“Modernizing Miranda” by Gutting the Sixth Amendment

15 Saturday May 2010

Posted by in Bill of Rights, Constitution, George W. Bush, Justice Department, Obama, Obama administration, Politics, terrorism, war on terror

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It’s becoming clearer what Attorney General Eric Holder meant when he spoke of the need to “modernize” Miranda. (Even though he also said that “giving Miranda warnings has not had a negative impact on our ability to obtain information from terrorism suspects” ). According to this latest proposal under consideration by the Obama administration, such a “modernization” includes doing away with the Sixth Amendment rights to a speedy trial and to counsel.

“President Obama’s legal advisers are considering asking Congress to allow the government to detain terrorism suspects longer after their arrests before presenting them to a judge for an initial hearing, according to administration officials familiar with the discussions.

If approved, the idea to delay hearings would be attached to broader legislation to allow interrogators to withhold Miranda warnings from terrorism suspects for lengthy periods, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proposed last week.

The goal of both measures would be to open a window of time after an arrest in which interrogators could question a terrorism suspect without an interruption that might cause the prisoner to stop talking. It is not clear how long of a delay the administration is considering seeking.”

President Obama has been criticized by civil libertarians in the past for continuing the policies of the Bush administration. This one goes further, it’s beyond Bush:

“Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, assailed the Obama administration for considering such ideas. He noted that the administration of President George W. Bush, which was heavily criticized by civil-liberties groups, never proposed such modifications to criminal procedures.”

Marcy Wheeler points out how this denies the accused of their right to counsel:

“The way it works…is you’re arrested and you’re brought before the judge (either to be charged or arraigned) and if you don’t have a lawyer, the judge makes sure you have one.

[…]

“[T]he Administration wants to “modernize” Miranda. They want to postpone bringing alleged terrorists before a Court (though it’s not clear why). Are they, by delaying court appearances, trying to at the same time delay the time when alleged terrorists get assigned lawyers? Are they trying to dissuade alleged terrorists from having lawyers?”

And Jeralyn at Talk Left warns of the slippery slope:

“Taking rights taken from terror suspects today just makes it easier to take them from all of us tomorrow. It’s ironic that this is one right even the Bush Administration didn’t try and tinker with, and its our Democratic president showing so little respect for the rule of law.”

More constitutional rights and protections bite the dust in the course of carrying out the “war on terror.” But hey, whatever it takes to keep us safe, right President Bush Obama?

Senate Votes on Financial Regulation Amendments

12 Wednesday May 2010

Posted by in bailout, Congress, Democrats, economy, financial reform, financial regulation, lobbyists, McCain, Politics, Progressives, too big to fail, Wall Street

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Any time anything passes in the Senate by a vote of 96–0 I’m suspicious. Those numbers are usually reserved for meaningless proclamations declaring ‘National Be Kind to Puppies and Kitties Day.’ But such a vote took place yesterday on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ amendment to audit the Federal Reserve.

Sanders’ original amendment would have required the Fed to submit to regular audits, but the watered-down version passed yesterday is for a one-time audit with a specific scope and time frame. This only adds to my suspicion that the newer version is more than likely toothless:

“A Fed spokeswoman declined to comment on the Senate action, but Fed leaders, who previously have objected to broader efforts to review monetary policy, have not opposed the most recent version of Sanders’s proposal.”

A more accurate gauge of where the Senate stands on REAL financial reform can be found in other amendments taken up yesterday, like the one proposed by David Vitter which called for the stronger provisions contained in Sanders’ original proposal. It was voted down 62 to 37 with only 6 Democrats voting “Yea”—Cantwell, Dorgan, Feingold, Lincoln, Webb, and Wyden.

Another amendment, proposed by Sen. McCain, called for a time frame for winding down and eventually ending the government’s conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That failed by a vote of 56 to 43 with only 2 Democrats–Bayh and Feingold–voting “Yea.” An alternative to the McCain amendment, proposed by Chris Dodd, called for “the Secretary of the Treasury to conduct a study on ending the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” That passed by a margin of 63–36. Russ Feingold (I detect a pattern here) was the lone Democrat voting “Nay.”

