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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYT Rewrites Scalia to Make Him Sound Less Racist
Ever wonder why Swarthy Nazi Just-Us 5-4 gets a pass from the Paper o' Record?
NYT Rewrites Scalia to Make Him Sound Less Racist
By Jim Naureckas
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, Dec. 10, 2015
New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak (12/9/15) recounted a startling moment in the Courts oral arguments over the University of Texas affirmative action plan:
In a remark that drew muted gasps in the courtroom, Justice Antonin Scalia said that minority students with inferior academic credentials may be better off at a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.
I dont think it stands to reason that its a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible, he added.
But part of the reason that the remark drew muted gasps, surely, is that thats not what Scalia saidhe didnt say minority students with inferior academic credentials would be better off at worse schools, he said African-Americans in general would. Heres the whole passage:
There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a lessa slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country dont come from schools like the University of Texas . They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that theyre being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.
He goes on to suggest that really competent blacks would be better off if they were admitted to lesser schools:
Im just not impressed by the fact that that the University of Texas may have fewer [black students]. Maybe it ought to have fewer. And maybe some, you know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks, admitted to lesser schools turns out to be less. And I dont think it stands to reason that its a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.
This is not a person talking about a subset of blacks with a particular kind of educational background; taking his words at face value,
this is a person asserting that African-Americans as a whole belong in lesser schools that are not too fast for them. (Or that there are those who contend that that is the case, if you want to give Scalia credit for that circumlocution.)
[font color="red"]The fact that a Supreme Court justice justifies eliminating affirmative action on the basis of openly racist views ought to be big news. By sugarcoating what Scalia actually said, the New York Times disguises that newsmaking the ethnic cleansing of Americas top schools a more palatable possibility. Perhaps that shouldnt make me gasp.[/font color]
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com, or write to public editor Margaret Sullivan: public@nytimes.com (Twitter: @NYTimes or @Sulliview). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
SOURCE: http://fair.org/home/nyt-rewrites-scalia-to-make-him-sound-less-racist/
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The friendship rendered includes ignoring war criminals and traitors and stuff:
Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA
Mark Mazzetti's emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power
Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 August 2012 14.58 EDT
EXCERPT...
But what is news in this disclosure are the newly released emails between Mark Mazzetti, the New York Times's national security and intelligence reporter, and CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf. The CIA had evidently heard that Maureen Dowd was planning to write a column on the CIA's role in pumping the film-makers with information about the Bin Laden raid in order to boost Obama's re-election chances, and was apparently worried about how Dowd's column would reflect on them. On 5 August 2011 (a Friday night), Harf wrote an email to Mazzetti with the subject line: "Any word??", suggesting, obviously, that she and Mazzetti had already discussed Dowd's impending column and she was expecting an update from the NYT reporter.
SNIP...
Even more amazing is the reaction of the newspaper's managing editor, Dean Baquet, to these revelations, as reported by Politico's Dylan Byers:
"New York Times Managing Editor Dean Baquet called POLITICO to explain the situation, but provided little clarity, saying he could not go into detail on the issue because it was an intelligence matter.
CONTINUED with LINKS...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-new-york-times-cia
I wonder what other important stories New York Times spiked as a "favor" to CIA and its owner-operators?
elias49
(4,259 posts)You're making me feel bad, fish.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I want Roger Ailes to confess. The thing is, how does one shame the shameless? With the truth:
FOX News' Roger Ailes is a Big Fan of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite NAZI filmmaker.
According to the new biography (and a history going back a ways in GOP circles), The Loudest Voice In The Room: How The Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News And Divided A Country:
Ailes was a big fan of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitlers notorious favorite filmmakernot for her Nazi ideology but for her cinematic talent as a propagandist. Ailes was especially taken by Riefenstahls use of camera angles.
SOURCE: http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/01/extraordinary-revelations-about-roger.html
Terry Gross of Fresh Air interviewed Gabriel Sherman, the guy who wrote, the book today.
This is the kind of information that Fox viewers might appreciate knowing before watching their television screens.
Something everyone should know: Roger Ailes and the Big Money has been in bed with Big NAZI for a long time.
starroute
(12,977 posts)When I was a little girl, my mother told me about how she knew from reading George Seldes' newspaper columns that the Times would always report on Soviet involvement in Spain but never mentioned the Italian and German support for Franco's forces because they were afraid of offending their wealthy advertisers -- and that most Americans were in the dark about this.
A generation later, I gave up reading the Sunday Times because of their odious coverage of the Vietnam War and the anti-war demonstrations.
You don't have to go as far as Fox News to find complicity. It's available much closer to home.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)The CIA compliicity in the degradation of journalism is an important issue (I guess ... I didn't read the excerpt, as it seemed unrelated to Scalia's comment, which had nothing to do with journalists serving as a "check to power.)
This article probably merits it's own thread; rather than, distracting from a completely unrelated thread.
starroute
(12,977 posts)Last edited Sat Dec 12, 2015, 07:14 PM - Edit history (1)
One is Scalia's naked racism. The other is the eagerness of the Times to cover that up.
Those two things go hand in hand. The job of the media is to assure us that racism only afflicts ignorant rednecks and that the political elite are far more enlightened. And the job of the elite is to maintain the power of their own narrow class and destroy anything that could threaten it.
JEB
(4,748 posts)Judith Miller was tip of iceberg of corruption, IMHO.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Of course, no one knows how much money that is, or who gets it, as that information is classified above Democracy's pay grade.
But, rest assured, we can trust the secret government to do the right thing and spare no expense.
Online Propaganda - Invisible Tool of Secret Government
How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations
By Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept, 24 Feb 2014
One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. Its time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.
Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about dirty trick tactics used by GCHQs previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking Five Eyes alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.
SNIP...
Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: false flag operations (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting negative information on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document were publishing today:
SNIP...
No matter your views on Anonymous, hacktivists or garden-variety criminals, it is not difficult to see how dangerous it is to have secret government agencies being able to target any individuals they want who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes with these sorts of online, deception-based tactics of reputation destruction and disruption. There is a strong argument to make, as Jay Leiderman demonstrated in the Guardian in the context of the Paypal 14 hacktivist persecution, that the denial of service tactics used by hacktivists result in (at most) trivial damage (far less than the cyber-warfare tactics favored by the US and UK) and are far more akin to the type of political protest protected by the First Amendment.
CONTINUED w/links, sources, details...
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Reminds me that there's money to be made of a lot of government programs, like Torture.
Torture report reveals CIA spent $300 million
by Gregory Wallace
CNN, Dec. 9, 2014
The CIA spent "well over" $300 million on the CIA's covert detention and interrogation program, according to the blockbuster Senate report made public Tuesday.
