Blaming the Victims (Yet Again)

This sickens me so much I'm at a loss for words:

Fifteen year-old Larry King (no relation to the CNN interviewer) was shot twice in the back of the head by his classmate Brandon McInerney while sitting in school in Oxnard, California. Now that McInerney is on trial, the boy's legal team and the school administration are using the tried and true "he was asking for it" defense. This is totally disgusting.

According to a story in the L.A. Times today, "McInerney's defense attorneys... acknowledge that the boy pulled the trigger but say that he was pushed to the breaking point by King's taunts." Yes, it's the tried and true "gay panic defense" that preys on juries' homophobia to get confessed killers cleared for murdering gay people. It was even used against Matthew Shepard, when one of his killers said he was driven to kill the gay college student because he hit on him.

It only gets worse from there.

I know that defense attorneys have very few avenues they can take with an obviously guilty client. But this tactic is beyond reprehensible. What they're basically trying to argue is that, should you suffer an unwanted advance, it is perfectly right and fine to shoot a person in the head. You should be able to murder a human being and walk free just because you were briefly inconvenienced and made to feel a bit icky.

I don't imagine they'd be arguing that women have that blanket right to murder men who come on to them. But, y'know, gays. Ew. Of course it's all right for a straight guy to shoot a transsexual or a gay dude, because that's a threat to manhood. Kinda like when your wife sleeps with some other dude. It's okay to shoot 'em in the heat of passion - why not be able to shoot queers, too?

One can only hope that the jury is not so morally bereft as to buy this argument. But we need to have a conversation, a very long and unflinching conversation, about the kind of society in which arguments of this sort can even be entertained. We're supposedly a first-world nation, and yet there are not insubstantial numbers of people who don't see much wrong with demonizing and victimizing gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. When a little girl gets raped, an entire town rallies round the rapists, because, y'know, she wore makeup and was obviously asking for it. How dare those sorts of people lure nice, upstanding young men into performing savage acts?

Some folks, otherwise decent, may claim that the defense attorneys are only doing their job. Sure, they have to blame the victim - how else can they defend their client? I don't know the answer to that. I know this, though: that sort of tactic is devastating to victims, survivors, and the culture at large. There's probably nothing we can do to prevent defense attorneys from using such tactics, but that doesn't mean we have to accept them. We can speak out against them. We can tell our society that murdering a person because they made the mistake of flirting with a homophobic sociopath, that raping a girl because she wore makeup in the presence of men, is not justifiable. There are certain things you just do not do in a civilized society. There are some actions that cannot be excused on the grounds that the victim wasn't a perfect, straight, chaste person.

This dehumanizing bullshit may be a tactic defense attorneys feel comfortable using, but society at large never should. Victims have shouldered too much of the blame. Time to pass that blame to those who have earned it: the victimizers.

Oh, Yes. Very Frivolous

A while back, our own Chris Rhetts asked me to unlimber the Smack-o-Matic and deliver an epic beatdown. He pointed me to this:

And I watched the trailer:



And I grew very, very angry. Verily, I wished to unleash the Smack-o-Matic upon the deserving. Because, you see, I'd been taken in by that: by the media and the comedians and all the rest who had made bitter fun of the woman who sued McDonald's for spilling a cup of coffee. None of them ever made any mention of the fact that she'd suffered life-threatening burns in the process. They just laughed: silly wench. She should've known better than to spill coffee on herself. What a trivial thing to sue a corporation for.

When the corporation serves its coffee at 180 degrees F - 85% of the boiling point of water - it's not trivial.


This is how not trivial it is:

Each year, approximately 3,800 injuries and 34 deaths occur in the home due to scalding from excessively hot tap water. The majority of these accidents involve the elderly and children under the age of five. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) urges all users to lower their water heaters to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to preventing accidents, this decrease in temperature will conserve energy and save money.

Most adults will suffer third-degree burns if exposed to 150 degree water for two seconds. Burns will also occur with a six-second exposure to 140 degree water or with a thirty second exposure to 130 degree water. Even if the temperature is 120 degrees, a five minute exposure could result in third-degree burns. [emphasis added]

Go spill some water on yourself. I guarantee you will be exposed for more than two seconds. Now, imagine that cold water is 180 degrees, and you are elderly, and thus already vulnerable to burns. Look at the wet bits of you, and imagine this is what you see (don't go below the fold if you can't handle graphic):

GOP Priorities: Redefining Rape

Right, then, ladies.  The Cons in Congress, together with a handful of despicable Dems, have decided we must have rape babies.  Observe:

Under this new bill, the only rape survivors who would be able to receive funding [for abortion] would be those who were able to prove that their rapes involved “force.” If your rapist drugged you, intoxicated you, or raped you while you were unconscious, you don’t get coverage. If your rapist used coercion, you don’t get coverage. If this is a case of statutory rape — that is, if you are a thirteen-year-old child, raped by someone outside of your family — you don’t get coverage. If you’re an incest survivor over the age of eighteen — if, say, years of abuse only culminated in a pregnancy after your nineteenth birthday — you just don’t get coverage. And if you live in a state that doesn’t distinguish “forcible rape” from “rape,” you might not qualify, meaning that no matter what the circumstances of your assault were, well, sorry: You might not get coverage.

