Missouri AG Confirms: Grand Jury In Michael Brown Killing Was Misled By DA Regarding MO Law On Police Use Of Deadly Force

Frank Vyan Walton at Kos has the details. Here is an excerpt of the basics:

...

The background of this situation is that Lawrence O'Donnell reported that after reviewing the transcripts of the Darren Wilson Grand Jury, his analyst discovered that Assistant District Attorney's working for Bob McCullough gave the Jurors an outdated copy of Missouri Law that all that was required for an Officer to use deadly force is their "reasonable belief" that there was a threat.

In 1985 the Supreme Court amended this law to include a "probable cause" requirement under Tennessee v Garner and the Jury wasn't informed of this until 3 months later just before their deliberations, nor even at that time was the difference and relevance of this explained to them clearly.

The misleading information was given to the Grand Jury directly before Darren Wilson's testimony giving the impression that all that was required under the law for Wilson to kill Michael Brown was his belief that he was in danger, without the additional requirement of probable cause for such a belief.

...

(Bolds mine. - SB)

This is far more than tragic: this is obscene. Will anything happen to that Assistant DA now, would s/he be indicted, or at least fired? I wouldn't bet on it...

Emptywheel On Ferguson/Wilson/Brown/McCulloch

Emptywheel, as is often the case, expresses some of my thoughts on the whole matter better than I could do myself, so I commend to you her article on a couple of aspects of this insanely painful episode.

CORRECTION: as Bryan of Why Now? notes, the article linked is by bmaz, not emptywheel. My apologies.

DoJ To Investigate Ferguson MO PD

(Enough acronyms for you?) Seattle Socialist at Kos has the particulars. I don't know how I missed this three days ago when it was reported.

A [Redacted] Day For The ACLU

Glenn Greenwald:

The ACLU submitted a FOIA request to obtain the Obama administration's policy on intercepting text messages sent to and from cell phones. This is the document they received - here [.pdf] - from the Most Transparent Administration Ever™. It's hard to believe that the DOJ isn't mischievously cackling at their own brazenly displayed contempt as they do these things.

For those of you reading on the few remaining mobile devices on which .pdf readers may not be universally available, take it from me: all 15 pages of the requested document are wholly redacted. Yep. Fifteen solid black pages, thanks to your sadly misnamed "Justice" department.

I do not believe this response complies with the spirit of the FOIA. But that seems to be the nature of American government these days: the executive branch does whatever it damned well pleases, and the rest of us suck on it and "like" it.

As you contemplate this response, remember not to text your deepest secrets even to your life partner. Good grief... has it come to this, that the increasingly fascist regime feels it necessary to capture... text messages? OMG I hp thy njoy rdng abbrs...

Remind me: why did I ever vote for this prez?

Social Security Under Siege: Sen. Bernie Sanders

I could not possibly describe the situation better than Sen. Sanders does:

...

... Before Social Security existed, about half of America’s senior citizens lived in poverty. Today, less than 10 percent live in poverty.

Today, Social Security not only provides retirement security but also enables millions of people with disabilities and widows, widowers and children to live in dignity and security.

...

In these highly-volatile economic times, when millions of Americans lost their life savings in the 2008 Wall Street crash, it is important to remember that since its inception, through good economic times and bad, Social Security has paid every penny owed to every eligible beneficiary.

... Social Security, which is funded by the payroll tax, does not contribute to the deficit. In fact, the Social Security Trust Fund today, according to the Social Security Administration, has a $2.7 trillion surplus and can pay 100 percent of all benefits owed to every eligible American for the next 21 years.

... Social Security is run with very modest administrative costs.

...

As Sen. Sanders emphasizes, the same is very much NOT true of Wall Street firms, where people like Paul Ryan and Pete Peterson want to put Social Security money. We all remember what happened in 2007 when the last bubble burst, yielding the great crash of 2008. If you believe the future does not hold a similar crash at some point, you are a sucker, ready to be taken for everything you've put into Social Security through the payroll tax over the years. Sucker, or smart taxpayer... which will it be?

