MyDD

Poster child for Sotomayor critics has litigious history

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:48:24 GMT

Republicans plan to have New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci testify during Judge Sonia Sotomayor's upcoming confirmation hearings. Ricci's story has become a focal point for opponents of Sotomayor, because the Supreme Court recently found in his favor in a 5-4 decision that overruled a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision involving Sotomayor. (Of course, Sotomayor's critics don't acknowledge the bigger picture of her rulings in race-related cases.)

It turns out that Ricci's quite the veteran of employment lawsuits. He sued the city of New Haven in 1995, claiming that he was discriminated against because of his dyslexia, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ricci also went to court to fight his 1998 dismissal from Middletown's South Fire District.

Dahlia Lithwick concluded at Slate,

Ultimately, there are two ways to frame Frank Ricci's penchant for filing employment discrimination complaints: Perhaps he was repeatedly victimized by a cruel cadre of employers, first for his dyslexia, then again for his role as a whistle-blower, and then a third time for just being white. [...]

The other way to look at Frank Ricci is as a serial plaintiff--one who reacts to professional slights and setbacks by filing suit, threatening to file suit, and more or less complaining his way up the chain of command.

Or as TPM-DC's Brian Beutler observed,

[Ricci's] views on jurisprudence seem to begin and end with the proposition that legal protections against discrimination are great when they work in his favor, and unconscionable when they don't.

My hunch is that we won't hear much about Ricci's litigious history during the cable tv coverage of the Sotomayor hearings.

Tags: Supreme Court, SCOTUS, Sonia Sotomayor, Frank Ricci, Ricci, discrimination (all tags)

Time to Pay Attention to the VA-AG Race

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:56:13 GMT

I haven't paid any attention to the Virginia Attorney General race -- but it looks like it's right time I should. Take a gander at who is running the campaign of GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli:

[Democratic nominee Steve Shannon's new campaign manager Mike] Henry faces Chris LaCivita, a veteran Republican operative who worked for George Allen and was behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 and the first ads about Barack Obama's connection to Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers last year.

I don't know anything about Cuccinelli, but the people he associates himself with say a lot about him. Running for a position that is not an inherently partisan one, but rather one about upholding the law, Cuccinelli chose as his top staffer a complete partisan hack who stoops to the lowest of lows to try to slime Democrats. If this is any indication of the type of Attorney General Cuccinelli would be, then it should be abundantly clear that he must be stopped.

Tags: VA-AG, Virginia (all tags)

A lot of Republicans owe Pelosi an apology

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:06:22 GMT

In May a chorus of Republicans inside and outside Congress made hay out of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the Central Intelligence Agency had not revealed its waterboarding policy during a 2002 briefing. Many demanded an investigation into the allegations. Minority leader John Boehner said of Pelosi,

"She made this claim and it's her responsibility to either put forward evidence that they did in fact lie to her, which would be a crime, or she needs to retract her statements and apologize."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was among the Republican talking heads who demanded Pelosi's resignation. According to Gingrich, Pelosi's assertion was "stunning" and "dishonest."

Representative Steve "10 Worst" King (IA-05) accused Pelosi of "actively undermining our national security" and called for suspending the speaker's security clearance:

Speaker Pelosi has accused the CIA of committing a federal crime - lying to Congress. The CIA and other American defense and intelligence agencies cannot trust Nancy Pelosi with our national secrets, let alone our national security, until this matter is resolved. If true, there has been a serious violation of federal law. If false, American national security requires a new Speaker of the House. The severity of Speaker Pelosi's accusations leaves no middle ground, and her security clearance should be suspended pending investigation.

Now we have learned that

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday. [...]

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

So not only was Congress misled, CIA staff did not even inform Panetta about the program until four months after he was sworn in. Charles Lemos is absolutely right that it's time for a special prosecutor to investigate this matter.

Republicans who trashed Pelosi in May and June owe her an apology, but like Rude Pundit, I'm not holding my breath. They've always been easygoing about Bush administration law-breaking while throwing fits about Democrats who criticized it.

Tags: Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Steve King, Leon Panetta, CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, Dick Cheney, abuse of power, lying to Congress, waterboarding, torture (all tags)

It's Time for a Special Prosecutor

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:39:11 GMT

The plot thickens, as they say. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been linked to a decision within the Bush Administration to conceal a still-unidentified CIA program from Congress. The New York Times has the story:

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Leon Panetta was sworn in as Director of the CIA on February 20, 2009. Why did it take four months for subordinates to inform the CIA Director of an on-going program? While intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the CIA interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities, the exact nature and purpose of the program remains unknown.

