we, matt sanchez and i and others who join us, will do our best to oppose all further burdens upon joel and his family imposed by riaa on grounds that the abuse already imposed makes any further burden undue.

cyberone

palin
smilingly explaining that obama’s move made his
black man could have had strong woman on his side
instead chose white man
all-in with palin
straight talk express back on the rails
mccain the maverick fighter
strong woman at his side
choo choo who do you choose

obama seen and raised
action now to him

shall he attack this new palin paladin of womanhood
i think knot

shall he ignore her hoping her charisma will somehow fade
i think knot

shall he expect his white man somehow to defeat
i think knot

is obama capable of embracing sarah palin in all she stands for women
how would he go about it to take strength of mccain’s play away

how to raise with an even more stunning play

By Jamie Gorelick
Tuesday, July 29, 2008; A17

Another stunning report has documented the bold and illegal influence of
politics at the Justice Department over the past eight years. For decades,
Republican and Democratic attorneys general had protected from political
influence the hiring of career prosecutors and administrative judges. There
was an unbroken rule, embodied in law, regulation and department policy,
that no political questions would be asked of those who wanted to serve in
career — as opposed to political — positions in the department. We
demanded of our Justice Department, in its core prosecutorial and
adjudicative functions, that it be separate from politics. Until the Bush
administration.

Last month, we learned that political functionaries deputized by Attorneys
General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales had screened the best and the
brightest coming out of law schools, judicial clerkships and other positions
to weed out those who appeared to be Democrats or who might hold liberal
ideas; favor was shown to Republicans, members of the Federalist Society,
and those considered to be good and loyal conservatives. As the department’s
inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility noted, this
is illegal. It also breaks the promise of justice that is above politics and
undermines the department’s best values.

Now, an equally graphic report by the same two offices concludes that in
2003, the apolitical process for selecting immigration judges and
prosecutors was stood on its head. A chief aide to Attorney General Ashcroft
(and later to Attorney General Gonzales) “outlined a new process for hiring
[immigration judges] that listed the White House as the sole source for
generating candidates.”

Thus, immigration judges — who, by law, are to be chosen without regard to
their political pedigree — were no longer picked by the nonpolitical office
that is supposed to find and train the men and women who mete out justice to
tens of thousands of immigrants. In the interview files for these candidates
were such comments as “Cons[ervative] on ‘god, guns + gays’ ” — but not
much about whether they understood immigration law or had the capacity for
fairness.

Even more appalling, others, including a counsel to Attorney General
Gonzales, illegally selected individual line prosecutors — who wield
tremendous power over the reputations, liberty and livelihood of
Americans — using Internet searches on such keywords as “Bush, Gore,
Republican, Democrat, Clinton, spotted owl, abortion, gay, gun, and Florida
recount” to assess their political and policy views.

Why does this matter?

In a long career counseling individuals being investigated by the Justice
Department, I have had to explain to sometimes cynical citizens that
politics are prohibited from influencing such inquiries. My ability to give
that assurance has hinged on both the public perception — and reality –
that the career assistant U.S. attorneys, line prosecutors and lawyers who
work at the department are picked on their merits and proceed without regard
to politics.

Until now.

During the Bush administration, we have seen U.S. attorneys fired under
circumstances that have led many to conclude they paid the price because
they wouldn’t prosecute Democrats; honors program applicants screened for
their political leanings; and now the process of hiring line prosecutors and
immigration judges similarly politicized. How do we reassure the American
people that justice is being meted out fairly? Trust and respect lost are
hard to win back.

Worse, the reports lay out evidence that the political appointees behind
many of these missteps knew that what they were doing was wrong.

But responsibility does not end there. The department’s senior leadership
turned over hiring decisions to people with no history and no understanding
of the institution, people who came from the Republican National Committee
or White House political functions. The predictable result was that the
department would have, in essence, political appointees in career positions.
Thus was the department’s fundamental promise to the American people –
which had been respected for decades — broken.