Sen. Sanders is rightly wary of President Obama's approach to Social Security: the president emphatically said "no cuts" before the 2008 elections, and now isn't saying anything much, except vague statements that it may have to be cut. Sen. Sanders has challenged this by introducing a bill that advocates exactly the program Obama advocated in 2008. I have my doubts that that bill will have any champions except for Sanders in this Dog-awful Congress we have today.

There is no rational basis for cutting Social Security at all:

• It works... well. 
• It is solvent. 
• It is in no way a financial burden; indeed, it runs a surplus. 
• It will pay out its scheduled benefits for 21 years with no alterations. 
• With one small change (and this is the crux of the radical Right's real objection), it could continue paying out scheduled benefits indefinitely. 

The change? apply the payroll tax to annual income above $250,000. I have never understood why there is a cap on the payroll tax income in the first place, but we will somehow have to beat down the wealthy bastards, the Pete Petersons, the Mitt Rmoneys, the Paul Ryans of the country, to achieve fairness on this issue. In the Declaration of Independence, there is a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is no similar right to be obscenely wealthy and not share that wealth with society. Benjamin Franklin said it superbly well:

Private Property therefore is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing; its Contributions therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered as conferring a Benefit on the Publick, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honour and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or the Payment of a just Debt.

And there you have it.

Texas Executes Man With IQ Of 61

The US Supreme Court ruled in 2002 in Atkins v. Virginia, on Eighth Amendment grounds, that “the mentally retarded should be categorically excluded from execution.” That's "categorically" ... as in, in all cases. Yet Liliana Segura at The Nation reports that the great State of Texas has done exactly that. The Supreme Court, despite its ruling in Atkins, declined to intervene.

Marvin Wilson was a man with an IQ of 61. He sucked his thumb. There are serious questions about his alleged confession... to the wife of another defendant in the same case. There are evidentiary questions about whether he was the "trigger man" in the murder. There are similar questions based on forensic evidence about when the murder was committed... the night of the alleged assault, or the next morning. Questions, questions, questions... and no dependable answers, in part because Wilson was mentally incapable of speaking rationally in his own behalf.

Long-time readers know I have strong reservations about any use of the death penalty. This case goes far beyond those generic reservations: a society willing to execute a mentally incompetent person (even if the evidence of his guilt had been strong, which is dubious in this case) is an uncivilized society. I do not want to live in a society that executes mental incompetents, people whose culpability is severely limited by an inability to understand the consequences of their actions. Judicial executions of such people become murders in their own right, as the Supreme Court implicitly recognized in Atkins.

But it's an election year; we have a Republican governor and a conservative-dominated Supreme Court unwilling to act even based on its own recent ruling. So Marvin Wilson died as surely as his alleged victim died.

I suppose I should do my ritual denunciation of the death penalty in its role as an attempt to protect society, but I'm terribly fatigued just thinking about it. Rather than examine all the details, I'll just note that the Death Penalty Information Center shows that "[t]he murder rate in non-death penalty states has remained consistently lower than the rate in states with the death penalty, and the gap has grown since 1990," a statement which they base on two presumably reliable sources: the US Census and an FBI report "Crime in the United States." 

So the death penalty has, if anything, a negative deterrent effect. That leaves vengeance as the only motivation for execution. 

How badly do you want to see people die?

CNN: SCOTUS Strikes Down Individual MandateSustains All Parts Of Health Care Law

No details yet. I'll post them here when I have them.

CORRECTION: CNN is now saying "Correction: The Supreme Court backs all parts of President Obama’s signature health care law." Now how the fuck could an org like CNN make a mistake like that? Somebody's ass should be fired...

UPDATE about 9:30am CT: fuck CNN; here's a tiny bit more from TPM Editor's Blog, David Kurtz:

Because of the archaic way the Supreme Court releases its decisions, there was lots of initial confusion about what the holding in the case was. We’re still awaiting the actual opinion, but the upshot is that the individual mandate survived under the taxing power of Congress, not under the Commerce Clause.  ...

