side note: the real sad truth here is Target was allowed to make these contributions because of the recent Supreme Court ruling which freed them to spend CORPORATE funds on elections. This stems directly from Bush and the people he put up on the Supreme Court, which was Roberts and Stevens. These Republicans have no idea what it means to protect the citizens of this country, all they know and all they think about is protecting corporations, since they believe corporations are just like people. the line has got to be drawn somewhere. Talk about Judicial Activism.

A few Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. institutional shareholders weighed in Thursday on the flap over the companies’ political donations in Minnesota, urging the boards of both retailers to increase their oversight of campaign contributions.

Walden Asset Management and Trillium Asset Management Corp., both of Boston, and Bethesda, Md.-based Calvert Asset Management Co. filed shareholder resolutions with both companies. Together, the three firms control less than 1 percent of each company’s outstanding shares — 1.1 million Target shares worth $57.5 million and 344,000 Best Buy shares worth $11.3 million — but they are moving the debate over the political giving to a new arena.

Target gave $150,000 and Best Buy $100,000 to a business-focused political fund helping a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, triggering a national backlash from gay rights groups and liberals. The companies made the donations after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling freed them to spend corporate funds on elections. The candidate, state legislator Tom Emmer, opposes gay marriage and other rights for same-sex couples. (more…)

In a decision announced this morning, the Supreme Court upheld the 1965 Voting Rights Act — a law that has done more to expand and strengthen our democracy than any other.

But the fight to protect voting rights doesn’t end there. Attacks on this critical law will not stop. And voter suppression tactics will continue to plague our elections.

In the wake of an historic election, it’s easy to reflect on how far we’ve come. But our democracy is still a work in progress.

Donna Brazile learned that first-hand as Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000.

Watch Donna’s video on the fight to protect voting rights — then share it with your friends.

side note: One of my biggest disappointments with the Obama Administration. There have been quite a few instances now where he has marched in lockstep with Dubya and his illegal policies.

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
Arguments for suppressing torture photos are grounded in the worst aspects of the Bush/Cheney mindset.

(updated below – Update II)

Yesterday, there was a potentially temporary though still quite significant victory for those who believe in open government and transparency: as Jane Hamsher first reported, House leaders and the White House were forced to remove the Graham-Lieberman photo suppression amendment from the war supplemental spending bill, because widespread opposition to that amendment among progressive House Democrats was jeopardizing passage of the spending bill. Readers here and those of various blogs who bombarded House members with opposition calls on Friday obviously played an important role in forcing the withdrawal of this pernicious amendment. Successes of this sort are rare enough that — even if fleeting — they warrant some celebration.

Whether there is value in disclosing these specific torture photographs is a secondary issue here, at most [though in light of the ongoing debate in this country over torture and accountability, as well as the irreplaceable value of photographic evidence in documenting government abuses (see Abu Ghraib), the value of these sorts of photographs seems self-evident]. A much more critical issue here is whether the President should have the power to conceal evidence about the Government’s actions on the ground that what the Government did was so bad, so wrong, so inflammatory, so lawless, that to allow disclosure and transparency would reflect poorly on our country, thereby increase anti-American sentiment, and thus jeopardize The Troops. Once you accept that rationale — the more extreme the Government’s abuses are, the more compelling is the need for suppression — then open government, one of the central planks of the Obama campaign and the linchpin of a healthy democracy, becomes an illusion. (more…)

President Obama hit a home run with his nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court — and not just because she’s the “woman who saved baseball” by ending the strike in 1995, nor simply because she would be the first Latina ever to serve on the high court.

It was a home run because in her three-decade career as a prosecutor, judge, private litigator and law professor, she has time and again earned bipartisan praise as one of America’s finest legal minds. And it was the right choice because Judge Sotomayor — herself born and raised in a South Bronx housing project — has summed up the American dream in her own incredible story and never once forgotten how the law affects our daily lives.

Now her historic nomination goes to the Senate. I know that process well, and I can tell you that the debate of the coming weeks and months will be shaped by the public response in the next few hours and days. It’s critical that the Senate and the public clearly see where the American people stand.

