STOP ABUSING OUR MARINES!

We realize that when it comes to freedom of the press, the USA has fallen to Number 53 in the world — tied with our fascist homies in Croatia and the islanders of the Kingdom of Tonga! — but do we have to make is so damned obvious?

Another Marine stationed in Iraq has sent us a screenshot of what happens when you need some hot news on Macaca and Foley:

forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com) is categorized as (Personal Pages) ALL SITES YOU VISIT ARE LOGGED AND FILED.

Nice little threat at the end, too. Asswipes.

Notice the other browser tabs. Two actual “personal pages” that rah-rah for Bush (What’s her name, the wannabe Coulter, and Hugh Hewitt) show up just fine, as our Marine Operative confirms. But “Talking Points Memo,” which is apparently one of the “left leaning” sites one hears so much about these days, is prohibited.

Writes the Corporal: “I think that this kind of censoring is a big deal. I can understand blocking porn, music and movies, and blatantly illegal sites, but blocking sites that some higher up just doesn’t agree with is disgusting. They are blocking a huge portion of voters from information that will help them determine which side to vote for. Because of this, the only news we get is from the big corporations or conservative based sites.”

EARLIER: BREAKING … U.S. MILITARY IN IRAQ MAYBE BLOCKS WONKETTE

Pa. Man's Letter Brings Secret Service

BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- An elderly man who wrote in a letter to the editor about Saddam Hussein's execution that "they hanged the wrong man" got a visit from Secret Service agents concerned he was threatening President Bush.

The letter by Dan Tilli, 81, was published in Monday's edition of The Express-Times of Easton, Pa. It ended with the line, "I still believe they hanged the wrong man."

Tilli said the statement was not a threat. "I didn't say who _ I could've meant (Osama) bin Laden," he said Friday.

Two Secret Service agents questioned Tilli at his Bethlehem apartment Thursday, briefly searching the place and taking pictures of him, he said.

The Secret Service confirmed the encounter. Bob Slama, special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Philadelphia office, said it was the agency's duty to investigate.

The agents almost immediately decided Tilli was not a threat, Slama said

"We have no further interest in Dan," he said.

Tilli said the agents appeared more relaxed when he dug out a scrapbook containing more than 200 letters that he has written over the years, almost all on political topics.

"He said, 'Keep writing, but just don't make no threats,'" Tilli said of one of the agents.

It wasn't Tilli's first run-in with the federal government over his letter writing. Two FBI agents from Allentown showed up at his home last year about a letter he wrote advocating a civil war to unseat Bush, he said.

Source: Washington Post

The Goal Is Freedom: "Congressional Generosity" and the Power to Tax

January 19, 2007

by Sheldon Richman

Every now and then we get a glimpse into what government officials really think about our rights to life, liberty, and property. The U.S. Justice Department recently provided such a glimpse in a controversial tax case, Murphy v. IRS.

How revealing it is! Did you know that if the government abstains from taxing all your income, you should be grateful for this "congressional generosity"?

To recap the case, Marrita Murphy was awarded $70,000 in compensatory damages for the mental distress and loss of reputation she claimed to have suffered after she acted as a whistleblower against her employer, the New York Air National Guard. She paid about $20,000 in federal income taxes on that money, but later asked for a refund on grounds that the damage award should have been excluded from her gross income under §104(a)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26 of the U.S. Code), which states:

gross income does not include --

. . . (2) the amount of any damages (other than punitive damages) received (whether by suit or agreement and whether as lump sums or as periodic payments) on account of personal physical injuries or physical sickness . . . .

The IRS rejected the request for a refund because her injuries were nonphysical and the section specifies "physical injuries." When she sued in federal district court she lost.

Murphy appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She argued that the compensation was covered by §104(a)(2) but if not, then the section is unconstitutional because it would permit the taxation of money that is not included in the constitutional and statutory meaning of "income."

The government rebutted that Murphy's injuries were nonphysical -- and hence not included in §104(a)(2) -- and that IRS policy was consistent with the concept of "income" as used since the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913.

