The Democratic witch hunt sure has a lot of Republicans testifying

 

Luckily we get to hear about it on tv

 

Keeping an open mind...

A clear look at the events on the Bundy Bird Sanctuary take over and trial

Spocko's Brain explains it all excellently. And makes me feel so much better.

Women of the Net

Celebrating your geekness.

Fighting misogynistic trolls who hate women.

Refusing to break down and cry when in court.

Twitter is attempting to deal with online threats to women.

Who actually has power?

Plan B should be available now to everyone.

Because the wimmen folk are stupid and need help.

This should take care of any geology majors in Italy...

Seismologists Tried for Manslaughter for Not Predicting Earthquake

Earthquake prediction can be a grave, and faulty science, and in the case of Italian seismologists who are being tried for the manslaughter of the people who died in the 2009 L'Aquila quake, it can have legal consequences.

The group of seven, including six seismologists and a government official, reportedly didn't alert the public ahead of time of the risk of the L'Aquila earthquake, which occurred on April 6 of that year, killing around 300 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

But most scientists would agree it's not their fault they couldn't predict the wrath of Mother Nature.

"We're not able to predict earthquakes very well at all," John Vidale, a Washington State seismologist and professor at the University of Washington, told LiveScience.

Even though advances have been made, the day scientists are able to forecast earthquakes is still "far away," Dimitar Ouzounov, a professor of earth sciences at Chapman University in California, said this month regarding the prediction of the March 11 earthquake in Japan.

War Crimes

War criminals, war profiteers, warmongers. We need accountability, confessions, trials, convictions, sentencing, jail time.

If you disagree, read this.

And then think this:

The Padilla Trial

Where we 'softened up the suspect', we did not torture.

Lewis Koch of Firedoglake:

There’s one story that summed it up for me by Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor.

As Richey tells it, it becomes a tale that makes implicates all those who participated – from the lowest ranking military person to the highest ranking officials of the Justice Department and the White House, with the President himself knowing what was occurring under his watch. Read this..and weep.

For a month, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been questioning Padilla in New York City under the rules of the criminal justice system. [Note: without an attorney.] They wanted to know about his alleged involvement in a plot to detonate a radiological “dirty bomb” in the US. Padilla had nothing to say. Now, military interrogators were about to turn up the heat.

Padilla was delivered to the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., where he was held not only in solitary confinement but as the sole detainee in a high security wing of the prison. Fifteen other cells sat empty around him.

The purpose of the extraordinary privacy, according to experts familiar with the technique, was to eliminate the possibility of human contact. No voices in the hallway. No conversations with other prisoners. No tapping out messages on the walls. No ability to maintain a sense of human connection, a sense of place or time.

In essence, experts say, the US government was trying to break Padilla’s silence by plunging him into a mental twilight zone. Padilla was not the only Al Qaeda suspect locked away in isolation. Although harsh interrogation methods such as water boarding, forced hypothermia, sleep deprivation, and stress positions draw more media attention, use of isolation to “soften up” detainees for questioning is much more common.

“It is clear that the intent of this isolation was to break Padilla for the purpose of the interrogations that were to follow,” says Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist and nationally recognized expert on the debilitating effects of solitary confinement. Dr. Grassian conducted a detailed examination of Padilla for his lawyers.

We are no longer in a situation where we are waiting for the barbarians. The barbarians have arrived and they are us.

Remember what Bush says:

Patrick Fitzgerald's next case

(Via Cannablog), Conrad Black.

From Wikipedia, Black's financial controversies:

In the 1980s, Black reclaimed $62,000,000 from the surplus of the Dominion workers' pension fund, claiming the surplus was the property of the employer. The Union challenged Black in court and he was ordered to return the money to the workers. Black appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada which upheld the lower court's decision. ^[3]

On 17 November 2003, after an internal inquiry alleged that Black had received more than $7 million in unauthorized payments of company funds, it was announced that he would resign as chief executive of Hollinger. The SEC also launched an investigation of his company's affairs.

