Free Plaxico Burress - New York City's gun law is unconstitutional
Source: Wall Street Journal
New York Giants star receiver Plaxico Burress is facing a mandatory 3½ years in prison and the end of his football career. His crime? Not having a license, which New York City never would have issued him, for the exercise of his constitutional right to bear arms.
To be sure, Mr. Burress got caught because of what appears to have been stupid and irresponsible behavior connected with the handgun. But he does not face prison for shooting himself. His impending mandatory sentence highlights the unfairness and unconstitutionality of New York City's draconian gun laws.
Mr. Burress had previously had a handgun carry permit issued by Florida, for which he was required to pass a fingerprint-based background check. As a player for the Giants, he moved to Totowa, N.J., where he kept a Glock pistol. And last Friday night, he reportedly went to the Latin Quarter nightclub in midtown Manhattan carrying the loaded gun in his sweatpants. Because New York state permits to possess or carry handguns are not issued to nonresidents, Mr. Burress could not apply for a New York City permit.
At the nightclub, the handgun accidentally discharged, shooting Mr. Burress in the right thigh. He was not seriously injured, but he has been charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree.
It appears that he put the unholstered gun in the waistband of his sweatpants, and when it slipped, he grabbed for it, accidentally hitting the trigger. To make matters worse, according to press accounts, he was seen drinking and may have been consuming alcohol -- which all firearms safety training (including the class he would have been required to take for his Florida permit) absolutely forbids for people handling guns. And of course Mr. Burress's handgun should have been holstered to prevent unintentional movement of the trigger. Fortunately, his negligent discharge did not harm anyone else.
Gangster Government
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Barack Obama breaks first campaign promise by dropping oil tax
During the campaign, Mr Obama repeatedly promised to submit oil and gas companies to a profits windfall tax, citing the disparity between their huge profits and the struggles of ordinary Americans.
In the summer he said the tax would "help families pay their heating and cooling bills and reduce energy costs".
But the proposal has been quietly dropped from his agenda listed on transition team website's www.change.gov, setting off a storm of protest among liberal bloggers and small business groups.
An aide explained the change by saying: "President-Elect Obama announced the policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel. They are below that now and expected to stay below that."
But the shelving of the proposal was spotted by the California-based Small Business League, which asked if "the sudden elimination of this issue is a further indication that large corporations are already demonstrating their ability to influence the Obama administration".
"President-Elect Obama owes the American people an explanation as to why these campaign promises have been pulled from his agenda," it said.
The League was also disappointed that Mr Obama has dropped a reference that expressed concern that federal contracts designated for small businesses were being awarded to major corporations.
Mr Obama's decision follows indications that he will probably go back on another pledge - to introduce higher taxes for those earning $250,000 (£165,000) or more a year.
David Sirota, writing on the liberal blog Campaign For America's Future, said: "It seems like the Obama team is buying into the right-wing frame that raising any taxes - even those on the richest citizens and wealthiest corporations - is bad for the economy."
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has asked his colleagues on the court to consider the request of an East Brunswick, N.J. attorney, who has filed a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president!
U.S. Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has asked his colleagues on the court to consider the request of an East Brunswick, N.J. attorney, who has filed a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president.
Thomas’s action took place after Justice David Souter had already rejected a petition for the stay of a writ of certiorari that asked the court to prevent the meeting of the Electoral College on Dec. 15, which will certify Obama as the 44th president of the United States and its first African-American president.
The court has scheduled a Dec. 5 conference on the writ—just 10 days before the Electoral College meets.
The high court’s only African American is bringing the matter to his colleagues as a result of an emergency stay request filed by attorney Leo Donofrio. Donofrio sued the New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Wells, contending that Obama was not qualified to be on the state’s presidential ballot because of Donofrio’s own questions about Obama’s status as a natural born U.S. citizen.
Donofrio is a retired lawyer who identifies himself as a “citizen’s advocate.” The {AFRO} learned that he is a contributor to naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com, a Web site that raises questions about Obama’s citizenship.
Calls made to Donofrio’s residence were not returned to the {AFRO} by press time.
