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CORRUPTION UPDATES 90 Posted July 18, 2007 The CORRUPTION UPDATES posts corruption news stories from California, the Nation and the World, and gives you the straight story. |
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White House says it won't hand over documents on attorney firings
By Joel Havemann
Times Staff Writer
9:27 AM PDT, July 9, 2007
From the Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — The constitutional face-off between the White House and Congress took another leap forward today when the White House refused to provide lawmakers with documents relating to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
The House and Senate judiciary committees had given the White House until this morning to produce the documents and permit two former White House aides — Counsel Harriet E. Miers and political affairs director Sara M. Taylor — to testify about the firings.
The new White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, responded today that release of the documents and testimony by the two former officials would jeopardize "a fundamental interest of the presidency: the necessity that a president receive candid advice from his advisors and that those advisors be able to communicate freely and openly with the president."
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) immediately issued a statement promising to challenge the White House claim of executive privilege in court.
Congress and the White House have been jousting all year over Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales' firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the federal prosecutors who are spread around the country.
On June 29, a day after the White House missed another congressional deadline for providing documents, Conyers and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) accused the White House of "Nixonian stonewalling" that "reveals the White House's disdain for our system of checks and balances."
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
BUSH REFUSES OVERSIGHT
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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Miers Rebuffs House Subpoena
Another Ex-Aide Says She Did Not Speak With Bush About Firings
By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 12, 2007; A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071100249_pf.html
President Bush's former counsel Harriet E. Miers yesterday rebuffed a subpoena demanding her congressional testimony, as former White House political director Sara M. Taylor told the Senate Judiciary Committee she did not speak with President Bush about the administration's plans to fire a group of U.S. attorneys last year.
Taylor, who left her job two months ago, said she had no knowledge that Bush was involved in the dismissals at all. "I did not speak to the president about removing U.S. attorneys," Taylor said. "I did not attend any meetings with the president where that matter was discussed."
Democrats promptly said that her remarks could undermine Bush's assertion that White House deliberations about the U.S. attorney firings are protected by executive privilege. Bush's current counsel, Fred F. Fielding, had cited that prerogative -- which generally applies to matters involving the president -- in explaining why Bush had "directed" Taylor not to provide information about the deliberations to Congress.
Several hours after Taylor concluded her appearance, the House Judiciary Committee announced that Miers was set to refuse to appear at a hearing today. Miers's attorney, George T. Manning of Atlanta, said in a letter to the committee that the administration's assertion of executive privilege gives her "absolute immunity" from being forced to testify on Capitol Hill.
"Your answer that you did not discuss these matters with the president and, to the best of your knowledge, he was not involved is going to make some nervous at the White House," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told Taylor. "It seriously undercuts his claim of executive privilege if he was not involved."
In the questions she did answer, Taylor revealed that she was "furious" when she realized that her friend and former White House political-office colleague, Tim Griffin, would not get his full appointment as U.S. attorney in Little Rock because of Democratic objections to how Griffin received an interim appointment.
House Democrats said they plan to go ahead with their hearing today without Miers, and will probably vote to authorize Conyers to issue subpoenas to the Republican National Committee for e-mails from White House officials such as Taylor who used e-mail accounts based in the RNC.
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Miers Refuses Congressional Subpoena
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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Police stifle bill on discipline hearings access
Monday, July 9, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/09/MNGLAQT2HS1.DTL
Legislation that would increase Californians' access to police disciplinary records by rolling back a 2006 state Supreme Court ruling appears to be dead for the year -- the victim of formidable law enforcement opposition.
Although the measure, SB1019, has the support of many community groups, newspapers, city officials, the American Civil Liberties Union and some members of police review agencies, it is also opposed by dozens of law enforcement groups.
The fight dates back to 2003, when the San Diego Union-Tribune sought to attend an administrative appeals hearing for a deputy sheriff who had been fired.
The deputy's lawyers objected, saying that under state law, disciplinary procedures for law enforcement officers were personnel matters and thus closed to the public unless an officer wanted them open.
The newspaper was barred from the hearing and went to court. Last year, in its Copley vs. Superior Court decision, the state Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the public had no right to obtain records of administrative appeals in police disciplinary cases.
Although the ruling did not explicitly ban open hearings, local governments interpreted it as barring the public and media. As a result, the public has been shut out of disciplinary hearings in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and other cities that previously had open processes.
Under Romero's bill, any jurisdiction could return to practices it followed before the Copley decision.
Mark Schlosberg, director of the police practices program for the ACLU's Northern California chapter, said the bill is vital because "police officers wield an incredible amount of power in our society, including the power to use lethal force under certain circumstances. The public must have a right to know when that power is being abused and whether misconduct is being taken seriously."The bill won Senate approval June 4, but at a hearing three weeks later, no one on the Assembly Public Safety Committee made a motion to put it to a vote.
