Glenn Greenwald, constitutional Law scholar, concerned US citizens are losing their civil liberties in the name of the supposed 'War on Terror'

Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional Law scholar an civil rights litigator, recently published an article in the online magazine, Salon, regarding the radical erosion of civil liberties for US citizens.

His May 13th, 2010 article is as follows:

"A primary reason Bush and Cheney succeeded in their radical erosion of core liberties is because they focused their assault on non-citizens with foreign-sounding names, casting the appearance that none of what they were doing would ever affect the average American. There were several exceptions to that tactic -- the due-process-free imprisonment of Americans Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, the abuse of the "material witness" statute to detain American Muslims, the eavesdropping on Americans' communications without warrants -- but the vast bulk of the abuses were aimed at non-citizens. That is now clearly changing.

The most recent liberty-abridging, Terrorism-justified controversies have focused on diluting the legal rights of American citizens (in part because the rights of non-citizens are largely gone already and there are none left to attack). A bipartisan group from Congress sponsors legislation to strip Americans of their citizenship based on Terrorism accusations. Barack Obama claims the right to assassinate Americans far from any battlefield and with no due process of any kind. The Obama administration begins covertly abandoning long-standing Miranda protections for American suspects by vastly expanding what had long been a very narrow "public safety" exception, and now Eric Holder explicitly advocates legislation to codify that erosion. John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduce legislation to bar all Terrorism suspects, including Americans arrested on U.S. soil, from being tried in civilian courts, and former Bush officials Bill Burck and Dana Perino -- while noting (correctly) that Holder's Miranda proposal constitutes a concession to the right-wing claim that Miranda is too restrictive -- today demand that U.S. citizens accused of Terrorism and arrested on U.S. soil be treated as enemy combatants and thus denied even the most basic legal protections (including the right to be charged and have access to a lawyer).

This shift in focus from non-citizens to citizens is as glaring as it is dangerous. As Digby put it last week:

The frighting reality is that not even Dick Cheney thought of stripping Americans of their citizenship so that you could torture and imprison them forever --- even right after 9/11 when the whole country was petrified and he could have gotten away with anything. You'll recall even John Walker Lindh, who was literally captured on the battlefield fighting with the Taliban, was tried in civilian court. They even read him his rights.

I think this says something fairly alarming about the current state of our politics. There is, of course, no moral difference between subjecting citizens and non-citizens to abusive or tyrannical treatment. But as a practical matter, the dangers intensify when the denial of rights is aimed at a government's own population. The ultimate check on any government is its own citizenry; vesting political leaders with oppressive domestic authority uniquely empowers them to avoid accountability and deter dissent. It's one thing for a government to spy on other countries (as virtually every nation does); it's another thing entirely for them to direct its surveillance apparatus inward and spy on its own citizens. Alarming assaults on basic rights become all the more alarming when the focus shifts to the domestic arena. 

It is not hyperbole to observe that all of the above-cited recent examples are designed to formally exempt a certain class of American citizens -- those accused of being Terrorists and arrested on U.S. soil -- from the most basic legal protections. They're all intended, in the name of Scary Terrorists, to re-write the core rules of our justice system in order to increase the already-vast detention powers of the U.S. Government and further minimize the remaining safeguards against abuse. The most disgraceful episodes in American history have been about exempting classes of Americans from core rights, and that is exactly what these recent, Terrorism-justified proposals do as well. Anyone who believes that these sorts of abusive powers will be exercised only in narrow and magnanimous ways should just read a little bit of history, or just look at what has happened with the always-expanding police powers vested in the name of the never-ending War on Drugs, the precursor to the never-ending War on Terrorism in so many ways.

What's most amazing about all of this is that even 9 years after the 9/11 attacks and even after the radical reduction of basic rights during the Bush/Cheney years, the reaction is still exactly the same to every Terrorist attack, whether a success or failure, large- or small-scale. Apparently, 8 years of the Bush assault on basic liberties was insufficient; there are still many remaining rights in need of severe abridgment. Even now, every new attempted attack causes the Government to devise a new proposal for increasing its own powers still further and reducing rights even more, while the media cheer it on. It never goes in the other direction. Apparently, as "extremist" as the Bush administration was, there are still new rights to erode each time the word Terrorism is uttered. 


Each new incident, no matter how minor, prompts new, exotic proposals which the "Constitution-shredding" Bush/Cheney team neglected to pursue: an assassination program aimed at U.S. citizens, formal codification of Miranda dilutions, citizen-stripping laws, a statute to deny all legal rights to Americans arrested on U.S. soil."

Rep. Bachmann (R-MN) equates the financial reform bill being debated in Congress to Mussolini’s Fascist Italy

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann equated the financial reform bill that is being debated in Congress to Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, when speaking at a Tuesday night online event with a Tea Bagger political action committee.

“Let’s remember really what this is. This has a lot in common with Italy in the 1930s and the way Italy dealt with economics,” she said. “It still continues private ownership of business but government is in control.”

Bachmann continued, “So government control of the private business, while its private ownership, that’s still at the end of the day the federal government virtually having a say over private business. We lose freedoms; we lose economic competitiveness.”

“And don’t forget,” she added, “Italy is in tough shape financially, and that’s not what we want for the United States.”

President Barack Obama is trying to use financial reform to centralize American industry under the thumb of the federal government, she added, similar to moves made by Mussolini.

“It’s a very deliberate move by this administration to centralize power and have the government own or control the means of production,” said Bachmann.