What exactly did that money buy? The report offers some answers -- and hides others. A relatively quick scan of the report found more than two dozen instances in which dollar figures were covered over by a thick black bar or omitted entirely.
The money funded an elaborate operation including the detention centers themselves. Additional cash -- sometimes called "subsidies" -- was used to "show appreciation" to host countries that housed the jails.
SNIP...
Outsourcing to former CIA employees:
The report reveals that two psychologists formed a company "specifically for the purpose of conducting their work with the CIA." The company was paid at least $81 million and had a nearly-exclusive contract for staffing the facilities.
[font size="6"][font color="green"]Shortly after the company was founded, "the CIA outsourced virtually all aspects of the program." Many employees were former CIA employees.[/font color][/font size]
The company provided both interrogators and psychologists. According to the Senate report, an inspector general review noted "concerns about conflict of interest" because of how the contractor was paid.
The company would assess the mental state of detainees. It would then collect extra money if its own interrogators were cleared to use "enhanced interrogation techniques."
EXCERPT...
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/09/news/economy/torture-report-cost/
Funny how that was missing from the front page and absent completely from the evening news.
erronis
(15,370 posts)To hold anyone accountable. Well, except the whistle-blowers who are supposedly protected by laws.
Corruption up and down the Tiber Creek (the one in Wash. DC.) and across the Patowmack.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)For those who "Go along to get along," a pot of gold awaits...
Like UBS hiring Phil Gramm as Vice Chairman, who then brought in former President Bill Clinton and George w Bush as part of his team in "Wealth Management", post Glass-Steagall, of course.
Neil Barofsky Gave Us The Best Explanation For Washington's Dysfunction We've Ever Heard
Linette Lopez
Business Insider, Aug. 1, 2012, 2:57 PM
Neil Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP, and just wrote a book about his time in D.C. called Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.
SNIP...
Bottom line: Barofsky said the incentive structure in our nation's capitol is all wrong. There's a revolving door between bureaucrats in Washington and Wall Street banks, and politicians just want to keep their jobs.
For regulators it's something like this:
"You can play ball and good things can happen to you get a big pot of gold at the end of the Wall Street rainbow or you can do your job be aggressive and face personal ruin...We really need to rethink how we govern and how regulate," Barofsky said.
CONTINUED... http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-barofsky-2012-8
For the rest of us, the more pauper-ly in spirit, it's Austerity Time. Again.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)when she went up against Uncle Miltie and his "Chicago Boys."
I wish you weren't spot on about this vile corruption...
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,761 posts)A Supreme Court justice is trying to dismantle Affirmative Action by claiming that black students are inherently inferior and colleges don't have to give them access on that basis.
Crazy stupid. And I think we should thank Trump for pushing the crazies out of the bushes.
Scalia needs to be impeached.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, sometimes not so clueless as other times:
John Lewis slams Justice Scalia for prejudice against black students
by Daniel Malloy
Atanta Journal Constitution, December 11, 2015
Filed in: Donald Trump, Gun control, Hank Johnson, Jack Kingston, John Lewis, Paul Broun, Uncategorized. (sic)
EXCERPT...
Among the voices in a chorus of denunciation Thursday was civil rights legend and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, who said Scalias thinking smacked of the kind of prejudice that led to separate and unequal school systems. And he provides examples of African-Americans who did just fine at tough universities.
Heres Lewis statement in full:
I was shocked and amazed by Justice Antonin Scalias comments in the Fisher v. University of Texas case yesterday. His suggestion that African Americans would fare better at schools that are less advanced or on a slow-track remind me of the kind of prejudice that led to separate and unequal school systemsa policy the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional decades ago.
Justice Scalia is supposed to be very well read, but he seems to have neglected study in African American history. Is he aware that the current head of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, the noted astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson, graduated from the University of Texas in 1983, before affirmative action was struck down?
Does he know the story of Henry Sampson, the nuclear engineer, whose invention of the gamma-electric cell made the cell phone possible? He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1965 when affirmative action was likely in place. Dr. Charles Drew, the founder of the modern-day blood bank, attended Amherst on a football scholarship in the 1930s, and his medical innovations helped saved the lives of front line soldiers in World War II and are still saving lives today.
These are only three of a host of examples which prove African Americans can not only compete in the best schools in the nation, even in applied sciences, but they can excel and even surpass some of their classmates and colleagues, if given a fair opportunity. Justice Scalias evident bias is very troubling to me. It leads me to question his ability to make impartial judgments in this case.
SOURCE: http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/12/11/john-lewis-slams-justice-scalia-for-prejudice-against-black-students/
You may be correct, Baitball Blogger: Trump may be doing the most patriotic thing he's ever done, getting these people out of the woodwork.
Baitball Blogger
(46,761 posts)first decade of this century where most of us were not allowed to share our views that racism still existed. We were talked down as if it was a thing that no one needed to consider anymore.
Do you know how lonely it is to see something that no one else will acknowledge? It is an isolating experience.
So, yes, I prefer this, to that. It's out in the open and even minority leaders who in the past use to go along to get along can't hide from it.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I'm old, so I spied with my only little eye how Ronald Reagan made it OK to be a racist in America, again.
Just to make sure people got the message of where he was coming from, Reagan declared his candidacy in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Obama would do well to learn, if not remember, the story from Terrel Bell, Prunefaces's shocked Secretary of Education, who heard White House staff refer to Dr. King as "Martin Lucifer Coon":
After he became one of the one-percent, Pruneface didn't care much for poor people or working people.
The Trickle Down crowd still holds sway in Washington, ask David Stockman or Penny Pritzker.
Then, the Prunefaced sumbitch made some kind of deal with the Ayatollah in order to hold the hostages until after the election.
Then, after the election, and after the Ayatollah blew up the US barracks in Beirut, Reagan did another deal with the Ayatollah to free another batch of hostages and used the profits to finance an illegal war in Central America.
Of course, Poppy Bush pardoned the various conspirators on behalf of the BFEE.
Poppy sort of took charge of things after Reagan, eh, slowed after that almost-assassin's bullet got him.