I cannot begin to describe how angry these fucktards make me.  They won't understand, anyway.  Men can get raped, true - but they can never be impregnated by their attacker.  They don't have to face that particular hell.  And the chances of them being raped in the first place is so vanishingly small that they can't imagine the fear and the trauma women live with.

I would like to explain it to them.  I'd like to sit down in a room with all 173 co-sponsors and describe to them in minute detail everything that happened the morning I woke to a rapist at my door.  You know, it's been nearly twenty years, and I still get sick to my stomach, my hands still sweat and shake, thinking about it.  And I'm one of the lucky ones.  I wasn't physically scarred for life.  I didn't end up pregnant.

If I had, and if an abortion had been denied to me because I didn't fight hard enough, scream loud enough, risk my life adequately enough to satisfy the Cons in Congress, I can promise you something: I would've ended up killing myself if I couldn't abort that baby.  They can't understand, will obviously never understand, why many women wouldn't be able to face carrying their attacker's spawn to term.  Let me just put it this way: there are worse things than getting raped.  One of them is being denied any chance to regain some control over your own body afterward.  One of them is being forced to put your body through the further trauma of pregnancy and childbirth against your will.  And at that time, in the aftermath of the worst morning of my life, I wouldn't have had the mental strength to deal with it.  It was hard enough putting the shattered pieces back together without a swelling belly and constant reminders of the horror I'd gone through.

But they don't care about a woman's welfare.  Obviously not.  They have some fantasy about rape, which makes them just as despicable as the men who rape.  They think there's some kind of honor to be fought for, that a woman should do everything in her power to guard her virtue rather than survive, and if she doesn't, then she's a slut who deserves everything she gets.

I wish I could take them back in time.  I wish I could turn what's in my mind into a film, so I could walk them through the event.  I'd like to see their faces when they're faced with the reality of sexual violence.  I'd like them to have to walk in my mind.  And I'd like to pause every so often, and ask, "Did I fight enough here?  How about here?  Was that rape forcible enough, or was it too gentle to qualify as the kind of rape where a woman is granted an abortion?"

I'd like them to have to experience every emotion with me, both during the attack and in the months and years afterward.  I'd like them to know just what it is to have control and integrity ripped away from you.  I'd like them to walk that fine line, knowing that if you fight too hard, you're going to get yourself killed.  I'd like them to be there in my mind, the moment I realized I didn't have the physical strength to fight my attacker off, and that no one could hear me scream.  I'd like them to share that instant where panic and gut instinct turned into a cold calculation, where I decided it would be a better idea to live.

Do they think I made the wrong choice, choosing survival over a fight to the death?  Do they think that making the choice to survive means signing away your right to your remaining bodily integrity?  And would they still believe that were they forced to live it with me?

They believe abortion is murder, and yet each and every one of them, should you ask, would likely tell you that killing someone in self-defense is justifiable.  Let me try to explain something to them: getting rid of a clump of cells isn't murder, but let's play on their field a moment.  That clump of cells that could become a human being someday is an intruder.  It broke in, it wasn't invited, and it's stealing from me.  It could kill me.  It's certainly going to hurt me, both mentally and physically.  So if you believe some homicides are justified, why do you think it's not justifiable to kill that intruder?

They need to walk in my mind.  They need to watch the months it took, feel the force of will it took, to regain function again, to not hide in the house anymore, to learn how to cope with a terrible new reality.  I dropped out of school, because I wasn't capable of normal function for quite some time.  It took years before I could trust people again.  I still have bad moments.  But I'm nearly a whole human again.  I don't think I would've gotten there if I knew I'd been forced to bear my rapist's baby.  And I don't have words strong enough to describe the visceral reaction I have to the idea.  That would have given me a lifelong connection to my rapist.  That would have been a level of trauma beyond my imagination.  I know my mind well enough to know that bearing a rape baby at the age of 18 would have broken it.

Is that the price I'm supposed to pay for being attacked?  According to the Cons in Congress, it is.  It's my fault, you see.  I should've fought hard enough to keep from being impregnated or died in the attempt.  Nothing else will do.  They care more for a clump of cells than they do for a living, breathing, thinking and suffering woman.

But I don't think they've thought this through, and that's why I'd like them to experience what I did.  Because then, you see, they could imagine what it would be like if that had been their wife, or their daughter, or some other woman they may actually care about.  They may have to look at her a bit differently, and wonder if it's worth destroying her in order to force her to grow a clump of cells fertilized by a rapist.  They might have to ask themselves if they'd really want her rape to be so forcible that it could kill her before they'd allow her the choice of aborting that clump of cells before she gets traumatized all over again.

Because, you see, what the Cons in Congress are saying to women is that if we don't fight, if we don't drive our rapist to really hurt us, then we'd better be prepared to have a rape baby.  If we're strong enough and wise enough and lucky enough to survive, we're to be punished.  We're to have control and bodily integrity ripped away from us once more.  And if we want to avoid that second traumatization, we'd best escalate the situation.  There's only one way to respond to rape in their world: fight.  Even though fighting could get us seriously hurt or killed.