Intelligence officials have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the CIA shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year. It remains unclear whether the program was conceived by the intelligence community or by the Vice President's office.

Saturday Diary Rescue

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:34:05 GMT

Enjoy.

El Paso is for lovers, unless you're gay. (shelleyschreiner)

Fogiv introduces Cheney's Secret Death Squad.

What does comprehensive immigration reform mean, asks The Media Consortium in the Weekly Immigration Wire: The White House vs. Reality. The Opportunity Agenda helps to answer that same question in the Thursday Immigration Blog Roundup.

Ragekage: Republicans Boycott Google. And facts. Truth. Honesty. You name it, they don't like it.

Appreciate continued learning with JohnGaramendi and Wreading, Writing, and Writhmetic.

Voting Rights Groups Sue States for Failing to Register Low-Income Residents. (Project Vote)

And second week in a row, psychodrew spawns the most engaging comment discussion in A ConservaDem Blinks.

Tags: Diary Rescue, Open Thread (all tags)

Another Atrocity Aided, Abetted and Covered Up by BushCo

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:02:36 GMT

Powerful video from Physicians for Human Rights discussing the appalling massacres in Afghanistan in 2002 that have been systematically covered up by both the Bush and now the Obama administrations.

From the NYT

After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations.

American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation -- sought by officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, the Red Cross and other human rights groups -- because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported Karzai government, in which General Dostum has served as a defense official.

"At the White House, nobody said `no' to an investigation, but nobody ever said `yes,' either," said Pierre Prosper, the former war crimes ambassador for the United States. "The first reaction of everybody there was `Oh, this is a sensitive issue. This is a touchy issue politically.' "

It is not clear how -- or if -- the Obama administration will address the issue. But in recent weeks, State Department officials have quietly tried to thwart General Dostum's reappointment as military chief of staff to the president, according to several senior officials, and suggested that the administration may not be hostile to an inquiry.

The Obama administration responded in the way we've gotten used to, defending the actions of the Bush administration and being reluctant to investigate.

Physicians for Human Rights responded:

Obama Administration officials stated Friday, as reported by Lara Jakes of the Associated Press, that they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who allegedly were killed by U.S.-backed forces. In their statement, these officials claim that they lack legal grounds to probe these alleged war crimes because "only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country."

The officials' comments came in response to a New York Times report by James Risen that the Bush Administration impeded at least three federal investigations into an alleged massacre of as many as 2,000 prisoners in Afghanistan.

"For US Government officials to claim that there is no legal basis to investigate this well-documented mass atrocity is absurd," stated Physicians for Human Rights Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin. "US military and intelligence personnel were operating jointly and accepted the surrender of the prisoners jointly with General Dostum's forces in northern Afghanistan. The Obama Administration has a legal obligation to determine what US officials knew, where US personnel were, what involvement they had, and the actions of US allies during and after the massacre. These questions, nearly eight years later, remain unanswered."

"Furthermore," added Nathaniel Raymond, PHR's lead researcher on the Dasht-e-Leili case, "The New York Times has shown that the Bush Administration engaged in a coordinated effort to prevent this alleged war crime from ever being investigated. Under the Geneva Conventions, the cover-up of a war crime can itself constitute a war crime."

Physicians for Human Rights have also made more information available:

Tags: afghanistan, war crimes, bush administration, physicians for human rights (all tags)

VA-Gov: McDonnell and His Backers Gets Desperate

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:47:14 GMT

The latestsurvey out of the Virginia Governor's race shows Republican Bob McDonnell leading Democrat Creigh Deeds by a 49 percent to 43 percent margin. Believe these numbers represent a good estimation of where the race currently stands? The Republicans apparently don't.

In the high stakes world of politics, few lines of attack on candidates are off-limits - their business and personal dealings, even their families.

That's a lesson Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds is being reminded of as word of his son's upcoming court hearing on a misdemeanor alcohol possession charge has become public.

[...]

His legal entanglement was unearthed by political operatives digging for dirt. Deeds faces a tight race against Republican Bob McDonnell, and the national organizations of both parties are closely involved in the campaign.

Candidates that are leading in the polls don't beg their opponents to participate in a series of ten debates to shake up the race -- and they certainly don't allow their supporters to turn the opposition research machine against their opponent's children. But that's what we're currently seeing in Virginia, where despite the fact that the latest poll puts McDonnell up, the Republican and his backers appear to be doing anything and everything -- including stooping to some pretty low levels even for the world of politics -- to try to eke out a victory.

Tags: VA-Gov, Virginia, Governor 2009 (all tags)