[font size="1"]In happier days, Detroit, July, 1980.[/font size]
You're not alone, my Friend. It's just that the right and their corporate mouthpieces like to make us feel that way.
starroute
(12,977 posts)When Ed Meese was known in the White House as the "Big Bigot," his assistant T. Kenneth Cribb was called the "Baby Bigot." (See http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/hijakjustice.html)
For a suck-up account of Cribb's role in the Reagan administration, see this passage from a history of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) by long-time movement conservative and Reagan idolator Lee Edwards:
https://books.google.com/books?id=5DHmwRGIWqAC&pg=PA195&lpg=PA195&dq=%22kenneth+cribb%22+%22antonin+scalia%22&source=bl&ots=yhmk-_EfwT&sig=59JZF42HBjV8hM7iL4CDxOrX_MM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjumIe67NbJAhWEHT4KHTmZDPkQ6AEIKTAC#v=onepage&q=%22kenneth%20cribb%22%20%22antonin%20scalia%22&f=false
Cribb, an old-line Southern racist, not only headed the ISI after leaving the Reagan White House but was involved with many other conservative groups. According to his Wikipedia entry, "He was President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute from 1989-2011, and served on its board until May 2012. During his tenure, ISI expanded its educational programs. He also served as vice chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board from 1989 to 1992. He was also president of the Collegiate Network, an association of alternative college newspapers; president of the Council for National Policy, a conservative umbrella organization; member of the Board of Advisors for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; is counselor to the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, a conservative legal organization."
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, of which the Collegiate Network is now a part, is a funding source for most conservative college newspapers and launched the careers of right-wing "journalists" like James O'Keefe. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education was recently behind the viral video of Yale students losing their decorum over the question of cultural sensitivity in Halloween costumes. And of course these two things are closely connected -- O'Keefe himself was just banned from the Yale campus for pulling his video stings there -- and display the same combination of racism and underhanded methodology.
And to bring this back round to Scalia, here's another page from that Lee Edwards book:
https://books.google.com/books?id=5DHmwRGIWqAC&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=%22The+three+law+students+recruited+antonin+scalia%22&source=bl&ots=yhmk-_EizR&sig=GCPbivalFqLcPFsBBJufkpmQeMw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwig96rW7dbJAhXBHR4KHZi5DM4Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20three%20law%20students%20recruited%20antonin%20scalia%22&f=false
It describes how the Federalist Society was founded in 1981 by three University of Chicago law students who "recruited Antonin Scalia, then a professor with a long-standing ISI association at the University of Chicago Law School, as an adviser."
The same paragraph goes on to say, "As chief assistant to Edwin Meese III in the White House and later as counselor to Attorney General Meese, Kenneth Cribb encouraged the development of the Federalist Society at every possible opportunity and used the group as a wsellspring of legal and judicial talent for the Reagan Administration."
And one of those three founding students is quoted as saying, "Ken took enormous interest in the Federalist Society. ... He immediately saw it as a continuation of ISI."
Octafish
(55,745 posts)-- Lee Edwards
Alarming, that white superiority crapola, in light of the history of a certain very, very wealthy mineral extraction outfit working outta Chicago. Edwin Black termed their work "The War Against the Weak." Those unfamiliar with his work will enjoy learning about what he termed the "California Connection" to eugenics:
Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection
Edwin Black
San Francisco Gate, Sunday, November 9, 2003
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.
But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.
California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.
The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, confinement or forced sterilization.
CONTINUED w/links n sources...
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php
All that, of course, is old news to you, stark raving lunacy for those who work for Roger Ailes and toil for Cass Sunstein, and a terrifying reality for all of us who consider the impact of secret government on democracy.
Thank you, starroute. From my first posts on DU in 2002 as Oblomov, you have always put things together in a way that historians -- as well as Democrats and all readers -- appreciate.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)seeing and pointing out what many acknowledge; but, never seem to see ... even, right here on DU.
Baitball Blogger
(46,761 posts)But eyes are finally opening.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)But, seemingly, only if viewed through a candidate's lense ... and only when convenient.
Baitball Blogger
(46,761 posts)At some point we have to recognize that national and local leaders, who were supposed to represent minority issues, were getting seduced by the system. If you really do go back to Reagan to blame for the legitimizing of racist opinions, that's over 25 years that race issues were pushed out of the main political arena.
It was only at the beginning of Obama's second term when someone finally said, "Hey, Republicans, and even some conservative Democrats are racist."
It was like a plot from Stephen King's "It" where no one remembered the heinous things they were witnessing.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)Scalia has long been a stain on the judicial system. I hope he gets impeached while Obama is in office, so we can get a reasonable replacement.
Baitball Blogger
(46,761 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Old news to you, Dont call me Shirley. Startling revelation to those who believe what comes from their television screen:
The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)
The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971
Introduction
In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powells nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powells legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice in behalf of business interests.[/font color]
Though Powells memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administrations hands-off business philosophy.
Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)
So did Powells political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment right for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.
CONTINUED...
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
All the money in the world won't help them escape the truth, though. Scalia and Company are racists and they are traitors.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Thomas Jefferson that case would change the entire direction of our country.
"He said judicial tyranny made the Constitution a thing of wax.
If [as the Federalists say] the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government,
, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de so.
The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they may please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law
Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, Nov. 1819
Jefferson was plainly alarmed by the possibility of judicial tyranny."
http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2012/06/04/thomas-jefferson-on-judicial-tyranny/
Octafish
(55,745 posts)"This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt." Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:114
http://www.streetlaw.org/en/Page/284/Thomas_Jeffersons_Reaction
Some days I wish I was smart enough to be a lawyer. Thank you, Dont call me Shirley. This is one of them!
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)I'm no lawyer either, but a fast learner. I learn so very much from great teachers like yourself and Mr Hartmann.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)there will be no shutting them up.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The history shows Laurence Silberman, esq. got a nice career as a federal judge as reward for service to the ultrarightwing, rather than standing trial he so richly deserved for treason.
Federal Appeals Judge Compares People Who Say Bush Lied To Rise Of Nazis
A federal appeals judge wrote in a column published on Sunday that people who accuse former President George W. Bush of lying about the Iraq War are peddling myths like those that led to the rise of Hitler.
Laurence H. Silberman, a federal appellate judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the idea the Bush administration "lied us into Iraq" has gone from "antiwar slogan to journalistic fact."
"It is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised," he wrote. "It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam."
After re-litigating the case for invading Iraq, Silberman wrote that the charge could have "potentially dire consequences."
"I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been 'stabbed in the back' by politicians," he wrote.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/laurence-silberman-bush-lied-nazis
via kpete: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6201723
Robert Parry in 2009:
Neocon Judge's History of Cover-ups
Laurence Silberman, a U.S. Appeals Court judge and a longtime neoconservative operative part of what the Iran-Contra special prosecutor called the strategic reserves for convicted Reagan administration operatives in the 1980s is back playing a similar role for the Bush-43 administration.
by Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews.com, September 23, 2009
On Sept. 11, the eighth anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Silberman issued a 2-to-1 opinion dismissing a lawsuit against the private security firm, CACI International, brought by Iraqi victims of torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
Silberman declared that CACI was immune from prosecution because its employees were responding to U.S. military commands. The immunity ruling blocked legal efforts by 212 Iraqis, who suffered directly at Abu Ghraib or were the widows of men who died, to exact some accountability from CACI employees who allegedly assisted in the torture of prisoners.
