LT Saloon

Judge Kills Off Filegate Suits, 14 Years On

Written by Josh Gerstein for Politico

From his column; Under the Radar: Courts, Transparency and More

A federal judge in Washington has dismissed the last legal remnants of Filegate, a scandal that engulfed the Clinton White House nearly 14 years ago.

Judge Royce Lamberth dispatched a pair of suits over the matter today, ruling that there was no intentional misconduct and that the acquisition of hundreds of FBI background files on former White House staffers was simply a mix-up.

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Former Rep. Eric Massa’s 29th District

“Can you say, ‘Gerrymandered,’ boys and girls?”

The Pentagon Shooter, Insurrectionism, and Right-wing Bloggers

Written by Eric Boehlert

When news broke last Thursday that a deranged gunman had opened fire outside a Pentagon security checkpoint, wounding two officers before being stopped by return fire (the gunman later died from his wounds), the reaction from some oddly giddy right-wing bloggers was swift. They wanted everyone to pay attention to the story. Why? Because bloggers claimed the gunman, John Patrick Bedell, was a loony liberal.

Under increased scrutiny for the rampant anti-government rhetoric of the Tea Party movement, along with its often violent imagery and open talk of insurrection, right-wingers seemed anxious, even frantic, to hold up the Pentagon killer as proof that they weren’t responsible for — or connected with — every political act of vigilante violence that makes headlines these days.

Want to read more? Click HERE.

Campaign 2010: Deja Vu All Over Again

Image courteous odeo.com

Written by Michael Winship

Comparisons are odious, the old saying goes, and certainly Democrats are dealing with some smelly, stinky realities as they stare down the next eight months until Election Day 2010 and pundits galore compare the party’s prospects to debacles of the past.

For a long time parallels were being made with 1994 and the midterm elections during Bill Clinton’s first term. Those gave us a Republican House and Senate, the glory that was Newt Gingrich and a Contract with America that after a dozen years turned out to have a hell of a balloon payment attached.

But this week, the mainstream media meme has shifted, advancing to the elections of 2006, when Democrats took back control of Congress, campaigning against a GOP “culture of corruption.” Now the village drums are signaling that it’s the Democrats who have been poisoned by too much power and made vulnerable. Exhibit A is Charlie Rangel, dean of the New York congressional delegation, forced to step down this week as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

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1-2-3 What are We Fighting For?

Written by Dave Lindorff

The stated goal of the US-led War in Afghanistan, according to the Obama Administration, is to defeat the Taliban and establish a stable democratic government over the entire country. Critical to that goal is establishing a professional Afghan army and police force that is not corrupt, and that has the respect of the Afghan people.

But reports out of Canada suggest that far from creating such a military and police force, the so-called International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) is turning a blind eye to the thuggish criminality of those organizations, both to avoid growing opposition in ISAF member countries, and to avoid offending those organizations in Afghanistan.

The issue in question is routine rape and sodomy of children by Afghan soldiers and police operating on Canadian-run bases in the Kandahar region.

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Repent Amarillo, Part 1

Quote from their site…

“We are the Special Forces of spiritual warfare, we’re looking for a few good warriors.”
-Repent Amarillo Staff-

Christian ‘Army of God’ Militia Terrorizes Amarillo, Texas

Written by xxdr_zombiexx for Smirking Chimp

An evangelical Christian hate group called “Repent Amarillo” is reportedly terrorizing the town of Amarillo, Texas. Repent fashions itself as a sort of militia and targets a wide range of community members they deem offensive to their theology: gays, liberal Christians, Muslims, environmentalists, breast cancer events that do not highlight abortion, Halloween, “spring break events,” and pornography shops. On its website, Repent has posted a “Warfare Map” of its enemies in town.

To leap to the end of the article, NO…there was no report or discussion that ANYTHING has been done to corral these brownshirt assholes. A little more on the flip.

