I’m am generally not a fan of the death penalty. It’s not fairly implemented (not very many white millionaires on death row),  it’s uncorrectable if new evidence exonerates the defendant and  it’s really expensive. Besides, forcing someone to exist in a maximum security prison for life is probably far worse than a lethal injection execution, if retribution is the goal.  As long as flawed humans implement it, the death sentence will be flawed.

That said, if there was ever a case that deserved it, this is the one. I simply don’t know how Dr. Petit retrained himself from leaping across the courtroom in an effort to throttle these two waste of oxygen losers with his bare hands. They beat, robbed, raped and murdered their way through his whole family. They set his house on fire with his wife and children in it and left him for dead. My gut tells me he has a divine animal right to gruesome retribution. I don’t think I’d have a problem having those two knuckleheads staked down nude in field with many red ant colonies and covering their genitals and faces with honey. It would hopefully take a very long painful time to die.

This ironically supports my practical opposition to the death penalty. It’s so very easy to get caught up in emotionalism and demand an emotionally satisfying penalty. I suppose this is why we have laws to temper our collective demons and a constitutional prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment.

The lead plaintiff in the case is Binyam Mohamed, an Ethopian citizen and legal resident of the United Kingdom who was arrested in Pakistan on immigration charges. He claimed he was turned over to the C.I.A., which flew him to Morocco and turned him over to the Moroccan security service, who held him for 18 months and subjected him to an array of tortures, including beatings, 24-hour subjection to loud music, and cutting his penis and other body parts with a scalpel and then pouring stinging liquid on the wounds…

…Judge Fisher took the unusual step of urging the executive branch and Congress at length to consider granting reparations to torture victims if secret records indicated that their allegations were true – even if they had no ability to seek redress in courts. He cited the example of payments the government made to Japanese Latin Americans who had been abducted and brought to United States internment camps during World War II.

via Court Sides With C.I.A. on ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ – NYTimes.com.

The court says as much as the allegations are probably true but bars a plaintive from a day in court on the basis of a judicially created “state secrets privilege” doctrine.  This is bullshit.

Sadly, it’s unlikely the Robert’s court will overturn this ruling. They’ve yet to see an executive privilege they didn’t like.  A government that has the power to order the extra-judicial murder of American citizens and jealously protects the right to torture in secret IS a tyranny.  The part that saddens me the most is that Obama was a constitutional law professor.  I hold him personally responsible for upholding the worst excesses of the Bush administration. Is this what he meant by bipartisan? It’s nauseating. You’ve officially lost me.

Down in flames, appeals sure to follow. This really will need to go to the Supreme Court. The real fear for me is that the Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy wing of the court will see nothing wrong with  enshrining discrimination in a state or federal law. I’m sure the right will scream and cry about how popular it is to ban gay marriage. Much the same way slavery or the ban on interracial marriage was popular.

Not long ago I would not have been able to marry my wife in many states: Arizona, California, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming all had anti-miscegenation laws repealed between 1948-1967. Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina and Virgina had their laws overturned by the aptly named Loving v. Virgina Supreme Court ruling in 1967. Prior to that a Caucasian was not allowed to marry an Asian/Filipino. The 13 states listed above specifically mentioned either Asians or Filipinos. All told 41 states had anti-miscegenation laws, mostly covering Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans. It was extremely popular.

Fuck popular, that simply does not make it right. This is why we have a constitutional democracy, to defend the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. I find this debate to be very personal to me.

Bonddad  at 538 seems to believe that the SEC has a very strong case against Goldman Sachs. The issue at hand is essentially lying to investors about mortgage backed securities that were sold, while at the same time betting against the same securities. This allowed them to make a shitload of money while other banks failed or circled the drain until rescued at great public expense.

Another point he makes is that a lack of enforcement actions helped to create an environment that made abuse more likely. Action is needed to strike a little fear into the hearts of the executives at Goldman’s, and other banks.

Despite protestations to the contrary I think they’ll use this power to disadvantage content from competitors, since the own a large chunk of copyrights to movies and music consumed in the US. I don’t think they’ll manage their networks for the good of their customers. They’ll do what corporate America always does, maximize their profits by choking off competition, then use those inflated profits to change the rules and regulatory environment to further inflate their profits.

Sadly, this decision leaves the ball in Congress’ court. I seriously doubt they’ll do the right thing and protect the freedom of the internet.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a sharp blow to the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to set the rules of the road for the Internet, ruling that the agency lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks…

But Tuesday’s court ruling has far larger implications than just the Comcast case.

The ruling would allow Comcast and other Internet service providers to restrict consumers’ ability to access certain kinds of Internet content, such as video sites like Hulu.com or Google’s YouTube service, or charge certain heavy users of their networks more money for access.

Google, Microsoft and other big producers of Web content have argued that such controls or pricing policies would thwart innovation and customer choice.

Consumer advocates said the ruling, one of several that have challenged the F.C.C.’s regulatory reach, could also undermine all of the F.C.C.’s attempts to regulate Internet service providers and establish its authority over the Internet, including its recently released national broadband plan.

via Court Favors Comcast in F.C.C. ‘Net Neutrality’ Ruling – NYTimes.com.

This verdict would seem to turn the patent system, which is flawed in any case, into a mandatory license to print money. If manufacturers can be sued for not including patented technology in their products where does stop? This seems badly flawed. If you don’t realize a table saw is dangerous before you buy it, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to walk around without protective head gear. And you certainly shouldn’t be allowed near power tools. Instead he’s awarded $1.5 million for not following basic safety rules.