Credit where credit is due, Sen. Shelby is right on the money (so to speak):

“Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were at the heart of the financial crisis,” Shelby said Tuesday. “How we can have basic regulatory reform, financial reform, if we’re not going to include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?”

Also set for a vote this week is Sen. Lincoln’s amendment which would place strong restrictions on derivative trading. Needless to say, Wall Street is going all out to kill this:

“…the five [largest] banks together have mustered more than 130 registered lobbyists, including 40 former Senate staff members and one retired senator, Trent Lott. The list includes former staff members for the Senate majority and minority leaders, the chairmen and ranking members of the banking and finance committees, and more than 15 other senators. In the first quarter, the banks spent $6.1 million on lobbying.”

Why are the banksters fighting so hard to stop it? Follow the money:

“The change could cost the industry a lot of money. Banks reported $22.6 billion in derivatives revenue in 2009..”

Good Advice for Michael Steele: “Try Thinking Before You Speak”

11 Tuesday May 2010

Posted by in Conservatives, Constitution, Obama, Politics, Republicans, Supreme Court, Uncategorized

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Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele should have realized he stepped in it when the National Review advised him to “try thinking before you speak,” referring to Steele’s opening salvo following President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Steele released a statement criticizing Kagan for her support of Justice Thurgood Marshall’s speech in which he said that the Constitution as originally conceived and drafted was “defective.”

Had Mr. Steele taken the time to look into the context of Justice Marshall’s statement he might have found that Marshall was referring to the Three-Fifths compromise in Article 1 Section 2, which counted slaves as three-fifths of a person. I don’t know about Mr’ Steele, but I would call that a serious “defect.”

Justice Marshall also said the it took several constitutional amendments and a Civil War to right this wrong. Again, had Chairman Steele taken the time to look at the copy of the Constitution I’m sure he carries in his pocket he could have read the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to find out the Marshall was correct. I assume Steele has heard of the Civil War, but maybe I take too much for granted.

But as is their habit, once the RNC had the shovel in their hands, they kept digging. Doug Heye posted this at gop.com:

“In the same law review article, Kagan endorses the view that the Court’s primary role is to “show special solicitude” for people a judge has empathy for.

In the article about her former boss, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan wrote:

For in Justice Marshall’s view, constitutional interpretation demanded, above all else, one thing from the courts: it demanded that the courts show a special solicitude for the despised and disadvantaged.  It was the role of the courts, in interpreting the Constitution, to protect the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government — to safeguard the interests of people who had no other champion.

The majority of Americans want a justice who understands that the Founders intended the Court to serve as a neutral arbiter of disputes.  The question for Kagan is whether she believes in a ‘modern Constitution’ shaped by activist judges pursuing personal political agendas or whether she believes in basing judicial decisions based on the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Would that include “activist judges” like the majority on the Roberts Court who overturned more than a hundred years of legal precedent and greatly expanded the parameters of the case to “pursue their personal political agenda” by granting corporations the rights of individuals in Citizens United v. FEC? Those kind of “activist judges?”

Waiver Granted for Well Twice the Depth of Deepwater Horizon

08 Saturday May 2010

Posted by in Energy, Environment, Gulf Oil Spill, Obama, Politics

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As if this isn’t bad enough:

“Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Given the uncertainties and unknowns about attempting to place a containment dome over the well at 5,000 feet, how is this even being considered?:

“The exemptions, known as “categorical exclusions,” were granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more than 9,000 feet.”

Six Senators “Abstain” on Brown–Kaufman Amendment

08 Saturday May 2010

Posted by in Congress, financial reform, financial regulation, Politics

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The gutlessness of our elected representatives never ceases to amaze. In Thursday night’s vote on the Brown–Kaufman amendment to limit the size of the big banks, 6 Senators voted “abstain”:

* Sen. Robert Bennett [R, UT]
* Sen. Jim Bunning [R, KY]
* Sen. Robert Byrd [D, WV]
* Sen. Jim DeMint [R, SC]
* Sen. Richard Lugar [R, IN]
* Sen. David Vitter [R, LA]

Profiles in cowardice.

