A friend from Denmark forwarded an op-ed piece from the Washington Post. It was by the owner of a small internet company who had received a Justice Department "national security letter" ordering the man to provide information about a client.
It was accompanied by a gag order. The FBI has since abandoned the request for information, saying it does not need it, but continues to enforce the gag order against the company's owner.
As a news man, I have a knee-jerk opposition to government efforts to silence people or hide information. And as the owner of a small internet news service, I can relate to the author's position.
As he wrote anonymously for the Post, it is the imposition of silence that is pernicious.
He said he wanted to contact his representative in Congress when the re-authorization of the Patriot Act came up, for example, but could not because it would violate the gag order. He must lie to friends. He has been conscripted as a "secret government informer."
The FBI has issued 140,000 such letters -- according to a report by the inspector general of the Justice Department -- letters that are issued without judicial oversight and without a showing of need.
From outside of the political cauldron of the U.S., much of the world sees our nation as having abandoned many of the principles and liberties that made us great. But it is not a particular law that has achieved that degradation, it is the long-term, organized effort by the administration to politicize a professional justice department and a professional military.
Another friend from Denmark was visiting recently and we were talking about the military trials at Guantanamo and I said that our judiciary would, in the long run, never allow kangaroo courts in the American system.
The revolt has been slow and has come in bits and pieces, from the investigation of the political firing of U.S. attorneys to lower court rulings on procedural defects in the military tribunals to statements from prosecutors within the system condemning is methods.
Last week, after the ACLU filed a suit in the Northern District of California over a national security letter directed at the Internet Archive, the government agreed to withdraw the letter and also the gag provision.
In a more far-reaching decision, also last week, a military judge disqualified a Pentagon official from further participation in the "convening authority," which oversees the prosecutors and has much greater power over military judges than a civilian justice department would have over state or federal judges.
The judge accepted the criticism from the former Guantanamo chief prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, who complained of interference from on high by Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann who would instruct prosecutors to try certain cases because they were "sexy" or "would capture the imagination of the American public."
As the military judge put it appropriately, such considerations "suggest that factors other than those pertaining to the merits of the case were at play."
But what was lurking underneath that overt politicization of prosecutorial discretion was the former prosecutor's objection to the evidence that was being used, evidence obtained through coercive methods such as waterboarding.
Hartmann overruled Davis and instructed that such evidence be used.
It reminded me of the darkest parts of justice in America when heavy-set white sheriffs in the South would "grind the toes" of black suspects to extract confessions. Such evidence was notoriously unreliable and led to false convictions.
It seems to me, from a distance not so far removed as Denmark, that with every day that the Bush administration walks deeper into lame duck territory, the warp those folks have put on two proud groups -- prosecutors and military officers -- is coming undone.
It could not happen to a more deserving administration, one whose baneful influence cannot recede quickly enough and one whose overriding incompetence will live long in the memory.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008Last Update:
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BALTIMORE (CN) - StemCells Inc., of Palo Alto, has publicly, and illegitimately, threatened to sue for patent infringement each and every company engaged in neural stem-cell research with therapeutic applications, regardless of how they obtain the cells, claims Neuralstem Inc., a Rockville, Md., company that has been engaged in such research since 1996.
HOUSTON (CN) - Countrywide Financial fired a regional vice president because he refused to condone its illegal acts, including inflating appraisals of homes built by Countrywide's business partner KB Homes, falsifying documents for borrowers who should not have qualified for loans, and approving 10 percent of backlogged loan applications daily so KB Homes could begin construction, Mark Zachary claims in Federal Court.