Italy was ruled by the Fascists under Benito Mussolini in the 1930s. Today, the country has the seventh largest economy in the world, according to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In testimony before congress oil executives blame 'everyone but themselves' for the Gulf oil disaster

Who's to blame for the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico? According to the executives of the companies involved, it's the other guy. A cable show guest host calls it "The Shaggy Defense."

Hayes, the Washington, D.C. Editor of The Nation, guest hosted "The Rachel Maddow Show" on Tuesday and lambasted BP, Halliburton and Transocean executives for blaming everyone but themselves during testimony before Congress about the continuing oil spill.

Hayes explained that the "The Shaggy Defense" is based on the 2000 song "It Wasn't Me" by reggae singer Shaggy. The song, about a man caught cheating by his lover, repeats "it wasn't me" over and over in its chorus.

Hayes says that's kind of like the oil executives blaming their corporate partners for the spill, like Bush explaining his administration's role on the WMD-Iraq War excuse, and like federal and local officials who made excuses for their botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

Republicans criticize Supreme Court nominee Kagan, because she's never been a judge, had no problem with other nominees without judicial experience.

As they prepare for a Supreme Court confirmation fight, Republicans are criticizing President Barack Obama's nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, because she's never been a judge.

When then-President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court in 2005, many Republicans said they found it refreshing that Miers' experience amounted primarily to her time as a corporate lawyer and Bush aide.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn noted then that "40 percent of the men and women who have served as Supreme Court justices" had no judicial experience.

"One reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers' qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court," Cornyn said in 2005. "Because right now you have people who've been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives or academicians."

Now, with a Democrat in the White House, what Cornyn once considered refreshing in a high court nominee is in Kagan's case "surprising."

"Ms. Kagan is ... a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience," Cornyn said Monday. "Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice."

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, likewise found Miers' qualifications suitable five years ago: "It is not necessary that she have previous experience as a judge in order to serve on the Supreme Court," Sessions said. "It's perfectly acceptable to nominate outstanding lawyers to that position."

But on Monday, Sessions was seeing things differently. Kagan, he said, "warrants great scrutiny" because of her lack of time as a judge. "Ms. Kagan's lack of judicial experience and short time as solicitor general ... is troubling," he said.

And the list goes on. Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas thought Miers was a "wonderful choice" in 2005, but today she "has some concerns over Elena Kagan's lack of judicial experience."

Another Republican, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, likewise didn't see Miers' lack of time on the bench as a holdup. On Monday, he said the same factor is a cause for further scrutiny of Kagan.

Miers is only the most recent example of GOP vacillation on whether judicial experience is important for a Supreme Court justice.

The last Supreme Court nominee to serve without judicial experience was the  late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was on the court from 1972 to 2005, and is still idolized by Republicans.

Moody's stock tanks after revealing SEC is investigating their ratings practices and contributions to the 2008 market collapse

Last Friday Moody's  Investors Service, a financial ratings company, revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that federal investigators called its procedures for quantifying some debt ratings "false and misleading...in light of the company's finding that a rating committee policy had been violated." The SEC plans an administrative review.

The company's own investigation found errors in the way it rated complex European debt products in 2007 called constant-proportion debt obligations.

Moody's says it disagrees with the SEC's findings and has filed a response to the inquiry.

Critics say that Moody's and other ratings agencies failed to adequately review mortgages that were packaged and sold on Wall Street before the economic crises spread globally.

The ratings that were ultimately assigned proved too generous, considering the state of the market. To make matters worse, the agencies were much too slow in downgrading housing bonds, overlooking signs of excess that almost everyone else in the industry recognized.

The conflict of the industry is that if the ratings companies prevent the creation of a high percentage of highly rated financial instruments, these mortgage securities deals won’t sell. The ratings agencies’ customers—the investment banks—will be unhappy, and the ratings agencies’ bottom lines will suffer.

“Bankers get paid a lot of money. The ratings-agency people get pushed,” says a hedge fund manager who is betting that the securitization market will continue to sour. The agencies “never stopped to question” this, he says, “because they had zero economic risk.” 


A panel investigating the roots of the financial crisis used its subpoena power for the first time last month to obtain documents from Moody's Corp.


The chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission said Moody's refused to provide the documents voluntarily.

Moody's stock fell sharply Monday following Friday’s news that the ratings company is being investigated by the SEC.

                                 

Republican Congresswoman rails against wasteful government spending in mailer paid for by taxpayers; voted against stimulus but took credit for projects funded by it.

Republican Congresswoman Mary Fallin recently mailed a campaign like literature piece to her constituents in Oklahoma complaining of wasteful government spending. What is surprising is the literature piece was paid for with taxpayer funds.

The mailer, which declares that the congresswoman wants to "reduce the tax burden on all Americans," Rep. Fallin hypes her conservative credits by noting she voted against the "government regulation of health care," the Stimulus, the cap and trade measures, and the president's entire 2010 budget.

Spending taxpayer dollars on campaign materials is illegal, yet congressional Republicans think they found a loophole, simply by calling it something different.

Rep. Fallin's mailer fails to mention her support of millions in taxpayer dollars for local parks in her district, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates could cost $ 1 million to $3 million annually.

Just like her vote against the Stimulus, then later taking credit for the projects in Oklahoma; Fallin is trying to have it both ways. She wants her voters to think she is cutting spending, while at the same time wants their taxpayer dollars spent so she can take credit at local photo-ops.