fear for the South Vietnamese but fear that they (JFK and LBJ) would be charged with being “soft on Communism” and thereby not re-elected.
  • Kennedy knew the South Vietnamese government to be thoroughly corrupt and inept, and plotted to overthrow its president, Ngo Dinh Diem, to “save” the war effort.
  • During the Presidential campaign of 1964, Johnson decided to expand the war but posed as a peacemaker.  He claimed that his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, wanted to bomb North Vietnam and send thousands of American soldieers into an unnecessary war.

A memo from the Defense Department under the Johnson Administration summed up the duplicity behind the war.  It listed the real reasons for American involvement: “To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat.”

  • 70% – To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat.
  • 20% – To keep South Vietnam and the adjacent territory from Chinese hands.
  • 10% – To permit the people of South Vietnam to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
  • ALSO – To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
  • NOT – To ‘help a friend’.

The study implicated only the administrations of Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

But then-President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, saw the release of the papers as a dangerous breach of national security.

After the New York Times began publishing the study, Nixon ordered the Justice Department to intervene.

For the first time in United States history, a federal judge legally forbade a newspaper to publish a story.

The Times frantically appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Meanwhile, the Washington Post (having gotten a second set of the documents from Ellsburg) rushed its own version of the story into print.

On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court ruled, 6–3, that the government had failed to meet the burden of proof required for prior restraint of press freedom.

For Sheehan, reading the Papers was an eye-opener, a descent into a world he had never imagined possible.

As David Halberstam wrote in The Best and the Brightest, his best-selling 1972 account of how arrogance and deceit led the United States into disaster in Vietnam:

Sheehan came away with the overwhelming impression: that the government of the United States was not what he had thought it was.

Sheehan felt that he had discovered an inner U.S. government, highly centralized, and far more powerful than anything else.  And its enemy wass not simply the Communists but everything else–its own press, judiciary, Congress, foreign and friendly governments.

It had survived and perpetuated itself, often by using the issue of anti-Communism as a weapon against the other branches of government and the press.  And it served its own ends, rather than the good of the Republic.

This inner government used secrecy to protect itself–not from foreign governments but to keep its own citizens ignorant of its crimes and incompetence.

Each succeeding President was careful to not expose the faults of his predecessor.

Essentially the same people were running the government, wrote Halberstam, and so each new administration   faced virtually the same enemies.