That's why, when I sit down in a room to describe what I went through in excruciating detail, I'd also want Robert K. Ressler, John Douglas, and Ann W. Burgess there.  Two of them are former FBI profilers, the other a forensic nurse.  They wrote a book called Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives.  They understand fully that a one-size-fits-all rape strategy would end in more seriously wounded and murdered women.  Let me direct your attention to the chapter for victims, wherein survival strategies are discussed:

When the amount of rage and aggression obviously exceed what is necessary to force compliance, a violent confrontative response on the part of the victim will generally increase the violence in the assault and place the victim at increased risk for serious physical injury.  Gratuitous violence on the part of the rapist places the victim in dangerous, volatile, and unpredictable situations.  For that reason, we recommend that the first response to violence not be violent.  If direct dialogue does not begin to neutralize the attacker (reduce the intensity of the aggression), then the victim will have no recourse but to employ any means available to object.  The offender believes that he is entitled to sex under any condition, and hence has a callous indifference to the comfort or welfare of the victim.  Both verbal resistance and nonconfrontative resistance strategies are appropriate.  Once it has been demonstrated that the rapist will likely use whatever force neccesary to gain victim compliance, confrontative physical resistance would be unwise unless the victim is confident that it will work.

[snip]

If the attacker responds to victim physical confrontation with increased anger and/or violence, the victim should cease physical resistance.  If he responds by immediately ceasing his aggressive/violent behavior and is willing to engage the victim in conversation, he is also likely to be an exploitative rapist and the victim should use verbal strategies.

[snip]

For the displaced-anger rapist, the victim is a substitute for and a symbol of the hated person(s) in his life.  The primary motive is to hurt and injure the victim.  Aggression may span a wide range from verbal abuse to brutal assault.  Continued physical confrontation, unless the victim is reasonably certain she will be able to incapacitate the attacker, may only justify the need to "punish" the victim and thus escalate the violence.

This is what the Cons in Congress want.  They want us, when confronted with a rapist, to have only one choice: escalate the violence.  Because, you see, if it wasn't violent enough, it wasn't a rape, and hence we are not victims who deserve the right and the funds to decide what to do with our bodies afterward, we're hussies who are supposed to live with the consequences of our "decision."  They want to teach little girls that they must fight to the death rather than do everything in their power to come out of a horrible situation reasonably whole, with a chance at a fairly normal life after.

They want us to ignore the sound survival strategies formulated by two FBI agents and a forensic nurse after years of study of violent offenders, because some of those strategies will lead to a not-so-forcible rape, which means the woman obviously didn't try hard enough to defend her virtue.

You know that I find most everything Cons believe and advocate for these days to be either stupid or despicable.  I make no secret of that opinion.  But some of their ideas are more odious than others.  This is one.  When they advocate disgusting legislation such as this, they become victimizers themselves, no less than the original rapist.

So, after I've had a chance to take them on a walk through my mind, I have one final question for them: How does it feel to join a rapist in victimizing a woman? 

If you find this all as disgusting as I do, take action.  And use the #dearjohn hashtag on Twitter to let John Boehner and all know what you think of them.

It's Not That Easy

So David Dayen wrote this article right after the Giffords shooting, taking the WaPo out to the woodshed and administering some tough love for being such complete fuckwits.  You see, WaPo decided that since there's a law on the books in good ol' AZ saying crazy folk can be committed, all those people who didn't take advantage of the law to get Loughner off the streets before he put a bullet in a Congresswoman's head and killed a whole bunch of others have something to answer for:

According to the Washington Post, Arizona has a law on the books that enables anyone to identify a potential victim of mental illness, and remand them for treatment:

Under Arizona law, any one of Jared Lee Loughner’s classmates or teachers at Pima Community College so concerned about his increasingly bizarre behavior could have contacted local officials and asked that he be evaluated for mental illness and potentially committed for psychiatric treatment.

That, according to local mental health and law enforcement officials, never happened.

Ah, yes.  Good ol' Title 36.   Title 36, wot could've saved 'em all.

Let me tell you a little something about Title 36.  And it's gonna get personal.

Handy Reference Guide to Biblical Rape Laws

For those who like to take their religion literally, here's an easy-to-use reference guide:

Lessee... had we been following those guidelines, I do believe I would've been married.  Believe me when I say that given the choice between that and stoning, I would have been handing out rocks.

This is one of the reasons I despise fundamentalists.  They don't think the world has changed since Bronze Age goatherders went on a killing spree.  Oh, some of them say Jesus came and gave us a new, kinder law - then try to tell us the Ten Commandments et al are still in force.  And they somehow conveniently forget the violent bits of the New Testament when telling us how wonderful and gentle Jesus was.  And they enjoy endorsing Paul's misogynistic bullshit far too much.

Building a modern civilization on Biblical foundations makes about as much sense as licensing only psychopaths as child care providers.

(Tip o' the shot glass to whoever posted this on Twitter.  Alas, I cannot remember who it was!)

