Texas GOP Promises To Stop Committing Crimes

The Texas Republican Party has struck what might be the sweetest deal in the criminal justice system since Al Capone went to jail for income tax evasion:

The Republican Party of Texas avoided prosecution Thursday by agreeing to stop using corporate money in several ways being investigated by Travis County Attorney David Escamilla.

Escamilla's investigation, which is similar to allegations being pursued by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay and the Texas Association of Business, is put on hold through March 31, 2007. In return, the Republican Party agrees to stop using corporate money the way it did during the 2002 election. The party's administrative expenses spiked five-fold to about $5.6 million that year.

State law generally prohibits corporate money being spent in connection with campaigns. The law allows political parities to spend corporate money to run their conventions and on administrative overhead. Escamilla had studied some 27,000 GOP documents, but his investigation in the end focused on three instances of using corporate money. [Austin American Statesman

Here's how this works: If the Republicans promise to stop breaking the laws they broke in 2002, the DA won't prosecute them for the 2002 infractions until after the 2006 elections.
By Lindsay Beyerstein of

DeLay Threat Potentially Illegal

via Think Progress

Sen. Frank Launtenberg (D-NJ) has sent a letter to Tom Delay advising him that his threat may have violated federal law:

You should be aware that your comments yesterday may violate a Federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. 115 (a)(1)(B). That law states:

“Whoever threatens to assault…. or murder, a United States judge… with intent to retaliate against such… judge…. on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished [by up to six years in prison]”

Threats against specific Federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a Member of Congress. In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice. Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well.

Read the full text of the letter here.

...Of Cabbages and Kings

To paraphrase the Irish writer Brendan Behan, there is no situation so bad that cannot be made worse by the appearance of a politician.

[He said “policeman” but he hung around bars a lot.] And the worse thing that can happen is Congress showing up, a pack Mark Twain described as America’s only criminal class. Now, they have intervened in the sad case of Terri Schiavo in Florida.

Ok, in a war situation, stuff happens, but to lose a third of the total inventory..does the word incompetent come to mind?

Remember The Rule Of Law? Suburban Guerrilla

In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes—defined in part as "grave breaches" of the Genevva Conventions.

Noting that the law applies to "U.S. officials" and that punishments for violators "include the death penalty," Gonzales told Bush that "it was difficult to predict with confidence" how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions—such as that outlawing "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhumaan treatment" of prisoners—was "undefined."

One key advantage of declaring that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections is that it "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act," Gonzales wrote.

"It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441 [the War Crimes Act]," Gonzales wrote.

FILM SCHOOL: This should be re-created all across the country in every swing state:

"Filmmaker Michael Moore plans to have hundreds of cameras outside polling places in Ohio and Florida on the U.S. election day to watch for attempts to suppress voter turnout.

The director of the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 announced Saturday a total of 1,200 professional and non-professional cameramen, filmmakers and videographers will bring their cameras to polling places in the two presidential battleground states, especially in minority communities.

"I'm putting those who intend to suppress the vote on notice: Voter intimidation and suppression will not be tolerated," Moore said in a statement."

Earlier this week former employees of Sproul & Associates (operating under the name Voters Outreach of America), a firm hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters, told a Nevada TV station that their supervisors systematically tore up Democratic registrations.

The accusations are backed by physical evidence and appear credible. Officials have begun a criminal investigation into reports of similar actions by Sproul in Oregon.

Republicans claim, of course, that they did nothing wrong - and that besides, Democrats do it, too. But there haven't been any comparably credible accusations against Democratic voter-registration organizations. And there is a pattern of Republican efforts to disenfranchise Democrats, by any means possible.

Some of these, like the actions reported in Nevada, involve dirty tricks. For example, in 2002 the Republican Party in New Hampshire hired an Idaho company to paralyze Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts by jamming the party's phone banks.

But many efforts involve the abuse of power. For example, Ohio's secretary of state, a Republican, tried to use an archaic rule about paper quality to invalidate thousands of new, heavily Democratic registrations.

That attempt failed. But in Wisconsin, a Republican county executive insists that this year, when everyone expects a record turnout, Milwaukee will receive fewer ballots than it got in 2000 or 2002 - a recipe for chaos at polling places serving urban, mainly Democratic voters.

And Florida is the site of naked efforts to suppress Democratic votes, and the votes of blacks in particular. Read on...

George W. Bush has been exceedingly stingy when it comes to presidential pardons and commutations, issuing fewer than any modern president. But as Bush’s presidency winds down, there’s some talk about the president using his powers to help conceal some of the administration’s own transgressions.

As the administration wrestles with the cascade of petitions, some lawyers and law professors are raising a related question: Will Mr. Bush grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs?

Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance.

Some legal analysts said Mr. Bush might be reluctant to issue such pardons because they could be construed as an implicit admission of guilt. But several members of the conservative legal community in Washington said in interviews that they hoped Mr. Bush would issue such pardons — whether or not anyone made a specific request for one. They said people who carried out the president’s orders should not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills.

There are two angles to consider here: whether the White House would do this and whether the White House could do this.

On the prior, the Bush gang isn’t saying much. The NYT asked the White House about whether “pre-emptive pardons” — clearing people of legal responsibility before they even face charges — are on the table. The Times reported, “Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, would not say whether the administration was considering pre-emptive pardons, nor whether it would rule them out.”

On the latter, is this even a legal option? Does the president even have the authority to pardon someone who isn’t even facing criminal charges? Apparently, he can.

KAKE.com: (h/t J)

No criminal charges will be filed in the death of a Goodyear worker, who passed away after being tased by Shawnee County Sheriff's deputies.

Shawnee County District Attorney Robert Hecht released his report Tuesday on the March 29th death of 59-year old Walter Haake. The report says Haake had suffered a head injury in a fall at his home the night before his death. It says Haake had been incoherent at work and fellow workers tried to deter him from driving when he left the plant. Shawnee County Sheriff's Deputies were called in when Haake refused to get out of his vehicle.

"Mre Haake physcially resisted removal, leaving the officers in the position of simply leaving him in the vehicle and letting the medical condition play out or using such force as may be required to remove him," Hecht wrote in the report.

The deputies chose to remove Haake by tazing him, then restraining him. The coroner ruled that an existing heart condition, combined with the compression to his chest when he was placed on the ground to be handcuffed, led to his death. Read on...

We posted this story back in April, and it appears the tragedy has gotten even worse. Haake was guilty of being injured and refusing treatment -- nothing more. That no charges will be filed against these officers is a travesty of justice and its a slap in the face of his poor family. This man's civil liberties were obliterated and I hope his family files a civil lawsuit. This case deserves national attention, as it sets a very dangerous example.

I love Asian Yakuza movies. Heck, I love a lot of the J-horror flicks too, but I never thought I'd see this in real life. Hello, DHS---where the hell were you?

UCLA Medical Center and its most accomplished liver surgeon provided a life-saving transplant to one of Japan's most powerful gang bosses, law enforcement sources told The Times.

In addition, the surgeon performed liver transplants at UCLA on three other men who are now barred from entering the United States because of their criminal records or suspected affiliation with Japanese organized crime groups, said a knowledgeable law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The four surgeries were done between 2000 and 2004 at a time of pronounced organ scarcity. In each of those years, more than 100 patients died awaiting liver transplants in the Greater Los Angeles region...read on

You have got to read this story. It's a Pulitzer Prize winner....I have used the UCLA medical group in the past. Damn, if I would have produced a samurai sword when I checked in---who knows what kind of treatment I might have received.