skippy the bush kangaroo

....all of these annual dues are collected in the same 501(c)(6) the chamber is using to run partisan attack ads. the data above reflects information from public sources, and the chamber likely has many more foreign corporations as dues-paying members — but refuses to divulge any of the funders for their ad campaign. unfortunately, many reporters in the traditional press covered the chamber story, but missed the entire point of our reporting. most reporters (from the new york times, mcclatchy, the associated press, etc.) never contacted thinkprogress, instead opting to only interview chamber officials. - think progress

Labels: corporations, election, election integrity, gop, lawlessness, republicans

after a group of oregon national guard troops sued kbr in 2009, claiming they'd been exposed to toxic chemicals at iraq's qarmat ali water treatment facility, an unusual deal between the military contractor and the army came to light. tucked inside its multibillion-dollar contract to rebuild the facility was a clause, the contents of which remain classified, that could shield the contractor from legal liability—in essence, what could amount to a get-out-of-court-free card. - mother jones

Labels: contractors, halliburton, kbr, lawlessness, lawsuits, oregon, toxins

"....you will realize that canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. for example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. outside of the criminal realm, canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. i therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind." - think progress

Labels: canada, coulter, criminal, hate mongering, lawlessness, republicans

california's insurance regulator said monday his office has found more than 700 violations by the state's largest for-profit health insurer, including late payment of claims, giving misleading information to consumers and failing to cooperate with regulators.

anthem blue cross faces a maximum $10,000 penalty for each violation, insurance commissioner steve poizner said. his office said the violations occurred between 2006 and 2009.- sfgate

Labels: california, healthcare, insurance, lawlessness

carpinteria is a lovely little city on the pacific just south of santa barbara, boasting such features as a city-owned coastal preserve and one of the four remaining seal rookeries in southern california.

just about the last place you'd expect to become the target of a hostile corporate takeover.

the corporation is venoco inc., an independent oil company with revenue of more than half a billion dollars a year, which currently owns an oil storage facility in carpinteria. one would get weary painting big oil companies as soulless monsters, if venoco didn't make it so easy.

this denver-based firm is spending lavishly to pass a ballot initiative specifically exempting itself from the city's industrial development and environmental rules. - latimes

Labels: california, corporations, election, election integrity, lawlessness

“i was a big supporter of waterboarding,” cheney said in an appearance on abc’s this week on sunday. he went on to explain that justice department lawyers had been instructed to write legal opinions to cover the use of this and other torture techniques after the white house had settled on them.

section 2340A of the federal criminal code makes it an offense to torture or to conspire to torture. violators are subject to jail terms or to death in appropriate cases, as where death results from the application of torture techniques. prosecutors have argued that a criminal investigation into torture undertaken with the direction of the bush white house would raise complex legal issues, and proof would be difficult. but what about cases in which an instigator openly and notoriously brags about his role in torture? - harpers

Labels: cheney, criminal, lawlessness, liars, sunday teevee bobble heads, teevee, torture

the iraq inquiry is britain’s latest of four investigations into the fateful 2003 decision to go to war. it may be the most wide-ranging yet, as its mission is to explore the "lessons learned" from the run-up to the invasion through the aftermath and subsequent occupation. the investigation, also known as "the chilcot inquiry" after chairman sir john chilcot, began hearing publicly from witnesses in november, with blair (the 69th witness), the biggest cheese on the platter. - antiwar.com

giving evidence before the chilcot committee into the war, she (clare short) repeatedly accused the former prime minister of personally “misleading” and “conning” her, and of being “deceitful” with cabinet, parliament, and the public. - the
telegraph

...this is a weird form of liberal ­exceptionalism. because enthusiasm for politics has declined, she argues, there should be no limits to state power, except those ordained by the state. it is precisely because we no longer believe that the government can be held to account that we have become so disillusioned with politics. in a country like the united kingdom – where executive power is constitutionally unlimited; the prime minister can bully, mislead and lie to parliament; the attorney general is both overseer of the legal system and a minister of the crown; media scrutiny is feeble and partisan; and citizens have come to expect nothing better – judicial review is even more important than it is elsewhere. but in any nation, equality before the law is fundamental to democracy. its absence leaves the door wide open to elective dictatorship. except in italy, this is the first time i have seen anyone in a democratic
country argue that judges should not be able either to review the decisions of government or to try its ministers. - the guardian

Labels: aWol, blair, england, iraq, lawlessness, lawyers, politics

the rapid introduction of full body scanners at british airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the guardian has learned. - the guardian.