Why I Won't Own a Kindle

No matter what my stepmother says about how awesome it is, a Kindle will not darken my door until certain issues are resolved.  Namely (h/t):

Having learned all this, I went along and had a closer look at the current Kindle License Agreement. There is some simply petrifying stuff on there. For starters, you don’t “own” Kindle books, you’re basically renting them.

Unless otherwise specified, Digital Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider.

They can change the software on you whenever they like:

Automatic Updates. In order to keep your Software up-to-date, Amazon may automatically provide your Kindle or Other Device with updates/upgrades to the Software.

That is how a totalitarian state would go about confiscating books, if they wanted to. There is nothing in this agreement to stop Amazon from modifying the Kindle software to make it impossible for you to read any of your own files on the device. Such a step is not actually forbidden to them by this agreement; they are under no obligation to protect any data you might be storing on there. That’s not to say that there aren’t laws at least in some states that might allow you to sue for damages; I’m just saying, there isn’t any promise made by Amazon to protect your data or preserve its readability.

They can also change the terms of the deal or simply shut down Kindle service entirely, anytime they like:

Changes to Service. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service, in whole or in part, at any time.

Or they might decide to shut your account down:

Termination. Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software, and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without refund of any fees. Amazon’s failure to insist upon or enforce your strict compliance with this Agreement will not constitute a waiver of any of its rights.

Keep in mind these are your books that you bought or collected. Can you imagine a bookseller or publisher asserting rights over the contents of your bookshelves in your house? That’s basically what we’re talking about, here. 

There's much more at the link.  Sticking with paper, thank you so very much, at least until giving money to an enterprise for a book means I get to keep the damned thing no matter what.

Further Evidence Britain Needs to Reform It's Fucked-Up Libel Laws

Read.  Weep (with laughter and outrage).  Then sign the petition, unless you already have, in which case: go, you!  Tell your friends to get their arses on it.

What a fucking world.

England's Libel Law is Liable to Bite Yer Arse

So do what Simon Singh says and sign the petition to reform it:

This week is the first anniversary of the report Free Speech is Not for Sale, which highlighted the oppressive nature of English libel law. In short, the law is extremely hostile to writers, while being unreasonably friendly towards powerful corporations and individuals who want to silence critics.
The English libel law is particular dangerous for bloggers, who are generally not backed by publishers, and who can end up being sued in London regardless of where the blog was posted. The internet allows bloggers to reach a global audience, but it also allows the High Court in London to have a global reach.

You can read more about the peculiar and grossly unfair nature of English libel law at the website of the Libel Reform Campaign. You will see that the campaign is not calling for the removal of libel law, but for a libel law that is fair and which would allow writers a reasonable opportunity to express their opinion and then defend it.

The good news is that the British Government has made a commitment to draft a bill that will reform libel, but it is essential that bloggers and their readers send a strong signal to politicians so that they follow through on this promise. You can do this by joining me and over 50,000 others who have signed the libel reform petition at http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Remember, you can sign the petition whatever your nationality and wherever you live. Indeed, signatories from overseas remind British politicians that the English libel law is out of step with the rest of the free world.

If you have already signed the petition, then please encourage friends, family and colleagues to sign up. Moreover, if you have your own blog, you can join hundreds of other bloggers by posting this blog on your own site. There is a real chance that bloggers could help change the most censorious libel law in the democratic world.

We must speak out to defend free speech. Please sign the petition for libel reform at http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Please sign and pass it along.

ATTN UK CHIROPRACTORS: UR REMEDEZ R BOGUS! HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Excuse the shouting there, but it's so nice to know that we here in the States can call a spade a spade without considering how much our bank account converts to in pounds sterling (although I guess it's Euros now, innit?):

American authors, journalists, and bloggers can breathe a sigh of relief: with broad bipartisan support, a short time ago President Obama signed a bill into law that makes sure that the awful and regressive libel laws in the UK cannot be enforced here in the United States.

Huzzah!  Now all we have to deal with are the ridiculous SLAPPs from butt-hurt woomeisters.  Which is a breeze compared to defending against a libel charge in Britain.

I have only one thing to say to the dumbshits who hoped Britain's noxious laws would save them from good ol' American dickishness:

HA HA HA HA FUCK YOU!

At Last

Can we say "told you so!" now?

Judge rules Bush illegally wiretapped Americans

Outrageous Bullshit Double-Header

The Muse knows I am fuming, and has graciously allowed me to post another post.

First, absorb this bit of reality and see if you're steamed enough to power a freight train:

We learned a few years ago that the CIA had video documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives who'd been subjected to "severe interrogation techniques," but because of what the video showed, the agency destroyed the tapes. In effect, officials had evidence of a possible crime, so they eliminated it -- which is itself a crime.

Within a few weeks of the revelations, Bush's Justice Department appointed a prosecutor to lead a criminal investigation into the destruction of evidence.

What we didn't know until today is that a far-right senator, Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas, acting his capacity as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was apparently made aware of the alleged crimes in a closed briefing in 2003, and raised no objections.

