What This Judge Did, Happens Every Day...

DeviantArt w/ added Star

Heather Callaghan

Ooops, sorry if I offended anyone ... is basically the response Judge Amy Salerno of Franklin County, Ohio gave after getting called out for scolding the jury for their verdict. She then went further by threatening them that she would keep having a trial until the right verdict came in.

She is a rare one that got pulled out into the limelight. But judges everywhere use the jury as their personal Magic 8 ball, shaking it till they get the response they want - a response which almost always is one that throws the defendant in prison. [Turn volume up.]



Why even have a jury at all anymore...

Challenging US Lawlessness

Reuters Image

Stephen Lendman

It's vital today more than ever. America's a rogue terror state. It's ruthlessly out-of-control. It spurns rule of law principles. It mocks democratic rights. It honors its worst. It persecutes its best.

It acts unconscionably. It threatens freedom. It menaces world peace. It endangers humanity. It's guilty of worldwide espionage on a massive, unprecedented scale.

Edward Snowden revealed it. Everyone needs to know. He did it heroically. He accepted great risks. He acted responsibly. He did so because it matters. He's a role model for others. Hopefully he'll embolden others to come forward.

Political Washington vilified him. He's excoriated for doing the right thing. Media scoundrels piled on. They're unprincipled. They're vicious. They're unrelenting. They front for power. They support America's worst crimes. They mock legitimate journalism doing so.

Snowden has millions of world supporters. Important nations respect him. His legitimate rights matter. Russia, China, Ecuador, Venezuela, and other countries stand tall.

Ron and Rand Paul Were Never Going to Save Us

Editor's Note: We love the message of peace and liberty and respect Ron Paul for educating the masses, but we'd be naive to think the Pauls are exempt from an utterly corrupt political system.

Anthony Freda Art

Paul Adams, J.D.
Activist Post

Many people believe that Ron and Rand Paul are the only hope to save the United States from becoming a totalitarian fascist police state. After all, for decades only congressman Ron Paul exposed the crimes and consequences of the private Federal Reserve, fractional reserve banking, fraudulent war on drugs, wars and coups of aggression, the growth of government and dependency on it. 

Many Ron Paul supporters believed that Ron’s son, Rand Paul, would promote the same polices as his father after being elected to the U.S. Senate. Yes, Ron and Rand appeared to be the last Jedis of freedom, battling and exposing the empire of bankster monopoly occultists. 

Let us now examine whether Ron and Rand Paul can be trusted to save us and how effective their efforts have been.

DHS Emails: Insiders worried over political 'meddling'

FOI logo/Wikimedia Commons

Ted Bridis
AP News

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Homeland Security Department official in charge of submitting sensitive government files to political advisers for secretive reviews before they could be released to citizens, journalists and watchdog groups complained in emails that the unusual scrutiny was "crazy" and hoped someone outside the Obama administration would discover the practice, The Associated Press has learned.

Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan, who was appointed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, complained in late 2009 that the vetting process was burdensome and said she wanted to change it, according to uncensored emails newly obtained by the AP. In the emails, she warned that the Homeland Security Department might be sued over delays the political reviews were causing, and she hinted that a reporter might find out about the vetting. The reviews are the subject of a congressional hearing later this week and an ongoing inquiry by the department's inspector general.

"This level of attention is CRAZY," Callahan wrote in December 2009 to her then-deputy, Catherine Papoi. Callahan said she hoped someone outside the Obama administration would discover details of the political reviews, possibly by asking for evidence of them under the Freedom of Information Act itself: "I really really want someone to FOIA this whole damn process," Callahan wrote.

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During Food Safety Vote: Hot mic catches senator saying agenda is "all rigged"

Chris Moody
The Daily Caller

A hot mic left on during a Senate vote Tuesday morning on the Food Safety Act caught a senator complaining that process of setting the agenda during the lame-duck session is “rigged.”