Labels: homeland security, lawlessness

Labels: lawlessness, wal-mart

Randy Quaid
Originally uploaded by Tommy Donovan

Labels: felony, lawlessness, lawsuits, santa barbara, texas

it's been just over three weeks since the july 3rd arrest of former goldman sachs it executive sergey aleynikov inadvertently blew the lid off the intricacies of exactly how those great vampire squids on wall street manage (no past tense here) to suck main street dry.

(actually, come to think of it, that didn't take long at all.)

the high frequency trading ("hft") scam on wall street is being exposed to the masses as we blog. - bob swern' diary on the great orange satan.

Labels: animals, goldman sachs, lawlessness, pirates, wall street, youtube

at a “great conversations” event at the university of minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter seymour hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the cia, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.” - minnpost

Labels: cheney, cia, lawlessness

the central intelligence agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from congress for eight years on direct orders from former vice president dick cheney, the agency’s director, leon e. panetta, has told the senate and house intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said saturday. - nytimes

Labels: cheney, cia, dirty tricks, lawlessness, liars, treason

the state will pay $335,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a woman former state den. carole migden rear-ended after a wild 30-mile drive in dolano county, attorneys in the case said monday.

several motorists called 911 after seeing the san francisco democrat weaving in and out of traffic on interstate 80 and highway 12 on may 18, 2007, in her state-issued toyota highlander hybrid sport utility vehicle. at one point, migden sideswiped a guardrail on I-80 near american canyon Road.

"she's been on the phone and reading a book, doing about 80 miles per hour," one driver said in his 911 call. "she's really scary." - sfgate

Labels: bankruptcy, california, lawlessness, lawsuits, politicians, sacramento

election-law experts, supporters of campaign-finance regulations, and even some members of the commission itself are expressing growing concern about a string of cases in which the three republicans on the commission -- led by tom delay's former ethics lawyer -- have voted as a block against enforcement, preventing the commission from carrying out its basic regulatory function. as the normally mild-mannered washington post editorial board wrote recently: "the three republican appointees are turning the commission into the little agency that wouldn't: wouldn't launch investigations, wouldn't bring cases, wouldn't even accept settlements that the staff had already negotiated." - tpmmuckraker

Labels: election, election integrity, fec, lawlessness, republicans

Labels: copyright, corporations, lawlessness, lawsuits, music

a former hospital executive on tuesday admitted he paid recruiters to bring in homeless people for unnecessary medical treatment in a scheme to defraud government health programs out of millions of dollars. - sfgate

Labels: healthcare, hospitals, lawlessness, public health

...listening to cheney and rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

i have little sympathy for this argument. yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. but the decisions that bush officials made in the following months and years -- on iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the cia and the nsc staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-qaeda attack.- wapo

Labels: 9/11, cheney, condaleeza, lawlessness

the alabama federal judge who presided over the 2006 corruption trial of the state's former governor holds a grudge against the defendant for helping to expose the judge's own alleged corruption six years ago. former gov. don siegelman therefore deserves a new trial with an unbiased judge ─ not one whose privately owned company, doss aviation, has been enriched by the bush administration's award of $300 million in contracts since 2006, making the judge millions in non-judicial income. - huffpo

kreig's report comes at a critical time in the siegelman case. the u.s. 11th circuit court of appeals has upheld most of the convictions against siegelman. federal prosecutors are asking that the former governor receive a 20-year sentence, almost triple his original sentence. with the 11th circuit refusing last week to grant a review by the entire court, the case stands to return to fuller for resentencing. - legal schnauzer

Labels: lawlessness, lawyers, rove

president obama on monday called for curbing offshore tax havens and corporate tax breaks to collect billions of dollars more from multinational companies and wealthy individuals.

...the top corporate tax rate is 35 percent, but the treasury department estimated that in 2004, the most recent year for which data is available, american multinationals paid $16 billion in taxes on $700 billion in foreign income — an effective rate of 2.3 percent. - nytimes

Labels: corporations, lawlessness, liars, taxes, two americas