Donofrio is questioning Obama’s eligibility because the former Illinois senator, whose mom was from Kansas, was born in Hawaii and his father was a Kenyan national.
Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack!
What, exactly, does president-elect Barack Obama's mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former senator Tom Daschle, have to do with neo-conservatives who want to bomb Iran? A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners and neo-cons expects Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail - and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of US strike forces, including the prepositioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.
Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to war-like measures, including a US Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country's oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.
It's tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the George W Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Obama and the announcement on Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neo-cons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect's plans to talk with Iran, withdraw US forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless "war on terror" rhetoric of the Bush era.
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Rove Still Lying About Iraq, WMD's and 9/11
A former US presidential aide defends the decision to invade Iraq, saying that George W. Bush was justified in taking the oil-rich country.
In a Tuesday debate in New York on the Bush legacy, Karl Rove said the September 11 attacks on America had a major impact on how Bush dealt with the then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
"In the aftermath of 9/11 the concern was about a tyrant accused of enormous human rights abuses," he said, justifying the Bush decision to wage war on Iraq over the then Washington belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"Absent that, I suspect that the administration's course of action would have been to work to find more creative ways to constrain him like in the 90s," continued the architect of the Bush presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004. The contentions are in stark contrast with those expressed in 2003 by former US ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who said the Bush administration engineered intelligence about Saddam to justify an invasion of the oil-rich country.
The CIA had tasked Wilson with investigating the suspected sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by the African country of Niger to Iraq in the late 1990s.
During the official investigations, Wilson informed the CIA that it was highly unlikely that any such transaction had ever taken place.
The British government later published a "white paper", claiming that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an "immediate" danger. As for evidence, the report cited Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.
US Opts Out of Cluster Bombs Ban
Source: London Guardian
More than 100 governments, with some notable exceptions, will sign an international convention today banning the production of cluster bombs whose unexploded canisters have killed and maimed thousands of innocent civilians and are dangerously scattered over more than 20 countries.
The convention is enthusiastically welcomed today by the Red Cross, and on the Guardian's website by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, his German counterpart. The weapons had "rendered huge tracts of land unusable, cutting farmers off from their crops and visiting further suffering on families forced to risk their lives simply to pursue their livelihoods", said Matthias Schmale, international director of the British Red Cross.
Miliband and Steinmeier said their goal was a "truly global treaty on cluster munitions". They noted that "many of the major users, producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions" had not yet agreed to sign it. These countries include the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan as well as Israel, which fired many cluster bombs during the 2006 Lebanon war.
Up to 1m devices failed to explode during the 34-day conflict and this summer more than 40.6m square metres were identified as still being contaminated, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). More than 200 civilians died in the year after the Lebanon ceasefire. Cluster bombs also caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system.
At least 75 countries currently stockpile cluster munitions. More than 30 have produced the weapons. Unexploded cluster bombs have also killed civilians in Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Chechnya, Sierra Leone and Vietnam.
U.S. Lags In Providing College Access, Study Finds
Other countries are outpacing the United States in providing access to college, eroding an educational advantage the nation has enjoyed for decades, according to a study released today by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
The nonprofit research group contends that if left unaddressed, the development will harm U.S. competitiveness in the near future.
"I don't know what it's going to take to get our nation to wake up to what's happening with regard to the education deficit we're building," said William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, who will present a similar study by the College Board on improving access to higher education next week.
"We're standing pat while the rest of the world is passing us by. If we continue on this path, our chances of being the leader in the knowledge economy in the decades to come are between slim and none."
During the past two decades, some other nations have made the kind of effort to improve access to higher education that the United States undertook in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, said Patrick Callan, president of the research group.
In the United States, by contrast, college costs keep rising; more students are dropping out of high school; and large gaps remain in the success rates of students of different races, incomes and states. "We're one of the few countries where our older population is better educated than the younger population," Callan said.
The study gives a failing grade for college affordability to every state but California, which received a C because of the relatively low cost of its community colleges.
