USA Next sued for $25m over AARP ad

via AmericaBlog

A $25 million four-count lawsuit was filed today in federal court in Washington, DC against right-wing front group USA Next and political consulting firm Mark Montini International for stealing an Oregon couple's wedding photo and using it without permission in a high-profile gay-bashing ad designed to drum up support for social security privatization by attacking AARP. A hearing has already been scheduled on the emergency motion for a temporary restraining order before by Judge Reggie Walton today at 3pm EST in Courtoom 5, US Court House, Washington, DC, 3d and Constitution. The hearing is open to the media.

Salon has more here

Full Press release can be seen here

Well I couldn't be happier. USA NEXT uses smear tactics on AARP, then lies about buying the photos as reported by CNN to smear the AARP. Let's see how this plays out.

The NY Times broke this story today :

"Judge Alito's confirmation is also the culmination of a disciplined campaign begun by the Reagan administration to seed the lower federal judiciary with like-minded jurists who could reorient the federal courts toward a view of the Constitution much closer to its 18th-century authors' intent, including a much less expansive view of its application to individual rights and federal power...read on

Ted Kennedy let his thoughts be known about the use of the 'Swift Boat' PR Firm

Download | play -WMP

It's been over a year since Americans elected Barack Obama, but we're still living in George Bush's world – two wars, a recession, a deficit, and so much more.

President Obama has his hands full cleaning up these messes and establishing a legacy on healthcare and climate change. I get that. But there's one blind spot that he can't afford to ignore any longer.

We're living under the rule of George Bush's judges. He picked over 40% of all current federal judges. We're talking about lifetime appointees, and so few cases ever make it to the Supreme Court that they usually get the last word.

Bush's judicial legacy didn't happen by accident, or overnight. He made it a priority. The numbers are telling: as Obama approaches the end of his first year, he’s picked roughly 30 nominees, 11 of whom have been confirmed. By the end of his first year, Bush had nominated 65, and nearly 30 had been confirmed.

To be sure, Republicans have been obstructing Obama's nominees at every turn – that's why so few have been confirmed. But Obama has played into their hands by not nominating more people, which would throw their obstruction into sharp relief and amp up pressure on the GOP.

I know it might not seem this way – in the midst of the healthcare fight – but Obama's legacy, the future of progressive legislation, and the well-being of our nation depend on the character, and quantity, of the judges he nominates. This issue deserves equal billing with the others at the very top of the administration's agenda.

The good news is that, unlike with many problems we face, Obama can ramp up nominations without sacrificing progress on his other priorities. There is no shortage of highly qualified – and progressive – nominees, and Senate Democrats can crush judicial filibusters when they set their mind to it.

The bottom line is that Obama may never have another opportunity like the present, with 60 Democrats in the Senate, to push through his nominees and return some balance to the judicial branch. And he has only four or so months before the 2010 election season causes the Senate to grind to a halt.

President Obama, your legacy clock is ticking. We need you to act now.

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats beat back Jeff Sessions’ filibuster of Obama’s first judicial nominee – Judge David Hamilton – by a reassuring margin of 70-29. Sessions lost ten of his fellow Republicans, including conservatives like Hatch, Cornyn, and Thune, and Hamilton will be confirmed Thursday afternoon to the Seventh Circuit.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the GOP is winning the battle for the federal courts.

Just a few short years ago, right-wing Senators denounced filibusters of President Bush’s nominees in the strongest possible language and threatened to employ the “nuclear option.” Sessions went even further – he claimed Democrats were violating the Constitution by blocking any Bush nominee (no matter how extreme). But some time after November 4, 2008, his interpretation of the Constitution must have changed dramatically.

Now a Democrat is in the White House, and – hypocrisy be damned! – Sessions is vehemently pro-filibuster and pro-obstruction. And the worst part is that he’s been successful. Judge Hamilton was nominated in March to general acclaim. He received the highest possible rating from the ABA, both his home-state Senators strongly endorsed him (including senior Senate Republican Dick Lugar), and even the head of the Indianapolis Federalist Society backed him. It doesn’t get much better than that.

But the nomination was dragged out for months by the GOP. As a result, Hamilton will become just the seventh Obama nominee to be confirmed to the federal bench. By contrast, nearly 30 such Bush nominees had been confirmed at the same point. We’re talking lifetime appointments to the highest courts in our land. President Obama obviously has his hands full, but he can’t afford to neglect this crucial aspect of his legacy.

But so far, Obama has been playing into the hands of the GOP obstructionists. He’s nominated fewer than half as many people as Bush had at this point. That has got to change, and quickly. The Obama administration has a window of just 4-5 months to return some semblance of balance to the federal bench before the mid-term elections. The choice is simple: act now to fill the judicial pipeline with highly qualified progressive nominees, or let Sessions and Bush win.