Will you add your name to the growing list of Americans who are pledging to “Stand with Sotomayor” today? Your name and comments will become part of a public display of support at this crucial time.

I’ve followed Judge Sotomayor’s remarkable journey for years. I voted for her when President George H.W. Bush nominated her for the District Court in 1992, and I was proud to vote for her again when President Bill Clinton nominated her for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998.

Born to a Puerto Rican family, Sotomayor grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx. She was an avid reader from an early age, and was first inspired to pursue a legal career by the Nancy Drew mystery novels. Driven by her mother’s belief in the power of education and her own relentless work ethic, she excelled in school. She won a scholarship to Princeton University, graduated summa cum laude, and then went on to attend Yale Law School where she served as an editor of the prestigious Yale Law Journal.

Like President Obama, Sotomayor passed up many more lucrative opportunities after law school to put her degree to work for the public good. She served as an Assistant District Attorney in New York, tackling some of the hardest cases facing the city, including robberies, assaults, murders, police brutality, and child pornography. Her growing reputation for fearlessness and legal brilliance prompted her first nomination to the federal bench, and she’s only continued to soar.

If confirmed, she would start with more federal judicial experience than any Justice in a century, more overall judicial experience than any Justice in 70 years, and replace David Souter as the only Justice with firsthand experience as a trial judge. She has participated in over 3,000 panel decisions and authored roughly 400 opinions, expertly handling difficult issues of constitutional law, complicated procedural matters, and lawsuits involving complex business organizations.
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By Ben Furnas, Josh Rosenthal | March 3, 2009

In the United States today, tens of thousands of same-sex couples who are legally married in their state of residence are denied spousal Social Security benefits because the federal government does not acknowledge their marriage. Today, 15 Massachusetts residents represented by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders filed suit against the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies, challenging the constitutionality of the federal government’s decision not to recognize their marriages.

After paying a lifetime of payroll taxes into a system that is supposed to provide retirement benefits for married couples, same-sex couples who marry are denied thousands of dollars in retirement benefits, survivor benefits, and lump-sum death benefits, simply because they are married to a person of the same sex.

This paper illustrates the cost of denied benefits to three typical couples, as well as one hypothetical couple with average characteristics of same-sex couples in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and California, where same-sex marriages are officially acknowledged under state law.

We find that a same-sex couple with average characteristics—including average age, average income, and average gap in income between spouses—will be denied more than $8,000 a year in Social Security survivor benefits upon the death of the higher-earning spouse after retirement.
Context

In 1996, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which President Bill Clinton then signed into law. The act has two substantive sections: Section 2 reinforces a state’s right not to recognize another state’s same-sex marriage, while Section 3 denies federal recognition of marriages between couples of the same sex. The law marked the first time the federal government overruled state determinations of marriage.
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side note: I’m sorry, but at the very least, Blago is unintentionally hilarious. Hollywood couldn’t script something this comical. It wouldn’t be believable.

Please make a contribution to support ASA today.
Return of Legal Cannabis Not Pre-empted by Federal Law

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a landmark decision yesterday in which California state courts found that its medical cannabis law is not preempted by federal law. The Supreme Court’s decision in Garden Grove v. Superior Court means that federal law does not prevent state and local governments from implementing medical cannabis laws adopted by voters or state legislatures. In short: federal law does not override state law on medical cannabis!

Yesterday’s decision follows three years of strategic legal work by Americans for Safe Access (ASA) in a California case involving the return of wrongfully confiscated medicine. ASA needs your help to keep doing important work like this. Please take a moment to make a special contribution to ASA today. (more…)

side note: I wonder if we will ever know the truth, and if somehow we do, is there recompense possible?

While President George W. Bush held the fewest first-term press conferences in modern presidential history, the administration’s suppression of information also took place on other, more secretive fronts.

By Eric Alterman, George Zornick | November 20, 2008

If December 2000 is any guide, we’re about to be inundated with stories about the “Bush Legacy,” with all sides of the ideological spectrum battling over this administration’s rightful place in the proverbial “record books.” Yet the media’s role in our democracy will likely go unnoticed amid discussions of Iraq, Afghanistan, a collapsing economy, rendition and torture, domestic wiretaps, the Katrina catastrophe, continued environmental degradation, and the destruction of the Republican majority.

