NewsTrust - Crime - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

A vital (and unlearned) lesson from Julius Caesar

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - May. 08 (Opinion) - Julius Caesar then stood and noted that Roman law forbids the execution of Roman citizens even for heinous crimes, and that executing the conspirators would thus require the creation of a radical and dangerous precedent: dangerous because to vest the power in the State to kill its own citizens, even if justified in the specific case where it is first done, would be to vest the power generally and thus ensure its inevitable abuse. Thus, even as Caesar professed his boundless contempt for the traitors (“I consider no tortures sufficient for the crimes of these men”), he vehemently argued against allowing passions to lead the Senate to embrace punishments “foreign to the customs of our country” — not primarily on moral grounds but on pragmatic ones:

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Jon Stewart Rips Murdoch's Leveson Inquiry Hearings On "The Daily Show" (VIDEO)

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - Apr. 27 (Comedy News) - News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has been testifying before the Leveson Inquiry this week to determine whether he used his media entities to illegally influence the British government. Aside from admitting that he "failed" in handling the News of the World properly, Murdoch seems apt to deny all accountability in regards to the scandal, so on Thursday night's "Daily Show" Jon Stewart took a moment to put him in his place.

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Why Isn't the Gun Nut Lobby Saying Trayvon Martin Should Have Been Armed?

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Markos Moulitsas - Mar. 24 (Opinion) - Think about it. Every other situation in which an innocent person gets gunned down there is a cacophony of gun nuts screeching that if only this person had been armed he could have defended himself. It's been the basis of every concealed and open carry argument for the last couple of decades.

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Jon Stewart Slams Liz Trotta's Views On Sexual Assault On Women In Military (VIDEO)

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Katia McGlynn, Jon Stewart - Feb. 15 (Comedy News) - Fox News contributor Liz Trotta made headlines Sunday when she reacted to a 64% rise in violent sexual assaults in the miltary by saying "What did they expect? These people are in close contact," among other controversial remarks.

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Teachers Behaving Badly - KDVR

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

kdvr.com - By No Byline - Feb. 10 (Editorial) - Slideshow of teachers who have been arrested.

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An Open Letter to Wall Street

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By William Rivers Pitt - Oct. 04 (Editorial) - ...Really, why don't they just go home? Don't these people have jobs? I hate to be the Irony Police, but that's pretty much the whole point. They can't, and they don't. Have homes and jobs, I mean.

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Michael Moore Backs Call to Re-Open Investigation of 9/11 Attacks

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Michael Moore - Sep. 29 (Interview) - Moore is backing former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham’s call for President Obama to reopen the investigation into 9/11 after new information emerged about the possible role of prominent Saudis. According to recent news reports, a wealthy young Saudi couple fled their home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, just a week or so before Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind three cars and nearly all of their possessions. "There are many unanswered questions and they should be answered," Moore says.

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Racial Dilution of Voting Records

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Black Box Voting - By Bev Harris - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - In Shelby County, precincts are racially polarized; some are mostly Black, some almost all White, and some are "in play", meaning they are mixed enough that it's anybody's guess which party will win. If votes were simply flipped so that Republicans got the Democratic votes and vice versa, it would be immediately seen in a county with known racially-related political preferences and concentrated ethnic populations. If you wanted to flip the counts, you’d need to either (1) dilute the reported racial demographic or (2) create a precinct-specific vote flipping method, or both. Both of these factors exist in Shelby County.

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Homeland Security Texas Homeland Security Strategic Plan - 2010-2015

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

State of Texas - By Rick Perry - Sep. 28 (Statement) - Local and state reinforcement of federal forces has proven to be an extremely effective means of helping fill the capability shortfalls created by severe manpower shortages in key federal agencies like the U.S. Border Patrol. Since 2005, Texas has dedicated over $200 million in federal grants and state funding to help fill the critical gaps, and is committed to providing further support to ensure adequate forces are available to patrol and secure the Texas-Mexico border.