Broken Hearts/Broken Trust, Broken Like Matchsticks
Phillip F. Tourney | ussliberty.wordpress.com
As I lay here in my hospital bed, cheating the grim reaper once more and as bad as I feel, I must write this article. I think back to June 8, 1967 aboard the USS LIBERTY when the terribly wounded men had not a comfortable bed to lie on, only the comfort of a steel deck on a hard mess table to give them comfort. The heroic Doctor Keipher could only do so much for so many. We as a crew are eternally grateful for his life saving skills.
As you may or may not know, our ship was savagely attacked by air and sea in a sneak, murderous, venomous, and brutal attack by the government of Israel, our only “ally” in the Middle East. We were in international waters on the high seas with our colors flowing in the wind for all to see. The government of Israel had positively identified our clearly marked ship as the USS LIBERTY, an American intelligence gathering ship, the most sophisticated listening platform in the world at that time.
In this two hour attack, Israel attacked us with French mirage jets with the Star of David painted over to mask the identity of our attackers. The air assault lasted 30 - 40 minutes, dropping napalm on us, shooting us with rockets, canons, machine guns, whatever ordinance they had on those planes they used on their American friends, slaughtering and maiming as many of Americas’ sons as possible. We got out a S.O.S. to the Sixth Fleet within 15 minutes into the attack that we were being attacked by unknown jet aircraft, may-day, may-day!
Captain Tully scrambled conventionally armed aircraft from the USS SARATOGA to come to our aid.
Obama’s National Security Team: Minions of the New World Order
President elect Barack Obama made choices today for “a broad and diverse team” in Chicago, reports the Associated Press. Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, former Gen. James Jones, Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, and Susan Rice “round” out this “change” team which is, of course, not change but a seamless transition between the Bush neocons and Obama’s decidedly neoliberal choices.
Consider the following uncomfortable facts that the corporate media will never tell you in a month of Sundays:
Hillary Clinton: As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton will continue the Bush-Clinton legacy of mass murder and “humanitarian” interventions in “failed states,” that is to say states not toting the New World Order party line.
Clinton wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations publication Foreign Affairs that ending “the war in Iraq is the first step toward restoring the United States’ global leadership,” never mind her 2002 Senate vote allowing Bush and the neocons to invade Iraq and subsequently slaughter over a million Iraqis.
Clinton, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has stated she wants to send more troops into the Afghan meat grinder and have them chase the CIA-created Taliban and al-Qaeda around. Afghanistan needs to get “as much, if not more attention” than Iraq, said Clinton earlier this year on a campaign stop in Cape Fear, North Carolina, an appropriately named venue.
“The next president will be the first to inherit two wars, a long-term campaign against global terrorist networks, and growing tension with Iran as it seeks to acquire nuclear weapons. The United States will face a resurgent Russia whose future orientation is uncertain and a rapidly growing China that must be integrated into the international system,” Clinton wrote for the CFR.
Mr. President, Settle the Trades
If President-elect Obama is serious about pulling the economy out of its death spiral, he must urgently appoint a task force to investigate our nation’s clearing and settlement system. Specifically, the American people need to know how it has come to be that a black box outfit on Wall Street is empowered to handle (or, rather, completely fumble) securities transactions worth more than $1.5 quadrillion – that’s 30 times the gross product of the entire planet – without any real government oversight.
This black box organization–the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC)–claims to “centralize, standardize and streamline processes that are critical to the safety and soundness of the capital markets.” In other words, if somebody sells a security, the DTCC is supposed to make sure that a real security is cleared, settled, and delivered to its purchaser.
But it does not do that. We have long known that the DTCC enables brokers to routinely fail to deliver the stock that they have sold on behalf of their hedge fund clients. All the while, the DTCC has waged a fierce and grossly misleading public relations campaign aimed at convincing the public that illegal naked short selling (which results in extended failures to deliver) is not a problem.
This is appalling given that even the exchanges’ limited data show that failures to deliver peaked at more than 2 billion shares last summer, just before the SEC issued its temporary “emergency order” protecting 19 financial companies from naked short selling. That is, on most days in June, there were more than 2 billion phantom shares circulating in our markets.
In fact, the problem is much larger than that. Many fails occur “ex-clearing” and in other parts of the system that are not monitored by the exchanges. But we do not know precisely how large the problem is because the DTCC has refused to release complete data.