Wapo:

A federal judge ruled today that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) will face trial in Washington next month, denying Stevens's request to transfer the case to a court in his home state.

...Stevens, 84, was indicted July 29 by a federal grand jury on charges he failed to report on Senate financial disclosure forms that he accepted more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from executives of Veco, a now-defunct Alaska oil services company.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that moving the trial to a federal court in Alaska would cause "delay and additional expense."

Aw gee, Judge Sullivan, I'm sure there are some former Veco executives who would be happy to help with the cost (snark).

Cliff Schecter:

President Bush exempted the Navy from an environmental law so it can continue using sonar in its anti-submarine warfare training off the California coast -- a practice critics say is harmful to whales and other marine mammals.

The White House announced Wednesday that Bush had signed the exemption Tuesday while traveling in the Middle East. (snip)

"The president's action is an attack on the rule of law," said Joel Reynolds, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "By exempting the Navy from basic safeguards under both federal and state law, the president is flouting the will of Congress, the decision of the California Coastal Commission and a ruling by the federal court."

This is not some little thing...sonar used so close to their migration paths disorients the whales (and other marine life) and causes them to beach themselves. A study in 2000 found that incidences of bleeding in the ear and around the brain of marine life from mid-frequency sonars as the Navy uses.

NOW takes a look at the FBI case against the "Corrupt Bastards Club," where cash and favors flowed between an Alaska-based oil services company and an Alaska Republican good-old-boy network that stretched all the way to DC.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Two state legislators have been convicted in Federal court for accepting bribes from VECO. The FBI has video and audio evidence that reveal VECO executives shockingly handing out cash to those legislators in exchange for promises to roll back a tax on the oil industry. But that may only be the tip of the oily iceberg. NOW's Maria Hinojosa learns that dozens more lawmakers are being eyed in the growing scandal, including one of the country's most powerful politicians, Alaska U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.

Watch the complete show online here.

For a presidential administration overwhelmed by humiliating mistakes, the Khaled el-Masri debacle is one of the most mortifying. Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was taken into custody in 2003 in a case of mistaken identity — he just happens to have a name similar to a terrorist sought by American officials.

Actually, “taken into custody” is the wrong phrase. He was abducted in Macedonia, drugged, beaten, and then flown to Afghanistan, where he faced more abuse. Five months of detention and torture later, the CIA, realizing they took the wrong man, dumped him in Albania. During those five months, Masri’s wife had no idea what had happened to him.

With help from the ACLU, Masri filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration, and the complaint described his treatment as “constituting prolonged arbitrary detention, torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”

The Bush administration insisted that the federal courts dismiss the case, not because of the merits, but because, administration lawyers argued, to even respond to the lawsuit would require divulging state secrets. Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided not to hear Masri’s case.

Kevin has more.

Via Feministing:

Last week, a Federal court ruled that, despite Illinois law, pharmacists in Illinois can refuse to dispense emergency contraception. The state passed a law in 2005 that requires all pharmacies to dispense EC. As a result, Wal-Mart (and other companies) have disciplined pharmacists that refused to follow the rule. Then came the lawsuits and the bad news.

U.S. District Judge Jeanne Scott denied a request Tuesday by Wal-Mart to throw out a lawsuit filed by pharmacist Ethan Vandersand. Scott sided with Vandersand, who had claimed he was legally protected from discipline by the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act when he declined to dispense Plan B. Vandersand, who lives in Bluffs, formerly worked at the pharmacy in Beardstown's Wal-Mart. He was put on unpaid leave after he refused to fill a Plan B prescription requested by a nurse practitioner at Springfield's Planned Parenthood on behalf of a female patient in February 2006.

Wal-Mart had contended the state's right-of-conscience law doesn't cover pharmacists. Walgreen Co. has made the same argument in other Illinois lawsuits filed by fired pharmacists.

But Scott wrote in her ruling, "The statute prohibits discrimination against any person for refusing to provide health care because of his conscience." Read more...

From Emptywheel at The Next Hurrah:

Remember the way that Thor Hearne tried to hide any traces of his American Center for Voting Rights, just as the media started to realize that it was a Republican front group designed to popularize ideas with no basis in reality, but which would be key tools to Republican dominance?

Well, the same is happening with Italia Federici's organization, Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy. The Hill reports that the organization is all but disappearing.

But, if the council’s website is any indication, it couldn’t survive her guilty plea in federal court last month for obstruction and tax evasion. Federici’s sometime-boyfriend, former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, was also sent to prison last week for 10 months. Read more...

(h/t Daily Kos)