markpkessinger
markpkessinger's JournalYes, Feinstein's a hypocrite, BUT . . .
. . . what is at stake in the allegations concerning the CIA is very different from the issue of the NSA's overreach (of which I am no fan, and Feinstein's defense of which I have been very critical). Look, the issue of the CIA spying on members of Congress and their staffers is NOT the biggest issue here. The biggest issue is the CIA's alleged attempts to interfere with an ongoing investigation into possible misconduct by the CIA itself, an investigation being conducted by the elected body that has lawful oversight authority of the agency, and further, the attempted intimidation of Senate investigators by filing a crimes report with the Justice Department against the very Senate staffers who were working on the investigation and who took steps to protect the integrity of the investigation. If that is true as Feinstein has alleged, then the CIA has gone totally rogue, and the ramifications for a democratically elected government, and about the accountability of government agencies to the electorate, are enormous.
Sure Feinstein is a hypocrite. But, assuming you are really concerned about the burgeoning security state, if you allow this to be turned into a pissing match about who gets to spy on whom, you play right into the CIA's (and by extension, the NSA's) hands, thus making yourself a tool of the very security state you oppose. I would urge folks to set aside their like or dislike of Feinstein, and even their justified disgust at her hypocrisy, and focus instead on the enormously larger issue of government accountability to the elected representatives of the people.
If the President is to retain ANY credibility in light of the CIA revelations . . .
. . . he needs to demand the resignations of Brennan and the Acting General Counsel to the CIA TOMORROW. Just sayin'.
NY Times Editorial: The C.I.A. Torture Cover-Up
(A personal note relating to the last paragraph of the editorial, which paragraph is included in the excerpt provided here: when President Obama, shortly after his election in 2008, said that he didn't "want to relitigate the previous eight years" and that he wanted to "Look forwards, not backwards," i made the observation at the time that a failure of the country to come to terms with all that had gone on under the previous administration would be the surest guarantee that we would remain mired in it. I wish I had been wrong about that.)
[font size=1]THE EDITORIAL BOARD MARCH 11, 2014[/font]
It was outrageous enough when two successive presidents papered over the Central Intelligence Agency’s history of illegal detention, rendition, torture and fruitless harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects. Now, the head of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, has provided stark and convincing evidence that the C.I.A. may have committed crimes to prevent the exposure of interrogations that she said were “far different and far more harsh” than anything the agency had described to Congress.
Ms. Feinstein delivered an extraordinary speech on the Senate floor today in which she said the C.I.A. improperly searched the computers used by committee staff members who were investigating the interrogation program as recently as January.
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Today, the C.I.A. director, John Brennan, denied hacking into the committee’s computers. But Ms. Feinstein said that in January, Mr. Brennan acknowledged that the agency had conducted a “search” of the computers. She said the C.I.A.’s inspector general had referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. “Besides the constitutional implications,” of separation of powers, she said, “the C.I.A.’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the C.I.A. from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.”
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The lingering fog about the C.I.A. detentions is a result of Mr. Obama’s decision when he took office to conduct no investigation of them. We can only hope he knows that when he has lost Dianne Feinstein, he has no choice but to act in favor of disclosure and accountability.
Thanks for creating this group!
I was diagnosed almost four years ago, at the age of 49. I knew I likely had a genetic predisposition to it given my family history (my father, his father and and three out of four of his siblings, several of my mother's siblings, and (at the time) two of my three sisters (the third has since been diagnosed as a borderline case, or 'pre-diabetic.' I had pretty classic symptoms when I was diagnosed. I had noticed that my thirst had increased exponentially -- like nothing I have ever experienced -- and of course, because I was taking in such large quantities of liquid, I was getting up four or five times a night. I was familiar enough with the symptoms to have a pretty good idea what was going on, but I guess I went into a kind of denial. The thing is, despite the genetics, I guess I figured I could dodge this particular bullet because I have never been overweight and have always been fairly physically active. But sometimes, the luck of the genetic draw trumps everything else!
After this had been going on, and increasing, for a while, I ran into a friend whom I hadn't seen in about a month. The first thing he said to me was, "Mark, you look skinny, and not in a good way. You need to see a doctor!" At that point, my little denial scheme fell away. I went the following day, a Friday, to my internist. He did a quick check of my blood/glucose, and said it was in the 400s, and also drew blood for a variety of other tests. The following morning, Saturday morning, I got phone call from my internist's office. He wasn't in the office, but it was another doctor in the practice. She said they had just received my lab results, and that everything was so far out of whack they wanted me to report immediately to an emergency room. She said my blood/glucose was actually 692, and my potassium level was dangerously low, placing me at serious risk of a heart attack or stroke. I went to the emergency room at Lenox Hill Hospital here in NY (where, I must say, I received superb and amazingly prompt treatment -- I was triaged and seen by a doctor within 15 minutes of my arrival. I spent the better part of the day there as they tried to bring down my blood/glucose, and bring up my potassium.