The public has largely missed the eyes of this particular wolf at its door because of the crisis of survival in the media business itself, particularly within the newspaper business. But the Bush administration’s war against not just the media, but the very idea of free expression, is one that will need to be reversed as surely as the midnight regulations currently being written by administration officials. This will need to be done despite the apparent discomfort so many reporters and editors evince when it comes to defending their constitutional role as guardians and watchdogs of a democratic society.

I wrote a cover story for The Nation in early 2005 on the then-little discussed topic, and the crisis has only worsened since. This column, and a few to follow, will highlight and update information on this continued assault in the hopes that public officials and the media in a new administration will revisit some of the practices that have allowed those in power to keep the rest of us in the dark.

All presidents keep secrets, and just about all of them lie as well. This is unfortunate, but not a source of scandal—an argument I tried to elucidate in a book on presidential lying that was also the topic of my Ph.D. thesis. Yet during the Bush era, America entered a period I call “the Post-Truth Presidency” during which it mattered little to almost anyone whether the president and his representatives accurately represented reality in their statements to the press and the public. What mattered was what they thought it reasonable to try and get away with. They used their newly discovered power of audacity to rewrite the rules of political discourse and badly weaken the foundation of our democratic discourse. The attack was waged on numerous fronts simultaneously; indeed that was part of its genius. Even the most conscientious media watchdog had a hard time keeping up.

On one level, the effort has been obvious. President George W. Bush held the fewest first-term press conferences in modern presidential history. Bush has still never given an interview to The New York Times as president. And when was the last time you saw Dick Cheney—universally understood to be the most powerful and influential vice president in America—interviewed anywhere, save the friendly environs of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh’s radio program?

Make no mistake: This is a calculated strategy. As one Bush adviser explained to reporter Ron Suskind, “Let me clue you in. We don’t care. You see, you’re outnumbered two to one by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don’t read The New York Times or Washington Post or the LA Times.”
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Senator seeks damages, claims singer’s lawsuit chilled free speech
By Eriq Gardner

LOS ANGELES – John McCain may have lost the presidential election to Barack Obama, but his campaign seems absolutely determined not to lose to Jackson Browne.

The singer/songwriter sued McCain in August after the Republican candidate for the highest office in the land used his song, “Running on Empty,” in a campaign commercial that targeted Obama’s energy plan. At the time, many didn’t take the legal threat very seriously, but based on two motions filed this week in U.S. District Court in California, the McCain campaign sure does.

Represented by attorney Lincoln Bandlow at Spillane Shaeffer, McCain has filed two 20-page motions.

What’s he arguing?

The first is a standard motion to dismiss, claiming that McCain’s use of the song was fair use. The campaign’s fair use reading is based on the application of the standard four-factor test that includes the purpose and character of the use of the song (McCain argues it was non-commercial and transformative); the nature of the work (McCain derides the song as old, old, old, with a title that’s an acknowledged cliche); the amount and substantiality of the use of the song (McCain only used the title phrase, and cites a recent judgment against Yoko Ono, who had sought to prevent the unauthorized use of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in a film); and the effect of the use of the song (McCain says that rather than damage the song’s commercial potential, his use “will likely increase the popularity of this thirty year-old song”).
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side note: This is depressing, what’s even more depressing is that those scumbags on the Supreme Court just recently ruled that Exxon didn’t have to pay the full $2.5 billion dollar fine b/c of this mess. You can read that story here.

The Huffington Post
by JS McDougal

The Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in the Prince William Sound on March 24th, 1989. Over the next three days, three-thousand miles of Alaska’s coastline were coated with somewhere between 11 and 38 million gallons of crude oil. To give you a point of reference: had the spill occurred off the east coast of the ‘Lower 48,’ oil would have destroyed coastline from New York Harbor to Cape Canaveral.

All the communities along the coast–which depend on the Sound’s fish populations for food, jobs, tourism, and work–were devastated. One such community was Cordova, Alaska where a good friend of mine, Dr. Riki Ott, was working as a commercial “fisherma’am” at the time of the spill. Riki, also a Marine Biologist, has spent the last 20 years of her life fighting for justice from Exxon, working to restore affected communities, and teaching about the dangers of oil and corporate power.

