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20090121

Barack Obama

John Roberts

Law

Politics

"Obama retakes oath of office after Roberts' mistake." ... "[Democratic] President Obama retook his oath of office Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed while delivering it at Tuesday's inauguration." ... "The do-over was aimed at dispelling any confusion that might arise from Tuesday's take -- in which "faithfully" was said out of sequence -- and erase any question that Obama is legally the president." ... "However, per the Constitution, Obama became president at noon Tuesday without taking the oath." ... "The Constitution sets out the language that should be used in the oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.""

-CNN

Barack Obama

Federal

Military

Prison

Terrorism

Law

Politics

Guantanamo

Cuba

Canada

"Obama Seeks Halt to Legal Proceedings at Guantanamo." ... "In one of its first actions, the [Democratic President] Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday [January 20, 2009] to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- a clear break with the approach of the outgoing [Republican President] Bush administration." ... "The instruction came in a motion filed with a military court in the case of five defendants accused of organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The motion called for "a continuance of the proceedings" until May 20 so that "the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically."" ... "The same motion was filed in another case scheduled to resume Wednesday, involving a Canadian detainee, and will be filed in all other pending matters." ... "Such a request may not be automatically granted by military judges, and not all defense attorneys may agree to such a suspension. But the move is a first step toward closing a detention facility and system of military trials that became a worldwide symbol of the Bush administration's war on terrorism and its unyielding attitude toward foreign and domestic critics." ... "The Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to [Republican President Bush] administration claims, detainees at Guantanamo were entitled to challenge their detentions and that the naval base was not beyond the reach of federal law." ... "Eventually more than 550 detainees were released; only three were ever put on trial and convicted." -By Peter Finn

-WashingtonPost

20090120

Barack Obama

John Roberts

Politics

Religion

Race

Civil Rights

Justice

"Barack Hussein Obama: 44th president of the United States: Inauguration 2009." ... "A BIBLE WITH SIGNIFICANCE." ... "[Democratic President Elect] Barack Obama laid his hand on a Bible used in [Republican President Elect] Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 inauguration. The chief justice in 1861 was Roger Brooke Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision barring blacks from citizenship." ... "In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama said, “Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.” There have been only 43 different men serve as president; [Democratic President] Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms." ... "At 47, Barack Obama is the nation’s fifth-youngest president. The youngest was [Republican President] Theodore Roosevelt (42), followed by [Democratic President] John F. Kennedy (43), [Democratic President] Bill Clinton (46) and [Republican President] Ulysses S. Grant (46)." ... "Barack Obama was one of 22 Senate Democrats to vote against Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation in 2005, so this was the first time a justice has sworn in a president who voted against him."

-AJC

20090114

Torture

War Crimes

Government

Military

Terrorism

Intelligence

Detainees

Medical

Human

Rights

Law

Inpector

Guantanamo Bay

Cuba

Saudi

"Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official: Trial Overseer Cites 'Abusive' Methods Against 9/11 Suspect." ... "The top [Republican President] Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] detainees to trial has concluded that the [United States] U.S. military tortured a Saudi [Arabia] national who allegedly planned to participate in the [September] Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."" ... ""We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution." ... "Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the [Republican President] Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured." ... "Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said." ... ""I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."" ... "Crawford said she believes that coerced testimony should not be allowed. "You don't allow it in a regular court," said Crawford, who served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces from 1991 to 2006." ... "In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. "It did shock me," Crawford said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."" ... "The harsh techniques used against Qahtani, she said, were approved by [Republican President Bush's] then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld." (1, 2, 3) -By Bob Woodward with contributions by Julie Tate and Evelyn Duffy