"During wartime, where a private service contractor is integrated into combatant activities over which the military retains command authority, a tort claim arising out of the contractor's engagement in such activities shall be preempted," Silberman wrote.
But Silberman is not a dispassionate judge when it comes to the crimes of Republicans committed to advance the neocon cause.
In the 1980s, Silberman played behind-the-scenes roles in helping Ronald Reagan gain the White House; he helped formulate hard-line intelligence policies; he encouraged right-wing media attacks on liberals; and he protected the flanks of Reagans operatives who were caught breaking the law.
Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a Republican himself, counted Silberman as one of "a powerful band of Republican [judicial] appointees [who] waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army," determined to prevent any judgments against Reagans operatives who broke the law in the arms-for-hostage scandal.
In his 1997 memoir, Firewall, Walsh depicted Silberman as a leader of that partisan band, even recalling how Silberman had berated Judge George MacKinnon, also a Republican, who led the panel which had picked Walsh to be the special prosecutor.
"At a D.C. circuit conference, he [Silberman] had gotten into a shouting match about independent counsel with Judge George MacKinnon," Walsh wrote. "Silberman not only had hostile views but seemed to hold them in anger."
In 1990, after Walsh had secured a difficult conviction of former White House aide Oliver North for offenses stemming from the Iran-Contra scandal, Silberman teamed up with another right-wing judge, David Sentelle, to overturn Norths conviction in a sudden outburst of sympathy for defendant rights.
Trashing Anita Hill
Less publicly, in 1991, Silberman also went to bat for the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, working with right-wing operatives to destroy the reputation of Anita Hill, a former Thomas employee who testified about his crude sexual harassment.
Author David Brock, then a well-paid right-wing hatchet man who published what he later admitted were scurrilous attacks on Hill, described the support and encouragement he received from Silberman and Silbermans wife, Ricky. Even after Thomas had won Senate confirmation, Silberman still was pushing attack lines against Hill, Brock wrote in his book, Blinded by the Right.
While George H.W. Bushs White House slipped Brock a psychiatric opinion that Hill suffered from erotomania, Silberman met with Brock to suggest even more colorful criticism of Hill.
Silberman speculated that Hill was a lesbian acting out, Brock wrote. Besides, Silberman confided, Thomas would never have asked Hill for dates: She had bad breath.
After Brock published a book-length assault on Hill, called The Real Anita Hill, the Silbermans and other prominent conservatives joined a celebration at the Embassy Row Ritz-Carlton, Brock wrote, noting that also in attendance was Judge Sentelle.
But Silbermans anything-goes approach to promoting and protecting right-wing control of the government dated back even further, to his key role as a foreign-policy and intelligence adviser to Ronald Reagans 1980 campaign.
During Campaign 1980, Silberman was a senior figure in what was then a fast-rising neoconservative faction that saw Reagans victory and the defeat of President Jimmy Carter as vital to expand U.S. military power, to confront the Soviet Union aggressively and to relieve pressure on Israel for a peace deal with the Palestinians.
More than a decade later, congressional investigators discovered that Silberman was assigned to secretive Reagan campaign operations collecting intelligence on what President Carter was doing to secure the release of 52 American hostages then held in Iran.
On April 20, 1980, the Reagan campaign created a group of foreign policy experts known as the Iran Working Group. The operation was run by Richard Allen, Fred Ikle and Silberman, the congressional investigators discovered.
After Reagans nomination in July, his campaign merged with that of his vice presidential running mate, George H.W. Bush, who had enlisted many ex-CIA officers who were loyal to Bush as a former CIA director.
October Surprise Obsession
The general election campaign assembled a strategy team, known as the October Surprise Group, which was ordered to prepare for any last-minute foreign policy or defense-related event, including the release of the hostages, that might favorably impact President Carter in the November election, according to a House Task Force that in 1992 investigated allegations of Republican interference in Carters hostage negotiations.
Originally referred to as the Gang of Ten, the Task Force report said the October Surprise Group consisted of Allen, Ikle, Charles M. Kupperman, Thomas H. Moorer, Eugene V. Rostow, William R. Van Cleave, John R. Lehman Jr., Robert G. Neumann, Seymour Weiss and Silberman.
While that reference made it into the Task Forces final report in January 1993, another part was deleted, which said: According to members of the October Surprise group, the following individuals also participated in meetings although they were not considered members of the group: Michael Ledeen, Richard Stillwell, William Middendorf, Richard Perle, General Louis Walt and Admiral James Holloway.
Deleted from the final report also was a section of the draft describing how the ex-CIA personnel who had worked for Bushs campaign became the nucleus of the Republican intelligence operation that monitored Carters Iran-hostage negotiations for the Reagan-Bush team.
The Reagan-Bush campaign maintained a 24-hour Operations Center, which monitored press wires and reports, gave daily press briefings and maintained telephone and telefax contact with the candidates plane, the draft report read. Many of the staff members were former CIA employees who had previously worked on the Bush campaign or were otherwise loyal to George Bush. (I discovered the unpublished portions of Task Forces report when I gain access to its files in late 1994.)
Another deletion involved a Sept. 16, 1980, meeting ordered by Reagans campaign director William Casey, who had become obsessed over the possibility of Carter pulling off an October Surprise release of the hostages.
On that date, Casey met with senior campaign officials Edwin Meese, Bill Timmons and Richard Allen about the Persian Gulf Project, according to an unpublished section of the House Task Force report and Allens notes. Two other participants at the meeting, according to Allens notes, were Michael Ledeen and Noel Koch.
That same day, Irans acting foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was quoted as citing Republican interference on the hostages. Reagan, supported by [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger and others, has no intention of resolving the problem, Ghotbzadeh said. They will do everything in their power to block it.
Exactly what the Reagan-Bush October Surprise team did remains something of a historical mystery.
About two dozen witnesses including former Iranian officials and international intelligence figures have claimed the Republican contacts undercut Carters hostage negotiations, though others insist that the initiatives were simply ways to gather information about Carters desperate bid to free the hostages before the election. [For the most thorough account of the October Surprise case, see Robert Parrys Secrecy & Privilege.]
The LEnfant Plaza Mystery
One of the many unanswered questions about the October Surprise mystery revolved around a meeting involving Laurence Silberman and an Iranian emissary at the LEnfant Plaza Hotel in Washington in September or early October 1980.
Years later, an Iranian arms dealer named Houshang Lavi claimed to be the emissary who met with Silberman, Allen and Robert McFarlane, who was then an aide to Sen. John Tower, R-Texas. Lavi said the meeting on Oct. 2 dealt with the possibility of trading arms to Iran for release of the hostages and was arranged by Silberman.
Silberman, Allen and McFarlane acknowledged that a meeting happened, but they insisted they had no recollection of the emissarys name nor who he was.