The Geithner Solution to Regulatory Failure: More Authority for Regulators

08 Saturday May 2010

Posted by in bailout, economy, Financial Crisis, Politics, too big to fail, Uncategorized, Wall Street

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Sure, federal regulators (like the former head of the New York Federal Reserve pictured at left) were inept, incompetent, and inadequate when it came to their ability to first foresee and then to take proper pre-emptive action based on all the red flags that were waving leading up to the financial crisis.

Sure, they may have overlooked the dangers of subprime mortgages, of major financial institutions being leveraged 30 to 1, and of those financial institutions becoming so interconnected through the packaging, re-packaging, and re-re-packaging of toxic securities and selling them back and forth that the failure of one could lead to the failure of all.

Hey, just minor oversights. No need to think they don’t deserve to keep their jobs, or better yet, be given more authority. Treasury Secretary Geithner seems to think so:

“During an appearance on Capitol Hill, Geithner acknowledged failures in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s supervision of Citigroup and other large banks, said regulators were “not conservative enough” when it came to overseeing banks’ leverage ratios and criticized capital requirements as not having done a “good enough job” as a buffer against risk.

He also said that regulators like himself could have done more to prevent the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression…To ensure these kinds of failures are avoided in the future…Geithner wants to leave it up to federal regulators — the same ones that presided over the housing bubble, oversaw extreme risk-taking by banks and other financial firms, and tried (yet failed) to contain a subprime crisis from mushrooming into a financial meltdown.

[…]

In short, Geithner said he wants to give regulators more authority, leaving it up to them to exercise their best judgment.”

No thanks, Tim. We’ve seen what leaving crucial decisions up to the “best judgment” of federal regulators leads to, from Wall Street to the Gulf of Mexico.

Quote of the Day: Taibbi’s Goldman–Roethlisberger Analogy

06 Thursday May 2010

Posted by in bailout, economy, Financial Crisis, Goldman Sachs, Politics, too big to fail, Wall Street

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From Matt Taibbi’s latest at Rolling Stone, The Feds vs. Goldman:

“The bank will try and – who knows – might even succeed in defending itself in a court of law against these charges. But in the court of public opinion it was doomed the instant the SEC decided to put this ghastly black comedy of a fraud case on the street for everyone to see. Just as Pittsburgh Steeler Ben Roethlisberger will never recover from the image of him (allegedly) waving his dick at a scared 20-year-old coed in the darkened hallway of a Georgia nightclub, Goldman may never bounce back from the SEC’s brutal blow-by-blow account of how the bank conspired with a hedge-fund magnate to bend one gullible business partner after another over the edge of the subprime housing market.

Priceless.

Alan Grayson on Geithner’s Conflict of Interest

06 Thursday May 2010

Posted by in Congress, economy, financial reform, financial regulation, Politics, Progressives, too big to fail, Uncategorized, Wall Street

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I’ve been considering relocating from Texas to the Sunshine State, since it looks like we may be in for another 4 years of Secessionist Rick here. Alan Grayson’s latest shot across the bow of the U.S.S Turbo Timmy might be enough to tip the scales. From Zero Hedge:

“In today’s ABC Top Line, Alan noted, “when Tim Geithner says that he doesn’t want to see the Fed audited, what he’s really saying is he doesn’t want to see Tim Geithner audited…”

“He was the head of the New York Fed for years and years. This audit would apply to him. And the actions he took — which he can now take in secret and, when this bill passes, will no longer be secret — we’ll be able to see and understand the decisions that he made that among other things put huge amounts of bailout money into the hands of private interests.” Grayson added: “It’s one of the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen.”

[…]

“The Fed doesn’t want to be audited. Who does? Do you want to be audited? I don’t want to be audited, but sometimes it’s necessary,” he said. “When you’re handing out a trillion dollars at a time — a trillion dollars at a time, which works out to $3,000 for every man woman and child in this country — don’t we have a right to know what happened to it?”

“It’s central to the bill. We’ve had secret bailouts from the Fed to private interests now for the past two years without any exposure whatsoever. … We need to know what happened to our money, because when the Fed hands out our money, every dollar in your pocket, every dollar in your checking account, every dollar in your 401(k) becomes that much cheaper and less in value.”

Dialing 1-800-MOVERS.