More here:
Tool Maker Loses Lawsuit For Not Violating Another Company’s Patents

A federal lawsuit against the major music labels calls them a cartel which has banded together illegally to fix the prices of digital music. A New York appeals court has ruled the case can proceed.

via Digital music prices: are they illegally fixed?.

Effective push back against Liz Cheney and others of her ilk by Jason Sigger at Crooks & Liars. Turns out the Bushies made frequent and effective use of civilian courts to try people on terrorism charges. Much more effective than the military tribunal train wreck approach.

Not content simply to defend Jammie Thomas-Rasset in her high-profile retrial next week in Minnesota, lawyer Kiwi Camara is joining forces with Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson to file a class-action lawsuit against the recording industry later this summer.

The goal is nothing less than to force the industry to pay back the alleged “$100+ million” it has collected over the last few years. Perhaps the RIAA had good reason not to send those settlement letters to Harvard for so long.

Camara is attacking both the use of MediaSentry as an unlicensed private investigator and for using an illegal “pen register,” considered a type of electronic surveillence.  Also, Camara maintains that the copyright registrations are not valid beciase they don’t contain the original recording and that the RIAA failed to produce certified copies.

Teaming up with Harvard Law professor and longtime RIAA foe Charles Nesson, Camara wants to take back all of the money the RIAA has extorted from people over the years by filing a class action suit. We’ll see if the claims made in the case at hand gain traction.

Follow Omar Khadr From an Al Qaeda Childhood to a Gitmo Cell : Rolling Stone
There is no scientific evidence that such coercion is better than any other kind of interrogation; it is probably worse. SERE techniques were not designed to be used in the real world; they were designed to test the psychic endurance of Air Force pilots. When the FBI sent some of its best counterterrorism agents to Guantanamo soon after the camps opened, the agents chose to use what is known as rapport-based interrogation, which apparently worked. The FBI agents found the coercive tactics used by military intelligence both disgusting and stupid: The abusive treatment instantly destabilized detainees, making the information they provided unreliable as intelligence and useless in court.

I find the comments to the article to be sad. Many seem to believe that a 15 year old, fighting for a national army, deserves torture. It says much about our savagery and lack of humanity has a nation.

Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal in Civilian Courts – NYTimes.com
Foreign terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba have constitutional rights to challenge their detention there in United States courts, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, on Thursday in a historic decision on the balance between personal liberties and national security.

“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court.

Scalia was predictably petulant and pissed off.

As Jefferson Ruling Stands, Prosecutors Feel Stymied – washingtonpost.com
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will not review a lower court’s decision that an FBI raid on Rep. William J. Jefferson’s congressional office violated the Constitution, a ruling that federal prosecutors had said could make lawmakers’ offices a “sanctuary for crime.”

And how is this different? Seems to me that Congress has been a sanctuary for crime for decades. All kidding aside this upholds the status quo, where the executive branch isn’t allowed to go on fishing expeditions in Congressional offices. It allows the $90K found wrapped in foil in Jefferson’s freezer to be admitted into evidence. (Doesn’t everyone do that?) It doesn’t allow a free for all search of Congressional offices. This case was the first time the FBI attempted that and I think courts decided it correctly.

I strongly agree with Ezra’s post. Job one: Close Guantanamo. No dallying around thinking about it. Scrap the military tribunal kangaroo court. Put them in a Federal maximum security facility and start civilian trials. The issue will be that evidence gained through torture won’t be admissible, and it shouldn’t be in any country that claims to be civilized. Deport them if they can’t be tried because BushCo sanctioned the use of illegal interrogation methods methods.

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 01/11/2008 | In voiding suit, appellate court says torture is to be expected

The detainees allege that they were held in stress positions, interrogated for sessions lasting 24 hours, intimidated with dogs and isolated in darkness and that their beards were shaved.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the detainees captured in Afghanistan aren’t recognized as “persons” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were aliens held outside the United States. The Religious Freedom Act prohibits the government from “substantially burdening a person’s religion.”

The court rejected other claims on the grounds that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had certified that the military officials were acting within the scope of their jobs when they authorized the tactics, and that such tactics were “foreseeable.”

“It was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably `seriously criminal’ would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants,” Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in the court’s main opinion.

Judge Janice Rogers Brown dissented with parts of the opinion, saying that “it leaves us with the unfortunate and quite dubious distinction of being the only court to declare those held at Guantanamo are not `person(s).’

This is the saddest and most damaging legacy of the Bush administration.

Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use – washingtonpost.com
Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

Long held legal ruling uphold personal use exemptions to copyright laws. The RIAA would like nothing better than to hobble PCs, CD recorders, DVD burners or anything that threatens and already collapsed business model. What better way to ensure long term survival than suing your customers?

I wonder why CNN wanted to give this person airtime? All he did was make an ass out of himself and never even attempted to address any questions in an intelligible way.

Father Awarded Millions for Funeral Protest – New York Times

Why? I have exactly 1 phone company, and 1 cable company offering broadband to my house. I’m not in the boonies. How is this enough competition? If the incumbents aren’t forced to share they won’t. period.

Broadband is a natural monopoly, rife with market failure and barriers to entering the market. It needs government regulation to prevent the kind of stagnation that’s normal here, but not in Korea, Japan and Canada. That’s why they have higher rates of broadband penetration and are moving more rapidly into higher speeds than here in the US. Monopolies do not lend themselves to innovation and innovation is where the future is.

Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm – washingtonpost.com
A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.

Glenn Greenwald has more.