The doctors at Lenox Hill really wanted me to remain in the hospital for a few days. But here was the thing: I am single, and have no other means of support other than myself. And I hadn't had time to check out all the ins and outs of my insurance coverage concerning hospital admissions, and didn't want to accidentally get myself into a situation I couldn't handle financially, and insisted upon going home in order to get things in order. The doctor -- a wonderful woman -- practically begged me not to leave, so concerned was she that I was at imminent risk of something like a heart attack or stroke. Although it was probably foolish of me, I insisted on leaving, but she made me PROMISE I would see my doctor first thing Monday morning. Fortunately, there were no negative consequences, and my doctor got me in to see an endocrinologist by midday Monday. He put me immediately on insulin (Lantus, a long-acting, basal insuline). As it happens, the endocrinologist's wife is a dietician specializing in diabetes, and I met several times with her as well, to help get me on the right track.
Things are more or less under control now, although it is, as Nadine says, a constant battle, and if I allow my attention to slip, can very easily (and has on a few occasions) spin out of control again.
Leave it to the French! ;)
Something to make conservatives' heads explode regarding Lois Lerner . . .
There seems to be some widespread notion among conservatives that Lois Lerner was some kind of Obama loyalist within the IRS. But she was appointed to her post in 2005, by GEORGE W. BUSH!
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/14/irs-scandal-s-central-figure-lois-lerner-described-as-apolitical.html
And here is the official IRS announcement, from the IRS' website, of her appointment:
IR-2005-148, Dec. 22, 2005
WASHINGTON — Lois G. Lerner has been selected as the director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service. In this position, she will be responsible for administering and enforcing the tax laws that apply to more than 1.8 million organizations recognized by the IRS as exempt from tax.
“Protecting the integrity of tax-exempt organizations is an important part of our enforcement program,” said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson. “Lois’s background, including her work for the Federal Election Commission, qualifies her for this new assignment.”
Before this appointment, Lerner had been the director of the Exempt Organizations Rulings & Agreements Division, where she was responsible for the EO determinations letter program, public guidance and technical assistance for IRS agents conducting examinations of tax-exempt organizations. Lerner came to the IRS in 2001 from the Federal Election Commission, where she was Associate General Counsel for Enforcement and Acting General Counsel. She replaces Martha Sullivan, who will retire from the IRS at the end of December.
“Lois is an integral part of the EO team and has successfully increased the IRS presence in the exempt community,” said Steven T. Miller, Commissioner of the IRS Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, of which EO is a part. “Her integrity, skills and judgment are exceptional and will allow us to continue to provide improved service and enhanced enforcement of the tax laws.”
The tax-exempt sector of the economy had total assets of approximately $3.7 trillion in 2002, the latest year for which data are available, with revenues of $1.2 trillion.
Lerner will report to her new position in early January 2006. Joseph Urban, EO Senior Technical Advisor in Rulings & Agreements, will serve as acting director of EO Rulings & Agreements.
My response to a truly execrable NY Times Op-Ed by Arthur Brooks . . .
. . . head of the American Enterprise Institute.
Here is the text of my comment:
The suggestion that most middle- and working-class folks are 'envious' of the very wealthy is an outrageous insult. Nobody is begrudging anybody's success, nor do they covet what the very wealthy have. But many of the very wealthy seem to have lost sight of the fact that nobody succeeds alone. What people want is the ability to make a decent living for themselves and their families. They want a real chance to get ahead. They want job security. And when the businesses who employ them enjoy large increases in profitability, they want their contribution to that increased profitability to be fairly reflected in their wages or salaries.
In any case, the prevailing emotion is not 'envy,' but rather bitter resentment. People resent that this tiny percentage of folks who have succeeded so spectacularly have used the fruits of that success to undermine the formerly robust commons this country once enjoyed. They resent that they use that money to lobby legislators to tear away at the social safety net and to block a long-overdue and very modest rise in the minimum wage.
An economic system must work for everyone. A system that enables a relative handful to hoard ever larger sums of wealth while everybody else is left to divvy up an ever declining remainder is unsustainable.
Finally, if anything is feeding this resentment, it is the smug, self-satisfied pronouncements of the 1% about what is "healthy" for society as a whole!
