Welcome, one and all, to the first Nightly Ramble of the new year.
[1]
- GLOBAL WARMING PROTEST DOUSED BY SNOW One really has to wonder how often this has to happen [2]before the global warming wonks finally get the message.
- ABOUT THOSE ARMORED TRUCKS, IRAN AND CHINA: I guess it should surprise nobody that when Iran starts looking around for riot control vehicles, they have to look outside their own country. The only real industry they have in the place, after all, is geared toward making nuclear weapons. It should also surprise nobody then that when he ran starts looking for a ride control equipment, they look to the one country who not only has the technological means, but some serious experience in controlling dissent. Red China. [3]Forgive me, but this doesn’t sound promising in terms of a good response to Obama’s call to Iran to honor human rights. I think also some attention should be paid to China who has been having a great deal of difficulty apparently living up to its international agreements. For example, the WTO agreement back in 2001. if I recall correctly those were supposed to open completed, by 2006, as Dave Schuler correctly points out at OTB recently. [4] . Telecommunications freight, and most importantly, I think, banking. At least, important to us here are given the amount of paper that Chinese have been hanging on us recently. I can’t help but think that the amount of government spending going on just now is putting us at the mercy of the Chinese. Were it not for that, I wonder, would we as a nation of spoken up more strongly, backing the Iranian people’s attempted revolution?
- SO MUCH FOR THAT: All as of today, The Mayo clinic will no longer accept Medicare patients [5] at it’s site in Arizona. Apparently, the first of many fallouts for slashing Medicare payments, there are now some 3000 patients who see doctors at Mayo in Glendale Arizona who will now have to pay cash. If they want their health care, that is. Remember; this is an organization that Obama spent a good deal of time praising just a short while ago. Like all other Obama statements, this, too, apparently has an expiration date. I wonder; cool those 3000 people be voting for come next November, assuming they are still alive at that point?
- DUKE: WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN… David’s gonna holler about this. The always pretty Mary Katharine Ham, ripping the Duke fiasco, Mike Nifong, and so on. What’s not to love? (BBCT Glenn)
- THOSE BLACKWATER GUYS: Speaking of things that didn’t happen, Volokh Conspiracy’s , Paul Cassel [6] has the next project for Mary Katharine Ham :
D.C. Federal District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina has just dismissed all charges against several Blackwater guards, who were accused of voluntary manslaughter and various serious firearms offenses in connection with a September 16, 2007, shooting in Baghdad.
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In my view, the charges should never have been filed. The prosecutors made novel use of federal criminal statutes, including charging the contractors with heavy mandatory minimum sentences for use of firearms (i.e., machineguns) in the commission of a crime of violence. The dismissal is long overdue and, given the thoroughness of Judge Urbina’s opinion, seems unlikely to be overturned on appeal (or, for that matter, perhaps even unlikely to be appealed).Well, that’s just great. Now the question becomes how about some charges against the prosecutors, who are clearly politically motivated in the matter?Given the current makeup of the government, I suspect that the chances of that actually happening are fairly minimal, but I’m of the view that that’s exactly what should happen. There is also something to be said here for the politically motivated prosecutorial use of statutes whose sole purpose is to extend existing sentences for a given crime. Does anybody not understand that prosecuting an individual for use of a weapon in the middle of a war zone is ludicrous on its face? These people were required to carry weapons as a part of their job. It is at least morally questionable and certainly legally questionable to consider doing one’s job a crime. Certainly, there are those who will argue that the job itself was invalid. That those people should not have been there. That, too, is a politically motivated statement. Without that point of view, the prosecution’s would never have occurred. Thing is, this is the kind of nonsense flowing out of Washington with the neo-socialists in charge these days.
- SPEAKING OF POLITICALLY MOTIVATED PROSECUTIONS: I see the TSA has dropped its subpoenas against the two travel Bloggers Joyner mentions at OTB yesterday. [7] Over at BoingBoing [8], Xeni Jardin reports that both bloggers have been “let off the hook”. As with the other case, this is a legal action which the government should never have undertaken. There is a clear political motivation to this action, and I’m of the opinion that the two bloggers in question Chris Elliott and Steven Frischling, should start an ethics complaint. an anonymous commenter there, agrees, saying:
Speaking as an attorney, I would advise you not to let this go. Make an ethics complaint against the government attorney that signed the subpoena in DC or the jurisdiction they are licensed to practice law in. You don’t subpoena someone, then just “let it drop.”
They will be forced to: (1) admit there was no basis for the subpoena, in the first place, (2) make a dubious “national security” claim as to why they can’t discuss, which will dog them for their entire career, or (3) admit that they made a forensic scan of a citizen’s computer and used the evidence to pursue a whistleblower, after having used a subpoena to strongarm a citizen (again, something that will arise again ten years later during his Senate confirmation hearing for another position).
Long story short, government drones who use their subpoena power to bully citizens blowing the whistle on government incompetence deserve to be held to account. Do not back down, an ethics complaint is very low cost, and very high reward.
Now, as I say, I tend to agree with this. I’ll more than grant that the chances of such a complaint biting these people in the ass in the near term is small, but I have to wonder who else will feel the pinch. How high up the ladder did the decision to seek such subpoenas come from? We have an environment in the executive branch, just now, that is nothing short of full-goose paranoia. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the directive came from a current national security advisor, for example. That would be pretty much confirmed if the two of them ended up on somebody’s “no fly” list, hmmmm?The
- ONLY 11 MONTHS TO GO..… for you know what.