6
POPSWhat’s Likely to Happen to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan? Perhaps what’s likely to occur, writes the Chron, is a court-martial under Article 2 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to punish offenses allegedly committed by a man wearing a U.S. military uniform against other military personnel on a military base. The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division is responsible for recommending charges, prompting the military equivalent of a grand jury, known as an Article 32 hearing, where both prosecutors and defense can present evidence. Those results would be reviewed by the base commander, who would decide whether to convene a court-martial. The 12-person jury would be composed of officers higher in rank than Hasan " lieutenant colonels and above. Lead Writer Ashby Jones The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a litigator at a large law firm and clerked for a federal judge.
4
POPSFrom both sides of his mouth!!!!! This latest move by the administration follows a pattern replicated countless times by Obama since assuming the presidency in January: denounce the lawless behavior of his Oval Office predecessor while continuing, even expanding, the reach of unaccountable security agencies that subvert constitutional guarantees barring "unreasonable searches and seizures."
1
POPSIf you cannot speak Texan, gee outta town! Texas is not the only place with people in power embarrassing the town but this is pretty good - fining people for something that's not a crime. It says as much about those who trained and managed them and the courts in their jurisdictions as it does about the officers with misplaced sense of being word police. Question is what would happen if one of these officers got stopped in London - England, not Ohio; could they be cited for refusing to speak the Queen's English?
2
POPSCalif. Lawyer Who Challenged Obama Citizenship Fined $20,000
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of watching one of her press conferences, then you can't truly appreciate the "train wreck" that is Orly Taitz, Attorney-at-Law. Ms. Taitz is a leader in the so-called "Birther Movement," the movement that challenges President Obama's right to hold office on the grounds that he is not a U.S. citizen. The ABA Journal Law News Now reports that a federal judge in Georgia fined Taitz $20,000 for her wild accusations in court and ordered her not to pursue any further frivolous actions in court - ever. In my opinion, this should render Taitz unable to practice law. Not to be dissuaded, Taitz filed a motion for reconsideration the next day. This motion was apparently denied, the judge writing, “Counsel’s wild accusations may be protected by the First Amendment when she makes them on her blog or in her press conferences, but the federal courts are reserved for hearing genuine legal disputes, not as a platform for political rhetoric and
5
POPSItaly Convicts 23 Americans In CIA Terrorist Kidnapping Case 
One of those convicted, former Milan consular official Sabrina De Sousa, accused Congress of turning a blind eye to the entire matter. "No one has investigated the fact that the U.S. government allegedly conducted a rendition of an individual who now walks free and the operation of which was so bungled," she said, speaking through her lawyer Mark Zaid. Despite the convictions capping the nearly three-year Italian trial, several Italian and American defendants – including the two alleged masterminds of the abduction – were acquitted due to either diplomatic immunity or because classified information was stricken by Italy's highest court. The case has been politically charged from the beginning, with attempts to mislead investigators looking into the cleric's disappearance and derail the judicial proceedings once the trial was under way. But the Italian-American relationship, conditioned on such issues as participation in the Afghan campaign, is unlikely to be hurt by the convic
2
POPS Hey... Want a Baby? The expression "life is cheap" seems to be true these days. Why in the hell are people like this even allowed to be parents? I guess they didn't think to place an ad in the newspaper. They could've got a lot more from prospective baby seekers. Don't attack me for that statement. It's more a reality than you might know. Anyway...I'm just glad they don't have it any more (the baby that is). But knowing how things things go in our wonderful courts these days, it's possible they can get custody restored. That is if they want the poor thing.
4
POPSGoldman Sucks’ new role: Taking Your Homes The couple alleges that Goldman declined for three years to confirm their suspicions that it had bought their mortgages from a subprime lender, even after they wrote to Goldman’s then-Chief Executive Henry Paulson — later U.S. Treasury secretary — in 2003. Unable to identify a lender, the couple could neither capitalize on a mortgage hardship provision that would allow them to defer some payments, nor on a state law enabling them to offset their debt against separate, investment-related claims against Goldman. In July, the Beckers won a David-and-Goliath struggle when Goldman subsidiary MTGLQ Investors dropped its bid to seize their house. By then, the college-educated couple had been reduced to shopping for canned goods at flea markets and selling used ceramic glass. Theirs is an infrequent happy ending among the hundreds of cases...
2
POPSDefense dept. opposed to franken's anti-rape amendment The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), is intended to address the type of Kafka-esque treatment Jamie Leigh Jones received from the U.S. justice system after she was gang-raped by fellow KBR workers. The defense contractor argued that her employment contract required that her claim be heard in private arbitration rather than in open court. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/19/defense-department-oppose_n_326569.html
4
POPSFinding Their Voice "The women say the newsroom structure remains loose and titles are often trumped by a system of respect among equals. A key point in many of the women's lives came when they realized, usually at some point in primary or middle school, that as Dalits they'd been born at the bottom of India's social pyramid. The painful awareness came when she realized the teacher in her remote village never drank the water she offered him and would accept it only from higher-caste students."
7
POPSEnding death penalty could save US millions More: Dieter says that keeping execution while reducing its costs is not realistic. If less money is spent on appeals, he argues, the risk of executing an innocent person will increase. He said that ultimately, execution does not deter crime as its supporters hope. Capital punishment has been abolished in most western democracies, and after it was eliminated in the US state of New Jersey in 2007, the state saw its murder rate decline. Dieter cites a poll of 500 local police chiefs, which was paid for by the DPIC and released on Tuesday, showing support for ending capital punishment. The survey found that the police chiefs see the death penalty as the least effective tool in deterring crime. They suggest more efficient use of resources -- such as boosting funding for drug and alcohol abuse programs.
