We live in a country where snowballing a “timid” city snowplow driver and a police officer’s unmarked vehicle is a felony punishable by five years in prison, and a maximum fine of $2,500, mens rea be damned.
If you absent-mindedly and fleetingly cross a passenger screening checkpoint to plant a kiss on your girlfriend at an airport occupied by the American federales, you will be arraigned after a nation-wide manhunt. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat, promised to put the next such love-sick pup in jail for ten years. The lout is legislating to that end.
Just how pervasive is fascistic America? Search BAB under the categories “Criminal Injustice, Fascism, Law.” Ditto the articles archive, where you can reread “Don’t Tase Me, Big Bro, They’re Coming For Your Kids! Tasers ‘R’ Us, Remember Reno! ‘Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson,” and others.
As the state and its stooges strain sights on Iran, let us, of the reality based community, “Fret About Our Own Tyrants.”
He’d have cried out “You Lie” at the president during the State of the Union, last night. It so happens that Justice Alito is a gentleman, so he didn’t. All Alito did was gesticulate in surprise at the president’s audacious “misrepresentation ” of the SCOTUS’ invalidation of “a portion of the McCain-Feingold Campaign finance law.”
“The 20-year-old ruling had forbidden any political spending by groups such as corporations, labor unions, and advocacy organizations (like the NRA and Planned Parenthood, for example). Ruling that all persons, individually and in groups, have the same unfettered free speech rights, the court blasted Congress for suppression of that speech. In effect, the court asked, ‘What part of ‘Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech’ does Congress not understand?’ Thus, all groups of two or more persons are free to spend their own money on any political campaigns and to mention the names of the candidates in their materials.”
“Thus, as a result of this ruling, all groups may spend their own money as they wish on any political campaigns …”
“On Wednesday night, during his State of the Union address, the president attacked this decision by arguing that the ruling permits foreign nationals and foreign corporations to spend money on American campaigns. When he said this, Justice Samuel Alito, who was seated just 15 feet from the president, gently whispered: ‘That’s not true.’ Justice Alito was right. The Supreme Court opinion, which is 183 pages in length, specifically excludes foreign nationals and foreign-owned corporations from its ruling. So the president, the former professor of law at the one of the country’s best law schools, either did not read the opinion, or was misrepresenting it.”
“In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.”
Among the many dumb things Republicans have given us (read “GOP and Man at Yale”) is a brand of tease “journalism” headed by Hannah Giles, a well-connected, monosyllabic, Town-Hall tartlet, who partook in an ACORN-exposing (tush-wagging) operation. Her partner (he played the pimp) was James O’Keefe, who, it transpires, is even dumber than Hannah.
“ACORN ‘gotcha’ man arrested in attempt to tamper with Mary Landrieu’s office phones. James O’Keefe … a conservative activist who last year posed as a pimp to target the community-organizing group ACORN, is one of four people arrested by the FBI and accused of trying to interfere with phones at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans.”
O’Keefe and his pals are “charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purposes of committing a felony.”
Phone tapping or something.
The little pischer O’Keefe had given “a speech to the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a libertarian group in New Orleans,” which seems to be standing by him.
While the ACORN fun lasted, Andrew Breitbart put O’Keefe up as some sort of editor on his Big This/Big That websites, and appeared with him and Hannah on all the Republican TV shows. Now Big Breitbart is distancing himself from his protege. I guess AB has some sense of how fascistic and fickle American law and culture can be (you can go to jail for a long time for non-offenses; and become the toast of the town for major offenses). Here’s the interview he hastened to give to Hugh Hewitt.
Update (Jan. 27): “A lawyer for one of the men said outside the courthouse that his clients may have the product of ‘poor judgment’ and that he didn’t intend to commit a crime; lawyers for other defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.”
This defense attorney is right, of course, but the American legal system, which Republicans (like this intrepid contingent of guerrilla journalists) are forever striving to make less constitutional, will fight to keep these idiots under its jurisdiction. It’s reflexive.
Tareq and Michaele Salahi, two reality TV “stars,’ crashed—or livened up—President Obama’s first White House state dinner. The two harmless interlopers, who dared to gaze upon their celestial leader,” are being subjected to an inquisition by the People’s posturing, sneering, fascistic “representatives.”
CNS: “Tareq and Michaele invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination Wednesday, refusing to answer a House committee’s questions about their uninvited appearance at a state dinner.”
Good for them. Apparently, the White House is open only to visits from inner-city kids.
“Crashing a Trashy House”: On the night of the offense, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue “was packed with nasty, noisome parasites. An extra pair would have made no difference. Quite the contrary: There’s something apropos about a couple of reality-show exhibitionists, who themselves ‘have left an extensive paper trail in federal bankruptcy and state court filings,’ brazenly elbowing their way into a party of ponces.”