That's right.  This fucktarded piece of shit has no problem with crimes being committed.  None.  No problem, cover it up.  And we're not talking minor shit, we're talking war crimes.

These people aren't amoral so much as anti-moral. 

Meanwhile, John Yoo, he of the torture memos, has decided the Prez can use nukes any ol' time he likes.  No limits on his power to destroy civilizations whatsoever.  Totally fine with the Constitution, despite the fact the Constitution's all about the checks and balances, and despite the fact that Supreme Court precedent sez executive powers tain't so unlimited.  Observe:

As far back as 1804, a unanimous Supreme Court held in Little v. Barreme that Congress has sweeping authority to limit the President’s actions in wartime. That case involved an Act of Congress authorizing vessels to seize cargo ships bound for French ports. After the President also authorized vessels to seize ships headed away from French ports, the Supreme Court held this authorization unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress’ decision to allow one kind of seizure implicitly forbade other kinds of seizure. More recently, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Court held that the President does not have the power to unilaterally set military policy (in those cases with respect to detention); he must comply with statutory limits on his power. Taken together, these and other cases unquestionably establish that Congress has the power to tell the President “no,” and the President must listen.

John Yoo is a moral vacuum, but he is also a constitutional law professor at one of the nation’s top law schools and a former Supreme Court clerk. It is simply impossible that Yoo is not aware of Little, Hamdi and Hamdan, or that he does not understand what they say. So when John Yoo claims that the President is not bound by Congressional limits, he is not simply ignorant or misunderstanding the law. He is lying.

Indeed he is.  Lying about the law, and yet Berkeley believes he's qualified to teach law.  I'll never, ever, understand that one.

Bonus outrages: selling plates of pasta to save your life (thank you, broken health care industry!) and the Cons' idea of a bipartisan dialogue on health care reform.  Maybe we should hold a pasta fundraiser to see if we can whip up enough cash to get these idiots some brains.

Supreme Stupidity

Isn't this special?  The Supreme Court has decided that the poor corporations don't have enough influence over our political system:

Rick Hasen has a very good piece in Slate today on today's Supreme Court ruling, and the significance of the 5-4 decision.

It is time for everyone to drop all the talk about the Roberts court's "judicial minimalism," with Chief Justice Roberts as an "umpire" who just calls balls and strikes. Make no mistake, this is an activist court that is well on its way to recrafting constitutional law in its image. The best example of that is this morning's transformative opinion in Citizens United v. FEC. Today the court struck down decades-old limits on corporate and union spending in elections (including judicial elections) and opened up our political system to a money free-for-all. [...]

What is so striking today is how avoidable this political tsunami was. The court has long adhered to a doctrine of "constitutional avoidance," by which it avoids deciding tough constitutional questions when there is a plausible way to make a narrower ruling based on a plain old statute.... What we have in Citizens United is anti-avoidance. Kennedy's majority had to go out and grab this one.

Of particular interest, Hasen notes that Kennedy's ruling "wrongly assumes that corporations or unions can throw money at public officials without corrupting them. Could a candidate for judicial office, for example, be swayed to rule in favor of a contributor who donated $3 million to an independent campaign to get the candidate elected to the state supreme court?"

Dahlia Lithwick added, "Even former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist once warned that treating corporate spending as the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is 'to confuse metaphor with reality.' Today that metaphor won a very real victory at the Supreme Court. And as a consequence some very real corporations are feeling very, very good."

This has got to be one of the dumbest rulings ever.  Treating corporations as people is an inane idea to begin with.  Treating them as people who can advocate for a particular candidate is even more inane.  Hell, even many corporations agree:

Yesterday, “all five of the [Supreme] Court’s conservatives joined together … to invalidate a sixty-three year-old ban on corporate money in federal elections,” a move that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) said “opens the floodgates for the purchases and sale of the law” by big corporations.

Today, in response to the Supreme Court’s catastrophic decision, “dozens of current and former corporate executives” from corporations including Delta, Ben & Jerry’s, and Crate & Barrel sent a letter to Congress asking it to immediately pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which would publicly finance all congressional campaigns out of a special fund created by a fee levied on TV broadcasters:

Roughly 40 executives from companies including Playboy Enterprises, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, the Seagram’s liquor company, toymaker Hasbro, Delta Airlines and Men’s Wearhouse sent a letter to congressional leaders Friday urging them to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They say they are tired of getting fundraising calls from lawmakers — and fear it will only get worse after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling. [...]

“Members of Congress already spend too much time raising money from large contributors,” the business executives’ letter says. “And often, many of us individually are on the receiving end of solicitation phone calls from members of Congress. With additional money flowing into the system due to the court’s decision, the fundraising pressure on members of Congress will only increase.”

Even before the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, corporate special interest money was making a huge impact on the legislative process. From 1998 to 2009, the financial, insurance, and real estate lobbies spent nearly $3.8 billion in Washington, successfully deregulating Wall Street, passing huge tax cuts for the wealthy, barring Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices, killing mortgage cramdown legislation, and weakening financial and health reforms.