In 1990, I interviewed a testy Richard Allen about the meeting for a PBS Frontline documentary. Allen said he reluctantly went to the meeting, which he said was proposed by McFarlane. Allen said he took along Silberman as a witness.
So Larry Silberman and I got on the subway and we went down to the LEnfant Plaza Hotel where I met McFarlane and there were many people milling about. We sat at a table in the lobby. It was around the lunch hour. I was introduced to this very obscure character whose name I cannot recall.
The individual who was either an Egyptian or an Iranian or could have been an Iranian living in Egypt and his idea was that he had the capacity to intervene, to deliver the hostages to the Reagan forces. Now, I took that at first to mean that he was able to deliver the hostages to Ronald Reagan, candidate for the presidency of the United States, which was absolutely lunatic. And I said so. I believe I said, or Larry did, we have one President at a time. Thats the way it is.
So this fellow continued with his conversation. I was incredulous that McFarlane would have ever brought a guy like this or placed any credibility in a guy like this. Just absolutely incredulous, and so was Larry Silberman. This meeting lasted maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes. So thats it. Theres no need to continue this meeting.
Larry and I walked out. And I remember Larry saying, Boy, you better write a memorandum about this. This is really spaceship stuff. And it, of course, set my opinion very firmly about Bud McFarlane for having brought this person to me in the first place.
Swarthy Emissary
Allen described the emissary as stocky and swarthy, dark-complected, but otherwise non-descript. Allen added that the man looked like a person from somewhere on the Mediterranean littoral. How about that?
Allen said this Egyptian or Iranian must have given a name at the time, must have. But Allen couldnt recall it. He also said he made no effort to check out the mans position or background before agreeing to the meeting.
Did you ask McFarlane, who is this guy? I asked Allen.
I dont recall having asked him, no, Allen responded.
I guess I dont understand why you wouldnt say, Is this guy an Iranian, is he someone youve known for a while? I pressed.
Well, gee, Im sorry that you dont understand, Allen lashed back. I really feel badly for you. Its really too bad you dont understand. But thats your problem, not mine.
But wouldnt you normally ask that kind of background question?
Not necessarily, Allen said. McFarlane wanted me to meet a guy and this guy was going to talk about the hostages. I met plenty of people during that period of time who wanted to talk to me about the hostages. This was no different from anybody else I would meet on this subject.
It obviously turned out to be different from most people youve met on the subject, I interjected.
Oh, it turned out to be because this guy is the centerpiece of some sort of great conspiracy web that has been spun, Allen snapped.
Well, were there many people who offered to deliver the hostages to Ronald Reagan? I asked.
No, this one was particularly different, but I didnt know that before I went to the meeting, you understand.
Did you ask McFarlane what on earth this guy was going to propose?
I dont think I did in advance, no.
What also was unusual about this meeting was what Allen and Silberman did not do afterwards. Though Allen said that he and Silberman recognized the sensitivity of the approach, neither of Reagans foreign policy advisers contacted the Carter administration or reported the offer to law enforcement.
Defying Logic
It also defied logic that seasoned operatives like Allen and Silberman would have agreed to a meeting with an emissary from a hostile power without having done some due-diligence about who the person was and what his bona fides were.
Iranian arms dealer Lavi later claimed to be the mysterious emissary. And government documents revealed that Lavi made a similar approach to the independent presidential campaign of John Anderson, although Andersons campaign unlike Allen and Silberman promptly informed the CIA and State Department.
For his part, Silberman denied any substantive discussion with the mysterious emissary but refused to discuss the meeting in any detail. He did insist that he was out of town on Oct. 2, the date cited by Lavi, but Silberman wouldnt provide a list of dates when he was in Washington during the fall of 1980.
Though purportedly having arranged the meeting, McFarlare also insisted that he couldnt recall the identity of the emissary.
Later, when a Senate panel conducted a brief inquiry into whether the Republicans interfered with Carters hostage negotiations, a truculent Allen testified and brought along a memo that he claimed represented his contemporaneous recollections of the LEnfant Plaza meeting.
However, the memo, dated Sept. 10, 1980, flatly contradicted the previous accounts from Allen, Silberman and McFarlane. It described a meeting arranged by Mike Butler, another Tower aide, with McFarlane only joining in later as the pair told Allen about a meeting they had had with a Mr. A.A. Mohammed, a Malaysian who operated out of Singapore.
This afternoon, by mutual agreement, I met with Messrs. Mohammed, Butler and McFarlane. I also took Larry Silberman along to the meeting, Allen wrote in the memo.
According to the memo, Mohammed presented a scheme for returning the Shah of Irans son to the country as a figurehead monarch which would be accompanied by a release of the U.S. hostages. Though skeptical of the plan, both Larry and I indicated that we would be pleased to hear whatever additional news Mr. Mohammed might be able to turn up, and I suggested that that information be communicated via a secure channel, the memo read.
Nearly every important detail was different both in how the meeting was arranged and its contents. Gone was the proposal to release the hostages to candidate Reagan, gone was the abrupt cutoff, gone was the Iranian or Egyptian some guy from the Mediterranean littoral replaced by a Malaysian businessman whose comments were welcomed along with future contacts via a secure channel. The memo didnt even mention the LEnfant Plaza Hotel, nor was McFarlane the organizer.
A reasonable conclusion might be that Allens memo was about an entirely different meeting, which would suggest that Republican contacts with Iranian emissaries were more numerous than previously admitted and that Silberman was more of a regular player.
Also, Silberman, McFarlane and Butler when questioned by the House Task Force investigating the issue in 1992 disputed Allens new version of the LEnfant Plaza tale. They claimed no recollection of the A.A. Mohammed discussion.
Nevertheless, the House Task Force, in its determination to turn the page on the complex October Surprise issue, accepted Allens memo as the final answer to the LEnfant Plaza question and pressed ahead with a broader rejection of any wrongdoing by Republicans even though that required concealing a host of incriminating documents. [See Secrecy & Privilege.]
Tantalizing Clue
The House Task Force also turned a blind eye to another tantalizing clue related to the LEnfant Plaza mystery. Lavis lawyer, former CIA counsel Mitchell Rogovin, provided me a page of his notes from that time period.
Rogovin, who was an adviser to the John Anderson campaign, wrote on his calendar entry for Sept. 29, 1980, a summary of Lavis plan to trade weapons for the hostages. After that, Rogovin recorded a telephone contact with senior CIA official John McMahon to discuss Lavis plan and to schedule a face-to-face meeting with a CIA representative on Oct. 2.
The next entry, however, was stunning. It read, Larry Silberman still very nervous/will recommend against us this P.M. I said $250,000 he said why even bother.