On 17 January 2004, Hollinger International reported that the executive committee of the board of directors had obtained Black's resignation as chairman. At the same time the special committee in Hollinger already investigating the unauthorised payments filed a lawsuit in New York for the recovery of the money. Hollinger International also filed a $200 million (USD) lawsuit against Lord Black and his former top lieutenant, David Radler, as well as the companies Black has used to control the publishing it.^[4]

On 15 November 2004, the SEC filed civil fraud lawsuits against Lord Black and several others.^[5]

On 17 November 2005, eleven criminal fraud charges were brought by U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald against Black and three former Hollinger executives. Eight of the criminal fraud charges are against Black, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. After a hearing in late 2006, his bail was raised to $21 million (USD). His American trial was to begin in early 2007.

On 15 December 2005, four new federal charges were laid against Black by Fitzgerald in Chicago. The new counts include racketeering, obstruction of justice, money laundering and wire fraud. Under the racketeering count, Fitzgerald is seeking forfeiture of more than $92,000,000 (USD). The obstruction count against Black relates to a video that appears to show Black illegally removing more than a dozen boxes from the Toronto office of Hollinger Inc^[6]. After the video became public, Black returned boxes of documents about a week later.

An agency of the American government has seized the proceeds of the sale of Black's and Amiel's New York apartment. Hollinger International Inc. sued Black for $200 million (USD) in January 2006.

How hard will it be to find a jury for Scooter?

Sinfonian at Blast Off! quotes the news:
"The defense faces a key challenge in picking a jury for this highly political case in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 9-to-1. Cheney is expected to be a defense witness."

The Libby lawyers ask questions

"Defense attorneys are even more pointed in their proposed questions. Among those on their list:

• "Based on what you know at this time, do you believe that the Administration misled the American people to justify going to war?"

• Have you been following any of the recent political scandals involving Jack Abramoff, William Jefferson, Tom DeLay, Cynthia McKinney, or Mark Foley?

• Do you have particularly strong feelings about the war in Iraq?

• Based on what you know at this time, do you believe that the administration misled the American people to justify going to war?"

Looseheadprop of Firedoglake offers a primer on the trial.

Christy Hardin Smith talks about Valerie Plame and the destruction of her career, and the men behind the exposure:
"For the Bush Administration, the message and the reality that they have created for themselves is everything — outside criticism is ignored or squashed as needed. Over and over again. Critics are silenced by any means necessary, and the consequences be damned. That Valerie Plame Wilson's network of agents and assets working on Iraqi and Iranian WMD matters was collateral damage? Well, that's the price to pay for political vengeance, now isn't it?

This is who is running our nation. This petty, vengeful, nasty cabal of neocon-men headed by Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, David Addington, Karl Rove, the rest of the WHIG, and George Bush. Take a good, long, hard look at them square in the face of who they truly are through the lens of this single case — and then sit back and wait for the testimony to put an even more dismal picture into play.

This is about to be one helluva trial. But before we even get to it, shouldn't we all start asking all of the questions that we failed to ask in the run-up to Iraq before we get started on a war without end with Iran? Here, I'll start: is this a good idea for the long-term interests of the United States? If not, then why are we even thinking about it? "

Update: Murray Waas:

"On January 16, Libby will go on trial in the federal courthouse in Washington D.C. on five counts of lying to federal investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice. He is accused of attempting to conceal his role, and possibly that of others, in leaking to the media that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA officer, and that she might have played a role in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger in 2002 to determine whether Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.

In attempting to determine Libby's motives for allegedly lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury about his leaking of Plame's CIA identity to journalists, federal investigators theorized from the very earliest stages of the case that Libby may have been trying to hide Cheney's own role in encouraging Libby to discredit Wilson, according to attorneys involved in the case.

Cheney is scheduled to be a defense witness in the Libby trial. Regarding this, a spokesperson for the Vice President says: "We've cooperated fully in this matter and will continue to do so in fairness to the parties involved.""