Cottingham, whose alliance against the bill includes the state's potent prison guard union, said criminals could glean sensitive law enforcement information from open disciplinary hearings.
He also said he knew of instances when publicity about disciplinary charges had led to threats against officers. He declined to give specifics, saying, "To release that information, we'd be putting officers in danger."
Advocates of the Romero measure argue that the Copley decision gives police officers a greater cloak of secrecy than any other group of employees in the state.
In many ways, the wall that Romero hit with her legislation was predictable. The law enforcement lobby has long been powerful in the Capitol, not only because of its contribution clout but because of the weight its candidate endorsements carry.
Romero has picked up high-profile support for her bill, including that of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey and Theresa Sparks, president of the San Francisco Police Commission.
However, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom says he is taking no position on the bill, and Police Chief Heather Fong did not respond directly, instead issuing a statement saying she believes that an "officer facing discipline before the Police Commission should have the option of an open or closed hearing."
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
ASSEMBLY PROTECTS SECRET POLICE POWERS
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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U.S. Diplomat Hints at Delay for Kosovo Independence
NYT, July 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/world/europe/09kosovo.html?_
r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
DUBROVNIK, Croatia, July 8 — A senior United States diplomat, speaking at a conference in Croatia over the weekend, cast doubt on a quick resolution of Kosovo’s future, suggesting that an agreement that would enable it to claim independence might not come until next year.
The assessment by Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, is likely to be seen as a setback for Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership. This spring, Western officials had held out hope that the future of the province, which technically remains part of Serbia, would be resolved within weeks.
Mr. Fried’s comments are the clearest indication to date that the United States now acknowledges that it is unlikely that Russia will soon agree to a United Nations plan that would grant the province independence under supervision of a mission led by the European Union.
But Russia is supporting Serbia in its opposition to independence for Kosovo.
Kosovo’s Albanian leaders had hoped that President Bush’s meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this month might resolve the issue.
...the emerging consensus among European and American policy makers is that the status quo will have to remain for months in the hope that Russia can eventually agree to a resolution allowing for effective independence for Kosovo.
Russia has rejected two draft resolutions in the Security Council, contending that an agreement between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians is necessary to resolve the issue. American officials have suggested that if Russia continues to reject the proposal before the United Nations, the United States could recognize Kosovo’s independence unilaterally.
“Britain and the U.S. thought the Russians would go along with this,” said a senior European politician with extensive knowledge of the Balkans...“Now the entire strategy has blown up in their face.”
“If you think that this is a passing phase in Russia, then you are dramatically wrong,” said Kai Eide, Norway’s senior diplomat and the author of a United Nations report in 2004 that first advocated Kosovo’s independence.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
Balkan Conflict Looms between US and Russia
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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Major F.B.I. Inquiry in El Paso Results in Second Guilty Plea
By BARBARA NOVOVITCH
A huge public corruption inquiry in El Paso has resulted in a second guilty plea.
NYT, July 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/us/09corrupt.html?pagewanted=print
Elizabeth Flores, a former El Paso County commissioner, made the plea on Friday in Federal District Court to six federal charges of mail and wire fraud. Ms. Flores confessed to accepting cash bribes for commission votes on construction contracts, a hospital bond initiative, a lawsuit settlement and other issues. Court records did not indicate how much money was involved.
The plea by Ms. Flores, who faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 per charge, follows that of John Travis Ketner, the former chief of staff for County Judge Anthony Cobos, on four counts of bribery and conspiracy to commit fraud, including attempted rigging of the district court system.
Veronica Escobar, who succeeded Ms. Flores as Precinct 2 commissioner in January, said she expected more indictments from the inquiry, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “It’s clear that there’s more to come,” Ms. Escobar said. “I believe they’re closing in on folks.”
Mr. Ketner’s testimony implicated 17 city, county and school officials and business leaders. The F.B.I. has informed about 200 people that their telephones were tapped.
The investigation became public in May of last year when about 65 agents of the F.B.I. and three other federal agencies raided the plant of the National Center for Employment of the Disabled, taking 1,000 boxes of documents and computer data.
Its president and chief executive officer, Robert Jones, who was nominated as El Paso’s entrepreneur of the year in 2004, was charged with using the center’s money to finance other business ventures and with paying more than $4 million into a management firm controlled by his family trust.
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Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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Rulings seal high court's shift to right
Sunday, July 1, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/01/MNGH0QP3RI1.DTL
As ideological shifts go, the U.S. Supreme Court's rightward tilt during the just-completed 2006-07 term was not a large swing. But it was decisive.
The replacement of moderately conservative Justice Sandra Day O'Connor by staunchly conservative Justice Samuel Alito did not send legal precedents toppling. Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion, remains in place, and so do recent liberal victories on gay rights, presidential power, the death penalty and the environment. A 2003 ruling allowing limited consideration of race in public college admissions was battered but survived.