When I called Rogovin about this notation, he said it related to a loan that the Anderson campaign was seeking from Crocker National Bank where Silberman served as legal counsel. The note meant that Silberman was planning to advise the bank officers against the loan, Rogovin said.
I asked Rogovin if he might have mentioned Lavis hostage plan to Silberman, who was in the curious position of being a senior Reagan adviser and weighing in on a loan to an independent campaign that was viewed as siphoning off votes from Carter. (Crocker did extend a line of credit to Anderson.)
There was no discussion of the Lavi proposal, Rogovin insisted. But Rogovin acknowledged that Silberman was a friend from the Ford administration where both men had worked on intelligence issues, Rogovin from the CIA and Silberman at the Justice Department. Later, Rogovin and Silberman became next-door neighbors and bought a boat together.
In a normal investigation, such coincidences would strain credulity, especially given Lavis claim that he took part in a meeting with Republicans at the LEnfant Plaza on Oct. 2, the same day that he talked with a CIA representative. Lavi also claimed that Silberman had arranged the meeting, which would make sense given Rogovins personal ties to Silberman.
However, as on a host of other compelling leads, the House Task Force chose to look the other way.
Reagans Victory
On Nov. 4, 1980, with Carter unable to free the hostages and Americans humiliated by the year-long ordeal with Iran, Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide.
For his loyal service in the campaign, the neoconservative Silberman was put in charge of the transition teams intelligence section. The team prepared a report attacking the CIAs analytical division for noting growing weaknesses in the Soviet Union, a position despised by the neocons because it undercut their case for a costly expansion of the Pentagons budget.
Silbermans transition team accused the CIAs Directorate of Intelligence of an abject failure to foresee a supposedly massive Soviet buildup of strategic weapons and the wholesale failure to comprehend the sophistication of Soviet propaganda.
These failures are of such enormity, the transition report said, that they cannot help but suggest to any objective observer that the agency itself is compromised to an unprecedented extent and that its paralysis is attributable to causes more sinister than incompetence.
In other words, Silbermans transition team was implying that CIA analysts who didnt toe the neoconservative line must be Soviet agents. Even anti-Soviet hardliners like the CIAs Robert Gates recognized the impact that the incoming administrations hostility had on the CIA analysts.
That the Reaganites saw their arrival as a hostile takeover was apparent in the most extraordinary transition period of my career, Gates wrote in his memoir, From the Shadows. The reaction inside the Agency to this litany of failure and incompetence from the transition team was a mix of resentment and anger, dread and personal insecurity.
Amid rumors that the transition team wanted to purge several hundred top analysts, career officials feared for their jobs, especially those considered responsible for assessing the Soviet Union as a declining power rapidly falling behind the West in technology and economics.
According to some intelligence sources, Silberman expected to get the job of CIA director and flew into a rage when Reagan gave the job to his campaign director William Casey, who also was tied to the October Surprise operations. (The U.S. hostages in Iran were released immediately upon Ronald Reagan taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981.)
Silbermans consolation prize was to be named a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, where he helped frustrate the Iran-Contra investigation by overturning Oliver Norths conviction in 1990 and to this day is a defender of the neocons foreign policy -- as witnessed by his Sept. 11, 2009, ruling blocking civil lawsuits against U.S. government contractors implicated in torturing Iraqis.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.
SOURCE w.links: https://consortiumnews.com/2009/092209.html
Calling someone a NAZI for pointing out that Bush acted like a NAZI is NAZI so that they can get away with installing fascism, one 5-4 vote at a time.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)turbinetree
(24,720 posts)is that he should be Impeached------------------because his form of justice is not blind and equal, right along with the other 4 sitting on this bench, look no further than John Roberts and what he was doing-------------------amazing.
Honk---------------------for a politcal revolution it is about the U.S. Supreme Court this election
Bernie 2016
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The smarmy Justice John Roberts wasnt around for the 5-4 decision that installed pretzeldent Junior George W Bush 43 into the Oval Office. The vote-suppressor supreme Justice William Rehnquist was at the top of that legal heap back in 2001.
But, if it wasnt for young John Roberts workin his legal magic n all back in 1986, its quite possible there never would have been a President Poppy George Herbert Walker Bush 41 in the first place.
The reason: John Roberts helped keep Pruneface Ronald Reagan from being impeached and the secret government arms-for-hostages Boland Amendment runaround ringleader Poppy Bush out of prison during Iran-Contra.
JR lawyered iran contra
The Smoking Gun: John Roberts "Lawyered" the Iran-Contra Scandal
Bob Fertik
Democrats.com
August 25, 2005
EXCERPT...
One file withheld, regarding the Iran-contra affair, was a draft memo from Roberts to his bosses with the heading "re: establishment of NHAO" -- referring to the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office.
The office was one of the ways the Reagan administration got around what were known as the Boland amendments, which prohibited U.S. intelligence agencies from spending money to overthrow the Sandinistas. The office was a way the administration could get funds to the contras for nonmilitary purposes, but once there the money was used for all sorts of things.
In other words, John Roberts "lawyered" the Iran-Contra Scandal - one of the worst scandals in American history.
Now we know why Karl Rove is scrubbing Roberts' files!!!
CONTINUED
http://www.democrats.com/roberts-iran-contra
Why does that matter? Well, Iran-Contra was treason of the highest order. Not only did the Executive circumvent Congress in carrying out its various warmongering treasons in the name of fighting godless communism, they were trading arms with the terrorists who had killed 240 United States Marines, 18 Navy and 3 Army personnel at the Beirut airport in 1983.
Firewall: Inside the Iran-Contra Cover-up
By Robert Parry
1995
EXCERPT
Those combined interests likely will lead to very few favorable reviews of a new book by a man who put himself in the way of that cover-up -- Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. In a remarkable new book, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up, Walsh details his six-year battle to break through the "firewall" that White House officials built around President Reagan and Vice President Bush after the Iran-contra scandal exploded in November 1986.
For Walsh, a lifelong Republican who shared the foreign policy views of the Reagan administration, the Iran-contra experience was a life-changing one, as his investigation penetrated one wall of lies only to be confronted with another and another -- and not just lies from Oliver North and his cohorts but lies from nearly every senior administration official who spoke with investigators.
According to Firewall, the cover-up conspiracy took formal shape at a meeting of Reagan and his top advisers in the Situation Room at the White House on Nov. 24, 1986. The meeting's principal point of concern was how to handle the troublesome fact that Reagan had approved illegal arms sales to Iran in fall 1985, before any covert-action finding had been signed. The act was a clear felony -- a violation of the Arms Export Control Act -- and possibly an impeachable offense.