10
POPSRape case to force US defence firms into the open Halliburton/KBR used a clause in her contract requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration to block legal action – a policy which, her lawyer says, has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity. Franken described it as a denial of justice. "Contractors are using fine print to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court," he said in a Senate debate. In legal papers Jones, who was 20 at the time, says she was fed a knockout drug while drinking with KBR firefighters. "When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles torn‚ which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again," the papers say.
5
POPS10 Mediveval Torture Devices
More from the article: Some courts used torture to determine if someone accused of a crime was truly guilty. This torture would take strange forms: Someone's arm would be forced into boiling water, and the verdict would be based on how well the arm healed days later. Other courts simply tortured people to get them to confess to the crime. The courts themselves even recognized, in their twisted way, that a confession given under torture held no legal meaning. Such a confession had to be confirmed by the victims while not being tortured within 24 hours. If they refused, however, they were simply tortured until they confessed again People were often tortured to force religious conversions. They also faced torture because they may have committed heresy against the established church. Thousands were tortured during the Inquisition on the pretext of religious heresy or conversion, although Inquisitors in general were often motivated by more earthly concerns - they took over the estates
6
POPSA historian's account of Democrats and Bush-era war crimes What made those detainee photographs so important from the start is that they depict brutal abuse well outside of the Abu Ghraib facility and thus reveal to Americans -- and the world -- that America's torture was not, as they've been constantly told, limited to rogue sadists at Abu Ghraib and the waterboarding of three bad guys. Instead, our torture regime was systematic, pervasive, brutal, fatal, and -- becuase it was the by-product of conscious policies set at the highest levels of government -- common across America's "War on Terror" detention regime. These photographs would have documented those vital facts; combated the false denials from torture apologists; fueled the momentum for accountability; and revealed, in graphic and unavoidable terms, what was truly done by America's government. But a Democratic-led Congress, at the urging of a Democratic President, is now taking extraordinary steps -- including a new law which has no purpose other than to suppress evidence of Americ
7
POPSJudge to Prop. 8 backers: Hand over your papers More: Although "voters cannot be asked to explain their votes," Walker said, a ballot measure's authors and strategists can be scrutinized to see what their motives were. He cited a magazine article last year by the heads of the public relations firm that managed the Prop. 8 campaign in which they discussed their strategy, including plans to show how advocates of same-sex marriage would indoctrinate schoolchildren. Walker said the article undermined the campaign's insistence that its strategy discussions were confidential.
3
POPSChild rapist strikes again The latest victim's father, a 35-year old printer from Greater Manchester, said: 'Our son was abused not only by this lad but also in effect by the British legal system that was supposed to protect him. 'I always thought people who commit such serious offences like rape automatically go to prison - yet this boy was allowed to go free. He was even allowed back onto the estate where he lived. 'In my eyes if someone commits an adult or grown up crime then they should serve an adult or grown up sentence - not be molecoddled by the courts and told to get treatment. 'My son is six years old now but as a result of what happened his childhood innocence has probably been robbed. Heaven only knows what effect it will have in him in the years to come.
4
POPSMore rebuttals to more Polanski-apologist rationalizations More: Where is the outrage of so many of these same people over men who have been sitting on death row for decades based on perjured testimony, judges who didn't let in relevant testimony, or simply biased juries... even before we get to DNA issues? He's guilty... he admits he's guilty... he ran... but we like him... so it's okay. Epic Fail. If you want to make the argument, make a real argument. I haven't heard one yet.
7
POPSLosing Sight I'd like to ask whether, if the victim were their daughter, they'd be so cavalier about a crime that was originally charged as sodomy and rape before Polanski agreed to a plea bargain. She testified that he put his mouth on her vagina. "I was ready to cry," she said. "I was kind of -- I was going, 'No. Come on. Stop it.' But I was afraid." She said he then pulled off her panties. Q: What happened after that? A: He started to have intercourse with me. "He goes, 'Would you want me to go in through your back?' And I went, 'No.' " According to her, that didn't stop Polanski, who began having anal sex with her." Does it make you uncomfortable to read this? GOOD. She was a child.
4
POPSDeath Merchants: Rick Scott profits off the uninsured And this isn't the first time that Scott's warnings about the ills of socialist medicine have found an ironic echo in his own healthcare business. Scott argues that socialized medicine rations care and strangles competition, yet just after his first stint as anti-reform spokesman in the 1990s, while he was running the world's largest healthcare company, he was accused of monopolizing markets and choking out the competition while slashing the chain's costs to the point that it affected patient care. And while he asserts that two of the core principles of healthcare reform are "accountability" and "personal responsibility," Scott ran a company that ultimately pleaded guilty to defrauding the government in one of the nation's largest Medicare frauds ever. Two executives went to prison, the company paid almost $2 billion in fines, and Scott was pushed out of the company. Before he could retake the political stage, he had to build his healthcare business all over again.
4
POPSDoJ Official Blows Cover Off PATRIOT Act more @ source. Only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.
4
POPS Obama as Dr. Evil
Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for our collective inaction. Like all of you, my responsibility is to act in the interest of my nation and my people, and I will never apologize for defending those interests. But it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 " more than at any point in human history " the interests of nations and peoples are shared. It irks me that Obama believes that our interests are shared. Our interests could be shared, if Iran didn’t want to obliterate Israel, for example. However, presently that is not a shared interest of the United States. Obama courts the world, telling them how he appeases them"closing Guantanamo Bay, ending torture, ending weapons systems, ridding the world of nuclear weapons, and so on . .
1
POPSBrazil: Slash, burn and kill capitalism I know President Lula has hands full but the slash, burn and kill "cowboy" capitalists need some sort of lesson from the President to change their ways of have their holdings nationalized. Endangering people and the planet is no longer an option folks!
1
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update