Tag Archives: courts

105 Years in Jail for Posting a Link?

by Polly Browder Posted on September 9, 2013

Mother Jones

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A few months ago I passed along the story of Barrett Brown, a young journalist/activist who relentlessly followed up on documents leaked by Anonymous, was targeted for this by the FBI, and who was eventually harassed enough that he cracked—which took the unfortunate form of recording a YouTube rant promising to “destroy” one of his tormentors.

Brown was indicted for posting the YouTube threats, and there’s no question that it was an ill-advised rant regardless of the FBI instigation. But David Carr follows up with more today. It turns out that only three of the charges against Brown are related to the video. Twelve more are related to a link he posted in a chat room:

In December 2011, approximately five million e-mails from Stratfor Global Intelligence, an intelligence contractor, were hacked by Anonymous and posted on WikiLeaks. The files contained revelations about close and perhaps inappropriate ties between government security agencies and private contractors. In a chat room for Project PM, Mr. Brown posted a link to it.

Among the millions of Stratfor files were data containing credit cards and security codes, part of the vast trove of internal company documents….According to one of the indictments, by linking to the files, Mr. Brown “provided access to data stolen from company Stratfor Global Intelligence to include in excess of 5,000 credit card account numbers, the card holders’ identification information, and the authentication features for the credit cards.”

….But keep in mind that no one has accused Mr. Brown of playing a role in the actual stealing of the data, only of posting a link to the trove of documents….“The YouTube video was a mistake, a big one,” said Gregg Housh, a friend of Mr. Brown’s who first introduced him to the activities of Anonymous. “But it is important to remember that the majority of the 105 years he faces are the result of linking to a file. He did not and has not hacked anything, and the link he posted has been posted by many, many other news organizations.”

This is almost a textbook case of prosecutorial overreach. As Carr points out, the guy who actually stole the Stratfor information is facing a sentence of only ten years. So why is Brown facing 105 years? Certainly not for a video posted while he was in withdrawal from heroin addiction. More likely, it’s because the government considers him a thorn in their side and wants to send a message to anyone else planning to follow in Brown’s footsteps. That just ain’t right. As Carr says, “Punishment needs to fit the crime and in this instance, much of what has Mr. Brown staring at a century behind bars seems on the right side of the law, beginning with the First Amendment of the Constitution.”

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105 Years in Jail for Posting a Link?

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Ask a FISA Court Judge!

by Margherit Posted on August 23, 2013

Mother Jones

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The FISA Court was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to oversee top-secret surveillance programs. Its opinions are classified, although the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently released a rare, heavily redacted 2011 ruling striking down an NSA program that collected email data from American citizens and foreign nationals.

It also offers relationship advice.

Dear FISA Court Judge,

A coworker gave me and my husband a $25 certificate to the Cheesecake Factory as a wedding gift. It cost us $400 to feed her and her guest at our reception. Should I send it back and tell her she’s rude and cheap? Help, FISA Court Judge! —Dismayed in Des Moines.

FISA Court Judge says:

Dear Dismayed,

!!

Dear FISA Court Judge,

My husband and I have been married for 20 years but recently we hit a bit of a rough patch. I had an affair with my boss, and my husband missed the birth of our daughter to deliver a $3 million shipment of methamphetamine to a guy he knows from Chile. Also he’s dying of cancer. What should I do, FISA Court Judge? —Nervous in New Mexico.

FISA Court Judge says:

Dear Nervous,

I literally .

Dear FISA Court Judge,

Is there such thing as insanity among penguins? I try to avoid a definition of insanity or derangement—I don’t mean he or she is Lenin or Napoleon Bonaparte—but could they just go crazy because they’ve had enough of their colony? You’re my only hope, FISA Court Judge! –Musing in Munich.

FISA Court Judge says:

Dear Musing,

puffins ; I hope that answers your question!

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Ask a FISA Court Judge!

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Court Slams NSA for "Third Instance in Less Than Three Years" of Substantial Misrepresentation

by Olesiacei Posted on August 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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I’m still plowing my way through the declassified FISA court ruling from 2011 that found one of the NSA’s surveillance programs unconstitutional. However, the gist of the opinion is that NSA had misled the court about whether U.S. persons could be caught up in the program’s dragnet, and the court was not happy about it. According to a footnote, it represented “the third instance in less than three years” in which a program had been misrepresented to the court. One of the other two instances is described below. The third one is redacted.

President Obama says he’s eager to have a national conversation about the NSA’s surveillance programs. I assume, then, that he’ll order the declassification of the other two FISA court opinions which found “substantial misrepresentations” by the NSA.

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Court Slams NSA for "Third Instance in Less Than Three Years" of Substantial Misrepresentation

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Texas AG: We Don’t Hate Blacks, Only Black Democrats

by johnsmithwindows Posted on August 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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Ever since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, Texas has been required to preclear any changes to its voting laws to ensure that they don’t discriminate against blacks or other ethnic minorities. That ended in June when the Supreme Court voided the preclearance formula of the VRA, so Eric Holder has gone to court to ask that Texas be required once again to get preclearance. The current leaders of Texas, naturally, object. So in the face of mountains of evidence of discriminatory practices lasting all the way to the present day, what are their arguments?

Aside from some technical issues, there are two. And they’re great! The first, according to Texas attorney general Greg Abbott, is that, sure, Texas has tried to discriminate as recently as 2011, but their efforts were overturned by a court. So that means there are no current violations, and thus no reason to grant any kind of “equitable relief.” Second, there was never any racial intent to begin with:

DOJ’s accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats….The redistricting decisions of which DOJ complains were motivated by partisan rather than racial considerations, and the plaintiffs and DOJ have zero evidence to prove the contrary.

There’s much more where that came from, including pages and pages of detailed defenses of various districting decisions and how they hurt white Democrats too. Will this argument pass judicial muster? You never know. The Supreme Court has indeed taken a pretty casual attitude recently toward voting laws in which states argue that blacks are just a kind of collateral damage. Mainly, though, Abbott’s brief is notable for the gusto he brings to his defense of gerrymandering. As Jon Fasman notes, “Rarely does one see political gamesmanship admitted so openly, and I have to admit it’s kind of refreshing to hear a politician decline to even pay lip-service to fairness. Mr Abbott seems to think that the VRA allows him to abrogate minority voting rights as long as he does so for partisan rather than overtly, provably racial reasons.”

Abbott’s arguments are pretty strained, as Fasman notes. Whether a court will strain to accept them is anyone’s guess. They sure seem to be in a pretty straining mood these days, though.

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Texas AG: We Don’t Hate Blacks, Only Black Democrats

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NRA to Supreme Court: Give Handguns to 18-Year-Olds

by Fredrick Wise Posted on August 6, 2013

Mother Jones

Last week, the National Rifle Association filed a petition with the Supreme Court (PDF) asking it to strike down a ban on the sale of handguns to people who are at least 18 and younger than 21. The NRA, which sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2010 over the age restriction, argues that it denies young adults their Second Amendment right to self-defense by suggesting without sufficient evidence that they are too irresponsible to own handguns.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled last year that the restriction was “consistent with a longstanding tradition of targeting select groups’ ability to access and to use arms for the sake of public safety.” It also acknowledged that Congress found people below the age of 21 to be “relatively immature and that denying them easy access to handguns would deter violent crime” (PDF). The Supreme Court has never considered the restriction since it became law as part of the Gun Control Act on 1968.

The NRA’s petition, filed with two 19-year-olds, questions whether “a nationwide, class-based, categorical ban on meaningful access to the quintessential means to exercise the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense can be reconciled with the Second Amendment, the equal protection guarantee, and this Court’s precedents.” The petition argues that the appeals court’s ruling contradicts the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in DC v. Heller that affirms the right to own a handgun for self-defense, and the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in McDonald v. Chicago that applies the Heller decision to every state.

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who studies Second Amendment cases, predicts that the Supreme Court—if it even decides to hear the case—will uphold the restriction because of its tendency to be deferential to state and federal lawmakers on gun control. The court hasn’t reviewed a gun control case since 2010 and has turned down at least six since 2008. But if the court decides to review the case, the decision may be close because the NRA has a relatively strong argument, Winkler says.

“There’s something compelling about the argument that 18- to 21-year-olds who are able to bear arms in defense of the nation should be able to bear arms in defense of themselves,” Winkler says. “I think, symbolically, there’s a strong case to be made.”

On the other hand, the defense would have a variety of arguments for the law’s public safety merits. Risky behavior, which teenagers engage in more than older people, leads to increased gun accidents and violence. Greater access to guns would likely increase suicide rates among at-risk youth, and people between the ages of 18 and 24 commit the majority of gun homicides.

One complicating factor that may improve the NRA’s case is that the so-called gun-show loophole that Congress failed to close earlier this year already allows people between the ages of 18 and 21 to buy handguns. Federal law prohibits them from buying guns from federally licensed dealers but not from private sellers at gun shows or on the internet. “That strongly undermines the value of the law, and I think helps the NRA,” Winkler says. “Their argument’s made stronger by the fact that you can’t buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer, but you can buy a gun from anyone else.”

Still, Winkler says, “In general I think the idea of keeping people who are too young to use firearms responsibly from getting their hands on guns is a perfectly legitimate government objective.”

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NRA to Supreme Court: Give Handguns to 18-Year-Olds

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Republicans Holding Firm So Far on DC Court Filibuster Threat

by au87rr Posted on August 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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Apparently Republicans are holding firm on their threat to filibuster every single nominee ever to the DC Circuit Court. Every single Democratic nominee, that is. Not because they have any particular objections to them, but just because they don’t want to lose the current Republican majority on the DC Court.

(Technically, their argument is that the DC Court is “underworked” and all its open seats should be permanently eliminated. This is so obviously specious there’s no real need to pretend to take it seriously.)

In any case, Ed Kilgore wonders if this will ignite any summer recess passion among progressives:

The question is whether … Democratic senators leery of a general position opposing filibusters of life-time judicial nominations might make an exception if the filibusters are being advanced on this type of specious ground rather than objections to the qualifications of individual judges.

The timing, with three DC Circuit nominations heading towards the Senate floor immediately after the August recess, is interesting. Will senators hear about this relatively obscure issue when they are back home? That’s hard to say….It would be nice if Democratic senators known to be wobbly on filibuster reform–ranging from outright opponents like Carl Levin to more questionable cases like Mark Pryor and Reid himself–heard from progressives on this issue in August. I see no particular merit in the counter-argument that countenancing filibusters to preserve the overall ideological character of this or that federal panel is a weapon Democrats might want to use in the future. The kind of judges a Republican president is likely to nominate any time in the near future are going to have the track records and associations that make them debatable on their individual merits; our conservative friends will make damn sure of that.

OK, then. You have your marching orders. Go raise some hell.

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Republicans Holding Firm So Far on DC Court Filibuster Threat

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Inside the Washington Sexual Assault Scandal Rocking a Chinese Media Empire

by RupertxMcmillan Posted on August 1, 2013

Mother Jones

One of China’s largest and most prominent media companies—12 percent of which is owned by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox—has been rocked by a major sexual harassment and assault scandal. A lawsuit filed on July 19 in federal court against Phoenix Satellite Television contains a series of jaw-dropping allegations concerning its onetime Washington, DC, bureau chief, Zhengzhu Liu. The Chinese journalist is accused of a litany of offenses, including encouraging job applicants to meet him in hotel rooms for interviews and then groping them, attempting to coerce the wife of a cameraman to have sex with him to preserve her husband’s job, telling a job candidate about the “gigantic and powerful penis” of his black friend, and attempting to rape a reporter.

The plaintiffs, two of whom are US citizens, claim at least one high-ranking Phoenix executive knew about this conduct for years before the company fired Liu last December. They also say that after Phoenix ousted Liu, the media conglomerate installed a new bureau chief who proceeded to retaliate against employees who had complained about the alleged abuses.

Four of the five plaintiffs—Meixing Ren, Ching-Yi Chang, Taofeng Wang, and Haipei Shue—are men who say that Tao Lu, the current bureau chief, punished them for speaking out about his predecessor’s alleged conduct by downsizing their job duties and firing one of them. The fifth plaintiff is a former Phoenix intern who alleges that Liu repeatedly groped her. Another former Phoenix intern filed a separate lawsuit in New York earlier this year making similar allegations. Mother Jones interviewed three of the male plaintiffs and four of Liu’s alleged female victims.

Phoenix Television, which is based in Hong Kong, is one of few private broadcasters permitted by the Chinese government to operate in mainland China. The multimedia empire maintains bureaus around the world, covers more than 150 countries, and is worth about $1.9 billion. In 2008, the company’s current CEO, Liu Changle, won an International Emmy for being “one of Asia’s leading broadcast entrepreneurs.”

The lawsuit is “full of inaccuracies and false statements about the Company,” Wu Xiaoyong, the CEO of Phoenix’s American subsidiary, told Mother Jones in a statement. “We have retained counsel to defend the Company’s interests, and we will have no further comment regarding this case.” Mother Jones left messages at several phone numbers associated with Liu; he did not respond to these repeated requests for comment. Both Xiaoyong and the law firm representing the plaintiffs said they do not know the ex-bureau chief’s whereabouts. Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox declined to comment.

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Inside the Washington Sexual Assault Scandal Rocking a Chinese Media Empire

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Democrats To Introduce Supreme Court Ethics Bill

by dwsfwa Posted on July 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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â&#128;&#139;Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been in the news recently after Mother Jones revealed her involvement in Groundswell, a secret effort by a group of conservatives to organize their fight against liberals, mainstream Republicans, and Karl Rove. Her political activity has once again raised questions about whether she is creating conflicts of interest for her husband, and whether he should be forced to recuse himself from cases that involve Ginni’s work.

Such calls for Thomas to recuse from cases hit a fevered pitch when the Affordable Care Act was before the high court and Ginni was actively lobbying against it. As it turned out, there’s no mechanism for concerned citizens to complain about a Supreme Court justice, or even a clear set of rules that the justices must follow in making recusal decisions. Supreme Court justices are exempt from the Code of Conduct for United State Judges, the rulebook that every other federal judge in the country has to follow.

That code would have prohibited the justices from a number of controversial activities the Supreme Court has engaged in over the past few years. In 2011, for instance, Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia headlined a fundraiser for the conservative legal group, the Federalist Society. Ordinary federal judges couldn’t have done that. Both also have attended hush-hush political events hosted by Koch Industries that are billed as efforts “to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.” Koch Industries is owned by the right-wing Koch family that’s been dumping millions of dollars in the Republican politics, particularly after the court decided in Citizens United to allow unlimited corporate money into the electoral system. The code also requires federal judges to recuse themselves from cases in which a spouse or family member has a financial interest, a rule that might apply to the Thomases.

Several members have decided to try to do something about the appearance of impropriety by some of the justices. On Thursday, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sen. Chris Murhpy (D-CT), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), plan to introduce the Supreme Court Ethics Act of 2012 that would force the high court to adopt an ethics code much like the one that binds lower court judges. The idea has support from legal scholars, who’ve been urging the court to adopt such a code since last year. More than 125,000 people have signed a petition calling on Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. to apply the Code of Conduct to the court. But Roberts has been pretty adamant that he thinks the justices are perfectly capable of policing themselves without the need for silly codes (codes which most of the sitting justices once had to abide by on a lower court).

Without buy-in from Roberts, any attempt, even by Congress, to require the justices to give themselves a written code of ethics is probably a tough sell. The new bill, if it could even pass through the full Congress (also doubtful), could set off an epic separation of powers battle between the two branches of government. A spokesman from Slaughter’s office says that the bill is absolutely constitutional, as Congress has the authority to regulate the administration of the court—setting the number of justices and whatnot. Still, it’s possible that the court could put up a fight—a fight that might ultimately have to be decided by….the Supreme Court.

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Democrats To Introduce Supreme Court Ethics Bill

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Is Ginni Thomas’ Expanding Activism a Problem for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

by KlaraGuzm Posted on July 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Virginia “Ginni” Thomas is no ordinary Supreme Court spouse. Unlike Maureen Scalia, mother of nine, or the late Martin Ginsburg, mild-mannered tax law professor who was good in the kitchen, Thomas came from the world of bare-knuckled partisan politics. Over the years, she has enmeshed herself ever more deeply in the world of political advocacy—all the while creating a heap of conflict of interest concerns surrounding her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Her role in Groundswell, the coalition of conservatives waging a “30 front war” against progressives and the GOP establishment that was revealed by Mother Jones on Thursday, revives questions about the propriety of Thomas’ activism on issues that have or could become the subject of Supreme Court cases.

Conflict of interest issues were first aired during Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings in 1991, when critics argued that Ginni Thomas’ political work might compromise her husband’s objectivity. At that time, her political resume included stints as a Capitol Hill aide to a Republican congressman; a staffer at the US Chamber of Commerce, where she fought the Family and Medical Leave Act; and as a political appointee at the Labor Department during the first Bush administration. Thomas didn’t leave politics after her husband was confirmed. “I did not give up my First Amendment rights when my husband became a justice of the Supreme Court,” she has said in the past. She would later return to the Hill as a staffer to House majority leader Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) and work for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. But in those jobs, Thomas kept a relatively low profile.

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Is Ginni Thomas’ Expanding Activism a Problem for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

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Climate Scientist Prevails in First Round of Defamation Suit Against Conservative Bloggers

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on July 24, 2013

Mother Jones

A judge in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia is allowing a defamation suit that climate scientist Michael Mann filed against conservative commentators to move forward.

Last year, Mann sued the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute over blog posts accusing him of lying about climate science. The NRO post called his research “fraudulent,” and the CEI post accused him of “scientific misconduct.” NRO also twice quoted another blogger who referred to Mann as “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science,” comparing him to the Pennsylvania State University football coach convicted of child molestation last year.

Blue Marble readers have certainly heard Mann’s story before. The Penn State climate scientist has been the subject of a relentless assault from climate skeptics over the years, largely tracing back to a chart of global temperature records that he coauthored that showed a sharp uptick in the industrial era.

The judge issued two decisions on July 19 allowing Mann’s suits to go forward. The plaintiffs had each filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the First Amendment protects their right to say that sort of stuff online. But the judge didn’t agree. Here’s a key part of the decision on the CEI suit (via Climate Science Watch) in which the judge asserts that the blogger was not just stating opinions, but that he was making factual claims about Mann’s work that could be proven false:

Defendants argue that the accusation that Plaintiff’s work is fraudulent may not necessarily be taken as based in fact because the writers for the publication are tasked with and posed to view work critically and interpose (brutally) honest commentary. In this case, however, the evidence before the Court, at this stage, demonstrates something more and different than honest or even brutally honest commentary.

The judge continued:

Plaintiff has been investigated several times and his work has been found to be accurate. In fact, some of these investigations have been due to the accusations made by the CEI Defendants. It follows that if anyone should be aware of the accuracy (or findings that the work of Plaintiff is sound), it would be the CEI Defendants. Thus, it is fair to say that the CEI Defendants continue to criticize Plaintiff due to a reckless disregard for truth. Criticism of Plaintiff’s work may be fair and he and his work may be put to the test. Where, however the CEI Defendants consistently claim that Plaintiff’s work is inaccurate (despite being proven as accurate) then there is a strong probability that the CEI Defendants disregarded the falsity of their statements and did so with reckless disregard.

The full National Review ruling is here and the CEI ruling here. The parties are scheduled to be back in court on September 27.

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Climate Scientist Prevails in First Round of Defamation Suit Against Conservative Bloggers

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