And here is an excerpt of Brooks' Op-Ed:
[font size=3]Arthur C. Brooks[/font]
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Unsurprisingly, psychologists have found that envy pushes down life satisfaction and depresses well-being. Envy is positively correlated with depression and neuroticism, and the hostility it breeds may actually make us sick. Recent work suggests that envy can help explain our complicated relationship with social media: it often leads to destructive “social comparison,” which decreases happiness. To understand this, just picture yourself scrolling through your ex’s wedding photos.
My own data analysis confirms a strong link between economic envy and unhappiness. In 2008, Gallup asked a large sample of Americans whether they were “angry that others have more than they deserve.” People who strongly disagreed with that statement — who were not envious, in other words — were almost five times more likely to say they were “very happy” about their lives than people who strongly agreed. Even after I controlled for income, education, age, family status, religion and politics, this pattern persisted.
It’s safe to conclude that a national shift toward envy would be toxic for American culture.
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. . . [W]e must recognize that fomenting bitterness over income differences may be powerful politics, but it injures our nation. We need aspirational leaders willing to do the hard work of uniting Americans around an optimistic vision in which anyone can earn his or her success. This will never happen when we vilify the rich or give up on the poor.
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Lawrence O'Donnell: "Worst political strategy idea of the year" goes to Democrats . . .
. . . He's spot on, IMO.
http://on.msnbc.com/1dKbYG0
Any lawyers care to weigh in on Stepian using the Fifth Amendment on a document subpoena?
The lawyer for Bill Stepian, Chris Christie's campaign manager, has announced that Stepian will invoke the Fifth Amendment and not comply with the subpoena demanding production of certain documents, which he received from the NJ legislature's joint committee investigating the GW Bridge access lane closings and related scandals. It sounded strange to me that he could do that, so I started trying to research the question myself. I came across the article below in the online journal, California Lawyer. If I am reading the article correctly, it sounds to me like Stepian is on very shaky legal ground in invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid producing documents. Is my understanding correct?
by Anthony A. De Corso | March 2012
< . . . . > (T)here is no Fifth Amendment privilege to refuse to produce subpoenaed documents on the ground their contents are self-incriminating; courts hold that such information is not "compelled testimony." However, as explained below, there is a crucial corollary: In certain circumstances the act of producing such documents may indeed be entitled to protection under the Fifth Amendment. - See more at: http://www.callawyer.com/Clstory.cfm?eid=920910#sthash.YO0uURU3.dpuf
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Fifth Amendment Privilege
Well-established case law holds that if a person voluntarily creates and possesses self-incriminating documents, he or she may nevertheless have to produce them in response to a subpoena. That is the law notwithstanding the privilege against self-incrimination, because the creation of such documents is not "compelled" within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. (See Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 409-410 (1976).) Even so, the act of producing documents may compel a person to implicitly or inherently admit that responsive papers exist, are in that person's possession or control, and are authentic. In such circumstances, the production of documents is testimonial and, because compelled, may be privileged under the Fifth Amendment. Whether the privilege applies turns on whether the act of production is likely to be incriminating. (See United States v. Hubbell, 530 U.S. 27, 36-37 (2000) (affirming dismissal of charges, based on Fifth Amendment violation.)
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Business Entities
Under the "collective entity doctrine," the Fifth Amendment privilege does not apply to artificial entities (such as corporations) or to their custodian of records who claims that producing documents will incriminate the custodian personally. Such entities act only through agents. Allowing these agents to assert the privilege as to the production of the entities' records would effectively extend the privilege to the entities themselves. (See Braswell v. United States, 487 U.S. 99 (1988).) Moreover, when individuals voluntarily assume the custodian position, they take on the duty to produce its records upon proper demand (Braswell, 487 U.S. at 109-10 (applying collective entity rule to president/sole shareholder of small corporation); United States v. Blackman, 72 F.3d 1418, 1426-27 (9th Cir. 1996) (applying same rule to defendant partner of law firm)). - See more at: http://www.callawyer.com/Clstory.cfm?eid=920910#sthash.YO0uURU3.dpuf
Well-established case law holds that if a person voluntarily creates and possesses self-incriminating documents, he or she may nevertheless have to produce them in response to a subpoena. That is the law notwithstanding the privilege against self-incrimination, because the creation of such documents is not "compelled" within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. (See Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 409-410 (1976).) Even so, the act of producing documents may compel a person to implicitly or inherently admit that responsive papers exist, are in that person's possession or control, and are authentic. In such circumstances, the production of documents is testimonial and, because compelled, may be privileged under the Fifth Amendment. Whether the privilege applies turns on whether the act of production is likely to be incriminating. (See United States v. Hubbell, 530 U.S. 27, 36-37 (2000) (affirming dismissal of charges, based on Fifth Amendment violation.)
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