Where were the career people on whom we count to keep the department honest?
The latest report concludes that the two most senior people responsible for
protecting immigration judges from political influence had “sufficient
evidence . . . to have realized that political or ideological affiliations
played a role” and that they should have spoken up to others who could do
something. The same criticism was leveled at those who ran the office
overseeing the honors program and lateral hiring. Where were they? It is
disappointing that they failed to act forcefully to protect the department
they served.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey, himself a former career prosecutor and
judge, pledges to fix these problems going forward. But more is required.
The department needs to hold individuals responsible for their actions. It
needs to offer opportunities to those who were improperly denied them. And
it needs to make sure that this never happens again. Restoring the promise
of unbiased justice will take the efforts of both this attorney general and
his successors.

The writer, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, is a
partner at WilmerHale in Washington.

draft lessig
to be chairman of the fcc

put the net in the hands of people who love it

Forwarded conversation
Subject: obama platform
————————

From: Charles Nesson
Date: Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 9:44 AM
To: Lawrence Lessig

on monday night (july 28) i am hosting a Listen to America platform meeting on Internet Democracy and Education.
where better to start than with your thought. what would you say is platform number one?

———-
From: Lawrence Lessig
Date: Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 6:13 PM
To: Charles Nesson

trust.

——-
From: Charles Nesson
Date: Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 8:40 AM
To: Lawrence Lessig

you put a . after trust

trust what
trust whom
trust why

———-
From: Lawrence Lessig
Date: Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 7:50 PM
To: Charles Nesson

trust in the very idea of government. that differences might be differences of good faith. that agreement might be won for the right reason.

CHARLES NESSON: I start from a presumption of liberty. Think of the founders of our nation. They assembled as people who had the liberty to create a government. They knew that historically all governments reflect their own self-interest and come over time to limit, if not destroy the collective power of the people. They believed that a government built of checks and balances would ensure protection of their (and our) liberty into the future.

One method for doing this was to provide that the government must present its case for taking away a citizen’s liberty to a jury of peers, and that the jury must unanimously agree to a general verdict of guilt as warrant for the State to take his liberty. The jury will endure as a bulwark so long as it decides the whole case — the law and the fact. When all other balances fail, the jury will remain as the last protection of liberty.

In a criminal prosecution the legislature must first pass a statute that defines a crime. The executive must then choose to enforce the statute by formally charging and proving a statutory violation. Finally the judiciary must oversee the trial of the charge to make sure the statute is constitutional and the process of proof completely legal. Thus the state”s claim to take the liberty of a citizen is presented to a jury of the people. WE the PEOPLE. The jury is us, so that our values of liberty and justice will be preserved into the future against the state.

I want to make a doctrinal point exposing the flaw in the legal argument used by the judiciary to take away the jury’s power to decide “the whole case, the law and the fact,” thereby reducing the jury’s role to that merely of factfinder. “Law” used in describing the jury’s role means justice in the sense of connection with the conscience of community. The judges who created the current doctrine of jury nullification read “law” to mean the formal law created by the State, e.g., legislation, common law, judicial precedent. In claiming for themselves in a dichotomy between judge and jury of “law” and “fact” the prerogative of authoritatively articulating such matters of legality they left the jury only with “fact” and took the jury’s justice function away.

The judges did this in the 19th century in dispute as to whether lawyers could continue the established practice of arguing unconstitutionality of statutes to the jury despite the trial judge’s ruling that the statute was constitutional. Judges decided that lawyers may not re-argue their legal rulings to the jury because it is the judge’s business, not the jury’s, to decide matters of law. But in every case, the ruling was based upon the judges power to decide constitutionality and other legal matters. It resolved the question insofar as it applied to constitutional matters, statutory interpretations and evidentiary rulings — matters of legality. But it did not address, nor did it justify, the claim that juries had no business deciding “law” in the more fundamental sense.

Even after the “legalities” have been articulated by the judge to the jury, the jury hears and must accept the interpretation of the law of the state that the judge puts upon it, the jury nonetheless retains the essential independent function and responsibility of deciding whether to apply the state’s law to the defendant before them. That is the jury’s constitutional function. That is its protective check and balance versus the state’s power to deprove a citizen of liberty. To take this funtion away diminishes, even obviates, the jury’s function as the last bulwark of liberty.

All right, that’s my ten minutes. I’d be delighted with any and all comments.

dershowitz

unknown1

marthafield

fried

noahfeldman

empiricalquestion

sandel

michelman

randy_kennedy

carol_steiker

palfrey1

unknown3-equality

jim-403