Senate Passes Two Meaningless Amendments on Financial Regulation

06 Thursday May 2010

Posted by in Congress, economy, financial reform, financial regulation, Politics, too big to fail, Wall Street

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Any time I see that the Senate has passed something by a vote of 93–5 or 96–1 I can be sure of one thing—it’s meaningless. It’s the equivalent of a proclamation naming Sunday as the official first day of the week. Such was the case yesterday with 2 amendments to the financial regulatory bill:

“The Senate on Wednesday approved two amendments to the financial regulatory bill that both Democrats and Republicans claimed would end the prospect of taxpayer-financed bailouts for companies deemed “too big to fail.”

[…]

By a vote of 93 to 5, the Senate approved an amendment by Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee [which] eliminated a $50 billion fund that was designed to help bridge financial shortfalls while a failing company was undergoing liquidation. Mr. Shelby said the fund was “a honey pot” that would facilitate “backdoor bailouts.” (Somewhere Frank Luntz is smiling).

[…]

The Shelby amendment also requires the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to oversee the liquidation of a systemically important financial company that is failing, using money provided by a special line of credit with the Treasury.”

And where does the Treasury get its money again?

“The Senate also approved, by a vote of 96 to 1, an amendment by Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, saying that no taxpayer money may be used to keep a ailing financial company alive.”

Wow, earthshaking stuff there too. Wake me up when (or should that be if) they get around to the Brown–Kaufman amendment.

The Unintended Consequences of Lieberman’s Law

06 Thursday May 2010

Posted by in Politics, Republicans, terrorism, war on terror

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In the ‘Be Careful What You Ask For You Just Might Get It’ Department comes this from Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog concerning Joe Lieberman’s proposal to strip citizenship from Americans affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations:

“Lieberman’s law would amend an earlier statute that details other things that can cost you citizenship: Serving in the army of a foreign state, pledging allegiance to a foreign state, and so on. In those cases the State Department decides whether your disloyalty merits loss of citizen status. Lieberman’s law would add involvement with a foreign terror organization — as opposed to a foreign state — to this list….

Who would determine whether you’re involved with a foreign terror group? The State Department. It already decides what is and isn’t designated as a terror organization. Lieberman’s law would also empower State to determine whether you are in league with one of these groups.”

Three of the organizations on the State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) are Hamas, Hezbollah, and Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Would any of these relationships count as “affiliation” with a terrorist organization?

“[Grover] Norquist is a founding director of the Islamic Institute, a socially conservative Muslim think tank that eschews international issues in favor of domestic issues such as tax cuts and faith-based initiatives. In addition, Norquist’s lobbying firm…was officially registered as a lobbyist for the Islamic Institute as well as for Abdurahman Alamoudi, the founder and former executive director of the American Muslim Council.

[At] an anti-Israel protest outside the White House on October 28, 2000. Alamoudi revved up the crowd, saying: ” I have been labeled by the media in New York as being a supporter of Hamas. Anybody supporters of Hamas here? ” The crowd cheered. ” Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas … I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah. “

How about this interview of Tom Tancredo by John Hawkins of Right Wing News?:

John Hawkins: Let me ask you another question, it’s Iran related. I heard that you support the National Council of Resistance (NCR), a political arm of the Mujahedin-e Kalq (MEK)…

Tom Tancredo: Yes, I do.

Another MEK friend in high places:

“In June 2004 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “designated MEK members as civilian ‘protected persons’ under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention,”… Rumfeld’s “decision controverted [Department of State], International Committee of the Red Cross (IRC), and Office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) recommendations…”

One more name on the State Department FTO list is the Real IRA:

“…during the 1980s and 90s, the NSA and CIA collected intelligence on financial transactions between the United States and Ireland and Northern Ireland involving Irish terrorist groups supported by Peter King. The group Irish Northern Aid (NORAID) funneled money to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) that was used to buy weapons used to blow up civilians and members of the British government, military, and police.

King was an active supporter of NORAID, a tax-exempt front for the IRA. Martin Galvin, King’s friend and former NORAID chief, rejected the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement and supports the agenda of the terrorist “Real IRA.”

Let the citizenship-stripping begin.