Now's probably a very good time to sign this petition for the Fair Elections Now Act. Not that I believe it likely a Congress that can't even pass a fucking health care bill can manage to pass this, but at least we can remind them that corporations aren't people who go to the polls.

Cons, of course, are delighted by this idiotic turn of events.  But before they get too excited, they might want to consider looking for the fly in the ointment (h/t):

This Could Become A Big Problem for Republicans.  The Republicans have picked themselves off the floor in recent months by running as champions of the middle class.  Having big corporate America come in on behalf of a candidate will almost certainly guarentee that a candidate becomes tarred as taking the side of big corporations against the average guy, something this cycle that could be deadly.  The GOP better think twice about their newly populist brand before celebrating this decision too much.

We'll see if that makes any difference.  American voters haven't proven themselves too intelligent lately - after all, they elected Wall Street's buddy Brown, despite their worries about the economy.  

You know what I hope comes of this?  I hope Stephen Colbert runs for the Senate this fall with corporate sponsorship.  He's good enough at playing a Con shitheel that he'd probably get elected, and I can think of few things that would be better for the Senate than having Stephen Colbert in there proving the whole thing's become a very big, very unfunny joke.

And if that happens, I'll be throwing a party celebrating the ruling.

Shock to the Conscience

Ladies and gentlemen, our legal system:

The hits just keep on coming. From the Center For Constitutional Rights:

Today, the United States Supreme Court refused to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse at Guantánamo. The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to the U.K. in 2004.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By refusing to hear the case, the Court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all “persons” did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law. The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that “torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants.” Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any Constitutional rights.

So torture is a forseeable consequence of the military's detention of suspected enemy combatants. I guess it's official.

I don't know how these people sleep at night.  I don't know how they can call themselves Americans.

Right now, I'm pretty fucking ashamed to be a citizen of a country in which these sorts of legal arguments are considered sane.

Beck Gets Dose of Own Medicine, Runs Crying to International Court

ZOMG, this is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I've seen all year.  It's perfect in every particular: the assclown, the pwning of the assclown, the hypocrisy of the assclown, and an attorney with a cutting wit turning said assclown's own hypocrisy against him.  The whole situation's made of win.  It's perfect.  Thank you, Ed Brayton, for finding this.

Parte the first:

I don't know if you've ever seen the Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990 website, but it's fairly amusing. It's a political satire of the style of argument Glenn Beck likes to engage in, which involves requiring that someone prove a negative ("prove you didn't do X") and making claims in the form of an interrogative ("Hey, I'm just asking questions here. I'm not saying he did this. What's wrong with asking questions?").

Well now Beck is trying to kill the site by making a formal complaint (PDF) to an international internet governing body, the World Intellectual Property Organization. He wants the domain name taken away from the person who registered it.

Why would he do that rather than file, say, a libel suit? Because he knows he would lose a libel suit. He is a public figure and the site is clearly satirical. Under precedents like Falwell v Flynt, it is virtually impossible to win such a suit. The attorney for the site owner, Marc Randazza, has filed a response brief (PDF) that is hilarious in its attack on Beck's thin-skinned and legally dubious argument. For instance, on the notion that someone might think the site was serious or that it was affiliated with Beck himself, he responds:

There is no indication that the Respondent has intentionally attempted to confuse anyone searching for Mr. Beck's own website, nor that anyone was unintentionally confused - even initially. Only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to the Complainant. 

We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent's website wondering "where did all the race baiting content go?" We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent's website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent's website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck's very rhetorical style. Beck's skin is too thin to take the criticism, so he wants the site down. Beck is represented by a learned and respected legal team. Accordingly, it is beyond doubt that his counsel advised him that under the First Amendment to the United States' Constitution, no action in a U.S. Court would be successful. Accordingly, Beck is attempting to use this transnational body to circumvent and subvert the Respondent's constitutional rights.

Parte the second:

I thought Mark Randazza, the attorney for the owner of the "Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a girl in 1990?" website, made a great argument with his initial response to Beck's attempts to censor the website through an international tribunal. But he emailed me today with a link to another filing (PDF) he made that is pure genius. He begins by quoting Beck criticizing liberals for trying to have legal issues removed from American jurisdiction and taken to the international level:

Let me tell you something. When you can't win with the people, you bump it up to the courts. When you can't win with the courts, you bump it up to the international level.

And by golly, that's exactly what Beck did. Randazza then notes that the UDRP, the process by which such complaints are resolved, does sometimes "render decisions that make First Amendment champions cringe" but that are in line with the laws of other nations. He then quotes Beck criticizing Harold Koh by arguing that he "wants to subordinate the American Constitution to foreign and international rules. We see that in his attack on First Amendment free speech principles, which he finds opprobrious."

And quotes Beck declaring, "Once we sign our rights over to international law, the Constitution is officially dead." So in light of this, Randazza has come up with a brilliant stipulation that will, he's certain, be agreeable to Beck: Both sides should agree that the standard for judgment in the case under the UDRP should be the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

I love this attorney.  Love him, love him, love him! 

Gorgeous.  I hope there'll be plenty more like this.  I'll keep you all posted.