SNIP
" White House chief of staff Don) Regan, who had heard McFarlane inform the president and who had heard the president admit to Shultz that he knew of the shipment of Hawk (anti-aircraft) missiles, said nothing. Shultz and (Defense Secretary Caspar) Weinberger, who had protested the shipment before it took place, said nothing. (Vice President George) Bush, who had been told of the shipment in advance by McFarlane, said nothing. Casey, who (had) requested that the president sign the retroactive finding to authorize the CIA-facilitated delivery, said nothing. (NSC adviser John) Poindexter, who had torn up the finding, said nothing. Meese asked whether anyone knew anything else that hadn't been revealed. No one spoke."
CONTINUED
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story34.html
These are no mere gangsters. They are mass murderers dealing with mass murderers to advance their aims. And John Roberts let them get away with their corruptions and treasons.
Roberts & the 'Apex of Presidential Power'
By Nat Parry
September 6, 2005
EXCERPT...
In the 1980s, Roberts also provided legal advice to the Reagan administration on how to pick its way around the legal obstacles erected by Congress to limit military and other assistance to the Nicaraguan contra rebels who were fighting to overthrow Nicaraguas leftist Sandinista government.
SNIP
Conflict of Interest
Regarding the Hamdan case, Roberts also saw no impropriety in his simultaneous interviewing with senior administration officials for a life-time job on the Supreme Court and his judging of a case in which Bush was a defendant.
On April 1, Roberts was interviewed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who had formulated many of the arguments for the apex of presidential power, including Bushs right to override anti-torture laws.
Other interviews with Roberts were conducted by Vice President Dick Cheney; White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card; White House legal counsel Harriet Miers; Bushs chief political strategist Karl Rove; and Cheneys chief of staff Lewis Libby.
CONTINUED
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/090605.html
Oh yeah. "No Poppy" means no one to appoint Associate Just-Us Tony the Fixer Scalia to the court in 1986. And everybody knows, Fangu Tony was da brains behind the 5-4 fiasco...uh ah uh, assisted by the lawyerly John Roberts, of course.
Roberts Gave GOP Advice in 2000 Recount
John G. Roberts, President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, played a role in the chaotic, 36-day period following the disputed 2000 presidential election.
by Gary Fineout and Mary Ellen Klas
Published on Thursday, July 21, 2005 by the Miami Herald
TALLAHASSEE -- U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts provided legal advice to Gov. Jeb Bush in the weeks following the November 2000 election as part of the effort to make sure the governor's brother won the disputed presidential vote.
Roberts, at the time a private attorney in Washington, D.C., came to Tallahassee to advise the state's Republican administration as it was trying to prevent a Democratic end-run that the GOP feared might give the election to Al Gore, sources told The Herald.
SNIP...
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat, seized on Roberts' participation in the 2000 recount and suggested it should be grounds for rejecting his nomination. Wexler suggested the nomination ``threw salt on the wounds of the thousands of Floridians whose voting rights were disenfranchised during the 2000 election.
''Judge Roberts worked to ensure that George Bush would become president -- regardless of what the courts might decide,'' Wexler said, relying on news accounts that suggested Roberts gave the governor advice on how the state Legislature could name Bush the winner. ``And now he is being rewarded for that partisan service by being appointed to the nation's highest court.''
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0721-07.htm
Small world. And very, very bad.
The Lost Opportunity of Iran-Contra
Special Report: A quarter century ago with the breaking of the Iran-Contra scandal, the United States had a chance to step back from its march toward Empire and to demand accountability for White House crimes. But instead a powerful cover-up prevailed, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews
December 1, 2011
EXCERPT...
Walsh finally relented and agreed to shut down his investigation, meaning that one of the key lessons derived from Iran-Contra was that a determined cover-up of a national security scandal, backed by a powerful media apparatus and aggressive political allies, can work.
In the early 1990s when I interviewed the House Foreign Affairs Committees longtime Democratic chief counsel Spencer Oliver, he put Iran-Contra in exactly that historical place, as the polar opposite of Watergate when Richard Nixons abuses of power had real consequences, including Nixons forced resignation and prison terms for many of his subordinates.
What [the Republicans] learned from Watergate, Oliver said, was not dont do it, but cover it up more effectively. They have learned that they have to frustrate congressional oversight and press scrutiny in a way that will avoid another major scandal.
The consequences of the failed Iran-Contra investigations have been long-lasting and profound. Not only did George H.W. Bush manage to get elected president in 1988 under the false claim that he had been out of the loop on the scandal, but the failure to hold him accountable in 1993 opened the door to the White House eight years later for his son, George W. Bush.
George W. Bushs imperial presidency (and its costly war on terror) would have been virtually unthinkable if the full truth had been known about George H.W. Bush regarding Iran-Contra. Nor would it have been likely that the Republicans could have succeeded in elevating Ronald Reagan to his present iconic status.
CONTINUED...
http://consortiumnews.com/2011/12/01/the-lost-opportunity-of-iran-contra/
For all that, dealing with terrorists and going around the Congressional ban on dealing death on innocent people in Nicaragua, they all belong in the slammer for life. Instead, John Roberts gets to head the nations highest court in the land for life.
Thank you for grokking, turbinetree.
turbinetree
(24,720 posts)these hypocrites whistle a tune of deceit and deception--------------------they have never been brought forth to answer these questions.
I can still remember seeing Roberts sayings that he would not do anything for established precedent's, what the hell does that mean, corruption, treason--------------he didn't pass that part, he was already lying.
And now Roberts just assigned Alito, the baton to write the majority for a union case out in California, this guy sleeps and has slept with same right to work for less crowd for years.
And people in this country are trying to figure out whats going on --------------------look at this court.
IMPEACH them everyone of these hypocrites
Thank you
Honk-----------------for a political revolution, it is and always has been about the courts
Bernie2016
chervilant
(8,267 posts)
The consequences of the failed Iran-Contra investigations have been long-lasting and profound. Not only did George H.W. Bush manage to get elected president in 1988 under the false claim that he had been out of the loop on the scandal, but the failure to hold him accountable in 1993 opened the door to the White House eight years later for his son, George W. Bush.
George W. Bushs imperial presidency (and its costly war on terror) would have been virtually unthinkable if the full truth had been known about George H.W. Bush regarding Iran-Contra. Nor would it have been likely that the Republicans could have succeeded in elevating Ronald Reagan to his present iconic status.
I remember being profoundly angry about the Iran-Contra treason, and profoundly dismayed that my friends and some fellow activists were relatively unconcerned about it.
And, St. Ronnie...don't EVEN get me started.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)is just a rewording of Pox News' favorite vague attribution, "Some people say..."
The Masters of the Universe are muttering, "Oh shit... not again!" While they do not disagree with Scalia's brazen racism in the slightest, they most emphatically do NOT want him running off at the mouth about it in public.
They know they'll have to "deal with" Scalia, but the they sure as hell don't want the Black Guy in the White House to appoint another >GASP!< WOMAN to the Court!