Brian Beutler of TPM has details.

Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns and Money has a tidy list of important facts.

ADDED: The estimable Laurence Tribe at SCOTUSblog explains, in "Chief Justice Roberts comes into his own and saves the Court while preventing a constitutional debacle," how this decision makes constitutional sense even as it disagrees with the opinions of the other conservative Justices.

AFTERTHOUGHT:  of course I have some thoughts of my own on the Affordable Care Act. It is far from the legislation I would have preferred, which for brevity I will call "Medicare for all" or "single payer." But the most disgusting thing is that when Obama, as he so often does, adopted a Republican position almost intact, the GOP, as a purely political act, with no redeeming motivations of aiding America's ill and infirm, turned 180 degrees and did everything they could to kill it... despite having effectively authored it themselves. They even turned loose their nakedly partisan Supreme Court on it, but one of their regulars (Roberts) betrayed them. The degree of acid-tossing raw enmity almost all Republicans exhibit toward Obama, who aside from being Black is almost one of their own, is... well, actually, no, it is no surprise. The GOP has sunk to the bottom, and is feeding on the toxic waste down there. Couldn't they at least, you know, like... pretend to advocate the good of the nation and its society? But noooo...

Republican evil knows no bounds.

While We Wait, Read About Scalia's Secret Opinion

This satire by Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money is too funny for words. If the opinion isn't in yet, pass the time by reading it. If it is in, read it to take the edge off. Enjoy.

Observation

One often hears it said that when Congress is in session, one's pocketbook is not safe. Let me add by analogy that when the current Supreme Court is in session, one's liberties are in danger. And when the president calls secret meetings to choose extrajudicial assassination targets...

Manning Defense Accuses Prosecution Of Making'An Outright Misrepresentation', Refusing Disclosure

Welcome to American military justice, where the trial you get is the trial the prosecution wants you to have. From the Guardian:

...

Reports by the Associated Press, Reuters and other news outlets have suggested that official inquiries into the impact of WikiLeaks concluded that the leaks caused some "pockets" of short-term damage around the world, but that generally its impact had been embarrassing rather than harmful.

Such a finding could prove invaluable to the defence in fighting some of the charges facing Manning or, should he be found guilty, reducing his sentence.

Yet Coombs says the army prosecutors have consistently kept him, and the court, in the dark, thwarting his legal rights to see the evidence.

"It was abundantly clear that Oncix had some form of inquiry into the harm from the leaks – but the government switched definitions around arbitrarily so as to avoid disclosing this discovery to the defence."

...

Has the prosecution received a secret order, maybe from the Commander-in-Chief, to win this one at any cost? If so, the cost seems to be the protections traditionally afforded defendants in America's military as well as civilian justice systems.

It will be highly ironic if Manning is convicted, manages to appeal, and has the conviction overturned on due process grounds. But I suspect that, too, has been "taken care of". Ain't America great? [/snark]

Supreme Court Unanimously TossesBroadcast Cursing Sanctions

... to which I can only say, "Fuckin' A!"

The cases at issue were brought by a radical right-wing Bush administration FCC, who wanted almost to criminalize even incidental, fleeting curses or transient glimpses of nudity.

The history of FCC policing of broadcast profanity and nudity arguably got its serious start in 1978 when Pacifica Radio aired George Carlin's famous monologue "(bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep)" where each (bleep) was a different obscenity or profanity. In today's ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed a wish that the Pacifica ruling be overturned as having been wrongly decided, but that didn't happen, fuckin' goddammit.

AFTERTHOUGHT: and I was so looking forward to FCC sanctions on commercials by candidate Joe the Plumber for rear-view shots of the plumber at work...

He Was Either Responsible Or Irresponsible:Nixon Was Worse Than We Ever Knew

Please read Phoenix Woman of FDL's "What Even Woodward and Bernstein Can't Say Out Loud: Nixon Wrecked the Paris Peace Talks" and Robert Parry of Consortium News's "The Dark Continuum of Watergate".

