Stephen Lendman

"Waging war, making billions, selling out workers, ill governing, dunking basketballs or hitting home runs hardly qualify, unlike a lifetime commitment to democratic values, universal equity and social justice."

After the annual Thanksgiving Day turkey "pardoning" travesty, Obama granted nine executive pardons, a December 3 White House press release announcing them by name, date of sentencing, and offense committed.

They date from Russell James Dixon's June 23, 1960 two years probation for a felony liquor law violation to Scoey Lathaniel Morris' May 21, 1999 three years probation and $1,200 restitution for passing counterfeit obligations or securities.

The others were for:

● minor illicit drug related charges;
● illegal possession of government property;
● conspiracy to defraud the US by making false statements to the FDA;
● mutilation of coins;
● adultery; and
● passing bad checks.

Besides one bad conduct military discharge/24 months confinement sentence, another imprisonment for one year/one day, and one 30 day jailing, the others involved probation (five years maximum), and/or fines. All were minor offenses, hardly warranting pardons, especially compared to what demands executive exoneration and restitution but never comes.

They involve gross criminal injustice, falsely imprisoning innocent people, some for murders they didn't commit, hundreds of others for political advantage, and two or more times involving human rights lawyers for defending unpopular clients too vigorously. Prominent examples are listed below.

More »

Joseph Kishore
WSWS

As part of efforts to block the release of documents obtained by WikiLeaks, there is an escalating campaign, led by the US government, to bring down the organization’s web site. This effort is taking place in parallel with an international dragnet targeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Late on Thursday US time, the domain name hosting service for WikiLeaks, EveryDNS.net, announced that it had cut off WikiLeaks for violating its terms of service. The DNS host links a domain name (e.g., wikileaks.org) to a specific computer server address that holds the content of a web site.

As a consequence of the action of EveryDNS, wikileaks.org no longer directs to WikiLeaks’ servers. The site was functionally inaccessible for about 6 hours, before being reopened on Friday at several other domain names: wikileaks.ch, wikileaks.de, wikileaks.fi, and wikileaks.nl. There were reports Friday that EveryDNS also serviced wikileaks.ch and had blocked that address as well.

To justify its action, EveryDNS claimed that the WikiLeaks web site posed a danger to all the domain names served by the company as a result of persistent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the site. Since a few days before the recent release of US State Department cables, WikiLeaks has been subject to an escalating Internet-based attack involving massive and continual requests for data aimed at overloading the organization’s servers.

The stated reasons given by EveryDNS for its actions, however, cannot be taken at face value, and it is very possible that commercial or political pressure was brought to bear. EveryDNS was purchased earlier this year by Dyn Inc., which also owns DynDNS. The buyout is part of the consolidation of the free DNS market, which poses significant dangers for the freedom of the Internet.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)

The Constitution's Article I, Section 5, clause 2 authorizes the House of Representatives to discipline or "punish" its members for "disorderly Behavior," as well as for criminal, civil liability, or other misconduct issues. Ostensibly it's to protect the institutional integrity and reputation of the body, an impossible challenge given its longstanding record, notably over the past three decades, deserving far more than censure.

Punishment may be by reprimand, censure, expulsion, and/or fines, monetary restitution, loss of seniority, and suspension or loss of certain privileges. In addition, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct may issue a formal Committee reproach by "Letter of Reproval" for misconduct not warranting full House action. It may also express disapproval by informal letters and/or direct communications with members.

In US history, five members were expelled, three during the Civil War for disloyalty to the Union. Others, however, resigned ahead of formal House action. More recently, on October 2, 1980, Rep. Michael J. Myers was removed after being convicted of bribery for political favors in the so-called ABSCAM FBI sting operation. On July 24, 2002, Rep. James Traficant, Jr. was also expelled after his 10-count conviction on charges of accepting favors, gifts and money in return for performing official beneficial acts for donors.

Unlike "expel," the term "censure" doesn't appear in the Constitution, although it's also authorized under Article I, Section 5, clause 2 power to "punish...Members for disorderly Behavior." Most actions occurred in the 19th century, usually over issues of decorum, including insulting other members on the floor, committing violent acts against them, supporting recognition of the Confederacy, selling military academy appointments, or more recently for financial misconduct or sexual misbehavior with House pages.

On July 11, 1832, Rep. William Stanberry was the first member censured for insulting the House Speaker. Prior to December 2, 2010, Reps. Daniel Crane and Gerry Studds were both censured on July 20, 1983 for sexual misconduct with House pages.

More »

Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

Alan Dershowitz, the American Zionist fanatic, is notorious for his brashly racist views about just anything non-Jewish. For example, he is against Muslim immigrants to Europe because their dietary habits don't suite his taste. He wholeheartedly supports the rampant terror, criminality and vandalism perpetrated by Judeo-Nazi thugs in the West Bank, otherwise known as Jewish settlers, against helpless Palestinian farmers and peasants.

Dershowitz is also fully supportive of Israel's criminal and murderous policies, and practices including raining White phosphorous on Gaza children and dropping 2-3 million cluster bomblets on Lebanon during Israel's evil aggression against that small country in 2006.

Dershowitz, like other Zionist supremacists, is against Nazi-like practices but only if done by non-Jews. However, when such practices are done by Jews, e.g. Israel, he employs all his intellectual energy to defend the criminals.

In recent years, an obviously mentally-disturbed Dershowitz has threatened to sue anyone criticizing Israel's manifestly criminal and Nazi-like Behavior such as murdering, knowingly and deliberately, innocent Palestinian civilians, e.g. entire families.

More »