One of the videos she carries with her as she travels the country shows the lasting effects of the Exxon Valdez that still pollute Alaska’s beaches today—nearly 20 years after the spill. Riki explained it to me like this, “We take students down to the beach, dig a hole somewhere, and pour water in.” This is what that experiment looks like.

original article

By Ian Urbina
The New York Times

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.

Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening and trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

Some states allow such voters to cast provisional ballots. But they are often not counted because they require added verification.
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by: Matt Renner, t r u t h o u t | Report

A backlog of whistleblower lawsuits against military contractors has been swelling and festering since the early days of the so-called war on terror.

According to critics, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has blocked the progress of these lawsuits to spare the Bush administration a major political black eye should the truth about ongoing war profiteering be revealed, a charge the DOJ denies.

Under the False Claims Act, a civil war era law, when an employee of a company thinks they have evidence that their company is defrauding the US government, the individual can file a lawsuit on behalf of the government against the contractor by filing a special lawsuit called a qui tam – a Latin abbreviation for “he who sues in this matter for the king as for himself.”

The exact number of qui tam cases stuck in legal limbo is unknown because the cases are kept under strict seal. But sources who have been following the issue closely estimate that there are between 50 and 70 Iraq contracting fraud cases under seal. Under normal circumstances, when the DOJ receives a qui tam case, it conducts an investigation into the whistleblower’s claims. If there is sufficient evidence of significant fraud, the DOJ joins with the whistleblower to sue the company in question and recover the government’s money. The whistleblower can receive up to 30 percent of money recovered as a reward for their service to the taxpayer.

Not a single qui tam case against war contractors has been joined by the Bush administration DOJ despite the possibility of recovering billions of dollars for the US taxpayer and reining in war profiteers, who continue to cheat and defraud the government and the US troops mired in battle. (more…)

side note: This confirms what most of us thought for a long time…..that the highest levels of this administration were involved in allowing the torture to take place.

Scott Horton
The New Republic
The author of ‘The Torture Tapes’ describes how coercive interrogation came to be the policy of the United States government.

British writer and international lawyer Philippe Sands is the author of The Torture Team , in stores May 5, which chronicles the role lawyers played in the introduction of the Bush administration’s program of coercive interrogation techniques. Here, Scott Horton talks to Sands about his findings.

TNR: In The Torture Team, you focus on a single document, Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 approval of extraordinarily aggressive interrogation techniques. You give us the document’s genesis, and the revolt within the Pentagon that led to its being formally withdrawn. But what you show is a process as much as a document, and that process appears to me to be a conscious, studied circumvention of the normal procedure followed by the U.S. military. Do you agree?

Sands: When the administration released the December 2002 and other memos, it told a story that essentially said this: The new interrogation techniques came from the bottom up and had nothing to do with policy decisions driven from the top. I wanted to explore the truth of that account, by trying to talk to as many of the people involved in the decision as I could. I journeyed around America, tracking down the key players–amongst many others, Diane Beaver and Mike Dunlavey at Guantánamo; General Tom Hill at SOUTHCOM; General Dick Myers at Joint Chiefs and his lawyer, Jane Dalton; Doug Feith at the Pentagon; and Jim Haynes at the general counsel’s office (more…)

side note: building upon the last story, In case you think $2.5 billion could bankrupt the company, The Salt Lake Tribune points out that Exxon Mobile’s profit in the last quarter of 2007 was $11.7 billion, and that “the award represents less than three weeks’ worth of Exxon profit.”

http://thinkprogress.org

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on how much money ExxonMobil should be forced to pay as damages for its Exxon Valdez oil spill 19 years ago. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank notes that Chief Justice John Roberts appeared “bothered” that Exxon might have to pay for its destruction:

What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion — roughly three weeks’ worth of profits — for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history.

“So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?” Roberts asked in court.

The lawyer arguing for the Alaska fishermen affected by the spill, Jeffrey Fisher, had an idea. “Well,” he said, “it can hire fit and competent people.”

The rare sound of laughter rippled through the august chamber. The chief justice did not look amused.
see original