In August a three-judge panel stunned the government by ruling in Murphy's favor that §104(a)(2) is unconstitutional: "[T]he framers of the Sixteenth Amendment would not have understood compensation for a personal injury -- including a nonphysical injury -- to be income." (The opinion is here [pdf]. Point of historical fact: the Amendment did not delegate to the government the power to tax wages and other income. According to the courts, it always had that power. See "Is the Income Tax Unconstitutional?")

Before anyone could recover from the shock of having part of the tax code declared unconstitutional, the judges shook the tax world again. In October the Bush administration's Department of Justice petitioned to have the case heard by the circuit court's entire complement of judges (en banc). However, before the court could rule on the petition, the original three judges announced they would rehear the case themselves. Tax watchers couldn't remember when this kind of thing last happened and speculated that the panel realized it had erred and wanted to reverse itself rather than be reversed.

The case will be reheard in April. The glimpse into the Justice Department's thinking is provided by its 19-page petition (pdf) for rehearing, which details its grounds for believing the court wrongly decided the case. The petition is revealing and chilling.


read more . . .

Tax the Rich, End the War

By Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation
Posted on January 12, 2007, Printed on January 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46521/

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," cries George W. Bush, the downmarket, twangy version of Shakespeare's Henry V. But that king, on stage and off, was a war leader who actually fought in the battles he asked other men to die in. Regardless, the President is moving to commit more of our soldiers and more of our money to try one more time to win the war in Iraq.

This latest "surge" against the unseen enemy, the umpteenth of its kind, is to be called A New Way Forward. New Way Forward is not to be confused with the February 2006 Operation Together Forward.

It demands some concentration to keep straight the names of our various operations, strikes, offensives, surges and initiatives in Iraq. Among others, we have had over the long weary years Operation Southern Focus, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Ivy Needle, Operation Longstreet, Operation Chamberlain (what was that about?), Operation Sweeney (who was Sweeney?), Operation OK Corral, Operation Eagle Curtain, Operation All American Tiger, Operation Ivy Cyclone, Operation Boothill, Operation Bulldog Mammoth, Operation Panther Squeeze, Operation Red Dawn, Operation Arrowhead Blizzard, Operation Rifles Fury, Operation Rock Slide, Operation Tomahawk, Operation Rocket Man, Operation Rocketman III (no record of a Rocketman II), Operation Warhorse Whirlwind, Operation Centaur Rodeo, Operation Lancer Lightning, Operation Wolfpack Crunch, Operation Rapier Thrust, Operation Spring Clean Up, Operation Phantom Fury, Operation Steel Curtain, Operation Swarmer and Operation Giuliani.

There has been more than one "sweep" operation, as in Operation Tiger Clean Sweep, Operation Industrial Sweep, Operation Market Sweep, Operation Rifle Sweep and Operation Ripper Sweep. Also favored have been the "iron" operations, as in Operation Iron Hammer, Operation Iron Promise, Operation Iron Grip, Operation Iron Force, Operation Iron Resolve, Operation Iron Saber, Operation Iron Bullet and Operation Iron Justice.

Why there should be an Operation Giuliani but not one named after other noncombatant, civilian heroes is a puzzle. Perhaps with the new, contemplated "surge" there may be an Operation Iron Rumsfeld, Operation Rifle Rice or an Operation Cheney Sweep.

The President has not been talking about how Operation New Way Forward is to be paid for. Some of it will be paid for in our young people's lives, of course, but as for the money... Congress is to appropriate it, the Treasury Department is to borrow it from China and Mr. Bush will spend it.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic hero of the hour, says that she will resist sending more troops to Iraq. But, though the new House Speaker has a lot going for her, she will not be able to block this escalation of the war effort. There are not enough votes in Congress for something so drastic.

For the same reason, yet more drastic measures are yet more out of reach, so those who, like Cindy Sheehan, hope that the much-spoken-of power of the purse will be used to force the President to end the war are going to be disappointed. The Democrats, scared that the Republicans will attack them as national-defense weenies, twinkies and cupcakes, will make sure nobody can say they failed to support the troops by failing to send more troops.