Even after four decades, the shit Nixon is revealed to have done still makes me angry. Someone in comments on the FDL post remarked that Ford's pardon of Nixon was the trigger of the entire "imperial presidency" phenomenon. I don't know if it's that simple, but I do know it makes me wish I believed in an actual Hell...

Remember Habeas Corpus? Remember Boumediene vs. Bush?

Apparently, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals doesn't remember either of those things, and even the Supreme Court's memories are... selective. Here's Ryan Cooper at Washington Monthly:

Back in 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which abolished habeas corpus rights for noncitizens, among other things. This part of the law was overturned in 2008 by the Supreme Court in Boumedi[e]ne vs. Bush as unconstitutional.

Today, it looks like the Supreme Court gave up on that line of reasoning. Marcy Wheeler reports:

SCOTUS has just declined to take all seven of the pending Gitmo habeas corpus petitions, including Latif and Uthman.

This effectively kills habeas corpus.

The problem here, as Mother Jones’ Adam Serwer puts it, is that the “conservative judges on the D.C. Circuit have interpreted the law in a way that assumes many of the government’s claims are true and don’t have to be proven in court.” Or as the Center for Constitutional Rights puts it:

Today’s decision leaves the fate of detainees in the hands of a hostile D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has erected innumerable, unjustified legal obstacles that have made it practically impossible for a detainee to win a habeas case in the trial courts. The D.C. Circuit, the country’s most conservative court of appeals, has reversed every detainee victory appealed to it by the government, and as consequence, district courts in D.C. have ruled in favor of detainees in only one of the last 12 cases before them.

(Ryan Cooper offers examples after that.)

This is really bad news. The right of habeas corpus predates the founding of America by several hundred years, and denying habeas is one way to remove a major burden of proof from the government that there is a reason the accused should be detained. It is only a slight stretch to say that detainees denied habeas start out already halfway to "guilty". The Supreme Court has indeed ruled on this matter in Boumediene, but it appears the federal courts, including the Supremes, are going to wink and look the other way at violations against alleged terrorists.

No matter how badly you want a conviction of an actual terrorist, if you accept the tweaking of the most ancient aspects of our system of justice, those tweaks will bite you in the butt someday. Either everyone, citizen and noncitizen, receives due process, or no one, citizen or noncitizen, truly enjoys due process rights. "Splitting the difference" just because it's a terrorism case is, quite simply, un-American.

The most regrettable aspect is that so many Americans... Democrats included; mark my words... are perfectly content to allow this kind of rigging of trials to make sure every alleged terrorist is convicted. I know such a person, a friend of Stella's, a Democrat, a baby-boomer, Jewish; i.e., someone who remembers what happened to Jews in the Holocaust... and she is still just fine with this kind of tampering with justice in terrorism cases.

I predict that all significant due-process rights will be effectively dead no later than the 2016 presidential elections... no matter who is elected President this November. We're screwed.

Bradley Manning's America: Land Of The (Indefinitely Detained), Home Of The (Too Cowardly To Grant A Fair Trial)

Bradley Manning is a man imprisoned without charges for a year after his arrest, finally charged with enough crimes to assure his imprisonment for life if convicted, and now, according to his defense team, denied discovery of exculpatory evidence for almost a year to date. Please read the details; even the bare facts are disgusting. This is not how America claims to treat its accused... at least not the America I grew up admiring.

"Show trial." "Drumhead." Call it whatever you want; it is obvious that Bradley Manning will ultimately be convicted on all charges, and exculpatory evidence will never be disclosed. Is the clear message "don't leak secrets"? In my opinion, it's more like "don't make Barry Obama and his buddies look bad." Your mileage may vary.

Maybe you've got the goods on Barry and his boys, but if you leak, your ass is going to jail, probably for life... fair trial be damned.

Is Manning guilty of the nearly two dozen charges against him? We'll never know. The world will never know.