Torture, Genocide, Etc.: All In a Day's Work

So sayeth Assistant Attorney General Tony West:

Citing the Westfall Act, Tony West wrote that "the type of activities alleged against the individual defendants were 'foreseeable' and were 'a direct outgrowth' of their responsibility to detain and gather intelligence from suspected enemy combatants." In defending the government's position, West cited case law stating that "genocide, torture, forced relocation, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by individual defendants employed by Department of Defense and State Department were within scope of employment" and similar cases justifying CIA torture as part of official duty.

I can't believe just how far this country has sunk.  Teabaggers can scream that health care reform means Obama's a big ol' sociocommiefascist.  But they're ignorant enough of history to miss the fact that it wasn't universal health care that marked Nazi Germany as a deadly threat to the world.  It was the fact that they went about calmly murdering entire classes of people, and they, too, saw that as "within scope of employment."

(Tip o' the shot glass to Mike at C&L, who led me to David Swanson, who led me to the above outrage.)

About Those CIA Directors

I'm sure you're going to hear at least one credulous acquaintance babble about something like, "Those CIA directors wrote that letter to President Obama saying how very awful it would be if the Justice Department actually did its job, so therefore investigating must be a bad idea!"

Here's the only proper response:

Can someone tell me what kind of arrogance would lead someone to write a letter like this, and more importantly, why anyone would pay attention to it?

We respectfully urge you to exercise your authority to reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations that took place following the attacks of September 11.

Uh, at least three of the people who signed this are implicated in the crime. How absurd it is that they are strutting around like some sort of heroes, when in fact they are publicly urging the president to engage in a cover-up from which they stand to benefit.

Naked self-interest, anyone?

Creationists Practice Law

Unfortunately for them, even with practice they're no good at it.

Ed Brayton recently found two wonderful examples. In the first, Kent Hovind gives his bestest legal advice:

Kent Hovind may be in prison but that hasn't slowed down his production of moronic arguments. On his blog he posts a letter he wrote to Frank Lay, the principal of Pace High School in Florida who seems to have a difficult time distinguishing between his school and his church. In that letter, Hovind suggests a brilliant legal strategy:

From what I can glean from the newspaper articles that have been sent to me (I know, never trust what you read in the paper - I quit taking it when my parakeet died), it seems that Judge Rodgers ruled that school officials could not endorse religion or talk about their religious beliefs within the school's cases or at school sponsored events. If what I read on LifeSiteNews.com, June 4, is true, ACLU attorney Benjamin Stevenson said school officials have a responsibility to "protect the silently held religious views of others" and to be sure that no one will "impose their religious views" on others. One headline read, "Religion Banned from Santa Rosa Schools."

If this is indeed what the court and the ACLU intend then you need to begin removing the religion of evolution from your school's textbooks, tests, classes, and videos shown in class immediately! You certainly don't want to be held in contempt of court!

Evolution (not the misnamed micro-evolution that we all agree happens) is a religious world view that is not supported by science or common sense. You have been ordered to remove religion. This will be a great challenge since this particular religion is very thoroughly mixed into nearly all of your science and history books (not to mention math and literature).

I'm sure Kent's "legal" scheme for removing evolution from classrooms will work just as well as his "legal" scheme for avoiding paying his taxes did.

The second example, believe it or not, is even funnier:

Sandefur has an amusing post at the Panda's Thumb about the Institute for Creation Research lawsuit against the state of Texas for refusing to give them official accreditation to hand out advanced degrees to their ill-educated victims.

[snip]

The word "herein" is sprinkled randomly throughout, rather like the way Miss Teen South Carolina sprinkles "such as." It occurs four times on page 2 alone-including "venue herein," whatever the heck that means. There are italics, boldface, ALLCAPS, and all sorts of different combinations herein, of course. There are delightful spelling errors ("advertizes"), rhetorical flourishes ("as if with a 'scarlet letter'"), and neologisms (I can't decide if "favoritistically" or "applicational bounds" is my favorite). Of course it quotes the Bible. It even has rhetorical questions! In a complaint!

Something tells me their chances for accreditation just got a fuck of a lot slimmer.

My best friend, who as a church-going Christian has had many opportunities to perform case studies, assures me that too much prayer rots the brain. He can add these examples to his body of evidence. With them, I do believe he'll have proved his case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Scalia Sez Putting Innocent People to Death Perfectly Constitutional

This should earn Scalia the "Worst Judge in America" award. Here we have a very probably innocent man on death row:

Troy Anthony Davis has been languishing on Georgia’s death row for over 15 years for purportedly killing an off-duty police officer. There are serious questions about his guilt given that:

• There is no physical evidence linking him to the offense, and no murder weapon has been found.
• Eyewitnesses have recanted their stories.
• There are accusations of police intimidation of witnesses.

The majority of the Supreme Court decided that maybe those claims of innocence were worthy of a look before it's too late:

The Supreme Court on Monday took the rare step of ordering a federal judge to consider the innocence claims of condemned Georgia prisoner Troy Anthony Davis, who has mounted a global campaign to declare he was wrongfully convicted of murder and barred by federal law from presenting the evidence that would prove it.