In this case the power of the purse turns out to be useless. Or does it? Another, indirect way is there for the taking. It is a way that shelters the Democrats from being called soft on the war on terror, closet pacifists and defeatists.

The Democrats can tax our way out of the war. This would be a Victory Over Terror tax to be levied on incomes of $5 million a year or more. It should be a surcharge of 20 percent over and above what people in that rarified income bracket are already paying. It should be levied on all income, regardless of what form it takes, so it would include stock options, jet plane rides, company-paid-for health and life insurance, retirement programs, golden parachutes, the use of apartments in Paris, cars and drivers.

The people in this stratospheric income category have enjoyed the big tax cuts that have gone into effect while the nation has been attacked and been at war. Individuals making $1.25 million a year have gotten tax cuts of almost 20 percent, but many of these would be spared paying the Victory Over Terror tax, which only cuts in at the $5 million level.

Needless to say, those paying this tax do not represent the Democrats' voter base. As these things go, this is politically pain-free. The tax is aimed at war profiteers, overpaid CEOs and grossly fat cats in general, most of whom carry a lot of weight at the White House. If there is any group of people in the world whom George Bush listens to, it is this bunch of billionaires. Call this a backdoor use of the power of the purse. And since the surcharge expires when the war on terror is won or declared over, those taxed will have a powerful incentive to tell the President it is time to get a move on.

Source

Official Attacks Top Law Firms Over Detainees
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.

“This is prejudicial to the administration of justice,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University and an authority on legal ethics. “It’s possible that lawyers willing to undertake what has been long viewed as an admirable chore will decline to do so for fear of antagonizing important clients.

“We have a senior government official suggesting that representing these people somehow compromises American interests, and he even names the firms, giving a target to corporate America.”

Mr. Stimson made his remarks in an interview on Thursday with Federal News Radio, a local Washington-based station that is aimed at an audience of government employees.

The same point appeared Friday on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, where Robert L. Pollock, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, cited the list of law firms and quoted an unnamed “senior U.S. official” as saying, “Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.”

In his radio interview, Mr. Stimson said: “I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?’ and you know what, it’s shocking.” The F.O.I.A. reference was to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Monica Crowley, a conservative syndicated talk show host, asking for the names of all the lawyers and law firms representing Guantánamo detainees in federal court cases.

Mr. Stimson, who is himself a lawyer, then went on to name more than a dozen of the firms listed on the 14-page report provided to Ms. Crowley, describing them as “the major law firms in this country.” He said, “I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”

Karen J. Mathis, a Denver lawyer who is president of the American Bar Association, said: “Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.”

In an interview on Friday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said he had no problem with the current system of representation. “Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases,” he said.

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon had any official comment, but officials sought to distance themselves from Mr. Stimson’s view. His comments “do not represent the views of the Defense Department or the thinking of its leadership,” a senior Pentagon official said. He would not allow his name to be used, seemingly to lessen the force of his rebuke. Mr. Stimson did not return a call on Friday seeking comment.

The role of major law firms agreeing to take on the cases of Guantánamo prisoners challenging their detentions in federal courts has hardly been a secret and has been the subject of many news articles that have generally cast their efforts in a favorable light. Michael Ratner, who heads the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based human rights group that is coordinating the legal representation for the Guantánamo detainees, said about 500 lawyers from about 120 law firms had volunteered their services to represent Guantánamo prisoners.

When asked in the radio interview who was paying for the legal representation, Mr. Stimson replied: “It’s not clear, is it? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.”

Lawyers expressed outrage at that, asserting that they are not being paid and that Mr. Stimson had tried to suggest they were by innuendo. Of the approximately 500 lawyers coordinated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, no one is being paid, Mr. Ratner said. One Washington law firm, Shearman & Sterling, which has represented Kuwaiti detainees, has received money from the families of the prisoners, but Thomas Wilner, a lawyer there, said they had donated all of it to charities related to the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Mr. Ratner said that there were two other defense lawyers not under his group’s umbrella and that he did not know whether they were paid.