CLAYTON, Mo. (CN) - A St. Louis County jury awarded $18 million to a man paralyzed in a car accident and another $3 million to his wife, his primary caregiver since the accident. SAN DIEGO (CN) - A 66-year-old woman pleaded guilty to defrauding 68 people of $2 million by promising up to 90% monthly returns in her Crystal Rose and Sterling Rose Capitalization Programs, federal prosecutors said. FORT LAUDERDALE (CN) - Three doctors netted $500,000 from inside trading, after one of them, a member of the board of IVAX Corp., tipped his brother and a friend that the company might be acquired, the SEC claims in Federal Court. ATTORNEYS - The appellate division allowed Lawrence A. Porcari Jr. to pursue his defamation action against The Journal News Westchester, which incorrectly stated that he had been sanctioned for frivolous conduct and failure to comply with court orders. The statements are reasonably susceptible of a defamatory meaning, as they accuse Porcari of much more than a mere mistake or lapse in judgment, the court ruled. SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The 9th Circuit found that Williston Basin Interstate Pipeline Co. needed authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to condemn two wells that caused the natural gas company to lose gas from its own subterranean storage facility. |
ATLANTA (CN) - The 11th Circuit lifted a ban on limestone mining in the Lake Belt wetlands of Miami-Dade County, explaining that the federal judge who imposed the ban had improperly focused on substantive issues rather than determining whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers complied with the National Environmental Policy Act. LOS ANGELES (CN) - A California appeals court largely upheld a jury's limited damage award of about $400,000 to Gary K. Wolf, author of the novel "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?," but remanded RICHMOND, Va. (CN) - The widow of a man killed by a landfill explosion cannot sue the landfill operators for allegedly causing her husband's death by paying off former litigants in exchange for their promise to keep quiet about the dump's environmental and safety concerns, the 4th Circuit ruled. WASHINGTON (CN) - A panel of judges in the D.C. Circuit unanimously upheld a California Supreme Court ruling that a privately owned shopping mall cannot stop protestors from urging shoppers to boycott stores in the mall. SACRAMENTO (CN) - California appellate justices determined that the family of a man killed by a driver under the influence of prescription drugs cannot sue the California Highway Patrol for failing to impound the driver's car after they caught him drugged up and driving on a suspended license just hours before the fatal collision. WASHINGTON (CN) - Finding that too many U.S. Supreme Court justices have financial conflicts of interest, the Supreme Court today refused to intervene in an appeal by 33 companies trying to stop lawsuits accusing them of doing business with the South African government during the apartheid era. WASHINGTON (CN) - An appeal for Veterans Administration benefits triggers the VA's duty to "provide a claimant with notice of the information and evidence necessary to substantiate a claim and to assist a claimant in obtaining the evidence necessary to substantiate the claim" in two instances. WASHINGTON (CN) - The Drug Enforcement Administration requests public comment on classifying over-the-counter steroids boldione, desoxymethyltestosterone, and 19-nor-4,9(10)-androstadienedione as schedule III anabolic steroids. |
Seventeen scallop fishermen sued Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and the National Marine Fisheries Service in Trenton Federal Court, claiming enforcement of the Magnuson-Stevens Act's Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan, planned for July 1, will put scallop fishermen out of business. An elderly couple accuse a slew of defendants of elder abuse and fraud in an equity stripping scheme. Brian W. White, Matthew D. Copley and attorney Marvin Errickson are accused of leading the scam through Senior American Funding, in San Diego Superior Court. Newman McIntosh & Hennessey LLP sued President Bush and Acumen Legal Services in DC Federal Court, seeking declaratory judgment whether electronic transmission of data from the United States to Acumen India, which provides litigation support services, waives Fourth Amendment protection with respect to the data that is electronically transferred. The Village of Richton Park forced a policewoman to attend roll calls where pornographic movies were shown, forced her to change clothes with men, and retaliated for her complaints about this harassment, Patricia Loparco claims in Chicago Federal Court. Zurn Pex brass plumbing fittings fail prematurely, causing water damage, and Zurn Industries refuses to honor its warranties, a class action claims in Missoula, Mont., Federal Court. District of Columbia police officers broke in and ransacked the historic home of civil rights pioneer Mary McLeon Bethune for more than an hour, on a defective warrant, the resident of the house claims in DC Federal Court. Marla Mendoza dba Mendoza Construction, of Fairfield, cheats homebuyers, the State of California claims in Solano County Court. Eurocopter claims Bell Helicopter Textron Canada swiped its patented helicopter designs, in Montreal Federal Court. OTC International, a jewelry importer, distributor and manufacturer, filed for bankruptcy in Manhattan, listing $16.4 million in assets and $74 million in liabilities. |
NEWARK (CN) - Metropolitan Life Insurance defrauds customers by secretly applying smokers' rates to children who don't smoke, claiming that they will become smokers by the time they are adults, a class action claims in Middlesex County Court. 
CHICAGO (CN) - Serta International responded to an increase in warranty claims for sagging mattresses by imposing an "inspection fee" to "investigate" the complaints, and enforcing vague exclusions for mattresses that have "a stain" or are "unsanitary," a class action claims in Federal Court. 
PROVIDENCE (CN) - A transplant recipient died of a virus he contracted from the donor, who got it from her pet hamster, the recipient's widow claims in Superior Court. Three other, similar claims have been filed, at least one of them alleging the organ recipient died from the hamster's virus. 
MANHATTAN (CN) - Gokhan Mutlu demands $2 million from Jetblue Airways, claiming a pilot made him sit on the john for most of a cross-country flight because a flight attendant wanted his seat. 
LOS ANGELES (CN) - A college student says a Los Angeles video production company tricked him into participating in a pornographic video by secretly filming him at a party. 