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"Granito: How to Nail a Dictator": New Film Tracks Struggle for Justice After Guatemalan Genocide

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman - Sep. 15 (Review) - A new documentary links Guatemala’s turbulent past with those who are active players in its present.

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Ex-Bush Official Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: "I am Willing to Testify" If Dick Cheney is Put on Trial

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 30 (Interview) - s former Vice President Dick Cheney publishes his long-awaited memoir, we speak to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "This is a book written out of fear, fear that one day someone will 'Pinochet' Dick Cheney," says Wilkerson, alluding to the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested for war crimes. Wilkerson also calls for George W. Bush and Cheney to be held accountable for their crimes in office. "I’d be willing to testify, and I’d be willing to take any punishment I’m due," Wilkerson said.

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Dominique Strauss-Kahn: Will Media Learn Anything?

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mediactive - By Dan Gillmor - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - In the days ahead — and especially after New York prosecutors drop their increasingly pathetic case against former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, as they surely will — you’ll see some media coverage of journalism’s role in this debacle. There will be a few notes about how everyone rushed to judgment. But almost no one will be asking more basic questions about the way journalists go about their business in criminal cases. You will see little or no self-reflection about the way reporters work in concert with law enforcement in almost all such cases, in ways that are designed by the police and prosecutors to stack the deck against the accused. It starts with the “perp walk” — the parading of the accused before cameras. Try this thought experiment. Imagine you’ve been arrested, and have spent a night in a filthy jail cell, getting maybe an hour of sleep in the clothes you were wearing the day before. Or, perhaps, you’ve been told to put on an orange jump suit that prisoners wear. Either way, now you’re shackled and frog-walked into a van that takes you to the courthouse. Then you’re manhandled out of the van and are frog-walked through a gauntlet of cameras and shouting reporters. How do you imagine you’d look, whether or not you were innocent? You’d look guilty as hell, because the perp walk is designed to make you look guilty. (For more on perp walks, see this piece from the Poynter Institute’s Al Tompkins.)

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Lessons of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Bernard-Henri Lévy - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - The Strauss-Kahn affair is not over. For it to be over, the American system of justice must pursue its investigation and work to the very end. If it’s truly to be over, Dominique Strauss-Kahn must be granted not only his freedom, but—even more importantly—restoration of his honor. In other words, “the Strauss-Kahn affair” will continue to be regarded as such as long as it hasn’t been clearly established that there never was any affair at all—and that the plaintiff, not content to have lied about this or that aspect of her past, also lied in accusing the former head of the IMF of having raped her. And yet, given recent revelations, we can already draw a few lessons from what will ultimately—no doubt very soon—be known as the Strauss-Kahn non-affair.

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Guess How Much More Wall St. Spends on Bonuses Than on Penalties for Torpedoing the Economy? | | AlterNet

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Nomi Prins - Jun. 29 (Opinion) - Are you enraged about JPM Chase’s puny $156.3 million fine? The fine was part of an SEC settlement in which the firm "neither admits nor denies" any wrong-doing. Translation: Stuffing assets with carefully selected crap is not wrong. Creating the crap loans to begin with:

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Eve Ensler Responds to Sexual Assault Charges Filed Against Former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Eve Ensler. Amy Goodman - Jun. 07 (Interview) - On Monday Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting a housekeeper, a Muslim African woman, working at his New York City hotel. "I think what's amazing is that a woman has come forward to prosecute and that a female judge held it, and I think that is where the world has changed," says our guest, V-Day founder Eve Ensler.

