After investigators said an engineer in last week's collision had been texting on the job, regulators temporarily banned the use of all cellular devices by anyone at the controls of a moving train.
Sen. Al Franken makes pro-arbitration lobbyist Mark De Bernanrdo squirm
A lot of female private contractors in Iraq were raped by their fellow contractors. In many of those cases, the companies they worked for ignored complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault, and refused to punish the guilty parties. In some instances, these firms went so far as to sequester the victims, effectively placing them under house arrest, in order to prevent them from reporting sexual assaults.
Because the Bush administration extended legal immunity to contractors, the rapists and their employees could not be held legally accountable. And because the contracting companies required their employees to submit to legally binding arbitration, these firms could not be held accountable in civil court. In effect, men working for these firms were given license to rape their fellow employees.
This went on for years, until Senator Al Franken introduced a legislative amendment that would deny federal contracts to firms that require victims of sexual assault to submit to binding arbitration. Unsurprisingly, Franken’s amendment was opposed by some of the more vile members of the Republican Party:
On the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) spoke against the amendment, calling it “a political attack directed at Halliburton.” Franken responded, “This amendment does not single out a single contractor. This amendment would defund any contractor that refuses to give a victim of rape their day in court.”
The reason Sessions thinks that this amendment is an attack on Halliburton is that former Halliburton subsidiary KBR was by far the worst offender, which makes me wonder why Sessions has cast himself as the firm’s staunchest defender.
By the way, when I say that Franken’s amendment was opposed by some of the more vile Republicans, I mean it was opposed by the majority of the Republicans in the US Senate. Given the fact that the Republicans in congress have proven time and again that they don’t care much about the rights and well-being of women, and given the fact that they’ve proven time and again that they will do literally anything on behalf of companies with financial ties to the Republican Party, this shouldn’t surprise me. But I honestly didn’t think that the Senate Republicans would so brazenly defend rapists, at least not with the mid-term elections just a year away.
Breaking news from yesterday that Faux seems to have missed. A little something to hook nearly anyone’s sense of the macabre. It seems like a couple of guys on the inside think there is not much that Prince is not capable of. The Nation
Some of us don’t take much convincing, already pretty convinced that this stuff was going on, but everybody else needs to take a much harder look at this crook and his organization, pretty much fits the definition of violent psychopath.
Shawna Forde: murderer, washed-up bar hag, and National Executive Director of Minutemen American Defense (image taken from Shawna’s semi-literate racism blog)
The national leader of one of those totally-not-racist Minuteman outfits was arrested for the massacre of a Mexican-American family, including a 9-year-old girl:
Three people, including the leader of a border watch group and an officer within that group, were arrested in connection with a May 30 home invasion that left a father and his daughter dead and the mother wounded, authorities said. One of those arrested, Shawna Forde, is the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a group out of Washington state that conducts operations along the U.S.-Mexican border in Arizona. The group is not related to either the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps founded by Chris Simcox, or the Minuteman Project founded by Jim Gilchrist.
Authorities also arrested Jason Eugene Bush, 34, who serves as operations director for the Washington group, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, in connection with the shooting deaths of Raul Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia Flores, said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.
Raul Flores was a suspected drug dealer, and the three suspects targeted the house with the intention of stealing money and drugs, Dupnik said. They did not plan to leave any survivors, he said. “The plan was to kill everyone. To kill a 9-year-old because she might be a potential witness is one of the most despicable acts I’ve heard of.”
Dupnik said Forde and her cohorts even searched for the couple’s other daughter, who had spent the night at her grandmother’s, with the intention of killing her.
Not surprisingly, Forde has ties to other Minuteman groups. She was once a leader with the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, and she and her organization have been close to Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist.
Forde appears to have staged an assault last December, which she naturally blamed on Mexicans.
***
There are a few of sites out there dedicated to chronicling crimes committed by immigrants. They tend to contain lots of racism, and present a skewed picture of who actually commits the most crimes in this country (immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes, so deporting them would have the effect of making the crime rate go up). Not surprisingly, these sites seem to be avoiding the Shawna Forde story.
Michelle Malkin loves to feature stories about immigrants committing crimes and championing the Minuteman movement. So far, nothing on Forde. However, there is an interesting rant about CAIR’s failure to issue condemnation of an attack by a Muslim in Little Rock.
Like I’ve always said: if you’re going to be a racist, it helps to be a hypocrite as well.
The American cargo ship captain held hostage by pirates jumped overboard Sunday from the lifeboat where he was being held, and U.S. Navy SEALs shot and killed three of his four captors, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation.
Capt. Richard Phillips was helped out of the water off the Somali coast and is uninjured and in good condition, the official said. He was taken aboard the USS Bainbridge, a nearby naval warship, and later flown to the USS Boxer, where he was “resting comfortably,” the U.S. Navy said.
