unusualmusic_lj_archive

A three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Mary Schroeder, William Canby and Michael Hawkins, has firmly rejected the vile cover up attempted against several detainees/former detainees led by Binyam Mohamed. The full decision is here.
I would like to note two things quickly; first off this is a wonderful panel (they are all from Arizona and I have known all of them) and I really expected no less from them. Secondly, it appears from a skimming of the decision that they did not dismiss the ability of the government to assert state secrets, rather indicated the time was not ripe for it. Do not be mistaken, however, this is a big blow to the government and a win for the rule of law.

The first sign that the Obama DOJ would replicate many of the worst and most radical arguments of the Bush DOJ was in the Jeppesen case, a lawsuit brought by five victims of the CIA's rendition and torture program (including Binyam Mohamed). The Bush administration had argued that the entire "subject matter" raised by the lawsuit (the rendition program) was such a gravely important "state secret" that the court could not consider any lawsuit relating to that issue. That argument was a by-product of one of the Bush DOJ's most controversial actions: its radical expansion of the "state secrets" doctrine. Whereas that privilege was once an evidentiary privilege enabling the Government to declare specific documents too secret to use in litigation, the Bush DOJ converted it into an all-purpose shield allowing them to have entire lawsuits dismissed even where the lawsuit alleged that the President's conduct was illegal.
The District Court in Jeppesen had accepted the Bush DOJ's argument and dismissed the lawsuit, and on appeal in February, the Obama DOJ -- to the obvious surprise of the judges and in a reversal of everything Democrats claimed they believed during the Bush presidency -- told the Ninth Circuit panel that they embrace the Bush DOJ "state secrets" position in full (a position they've since repeated in other cases).
Today, in a 26-page ruling (.pdf), the appellate court resoundingly rejected the Bush/Obama position, holding that the "state secrets" privilege -- except in extremely rare circumstances not applicable here -- does not entitle the Government to demand dismissal of an entire lawsuit based on the assertion that the "subject matter" of the lawsuit is a state secret. Instead, the privilege only allows the Government to make specific claims of secrecy with regard to specific documents and other facts -- exactly how the privilege was virtually always used before the Bush and Obama DOJs sought to expand it into a vast weapon of immunity from all lawsuits challenging the legality of any executive branch program relating to national security.MORE

As expected the Vermont state Senate easily exceeded the required 2/3rds requirement for a veto override, voting 23 to 5 shortly after 10 a.m. this morning. This vote reflected the earlier 26-4 vote in favour of the measure in the Senate. (One Senate Republican – Bill Doyle - who had voted for the bill switched to support the Governor’s veto – presumably in solidarity with his governor, while 2 of the bills supporters were not able to be there for the vote, including Ed Flanagan, the only openly gay member of the Senate, and Phil Scott, one of the Republican supporters.)

The real drama was in the House of Representatives which just after 11 a.m. (eastern) voted 100 to 49 to override, barely exceeding the required 2/3rds.

The House vote was in question up to the last minute, following last week’s 95-52 vote in favour of the bill – short of the 2/3rd s margin. The final margin came when 3 of Democratic representatives who had voted against the bill the first time around sided with the majority and supported the override, while another Democratic opponent was absent

The override action happened quickly – after the House gave initial approval last Thursday and final approval on Friday, the Senate met in special session on Monday afternoon to approve changes that the House had made. The Governor vetoed immediately after final passage on Monday. The Senate and House both took up the override on Tuesday morning.MORE

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"The court reaffirmed that a statute inconsistent with the Iowa constitution must be declared void even though it may be supported by strong and deep-seated traditional beliefs and popular opinion," said a summary of the ruling issued by the court.

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The state Supreme Court's ruling upheld an August 2007 decision by Polk County District Court Judge Robert Hanson, who found that a state law allowing marriage only between a man and a woman violates the constitutional rights of equal protection.

Thomas Clarke, who has been CEO of financial news website The Street has announced his departure “effective immediately.”

Clarke’s abrupt departure comes less than a day after The Daily Show aired tape of The Street’s co-founder, Jim Cramer, explaining in a Street.com webcast how he, as a hedge fund manager, manipulated value to serve some publicly traded companies and investors at the expense of others.

If you have just crawled out from under a rock, Cramer was a guest on Jon Stewart’s show last night, and the general consensus is Stewart took Cramer, CNBC, and financial “journalism,” in general, to the cleaners.

Or, maybe you haven’t just crawled out from under a rock—maybe you have only been getting your news from MSNBC. The 24-hour news channel—and CNBC partner—was reportedly told by its corporate bosses that this was, you know, not of interest to its viewers:

A TVNewser tipster tells us MSNBC producers were asked not to incorporate the Jim Cramer/Jon Stewart interview into their shows today. In fact, the only time it came up on MSNBC was during the White House briefing, when a member of the press corps asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs if Pres. Obama watched. Gibbs wasn't sure if the president had, but Gibbs did. "I enjoyed it thoroughly," the Press Secretary said.

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Now we are in a new era with a new President and it looks like he is open to taking our governments mindset out of the 90s and bring them into the new millennium when it comes to software choices:

The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products.
The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration.
"It's intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software," he said.
"Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money."

You can hear lobbyists from companies like Microsoft flocking on D.C. already to try and stop this. Hopefully they fail, because open source software is the way to go. Supporting a growing industry like this is something synonymous with economic stimulus. Small start up companies that specialize in different open source applications could see themselves grow by receiving support and development requests from the U.S. government.MORE

In a symbolic and unprecedented move, President Obama today announced that he would be freezing the pay of White House employees who make over $100k a year.

CBS13:

President Barack Obama announced on his first day in office Wednesday that he is freezing the pay of the about a hundred White House employees who make over $100,000 a year.
The freeze would hold salaries at their current levels. It is part of a presidential memorandum being issued Wednesday when Obama attends a swearing-in for staff at the White House.

In a statement, Obama said "families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington."

Aides making above $100,00 include the high-profile jobs of White House chief of staff, national security adviser and press secretary. Other aides who work in relative anonymity also fit into that cap, if Obama follows a structure similar to the one George W. Bush set up.

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karnythia

WASHINGTON (AP) — One of President Barack Obama's first acts is to order federal agencies to halt all pending regulations until his administration can review them.

The order went out Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Obama was inaugurated president, in a memorandum signed by new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. The notice of the action was contained in the first press release sent out by Obama's White House, and it came from deputy press secretary Bill Burton.

cofax7

I'm going to be totally geeky and point to a really understated but telling change in how the government operates, as an example of how different things could be after 20 January 2009.

The way search engines operate, they go into your website directories and index information in advance, so they know what to provide when people type in queries. If you don't want the information on your website indexed, you use a robots.txt file to tell the search engine not to index your stuff. (Like the way I have robots blocked on my LJ so it isn't indexed.)

The Bush Administration had a robots.txt file that was 2400 lines long, and it forbade search engines from making it easy for people to find information on the Whitehouse website relating to such things as earmarks, 9/11, or the Office of Management and Budget.

The new Obama Administration robots.txt file is two lines long, and allows everything to be indexed.MORE