Thursday's ruling that severely restricted race-conscious school integration programs was the last in a series of bare-majority decisions that steered the law in a conservative direction.
The most important abortion ruling in more than a decade upheld a federal ban on a rare midterm procedure and opened the door to further restrictions. A campaign finance ruling gutted congressional limits on broadcast ads funded by corporations and unions in the final weeks before an election, a law the court had upheld in 2003.
The justices narrowed free speech by students, barred taxpayer suits against Bush's promotion of federal funding for religious groups, tightened restrictions on punitive damages, and prohibited suits over sex and race discrimination in pay if they were filed more than 180 days after the wage disparity began.
There was one significant liberal victory, a 5-4 decision authorizing the government to regulate vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Its effect has been muted by Bush's continued opposition to mandatory controls, and by federal regulators' slow pace in reviewing California's request to enforce its own emissions law.
Stanford law Professor Pamela Karlan offered a curt summary of the term Thursday at a Supreme Court panel discussion sponsored by the liberal American Constitution Society: "If this is the birth of a new constitutional era, all I can say is, what an ugly baby.''
It is an era in which Kennedy is playing a pivotal role.
Apart from the global warming case, in which he joined a majority for federal regulation, he sided with Roberts and Alito in each major decision.
He was also the author of the 5-4 ruling April 18 that upheld the first federal ban on a specific abortion procedure, in which the fetus is partially removed intact.
Some of Kennedy's language -- references to Congress' "ethical and moral concerns,'' terminology such as "baby'' and "infant life,'' and his assertion that the ban would discourage some women from having abortions that they might later regret -- was unprecedented and seemed to invite more measures to regulate or deter abortion.
"Kennedy hasn't been the swing justice this term,'' Chemerinsky said. "He hasn't swung back and forth. He's swung to one side.''
But another practice this term has arguably made rulings murkier -- Roberts' treatment of past decisions with which he disagrees. Rather than overturning precedents, he narrows or reinterprets them, leaving them watered down but still on the books.
In Monday's campaign advertising case, for example, Roberts left in place the 2003 ruling upholding a ban on corporate-funded ads aimed at candidates just before an election, but construed it to apply only in rare cases.
On the same day, he reinterpreted a 1969 ruling on students' free speech to exclude statements that might promote drug use. Alito, in another ruling that day that Roberts joined, said a 1968 precedent allowing taxpayers to challenge federal funding of religion applied only to congressional and not presidential funding.Court's major rulings
Major rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2006-07 term:
Integration: Overturned school integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., that used students' race as a factor in enrollment. Said integration remains a legitimate goal of school districts but the race of individual students can be considered only in extraordinary circumstances.
Abortion: Upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which prohibited procedures in which the fetus is removed from the womb partially intact before being aborted.
Campaigns: Declared unconstitutional a portion of a 2002 campaign finance law that banned radio and television ads by corporations or unions that mentioned a candidate's name in the final weeks before a federal election. The court said the ban was valid only for ads that expressly advocated election or defeat of a candidate, and not for ads that discussed the candidate's position on an issue.
Emissions: Ruled that the federal government has authority over vehicle emissions that contribute to global warming, and must regulate them unless it has scientific evidence showing regulation is not justified.
Discrimination: Barred suits for pay discrimination based on sex or race unless the plaintiff discovered the disparity and sued within 180 days.
Students: Ruled that public school students could be punished for speech that a school administrator could reasonably interpret as promoting illegal drug use.
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Supreme Court Facism Compliments Our System of Political Fascism
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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China Sentences Official to Death for Corruption
July 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/business/worldbusiness/07drug.html?pagewanted=print
SHANGHAI, July 6 — For the second time in three months, a former high-ranking official at China’s top food and drug watchdog agency has been sentenced to death for corruption and approving counterfeit drugs, the state-run news media said on Friday.
Cao Wenzhuang, who until 2005 was in charge of drug registration approvals at the State Food and Drug Administration, was accused of accepting more than $300,000 in bribes from two pharmaceutical companies and helping undermine the public’s confidence in an agency that is supposed to be safeguarding the nation’s health.
Mr. Cao’s sentence was handed down by the No. 1 Intermediate Court in Beijing, less than two months after the same court sentenced Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration to death for accepting $850,000 in bribes to help steer drug companies through various approval processes.
Mr. Cao, however, was given the death sentence with a two-year reprieve, a lighter penalty that may allow him to have his sentence commuted to life in prison.
The harsh penalties come at a time when China is under mounting international criticism over the quality and safety of its food and drugs.
Earlier this year, China exported pet food ingredients contaminated with an industrial chemical, prompting one of the largest pet food recalls in United States history.