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Too Big to Jail

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Danny Schechter - May. 25 (Opinion) - 'The truth is that most of the bigger banks have emerged from the financial crisis stronger than ever, with executives cashing in with higher salaries and bigger bonuses. That old saying about criminals who 'laughed all the way to the bank' has to be revised because in this case they never left the bank.' Danny Schechter, Reader Supported News

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The Fight over Coal Mining is a “Fight About Democracy”: New Documentary with Robert Kennedy, Jr. Chronicles Campaign to Halt Mountaintop Removal

Mon, 23 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Amy Goodman - May. 23 (Interview) - We speak with environmental activist Robert Kennedy, Jr., and filmmaker Bill Haney about the new documentary, _The Last Mountain_, which premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival. The film chronicles the fight against coal mining across Appalachia and Massey Energy’s devastating practice of mountaintop removal to extract layers of coal. "They have to break the law to do this. They cannot survive in the marketplace without violating the law. They violate labor laws. They violate health and safety laws. And by their own records, they've had some 67,000 violations of just one of the environmental statutes," says Kennedy of the coal giant that has tremendous political influence at the state and federal level. “It’s not just about the environmental destruction, it’s also about subverting democracy.” [includes rush transcript]

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Operation Rescue seeks to expose the ‘abuses of the abortion-cartel’

Thu, 19 May 2011 17:28:40 -0700

Washington Independent - By Ashley Lopez - May. 19 - Last week, radical anti-abortion right’s group Operation Rescue told Life News that the Texas Medical Board has continued to investigate the group’s claims that women’s health clinics providing abortions in Texas 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Jon Stewart Compares Head Of IMF's Sex Scandal To Bin Laden Porn Story (VIDEO)

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - May. 17 (Comedy News) - "You know you're in bad shape when your sex scandal comes out the same weekend as Osama bin laden's, and you're the one that looks like an a**hole," Stewart said.

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Billionaire Babies

Sat, 14 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Real Clear Politics - By Susan Estrich - May. 14 (Opinion) - I dislike insider trading, not so much because it's unfair (it's also unfair that so many people are so much better than me at investing) but because it undermines confidence in the markets, and our economy depends on that confidence.

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My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death

Sat, 07 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Noam Chomsky - May. 07 (Opinion) - 'We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's, and he is not a 'suspect' but uncontroversially the 'decider' who gave the orders to commit the 'supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole' (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

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SCOTUS Rules Against Consumer Class Action Suits

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Crooks and Liars - By Susie Madrak - Apr. 29 (Opinion) - Oh, great. The wingnut five continues to rubberstamp anything they can to give corporations the edge they need to pound us completely into the ground. We have no right to anything, other than the right to shut up and take it. This decision is a big deal, further undercutting consumer protections: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court gave corporations a major win Wednesday, ruling in a 5-4 decision that companies can block their disgruntled customers from joining together in a class-action lawsuit. The ruling arose from a California lawsuit involving cellphones, but it will have a nationwide impact. In the past, consumers who bought a product or a service had been free to join a class-action lawsuit if they were dissatisfied or felt they had been cheated. By combining these small claims, they could bring a major lawsuit against a corporation. But in Wednesday's decision, the high court said that under the Federal Arbitration Act companies can force these disgruntled customers to arbitrate their ...

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"A Sea in Flames": Ecologist Carl Safina on First Anniversary of Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Blowout

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Carl Safina - Apr. 20 (Interview) - Today marks the one-year anniversary of the worst maritime oil spill in U.S. history. Last year on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by oil giant BP, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and releasing nearly 200 million gallons of oil, tens of millions of gallons of natural gas and 1.8 million gallons of other chemicals. A year later, how much has changed? “[Another spill] could happen again tomorrow. And if it did, the response would be as bad,” says Carl Safina, author of the new book, _A Sea in Flames_. Safina reviews BP, Halliburton and TransOcean’s role in the disaster and reflects on how little the government has done to prepare for another offshore drilling accident. [includes rush transcript]

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Bradley Manning Humiliated and Abused: Why Is Exposing a War Crime More Dangerous Than Committing One?

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Medea Benjamin, Charles Davis - Mar. 08 (Opinion) - Bradley Manning is accused of humiliating the political establishment by revealing the complicity of top U.S. officials in carrying out and covering up war crimes. In return for his act of conscience, the U.S. government is holding him in abusive solitary confinement, humiliating him and trying to keep him behind bars for life. The lesson is clear, and soldiers take note: You're better off committing a war crime than exposing one.

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America Is Not Broke

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Michael Moore - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

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