If they weren't such evil rat fuckers, I'd almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Not that it's saying much these days, but the New York Times seems to have a lot more class than Fox or the Wall Street Journal.
Did you ever read "Lies Of Our Times"? It was a short-lived magazine to correct the record of disinformation coming from the Paper of Record. A Gary Trudeau cover, ca. 1991:
gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)I used to think the Times had more class, but now I wonder if the editorial management just cultivates an elevated vocabulary and patronizes better tailors. Strip 'em down to their skivvies, ideologically speaking, and we'd be hard put to differentiate them from Murdoch's minions.
I still love the NYT magazine, though!
I've got a new 'toon up on Good Reads that features Scalia and a Tribble with a really ugly growth on its ass. Might give you a chuckle.
world wide wally
(21,755 posts)The gay marriage ruling was to trick people into thinking we need a more "coservative" supreme Court.
I think we're being played like Nero's fiddle.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Like illegal war, torture and bankster forgiveness, the Democratic leadership has gone along to get along. It's as if the 1-percent now funding "both sides of the aisle" think, were this a Democracy, they'd lose power, privilege and influence.
And we ARE being played like Nero's fiddle.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)After Roberts' (in)famous "the times have changed, there is no more racism in voting, so there is no lone really a need to protect vother rights" comment from the bench ... and then being, immediately and completely, proven wrong ... I think he'd be a little shy to go out on that limb a second time ... especially, when Scalia, as well as, Alito are already jumping up and down on it.
(BTW, Sam's line of questionING was equally repugnant, though not as unmasked.)
CrispyQ
(36,533 posts)Bookmarking for all the great info in this thread.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I. Was. There.
When Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. was in Detroit in Tony Spina's friends say ca. 1960:
I think that was 1968, based on appearances of RFK Sr.
The CCC
(463 posts)Anthony Scalia needs to trade in his black robes for white sheets.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)An excellent overview of the impact Capitalism's Invisible Army makes on the "free press" and its import for democracy...
The covert selling of anticommunism
The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America
By Nancy Hanover
World Socialist Web Site, 17 August 2015
EXCERPT...
The Mighty Wurlitzer
The detailed and engrossing 2008 book, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, by Hugh Wilford, investigates the CIAs ideological struggle from 1947 to 1967 to win hearts and minds for US capitalism and prosecute the Cold War.
SNIP...
Most important of all, the reader comes away with a sense of the immense significance attributed by the American ruling elite to the ideological struggle against socialism.
The author correctly emphasizes, If anything, these practices have intensified in recent years, with the war on terror recreating the conditions of total mobilization that prevailed in the first years of the Cold War. He adds that the agency is a growing force on campus.[3]
The metaphora Mighty Wurlitzerwas coined by Frank Wisner, the head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a paramilitary and psychological operations group created in 1948, which was folded into the CIA in 1951. He prided himself on directing the network of organizations to play any propaganda tune on demand, likening it to the world-famous theater organ.
The agency sought out those who might be predisposed in a socialistic direction, targeting constituencies that had grievances with the status quo. It selected representatives from ethnic groups, women, African-Americans, labor, intellectuals and academics, students, Catholics, and artists and organized them into various front groups to promote anticommunism. These links, in turn, provided the agency with the cover it needed to influence strategically important sectors of foreign populations.
Ironically, as the federal government was conducting its House Un-American Activities witch-hunts and assembling the attorney generals List of Subversive Organizations, supposedly to ferret out Communist Party front groups, the CIA was busy doing precisely thatcreating front groups of thousands of unwitting Americans for covert political operations.
CONTINUED...
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/17/wur1-a17.html
The fact you can read this is why DU matters. Those tired of racism and its direct relations -- the rich getting richer and the middle class disappearing into indentured servitude while wars without end for profits without cease rage unabated -- aren't hearing a thing about "Why" from Corporate McPravda.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)The New York Times is part of the establishment, a Supreme Court Justice is part of the establishment, even if he's an establishmentarian shyster, and the establishment must circle the wagons when we peasants and peons see all the establishmentarians running about with no clothes.
Of course, not all establishmentarians are racists, but the establishment is invested with racist establishmentarians. It is absolutely necessary to put this dirty little fact behind the curtain or we peasants and peons will stop respecting them. Like we haven't already.
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Octafish
(55,745 posts)The guy speaks not what the proles want to hear, but what the proles know and believe to be true:
1. The system is corrupt.
2. The rich keep getting richer by design.
3. The wars are based on lies and started by traitors.
4. The media lie all the day long.
5. And the smart people always screw the dumb people.
Even when it's Der Donald doing der Schlupping.
Thank you for understanding how serious this is, Jack Rabbit. Have you seen the Nobel speech of the now-late Harold Pinter.
After hearing him, the word "Lies" does not mean what it used to. Likewise, the word, "Truth," no longer means the same to me.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Here's some truth about the history of fascist Scalia et. al. from DU's archives.
Franklin Credit Union Scandal-OMG Is this for real??? (RubyCat OP 11-29-2004)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2761520
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The University of Chicago and Antonin Scalia
By Daniel Luzer
Washington Monthly, February 15, 2012
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used to teach law at the University of Chicago. And then they had a falling out because the school had become liberal. In 2009 he told a group in Chicago that:
I dont think the University of Chicago is what it was in my time. I would not recommend it to students looking for a law school as I would have years ago. It has changed considerably and intentionally. It has lost the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school.
Hes over it. According to an article by Abdon Pallasch in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Scalia was all verbal hugs and kisses Monday, telling an auditorium full of students, Im glad to be back here. A whole lot of what I am intellectually is attributable to this place. The University of Chicago is one of two or three of the most formidable intellectual institutions in the world; a really impressive place. And youre lucky to be here.
Its unclear if Scalia believes he was mistaken about the U of C back in 2009 or if hes merely giving a more nuanced opinion. Perhaps its possible for the school to be one of the most formidable intellectual institutions in the world even if it doesnt occupy the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school.
He is right, though, it doesnt occupy that position anymore.
According to a 1987 piece by Steven Greenhouse in the New York Times, it was the departure of conservative intellectuals like Scalia from the law school faculty for appeals court positions that helped make the institution more liberal.
The school was for many years a leading incubator of conservative thought, but with the election of Ronald Reagan, many of the schools conservative scholars left when they were rewarded with government positions.
SOURCE: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/the_university_of_chicago_and.php
PS: I love U-Chicago. The hospital there saved my best friend's life.
SCantiGOP
(13,874 posts)I have spent a good 3-4 hours of my Sunday with the NYT, but gave up
on them several years ago
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Liberal_Dog
(11,075 posts)Scalia is a disgrace and the NYT is a joke.