Christopher Moore, a lawyer at the New York firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton who represented an Uzbeki detainee who has since been released, said: “We believe in the concept of justice and that every person is entitled to counsel. Any suggestion that our representation was anything other than a pro bono basis is untrue and unprofessional.” Mr. Moore said he had made four trips to Guantánamo and one to Albania at the firm’s expense, to see his client freed.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wrote to President Bush on Friday asking him to disavow Mr. Stimson’s remarks.

Mr. Stimson, who was a Navy lawyer, graduated from George Mason University Law School. In a 2006 interview with the magazine of Kenyon College, his alma mater, Mr. Stimson said that he was learning “to choose my words carefully because I am a public figure on a very, very controversial topic.”

Source: NYTimes

Six Years After Florida, Where Are We?
Warning! Adult Content, Shocking Material

Michael Collins
“Scoop” Independent News

Washington, DC Understanding Florida 2000 is central to understanding where we stand today as a nation. Al Gore’s clear victory in the popular vote was obscured immediately by the last minute drama of the Florida vote count. The extended melodramatics of the post election period further confused and confounded the fundamental problems with that election.

The birth of a lie. The last shall be first by media acclamation and judicial ratification.

Rather than focus on the at least 50 thousand plus black Floridians who were summarily removed from state registration rolls due to a faulty felon purge computer program (citizens who had every right to vote), we had to endure the endless discussion of a few hundred flawed ballot in a retirement community.

Instead of focusing on the over 20,000 invalidated presidential ballots in Duval County, which came almost exclusively from Democratic precincts, and the tens of thousands more mostly minority ballots that were arbitrarily tossed out by so-called election judges, we had to endure a dyspeptic Judge from Leon County who told the lawyers he had plenty of time when he knew time was of the essence.

And when the votes were finally being recounted in Miami Dade, instead of focusing on a preppy riot by Republican Congressional staffers flown in just for that event; a riot that ended the vote count, we were diverted to minutiae. Even though knowing their identity would have been a huge story, no one bothered to tell us who these scary folks were.

Click for big version
Washington DC based Republican Congressional staffer show up at Miami Dade County Board of Elections and stage the preppy riot that lead the board of elections to suspend its Presidential vote recount. These Republican operatives helped change history.

What was the grand plan to prevent any more elections like Florida 2000? Lets all vote on computerized voting machines, really complicated machines. Everybody knows you can’t cheat with a computer. We’ll even spend billions to buy states and counties voting machines from vendors with strong Republican ties. And even better, we’ll set up an Election Assistance Commission that focuses almost exclusively on voting technology while totally ignoring race and class bias plus political dirty tricks, the real problems with Florida 2000…a bipartisan effort.

The Sorry Record of Questionable Elections

When a solution fails to match the problem in question, the problem persists. In 2002, Max Cleland and Barnes went from substantial pre-election leads to substantial post election deficits (last minute swings between 9% and 16%). Quite a surprise: two reversals like that in the same state, on the same day, from the same party, and both very well liked public officials. The other surprise is that five thousand voting machines in densely populated, Democratic Counties were secretly modified just before the election. According to whistleblower Chris Hood, this was done the orders of the president of the voting machine company, Diebold, Inc., who told the contractor making the changes to make the change without notifying the county authorities.

Shouldn’t this have been a clue? Apparently it wasn’t. We rolled into 2004 with few lessons learned. The Kerry campaign placed thousands of lawyers in place around the country to spot election fraud. The most substantive result of the effort was the production of this empirical study of a major county in Washington State by attorney Paul Lehto, one of the Kerry poll watching lawyers. There was no challenge. Of course, the Libertarians and Greens were more than willing to cry foul and note the emperor had no clothes in Ohio, to their great credit.