According to a new exposé by the Texas Observer, Repent set out earlier this year to destroy a discreet club of swingers they discovered in town. On New Years eve, the harassment began, with Repent members, almost exclusively young men, showing up in military fatigues and bullhorns, blaring Christian music at the swingers’ club building. The swingers, made up of “regulars” of middle aged, working class couples, were then stalked at every following visit to the club. Repent not only took video of each member, but obtained the swingers’ license plates and dug through their trash, informing neighbors and coworkers of what was once private

I have the overwhelming feeling that if I did this I’d be getting my ass kicked and then arrested and then sued.

Here’s their pathetic website Check this:

Notice: This site is not designed for non-christians, It is designed as a recruitment tool to call certain Christians to spiritual warfare, If you are not a Christian and you want to know more about becoming a Christian consider the following Links as resources. While some of them support our efforts, and some may not, it is not about us and it is not about them. It is about Jesus Christ.

If you do make the journey over to their site, note the little white flecks floating all over it. I imagine it’s methamphetamines.

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Repent Amarillo, Part 2

Written by Lee Fang for Think Progress

An evangelical Christian hate group called “Repent Amarillo” is reportedly terrorizing the town of Amarillo, Texas. Repent fashions itself as a sort of militia and targets a wide range of community members they deem offensive to their theology: gays, liberal Christians, Muslims, environmentalists, breast cancer events that do not highlight abortion, Halloween, “spring break events,” and pornography shops. On its website, Repent has posted a “Warfare Map” of its enemies in town.

Calling Repent an “American Taliban,” blogger Charles Johnson notes that the group’s moniker “Army of God” is a rough translation of “Hezbollah.” Led by a man named David Grisham, a security guard at a nuclear-bomb facility called Pantex, Repent first gained media attention in Texas following a campaign to boycott Houston for electing a gay mayor. The group, which is associated with Raven Ministries, collaborates with other Christian groups as well as forced pregnancy advocacy associations like “Bound 4 Life.”

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HERE.

Bill Black’s Top Ten Ways to Crack Down on Corporate Crime

Here are ten logical and necessary steps to warding off another financial crisis which I doubt the Obama Administration will attempt. They are apparently still in thrall to the idea of returning all the pieces on the board to where they were before the meltdown in the fall of 2008. That’s just not going to work, as Michael Moore, Matt Taibbi, and many others know; it will only precipitate another crisis since the ‘bulls’ on Wall Street and the ‘too big to fail’ banks continue to dabble in the same financial foolery and malfeasance they perpetrated that caused the last collapse.

Bill Black’s Top Ten Ways to Crack Down on Corporate Financial Crime
by Corporate Crime Reporter
March 10, 2010

Ninety-five percent of criminologists study blue collar crime.

Five percent study white collar crime.

Of the tiny minority who study white collar crime, ninety five percent focus on the individuals who rip off the corporation.

We are left with a small handful of criminologists – think Edwin Sutherland, John Braithwaite, Gil Geis – who have studied or are studying – corporate crime.

That would be crime by the corporation.

Bill Black is one of the most prominent of those living corporate criminologists.

His specialty – control fraud.

Control fraud is when the CEO of a company uses the corporation as a weapon to commit fraud.

Bill Black is a lawyer and former federal bank regulator.

He’s the author of the corporate crime classic – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry (University of Texas Press, 2005.)

Black says there are steps we can take as a society to control corporate crime – in particular financial crime.

In an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter last week, Black laid out his top ten.

Number ten: Hire 1,000 FBI agents.

Pass legislation (HR 3995) introduced by Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur that would fund the hiring of 1,000 FBI agents to investigate white collar crime.

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Shannon’s Story: Health Care and Our Need for Cultural Healing

Written by Cynthia Boaz for Huffington Post
(Asst. Prof. of Political Science, Consultant on Nonviolent Action and Strategy)

We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘people-oriented society.’ -Martin Luther King, Jr.

I know that everyone has a personal story related to health care. This is mine. Well, actually it’s my sister-in-law’s. I started to write this piece about nine months ago, but I could never bring myself to finish it. Putting to paper the pain and sadness of Shannon’s struggle was just too much for me. But I can’t put it off any longer because the current debate about health care has shed light on some realities that although daunting, are just too serious to ignore.

To put things into context, I have to first share our story.

Want to read more? Click HERE.

Shadows Outside St. PETER’S Basilica

Think God is trying to tell those priests something?