-WashingtonPost

Bradley Schlozman

Political

Government

Employees

Election

Civil Rights

Enforcement

"Bush appointee saw Justice lawyers as 'commies,' 'crazy libs,' report says: [Republican President Bush appointee] Bradley Schlozman, who supervised civil rights and voting rights lawyers, broke the law by considering political affiliations in deciding who can serve, an inspector general's report says." ... "To Bradley Schlozman, they were "mold spores," "commies" and "crazy libs."" ... "He was referring to the career lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights and voting rights divisions. From 2003 to 2006, Schlozman was a Bush appointee who supervised them." ... ""My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the section," he said in an e-mail in 2003. "I too get to work with mold spores, but here in Civil Rights, we call them Voting Section attorneys," he confided to another friend." ... "He hoped to get rid of the "Democrats" and "liberals" because they were "disloyal" and replace them with "real Americans" and "right-thinking Americans."" ... "He appears to have succeeded by his standards, according to an inspector general's report released Tuesday. Among the newly hired lawyers whose political or ideological views could be discerned, 63 of 65 lawyers hired under Schlozman had Republican or conservative credentials, the report said." ... "The inspector general concluded Schlozman violated the civil services laws while at the Justice Department. While the president's appointees are entitled to run the department and set policy, they are prohibited from considering "political affiliations" in deciding on who serves in career positions in the federal government." -By David G. Savage

-LAtimes

20090110

War Crimes

Human Rights

Military

Politics

Israel

Palestine

"UN calls for war crimes probe into IDF shelling of civilian-occupied building in Gaza." ... "With fighting all around them, Israel Defense Forces [IDF] troops knocked on the door of the Samouni clan in Gaza City [Gaza, Palestine] last weekend and told them to leave, directing them to the building owned by a relative. Twenty-four hours later, three shells slammed into the structure where dozens of people were huddling, according to survivor accounts Friday." ... "A newly released United Nations report said 30 people died in the shelling, citing four unidentified survivors who spoke by telephone. It called the shelling "one of the gravest incidents" to happen since Israeli infantry and armored troops entered Gaza [2009 January] Jan. 4 to quell Hamas rockets on Israel." ... "Other accounts given to The Associated Press and an Israeli human rights group provided lower casualty figures, but all agreed that shells hit the large, unfinished warehouse-like building a day after Israeli troops told them to get inside it for their safety." ... "Allegra Pacheco, a senior UN [United Nations] official in Jerusalem [Israel's capital] who helped draft the report on the incident for OCHA, added: "We are not making an accusation of deliberate action" by the Israelis." ... "UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the UN report should be the basis for an investigation of "war crimes elements." Her spokesman, Rupert Colville, said the "war crimes elements" would refer to allegations that Israel impeded medical teams trying to care for wounded civilians and failed to care for those injured in the attack." ... "Pillay told an emergency meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that any harm to Israeli civilians by Hamas rockets was unacceptable, but it did not excuse abuses carried out by Israeli forces in response." ... "On Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva accused Israel of "unacceptable" delays in letting rescue workers reach three Gaza City homes hit by shelling, where they eventually found 15 dead and 18 wounded, including young children too weak to stand."

-Ha'aretzDaily

Corporate

Government

Accounting

Politics

History

Military

Reconstruction

Gas

Alberto Gonzales

Torture

Law

Intelligence

Pat Tillman

Afghanistan

Guantánamo

Iraq

"Eight Years of Madoffs." ... "Three days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of [2008 December] Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized [Republican President] Bush management at home and abroad." ... "The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq." ... "The report quotes no less an authority than Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ” Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoff’s math." ... "What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. When, in 1971, The Times got its hands on the Pentagon Papers, the internal federal history of the Vietnam disaster, the revelations caused a national uproar. But after eight years of battering by Bush, the nation has been rendered half-catatonic. The Iraq Pentagon Papers sank with barely a trace." ... "After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.” The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials." ... "Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives." ... "Back in the day, an oil-fueled scandal in that one department alone could mesmerize a nation and earn [Republican President] Warren Harding a permanent ranking among our all-time worst presidents. But while the scandals at Bush’s Interior resemble Teapot Dome — and also encompass millions of dollars in lost federal oil and gas royalties — they barely registered beyond the Beltway. Even late-night comics yawned when The Washington Post administered a coup de grâce last week, reporting that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne spent $235,000 from taxpayers to redo his office bathroom (monogrammed towels included)." ... "It took 110 pages for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research organization, to compile the CliffsNotes inventory of the Bush wreckage last month. It found “125 systematic failures across the breadth of the federal government.” That accounting is conservative. There are still too many unanswered questions. " ... "Just a short list is staggering. Who put that bogus “uranium from Africa” into the crucial prewar State of the Union address after the C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] removed it from previous Bush speeches? How high up were the authorities who ordered and condoned torture and then let the “rotten apples” at the bottom of the military heap take the fall? Who orchestrated the Pentagon’s elaborate P.R. [Public Relations] efforts to cover up Pat Tillman’s death by “friendly fire” in Afghanistan? " -By Frank Rich

-NYTimes

20090109

Abramoff

Cheney

Secret

Illegal

Politics

Computer

Archives

Federal

Investigation

Censorship

"Judge rules against White House on visitors logs." ... "A federal judge on Friday rejected the [Republican President] Bush administration's latest attempt to keep secret the identities of White House visitors and declared that the government illegally deleted Secret Service computer records." ... "[United States] U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth concluded that the deletions took place before October 2004 when the Secret Service transferred large numbers of entry and exit logs to the White House and then deleted copies of them." ... "The deletions ceased after the archivist to the United States instructed the Secret Service to stop the practice and after various private organizations went to court in an effort to gain access to the logs, according to papers filed in the case. The deletions go back at least as far as 2001, the government's papers added, the year President George W. Bush took office." ... "Secret Service logs have been used in investigations by Congress and federal prosecutors." ... "In the spring of 2006, in the midst of an influence peddling scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement declaring the Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public." ... "Four months later, [Republican Vice President] Cheney's office told the Secret Service in a letter that visitor records for the vice president's personal residence "are and shall remain subject to the exclusive ownership, custody and control of OVP [Office of the Vice President]."" -By Pete Yost

-AP via -Yahoo

20090108

Corporate

Government

Regulations

Workers

Safety

Medical

Science

Environment

History

Earth

Oil

Auto

St. Paul

Minnesota

Wyoming

Utah

Obama

Netherlands

World

"Bush Pushes ‘Midnight Rules’ to Support Companies as Term Ends." ... "[Republican President] George W. Bush is using the waning days of his presidency to implement a raft of pro-business regulations, triggering vows by the incoming [Democratic President Elect] Obama administration and congressional Democrats to gut the measures." ... "Bush is proposing changes to federal rules that critics say make it more difficult to protect U.S. [United States] workers from exposure to toxic chemicals, reduce the use of employee medical leave and open more land to oil and gas exploration. The effort is supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and trade groups representing companies including [Netherlands-based] Royal Dutch Shell Plc [Public limited company] and Dow Chemical Co. [Company.]" ... "The Interior Department today is publishing a rule that would lift a 79-year-old executive order prohibiting oil shale development in Wyoming and Utah. Yesterday, the Bush administration postponed regulations requiring cars and light trucks to be more fuel efficient by 2011." ... "Bush’s regulation on toxins, which isn’t final yet, would change the way workplace exposure to poisonous substances is measured, and is supported by associations representing companies such as Dow, the biggest U.S. chemical company, Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, and 3M Co., the St. Paul [Minnesota's capital], Minnesota-based maker of 55,000 products." ... "The change is opposed by the United Mineworkers and other unions. They argue it would delay new health protections for workers by requiring a lengthy regulatory process before new standards could be issued. " -By Holly Rosenkrantz and Mark Drajem

-Bloomberg

Women

Jobs

Money

Civil Rights

Law

Politics

California

"Courts using Ledbetter decision to ‘undermine civil rights principles across the board.’." ... "Tomorrow, the House is set to take up the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would overturn a Supreme Court decision that restricted a woman’s right to bring pay discrimination lawsuits. The House handily passed the bill last year, but Senate conservatives blocked it after [Republican] President Bush threatened to veto it. On a conference call organized by [California Democratic Representative] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today, Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, explained that the faulty Supreme Court decision has been stretched to cripple all kinds of anti-discrimination laws:"

"GREENBERGER: So now we’ve got these judges taking the Ledbetter decision to absurd lengths and saying that the most entrenched and invidious discrimination — now that those who have the courage and the knowledge and the ability, for the first time to combat are out of time. It is an outrageous approach, an undermining of civil rights principles across the board. It’s now causing real misery, as was described not only for women and their families in pay…but for all victims of discrimination."

"Check out the Center for American Progress’s Fair Pay Calculator, and learn more about the fight for fair pay, here. Firedoglake has more." -By Ali Frick

-ThinkProgress.org

Barack Obama

Financial

Jobs

Government

Lawmakers

Mass

"Lawmakers and Financial Experts Question Obama's Tax Cuts." ... "At least two tax cuts that are part of [Democratic President Elect] Barack Obama's stimulus package have been criticized by lawmakers, tax experts and economists for being potentially too expensive and ineffective, signaling that they are likely to face resistance on Capitol Hill as congressional leaders begin direct negotiations with the president-elect's team." ... "Both Democrats and Republicans have questioned a provision that would provide a $3,000 tax credit to companies for every job created and, possibly, for every job spared. They contend that the idea would be ripe for abuse and difficult to administer." ... ""It is tough to see how a company that is seeing its sales slaughtered in today's recession is going to hire just because it gets a few thousand dollars per new worker from the government," Howard Gleckman wrote on the TaxVox blog for the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank. "Profitable firms would merely take the credit for bringing on workers they were already planning on hiring."" ... "[Massachusetts Democratic Representative] Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass. [Democratic-Massachusetts]), chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on select revenue measures, said the scenario that worries him is that of the employer who lays off thousands of people and then is subsidized for hiring back a few hundred." (1, 2) -By Shailagh Murray

-WashingtonPost

Consumer

Home

Law

Government

Politics

"Citigroup Backs Bankruptcy Courts Cutting Loan Rates (Update1)." ... "Citigroup Inc. [Incorporated], one of nine U.S. [United States] banks to get government aid, agreed to support legislation that would let bankruptcy judges cut mortgage rates for at-risk borrowers, three U.S. senators said today as financial industry lobbyists said the compromise was flawed." ... "Citigroup in November got $306 billion of U.S. government guarantees for troubled mortgages and toxic assets to stabilize the bank. The deal, brokered by the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. [Corporation] required the bank to modify terms for guaranteed troubled loans based on a model created by the FDIC." ... "Congress has passed several measures in the past year to stem home foreclosures, including a $300 billion bill passed in July aimed at helping 400,000 borrowers keep their homes. Senate Democrats were unable in April to adopt the bankruptcy proposal. Republicans, and the banking industry, said the plan would raise costs because lenders would try to recoup losses in court with higher rates on other loans." ... "The revised bill Citigroup endorsed would give judges the ability to adjust principle payments or interest rates on existing loans, and could extend the term on the loan, according to the language of the bill, which would force lenders to take losses without a say in bankruptcy court proceedings." ... "Citigroup accounted for 7 percent of the U.S. market for servicing home loans as of Sept. 30, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance newsletter in October. " -By Margaret Chadbourn

-Bloomberg

Larry Craig

Politician

Idaho

Minnesota

Police

"Ex-Senator Craig accepts sex sting guilty plea." ... "Former [Idaho Republican Senator] Sen. Larry Craig has ended his effort to void the guilty plea he made following his 2007 arrest in a men's toilet sex-sting operation, his lawyer said on Thursday." ... "Craig was arrested at [Minnesota's] Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on June 11, 2007, by an undercover police officer who said the lawmaker peeked at him repeatedly through a crack in a stall door, sat down in the stall next to him and used hand and foot signals to indicate he was soliciting sex." -By Andrew Stern with contributions by Michael Conlon

-Reuters

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