The 2004 election produced a major anomaly, one that will not go away. The truth emerged about how the candidates had been tracked by the National Exit Polls. These showed a Kerry victory. They were not for on air use but ended up being broad case anyway. The mathematical odds are overwhelmingly in favor of a Kerry win. Nobody bothered to tell the American people. The topic has never been seriously discussed by the mainstream media. It’s all there in black and white. There’s even a free Excel interactive program that allows you to enter your own assumptions to force a Bush win. It’s very difficult

2000, 2002, 2004…still asleep at the switch.

The persistent set of machine mal functions from 2000 forward developed as a theme – surprise or last minute victories by Republicans amidst questions about undervotes, over votes, machine problems, long lines, confusing voting instructions, etc, etc. The machine manufacturers and elections officials who enable them offer sanctimonious explanations which usually blamed voters.

Human error is their theme. By the way, this is the same set of lies told by the apologists for spoiled ballots, which were almost always in predominantly minority precincts. Back then it was a thinly veiled racist meme – the uneducated voter just didn’t know how to mark a ballot. This was a lie and the vile assertion was dismissed once and for all in a moment of scholarly brilliance. Now we’re back to the not so swift old voter in the case of the latest excuse for 18,000 ballots for Congress lost in the race for the seat vacated by Bush Secretary of State Kathleen Harris.

Georgia 2002 was the warning shot that Florida 2000 was no coincidence. The loss of a victory for a second time in 2004 was the outcome of a failure to heed that warnings. Subsequent unbelievable results like the Ohio Special Measures election with a 20-40% reversal of reliable pre-election polls, and the lost of one in seven votes in Sarasota County, the strong hold for the losing candidate, are the world as will know it in elections to come as long as those in power fail to recognize that machine foul ups are just an updated version spoiled ballots. They have a consistent outcome. Democrats lose.

The Prospects for Real Reform the New Congress

Plan A: Home grown. Action on elections is a hot item in this Congress. At the opening, Representative Rush Holt, Dem, NJ stood to raise a point of order that will allow hearings on the Florida 13th race, a bold move at this point. The legislative remedies don’t match this boldness: tinkering around the edges with no one willing to say the “F” word – FRAUD. Meaningful reform is not readily apparent in any current form. The hope is that the Jennings Election Contest, a very strong case, will generate a serious wake up call to all who favor fair and inclusive elections. It may just do that if Christine Jennings and her attorney Kendall Coffee get a fair hearing.

Plan B: Globalism to the rescue. How hard is it to set up a voting system, let alone an efficient voting system? Not very hard, if you use India as an example. The nation adopted a low tech electronic voting and reporting system that serves more than 600 million voters . That’s a lot of citizens exercising the franchise. But in India the stakes are very high. The political factions there take their politics very seriously. There is a history of violence surrounding elections. There were some problems but the Indian approach looks like a success. So here you are, $300 (US) a piece – tested in the killing fields of no nonsense politics in the world’s largest democracy, and, if we fail to change our laws, the last hope the United States has for free and fair elections: INDIA’S EVM.

Click for big version
India’s election commission makes the case for the low tech by design EVM (electronic voting machine). If we can’t get election fraud recognized as a real event and a remedy through Hand Counted Paper Ballots, we can always just swallow our price and adopt a model that works.

W pushes envelope on U.S. spying

New postal law lets Bush peek through your mail

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

President Bush added a "signing statement" in recently passed postal reform bill that may give him new powers to pry into your mail - without a warrant. WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned. The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions. That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it. Bush's move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise. "Despite the President's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill. Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail. "The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington. "The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said. "You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known." A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It's something we're going to look into." Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval. Yet in his statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances." Bush cited as examples the need to "protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection." White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming any new authority. "In certain circumstances - such as with the proverbial 'ticking bomb' - the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches," she said. Bush, however, cited "exigent circumstances" which could refer to an imminent danger or a longstanding state of emergency. Critics point out the administration could quickly get a warrant from a criminal court or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge to search targeted mail, and the Postal Service could block delivery in the meantime. But the Bush White House appears to be taking no chances on a judge saying no while a terror attack is looming, national security experts agreed. Martin said that Bush is "using the same legal reasoning to justify warrantless opening of domestic mail" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping.