Courts & Law

CIA accused of spying on Senate Committee re: detention and interrogation program

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As Vice President Joe Biden would say, “This is a big fucking deal.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Diane Feinstein (D-CA) accused the CIA of removing documents from computers used by her Senate panel. Reading from a prepared text, Feinstein said she was speaking out “reluctantly” but that she wanted to speak in order to clarify the situation. Feinstein: CIA search of Senate computers illegal:

CIAThe head of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday sharply accused the CIA of violating federal law and undermining the constitutional principle of congressional oversight as she detailed publicly for the first time how the agency secretly removed documents from computers used by her panel to investigate a controversial interrogation program.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that the situation amounted to attempted intimidation of congressional investigators, adding: “I am not taking it lightly.”

She confirmed that an internal agency investigation of the action has been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. And she said that the CIA appears to have violated the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as various federal laws and a presidential executive order that prevents the agency from conducting domestic searches and surveillance.

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Action Alert: tell your legislators to vote no on privatization of public education

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DeathStarThe Arizona Republic today takes a deep dive into the attempts by the “Kochtopus” Death Star, the Goldwater Institute (and presumably ALEC), together with Cathi Herrod’s Christian Taliban at Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), to privatize public education in Arizona.

One would think that joining together this much evil would cause a temporal rift in the space-time continuum. But I digress.

In reality, what we have here is an attempt to create a direct taxpayer subsidy to private education nonprofit and for-profit corporations. This is “corporate welfare” by any other name, but because this sophisticated scheme to fleece Arizona taxpayers is set up for individuals to access an account — a “pass-through” to the corporations that financially benefit — the Arizona Court of Appeals accepted Goldwater’s legal legerdemain that this somehow is not really a direct taxpayer subsidy. This is a question that remains to be decided by the Arizona Supreme Court.

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Court of Appeals to hear same-sex marriage cases in April

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The federal district court cases from Nevada, Utah, and Oklahoma have all been “fast tracked” for oral argument in the Court of Appeals in early April. The case from Virginia  is “fast tracked” for oral argument in May.

6a00d8341bf80c53ef01901df0a0f0970b-piThe 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has set oral arguments in Nevada’s same-sex marriage case, Sevcik v. Sandoval,  for April 9 in San Francisco.

[UPDATE: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports “The Ninth Circuit has now cancelled the April 9 hearing date for the Nevada case. It will be rescheduled.”]

On Feb. 10, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto announced that she and Gov. Brian Sandoval would no longer be defending Nevada’s amendment banning same-sex couples from marrying on appeal in the 9th Circuit, based on the fact that they did not believe their appeal would succeed if the amendment had to withstand heightened scrutiny standard  following the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in SmithKline Beecham v. Abbott.

The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage is the remaining party defending Nevada’s definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. There is an issue as to whether this organization even has standing, similar to the appeal of California’s Prop. 8 in Hollingsworth v. Perry.

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Neocon war criminals reemerge with talk of war in Ukraine

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The corporate media is still in thrall to the Neocon war criminals who lied this country into an unnecessary and unlawful war in Iraq based upon falsified intelligence of  “weapons of mass destruction.”

The same war criminals who authorized illegal torture, secret rendition of prisoners to black site prisons, and indefinite detention of  “enemy combatants” without charges or trial.

The same war criminals who sacrificed American lives and treasure in pursuit of their Neocon wet dream of a Pax Americana empire.

rice.cheney.bush.rumsfeld

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Sen. Gail Griffin does not like ‘Mexican’

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State Senator Gail Griffin (R-Heber) from LD 14 is a major piece of work.

Earlier this year she floated the idea of stealing a big chunk of Pima County and handing it over to Santa Cruz County because some local teabaggers wanted to secede from Pima County. Also, Pima County objects to the proposed Rosemont Mine, which Griffin denied was a motivating factor, but no serious person believes her denial.

This week Griffin’s bills to thumb her nose at the federal “guvmint” and to challenge the protected endangered species status of Mexican gray wolves are coming up for a vote in the House. As Craig McDermott posted earlier today:

LOBOMEXICANO– SB1211, allowing the AZ Department of Agriculture and “livestock operators” to kill Mexican wolves, under certain circumstances, and imposing reporting requirements on the reintroduction of Mexican wolves into the wild in AZ (House Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources, Monday, 2 p.m., HHR4)

– SB1212, appropriating $250K to the AZ Attorney General’s office to pay for litigation against the reintroduction of Mexican wolves into Arizona (House Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources)

– SCR1006, a resolution using many words to state that the legislature doesn’t like Mexican wolves.  What a surprise (House Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources)

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