Later, there were worldwide recalls of Chinese toothpaste laced with the same toxic substance that in recent years was found to be responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 people in Haiti and Panama.
And last week, the United States Food and Drug Administration blocked imports of some Chinese seafood, including shrimp, catfish and eel, after seeing a sharp rise in the amount of Chinese seafood tainted with carcinogens and excessive antibiotic residues.
Zheng Xiaoyu, who helped found the agency in 1998 and resigned in mid-2005, was later arrested and tried in Beijing, where prosecutors laid out evidence showing that he and his family had accepted huge bribes and gifts in exchange for favors. He was sentenced to death in late May.
Experts say the drug industry has been mired in corruption for years, and that one reason is that until recently the State Food and Drug Administration — the country’s highest ranking drug agency — was corrupted from top to bottom.
Mr. Cao and Mr. Hao had both at one time served as close aides to Mr. Zheng, the former agency director.
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Saturday night in the Mission - a beat full of alcohol and fights
Monday, July 9, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/09/BAGN7QT0PP1.DTL
It's Saturday night fights in the Mission District.
Just after midnight, officers from the Mission Station get a call to one of the hot nightclubs in the district. It's a fight.
It's always a fight.
The scene on Mission looks like a party. Red and blue lights bounce off the walls as people talk, yell, flirt and move from club to club. A taco vendor has set up on the corner, and the smell of carne asada wafts for blocks.
Three people, apparently local residents, walk down the sidewalk. One yells to the partyers at the club across the street, "Nice shirt, Yuppie!"
Latino gang members cruise the streets, while across-the-bridge kids mingle with the working-class immigrants, anarchists, artists, activists and bike messengers who make the Mission their home.
Finally, it's 2 a.m. Closing time. Hundreds of partyers hit the streets. A call comes in. Another fight.
The officers find a young Latino man on the corner. His English is limited, but he explains that he and his buddy got jumped by a group of men in the store.
When the officers arrive, they find the man on the corner, slumped against a light pole. He doesn't speak much English, either. His face is bruised, and blood is running down his arm and from cuts on his knuckles.
The officers call for an ambulance. As they try to question the men about what happened, two women walk past, stop and saunter back to where the action is.
"Hey!" one shouts at the officers. "Why don't you leave him alone? Go on up to 24th Street in Noe Valley and hassle those white people for a change!"
But she and her friend walk across the street and continue with a barrage of "white people," "bad cops" and "go back to your own neighborhood -- this is where I live."
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Welcome to Mexico
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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Texas: Immigrant Drowns After Border Agent Is Attacked
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 28, 2007
National Briefing | Southwest
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/us/28brfs-IMMIGRANTDRO_BRF.html?pagewanted=print
An illegal immigrant drowned in a border canal after a Border Patrol agent trying to rescue him was hit in the head with a rock thrown by a suspected human smuggler, Border Patrol officials said. The agent fired at least one shot at the suspect and another would-be immigrant, who fled back into Mexico, said an agency spokesman, Patrick Berry.
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Open Border Killing American Society
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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Israeli Settlements Found to Grow Past Boundaries
July 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.html?pagewanted=print
JERUSALEM, July 6 — Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank use only 12 percent of the land allocated to them, but one-third of the territory they do use lies outside of their official jurisdictions, according to a new report released on Friday by Peace Now, an advocacy group.
According to the report, based on official data released by the Israeli government after a court order, 90 percent of the settlements sprawl beyond their official boundaries despite the large amount of unused land already allocated to them.
More than 10 percent of the land included within the official jurisdiction of the settlements is owned privately by Palestinians, as is 70 percent of the land the settlements control outside of their official boundaries, said the report, whose findings were published in Haaretz newspaper on Friday. Peace Now opposes the settlements and tracks them.
...once an area is closed to Palestinians, settlers have seized adjacent Palestinian lands, often privately owned, without being stopped by the Israeli Army, which is the legal sovereign in the occupied territories.
“There is a pattern of a failure to enforce the law on the settlers,” Mr. Etkes said. “But the lack of enforcement isn’t an accident. It became another tool to achieve the military goals of the occupation, which is to allocate the land and hold it.”
There are about 122 official Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, as part of a future state. Much of the world regards all Israeli settlement in the West Bank as illegal under international law...
In the fighting, Imad Ghanem, a cameraman from Hamas’s television station, Al Aksa, was wounded, and then shot at least twice in the legs as he lay sprawled on the ground. His legs were amputated in the hospital. He was listed in critical condition.
The International Federation of Journalists on Friday condemned the shooting. “This is a vicious and brutal example of deliberate targeting of a journalist,” said Aidan White, the group’s general secretary. “The Israeli authorities must investigate this case and bring to justice those responsible.”
Major Leibovich said no investigation had been ordered.
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"Israel" Thievery of Arab Lands continues from 1948 to Present
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., July , 2007
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