At the time of the shootings, the fourth pirate was aboard the Bainbridge negotiating with officials, the source said. That pirate was taken into custody.
Phillips, who was taken hostage Wednesday after the pirates hijacked the ship he captained, the Maersk Alabama, has contacted his family and received a routine medical exam, the U.S. Navy Central Command said in a statement.
Maersk Line Limited, owner of the Maersk Alabama, issued a statement saying it was informed at 1:30 p.m. by the U.S. government that he had been rescued. John Reinhart, president and CEO, called Phillips’ wife, Andrea, to tell her the good news.
Maersk Alabama crew members, who retook the ship from the pirates last week, were “jubilant” when they received word of the rescue, the statement says.
In our old Brit Londoner’s famous rhyming-slang, cockney-speak, it’s called “boracic lint”. To the rest of we Brits it signifies absolutely “skint”.
Translated into American, it says “stony broke”.
U.S. economy is in worst decline for more than a quarter century
The U.S. economy suffered a huge nosedive in the final three months of last year, shrinking by a staggering 6.2 per cent.
The figures released by the U.S. department of commerce yesterday far outstripped the worst fears of the government and the gloomiest predictions by financial analysts.
The contraction is the worst decline in America’s gross national product for more than a quarter of a century.
Surely only the extremely stupidest of suckers couldn’t see it coming.
Boy, oh boy, oh boy.
What BushCo & their various criminal, greedy and corrupt cronies broke, Barak Obama has got one hell of a job to fix. Temporarily to repair, even.
Well, we sure wish him lots & lots of luck, since he’s certainly going to need some.
It’s long been said that whenever the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.
The terrible truth of today is that America has actually already succumbed to one sodding serious case of the ‘flu. And as almost all of us have already learned by past personal experience, the flaming ‘flu sure is one infamously contagious critter.
Sad to say, we strongly suspect that things are set to get a lot worse before they start to get better.
But what should silly old sods such as ourselves know?
Eh?
After all, this is the 21st century. Things are so much different these days.
So long as one stays silent regarding mere trifles such as wanton warfare, woeful welfare and (still) hardly any real health care.
If you belong to that bunch of barmpots who habitually condemn all American lawyers as being nothing but a load of lying, money grabbing mofos, don’t bother reading further. We’d hate to waste both your time and ours.
However, if you’re not so stupid as to all too easily swallow such silly shit, you’ll probably choose to continue.
A Report from Gaza
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes
By NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
Gaza City.
We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives.
In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and humanitarian assistance to civilians.
Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure
Much of the debate surrounding Israel’s aerial and ground offensive against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.
The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures.
If that snip has tempted/interested you enough to read the rest of this remarkably revealing report, then please be our guest.
Former president George W. Bush directed Karl Rove and Harriet Miers not to answer subpoenas issued by the House Judiciary Committee. The committee is investigating the prosecution of former Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama.
Apparently, Bush is under the impression that his executive privilege extends to the period after he leaves office:
Just four days before he left office, President Bush instructed former White House aide Karl Rove to refuse to cooperate with future congressional inquiries into alleged misconduct during his administration.
On Jan. 16, 2009, then White House Counsel Fred Fielding sent a letter to Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. The message: should his client receive any future subpoenas, Rove “should not appear before Congress” or turn over any documents relating to his time in the White House. The letter told Rove that President Bush was continuing to assert executive privilege over any testimony by Rove—even after he leaves office.
A nearly identical letter (.pdf) was also sent by Fielding the day before to a lawyer for former White House counsel Harriet Miers, instructing her not to appear for a scheduled deposition with the House Judiciary Committee. That letter reasserted the White House position that Miers has “absolute immunity” from testifying before Congress about anything she did while she worked at the White House—a far-reaching claim that is being vigorously disputed by lawyers for the House of Representatives in court.
The letters set the stage for what is likely to be a highly contentious legal and political battle over an unresolved issue: whether a former president can assert “executive privilege”—and therefore prevent his aides from testifying before Congress—even after his term has expired.
If Bush’s assertion of privilege is upheld, it would make it virtually impossible for anyone to investigate possible lawbreaking by the former president or by members of his administration. I guess that’s why Bush decided not to issue blanket pardons to his closest advisers before he left office.
But it’s not at all clear that Bush can continue to immunize his staff:
A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on state charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County’s federal detention centers.
The indictment, which had not yet been signed by the presiding judge, was one of seven released Tuesday in a county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles in recent years. Another of the indictments named a state senator on charges of profiting from his position.
Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra himself had been under indictment for more than a year and half before a judge dismissed the indictments last month. This flurry of charges came in the twilight of Guerra’s tenure, which ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March.
Cheney’s indictment on a charge of engaging in an organized criminal activity criticizes the vice president’s investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and “at least misdemeanor assaults” on detainees because of his link to the prison companies. The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons.
Also, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan says that Bush himself authorized Lewis Libby to expose undercover CIA agent Valerie Wilson:
