Betsey's Loyal Minion

Alito Dissented from Decision Upholding Conviction Under Federal Gun Laws; Argued that Congress Had No Right to Enact the Law. Alito also dissented from a decision upholding a conviction under the federal law prohibiting the transfer or possession of machine guns, claiming that there was not sufficient evidence in the record to show that Congress had the power under the Commerce Clause to enact the law. [See United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 807 (1997)]

Alito Would Require Women to Notify Husbands Before Exercising Her Reproductive Rights. Alito wrote a troubling opinion concerning reproductive rights in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. The Third Circuit in Casey upheld a number of the provisions in the restrictive abortion law enacted by Pennsylvania in the late 1980’s, in an opinion that questioned Roe v. Wade. But the Third Circuit struck down the law’s requirement that women notify their spouses before having an abortion. Alito dissented because he would have gone even further than the rest of the court and would have upheld the spousal notification requirement. He claimed that there was no showing that there would be an undue burden on women from this mandate. [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 947 F.3d 682 (3d Cir. 1991) , aff’d in part, rev’d in part 505 U.S. 833 (1992); Washington Times, 10/29/91]

Alito Ruled That Investors That Bought Junk Bonds In Donald Trump’s Defunct Casino Were Not Eligible For Compensation. The 3rd Circuit Court dismissed ten consolidated lawsuits filed by investors who bought $675 million in junk bonds from Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino. The investors felt that they were misled by about the amount of debt the Casino had accumulated and the risk inherent in the investment. [Pennsylvania Law Journal, 10/25/93]

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran's new president has repeated a remark from a former ayatollah that Israel should be "wiped out from the map," insisting that a new series of attacks will destroy the Jewish state, and lashing out at Muslim countries and leaders that acknowledge Israel.

*snip*

Ahmadinejad quoted a remark from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, who said that Israel "must be wiped out from the map of the world."

The president then said: "And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism," according to a quote published by IRNA. ( Yeah, good luck with that. )

*snip*

He also described Israel's disengagement from Gaza as a "trick" meant to make "Islamic states acknowledge the Zionist regime of Israel," according to the report.

The United States and Israel are sowing "discord among warring forces in Palestine and other parts of the Islamic world," the report paraphrased Ahmadinejad as saying.

In the process, such attempts were forcing Muslim nations to normalize relations with Israel, he said.

Ahmadinejad is quoted as saying, "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury."

Sen. John Kerry says President Bush should bring home 20,000 troops from Iraq over the Christmas holidays if the December parliamentary elections there are successful.

Defeated by Bush (Thank God, despite what I think of Bush) last year and a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Kerry called for a "reasonable time frame" for pulling back troops rather than a full-scale withdrawal advocated by some Democrats. He said it could be completed in 12 to 15 months.

"It will be hard for this administration, but it is essential to acknowledge that the insurgency will not be defeated unless our troop levels are drawn down ... starting immediately after successful elections in December," Kerry said in a speech Wednesday at Georgetown University.

The presence of 159,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is deterring peace efforts, said Kerry, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"To undermine the insurgency, we must instead simultaneously pursue both a political settlement and the withdrawal of American combat forces linked to specific, responsible benchmarks," he said. "At the first benchmark, the completion of December elections, we can start the process of reducing our forces by 20,000 troops over the course of the holidays."

Kerry, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, has been a strong critic of Bush's handling of the war, accusing the president of misleading the public into going to war.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.

In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years -- including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department "from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person."

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper "unconsented physical search," according to the documents.

*snip*

The records were provided to The Washington Post by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

David Sobel, EPIC's general counsel, said the new documents raise questions about the extent of possible misconduct in counterintelligence investigations and underscore the need for greater congressional oversight of clandestine surveillance within the United States.

"We're seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community," Sobel said. "It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied."

FBI officials disagreed, saying that none of the cases have involved major violations and most amount to administrative errors. The officials also said that any information obtained from improper searches or eavesdropping is quarantined and eventually destroyed.

New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam Hussein’s old sanctions-busting networks, and to a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr., known among other things for his ties to a figure designated by the U.N. itself as a financier of Al Qaeda.

Cindy Sheehan, the military mother who made her son's death in Iraq a rallying point for the anti-war movement, plans to tie herself to the White House fence to protest the milestone of 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq.

"I'm going to go to Washington, D.C. and I'm going to give a speech at the White House, and after I do, I'm going to tie myself to the fence and refuse to leave until they agree to bring our troops home," Sheehan said in a telephone interview last week as the milestone approached.

"And I'll probably get arrested, and when I get out, I'll go back and do the same thing," she said.

The death toll among U.S. military forces since the March 2003 invasion stood at 1,996 on Sunday.

The milestone's approach prompted plans for hundreds of other demonstrations across the United States, but for Sheehan, each military death in the Iraqi war has been a tragedy.

"To me, every single member since Number One has been tragic and needless and unnecessary," she said. "My son was somewhere around 615, and I've been working so hard for peace since my son was killed and now almost 1,400 more soldiers have been killed since Casey died."

Army Specialist Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004.

Beyond Sheehan's plans, a candlelight vigil is planned at the White House to mourn the 2,000-death milestone. Hundreds of other demonstrations are scheduled for the day after the milestone number is reached.

"I hope that this milestone marks the point when the American people realize the U.S. military is not going to stop the violence in Iraq, and they instead start demanding a political solution to this problem," Sean O'Neill, a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, said in a statement.

'HUMAN COST OF A LIE'

The American Friends Service Committee was helping coordinate activists to protest the Iraq war.

"On the day after the 2,000th reported U.S. military death in Iraq, people will gather in communities across the U.S. to say that the countries pro-peace majority wants Congress to stop the deaths by stopping the dollars that are funding the war," a coalition of anti-war groups said online at www.afsc.org.

*snip*
Regarding Syria's eastern neighbor, Iraq, Al-Assad said the United States should re-examine its policy there because of the negative consequences of the war.

"We should re-evaluate what's going on in Iraq," he said.

"What did we achieve, what did they achieve from that war in Iraq," he asked. "It's a very simple question. What did they achieve economically, politically, fighting terrorism?

"We didn't achieve anything. This is one example."

When Amanpour suggested the U.S.-led war ousted Saddam Hussein, Al-Assad replied, "Yeah, but what did you lose as a return? The hope of the people, the stability, no better democracy, no better economy, no services, no stability in the region, more terrorism -- so is that the prize you've won for getting rid of a dictator? That's not a goal."

Al-Assad's regime has faced sharp criticism from the United States, which has alleged the country shelters terrorist organizations and has failed to take measures to prevent fighters from crossing the border into Iraq.

On Wednesday, President Bush called on Syria to be a "good neighbor" in the Middle East, warning Damascus against interfering in Lebanon and allowing insurgents to cross into Iraq.

"We're making good progress toward peace in the Holy Land, but one of the areas of concern is that foreign countries such as Syria might try to disrupt the peace process by encouraging terrorist activities," Bush said.

"We expect Syria to do everything in her power to shut down the transshipment of suiciders and killers into Iraq."

Al-Assad said that the United States cannot control its border with Mexico so Syria cannot be expected to keep people from sneaking into Iraq.

He said his country does not support people who kill Iraqis but he thinks there is a difference between terrorists and those who fight against American and British troops.

He added that his country has asked Washington for technical support to monitor the Iraqi border better but ended its security cooperation with the United States recently because of repeated verbal attacks from the Bush administration.

The interview was conducted just before the news of the suicide of Ghazi Kanaan, Syria's interior minister who led the country's military intelligence in Lebanon for nearly 20 years.

Kanaan died in a Damascus hospital of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the interior ministry and other government ministers.

The official was among those interviewed by a German prosecutor heading the U.N. investigation into Hariri's death.

At issue was a defamation lawsuit filed last year by Patrick Cahill, a councilman in Smyrna, Del. Mr. Cahill said he needed the identity of a blogger who in a September 2004 posting praised the mayor but said Mr. Cahill was divisive and had "an obvious mental deterioration."

In a second posting, the blogger, named John Doe in the suit, wrote that Mr. Cahill "is as paranoid as everyone in the town thinks he is," according to court records.

In a 33-page opinion, the five justices reversed the lower court, saying the judge used a standard that was incorrect because it was not stringent enough. The court said, "The Internet provides a means of communication where a person wronged by statements of an anonymous poster can respond instantly, can respond to the alleged defamatory statements on the same site or blog, and thus, can, almost contemporaneously, respond to the same audience that initially read the allegedly defamatory statements."

David Finger, the blogger's lawyer, said: "Statements on an electronic bulletin board with hyperbole and profanity are generally not considered as credible sources of facts. The court found that people who read these types of blogs cannot reasonably expect them to be anything more than the writer's opinion."

Mr Clarke recently said he wanted to stop "nasty and extreme behaviour" which destroyed individuals and divided communities.

"This is not just about doctrine. This is not even about theological opposition. This is about our basic freedom to speak and to preach.

"It affects people's freedom to discuss and to critique anything because it might upset or offend somebody else and that is very serious."

The term "Thought Police", by extension, has come to refer to real or perceived enforcement of ideological correctness in any modern or historical contexts.

Two lobbying groups, chosen by Louisiana to collect emergency requests from hospitals and nursing homes during Hurricane Katrina, found themselves instead scrambling to arrange private rescues when government teams became preoccupied with plucking citizens off rooftops.

The inability to quickly direct National Guard and other government rescue teams to health care facilities had deadly consequences.

Dozens of fragile patients died in sweltering heat and other taxing conditions that lasted for days.

"We are an advocacy organization on behalf of hospitals. Overnight we turned into a hospital emergency center," Louisiana Hospital Association president John Matessino said, summing up how his group rose to rescue coordination amid the chaos.

Some are now asking why lobbyists, instead of emergency experts, were left to devise life-and-death solutions by patching together church and tour buses, private ambulances and religious volunteers.

The state gave both the Louisiana Nursing Home Association and the Louisiana Hospital Association permanent seats at the state emergency operations center in Baton Rouge and trained them to track health facility needs and relay information to authorities who would dispatch the help.

But that plan disintegrated under the magnitude of Katrina's destruction, leaving the lobbying groups to scramble to find private alternatives when government rescuers couldn't get to facilities.

"The priority mission was picking people off of rooftops and out of water," said state Health Officer Jimmy Guidry, the main contact for the hospital and nursing home lobbies in the Louisiana disaster center.

Guidry said he argued for nursing home and hospital requests but "it seemed like forever to get all the transportation that was being asked for."

Louisiana emergency operations spokesman Mark Smith said the choice boiled down to "if the water is about to come over the roof of someone's house do they have a need greater than the elderly person lying in their bed in the nursing home? ... They're not about to die because they're about to get swept away by a flood."