And Scalia dissents in disgusting fashion:

Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.

So in Justice Scalia’s world, the law has no problem with sending an innocent man to die. One wonders why we even bother to have a Constitution.

In Justice Scalia's world, one rather gets the sense that the spirit of the Constitution is surplus to requirements.

Thankfully, the majority of our justices do not live in such a world, and therefore did the right thing. I have a feeling I know which set of Justices the Founders would be proudest of today.

Sonia Sotomayor Sworn In

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have our 111th Supreme Court Justice.

In honor of her swearing-in, let's have a quick look back at one of the many reasons why she was an excellent choice, shall we?

Describing Sotomayor as a lawyer who "has worked at almost every level of our judicial system," Obama noted that she has "more experience on the bench and more varied experience of the bench than anyone currently serving on the Supreme Court when they were appointed."

While much will be made of the fact that Obama has chosen a woman of Puerto Rican background to serve on a court that until the 1960s was made up entirely of white men, the president has, as well, chosen a jurist whose specific experience will make her a key player on a court that, in coming years, will be taking on more and more cases involving financial and economic issues.

Judge Sotomayor's 11 years of service on the federal appeals bench (as an appointee of Bill Clinton) have been served just a few blocks from Wall Street in Manhattan, as were her six years as a federal judge (as an appointee of George H.W. Bush as the recommendation of former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan).

"As the top federal appeals court in the nation's commercial center," the New York Times notes, "the court is known in particular for its expertise in corporate and securities law."

Obama specifically cited Sotomayor's legal skills with regard to financial and corporate issues as something that made her particularly appealing as a nominee.

Sounds like she's just what we're needing.

Congratulations, Justice Sotomayor!

Viva la Differance

Compare and contrast time, my darlings.

Back when Bush was a burden, we had to watch supposed lawyers fuck the law up the back passage without lubricant, and his supposed lawyers are still trying to do so today:

David Shuster and Harper's Scott Horton break down John Yoo's poorly written op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, defending his part in allowing the Bush administration to spy on millions of Americans under the guise of keeping us safe from terrorists.

From The Anonymous Liberal--John Yoo: Still Lying:

In this morning's Wall Street Journal, John Yoo has an op-ed defending himself from the malpractice charges set forth in the recent Inspecter General's report. As with the opinions themselves, the op-ed is deeply disingenuous and misstates the law repeatedly.

Not surprisingly, Yoo begins the op-ed with a collosal straw man. He points out how important it is to intercept al Qaeda communications and writes: "Evidently, none of the inspectors general of the five leading national security agencies would approve." Of course, the issue is not whether intercepting communications is a good idea, but whether the program violated the law. Yoo was not a policy maker. He was a lawyer. His job was to state what the law was, not what it should be.

Now contrast Bush's assclowns with Obama's lawyers:

Last week, Assistant Attorney General David Kris and Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to talk about Military Commissions. David Kris got into a little bit of a discussion with Sen. John McCain because McCain was shocked to learn that the Constitution may operate in ways that apply to non citizens. In his defense, McCain is not a lawyer, but I didn't think this was a novel concept. Yet, Kris had to patiently explain the fundamentals:

Ranking member Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) questioned Assistant Attorney General David Kris about his remarks on the appropriateness of administering the Miranda warning to terrorist suspects captured abroad. "It is the administration's view that there is a serious risk that courts would hold that admission of involuntary statements of the accused in military commission proceedings is unconstitutional," Kris said in his opening statement.

"Does that infer that these individuals have constitutional rights?" McCain asked Kris.

"Ah, yes," Kris answered.

"What are those constitutional rights of people who are not citizens of the United States of America, who were captured on a battlefield committing acts of war against the United States?" McCain asked.

"Our analysis, Senator, is that the due process clause applies to military commissions and imposes a constitutional floor on the procedures that the government sets on such commissions ..." Kris said.

"So you are saying that these people who are at Guantanamo, who were part of 9/11, who committed acts of war against the United States, have constitutional rights under the Constitution of the United States of America?" McCain asked.

"Within the framework I just described, the answer is yes, the due process clause guarantees and imposes some requirements on the conduct of (military) commissions," Kris said.

If you click the above link, you can watch Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson wipe the floor with Joe Lieberman, who "respectfully disagrees" that terrorists can and should be tried in the same civilian courts that have been trying and convicting terrorists by the truckload for a good many years now. 'Tis a thing of beauty.

I think we can all concur with the following sentiment:

I am gratified to see that New York Times thinks Messrs Kris and Johnson have provided good legal counsel to the Committee. From the Times editorial page:

After years of watching government lawyers undermine the rule of law, it has been especially gratifying to see President Obama's lawyers urging senators to do even more to create a system that will fairly try prisoners and no longer shame Americans.

I know that Obama's not perfect. I know that there's vast room for improvement on several aspects of his national security policy. But the improvement over the last administration is remarkable. And I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I am that we didn't elect that mega-fucktard John "Do Terrorists Really Truly Have Rights?" McCain.

You made a good choice this time, America. Keep up the excellent work.