“It’s all rigged. The whole conversation is rigged,” said Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet. “The fact that we don’t get to a discussion before the break about what we’re going to do in the lame duck. It’s just rigged.”

The remark was picked up live on C-SPAN 2, although microphones are usually turned down during voting times. An aide quickly realized the mistake, jumped up and had the sound cut off.

Bennet Chief of Staff Guy Cecil stood by the senator’s comments.

“It’s something he’s been talking about from day one,” Cecil told The Daily Caller in an interview outside the Senate chamber. “The whole process being rigged against having a real conversation about tax cuts, the estate tax and the defense authorization. We’re not having a lot of those conversations. It’s just a symptom of Washington being broken.”

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A Majority Of Americans Believe The US Government No Longer Operates Within The Constitution

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge

A rather indicative poll released by Rasmussen earlier this week finds that a majority of Americans (44%) now believe that the government operates outside the confines of the Constitution, compared to just 39% who believe government does not take liberties with the precepts laid out by the founding fathers (and 17% were busy watching dancing with the stars to have an opinion either way). Some other unflattering findings on US democracy: "Earlier surveys have shown that just one-in-five voters believe that the government today has the consent of the governed. Forty-eight percent (48%) see the government as a threat to individual rights. According to the Declaration of Independence, governments are formed to protect certain inalienable rights." Not surprisingly, politicians are shown to not only be usurping and incompetent despots but biased as well: "As is often the case, there’s a wide gap between the perceptions of the Political Class and those of Mainstream voters when it comes to the federal government. Eighty-three percent (83%) of Political Class voters say the government now operates within constitutional limits, but 62% of those in the Mainstream don’t share that view." Most worryingly, "nearly two-out-of-three voters (65%) are at least somewhat angry at the current policies of the federal government, including 40% who are Very Angry." That's 65% with not even a whiff of austerity on the horizon...

While we uge readers to read the full survey for all queries, the following financial-related disclosure is important as it shows that the path the government is on will continue to make the vast majority of the American population increasingly angrier.

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Health Insurance Profits Soar, Dem Calls For Rebates

Ryan Grim
Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- Health insurance profits are skyrocketing in 2010 compared to last year's returns and the outgoing chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the companies is calling on them to return the profits to consumers in the form of premium reductions.

"Your ten firms alone have reported over $9.3 billion in profits for the first three quarters of 2010," writes Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), chairman of the Ways and Means health subcommittee -- and, for a day, chairman of the full committee. "On average, your profits have gone up 41 percent from last year."

Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the leading health insurance trade lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, said that Democrats shouldn't focus on the companies' profits, but rather the overall cost of health care.

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When Corporations are the Government

Ralph Nader
CounterPunch

It was Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, who in 1992 created the election slogan: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” For the 2010 Congressional campaigns, the slogan should have been: “It’s Corporate Crime and Control, Stupid.”

But notwithstanding the latest corporate crime wave, the devastating fallout on workers, investors and taxpayers from the greed and corruption of Wall Street, and the abandonment of American workers by U.S. corporations in favor of repressive regimes abroad, the Democrats have failed to focus voter anger on the corporate supremacists.


The giant corporate control of our country is so vast that people who call themselves anything politically—liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, independents or anarchist—should be banding together against the reckless Big Business steamroller.

Conservatives need to remember the sharply critical cautions against misbehaving or over-reaching businesses and commercialism by Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek and other famous conservative intellectuals. All knew that the commercial instinct and drive know few boundaries to the relentless stomping or destruction of the basic civic values for any civilized society.

When eighty percent of the Americans polled believe ‘America is in decline,’ they are reflecting in part the decline of real household income and the shattered bargaining power of American workers up against global companies.

The U.S. won World War II. Germany lost and was devastated. Yet note this remarkable headline in the October 27th Washington Post: “A Bargain for BMW means jobs for 1,000 in S. Carolina: Workers line up for $15 an hour—half of what German counterparts make.”

The German plant is backed by South Carolina taxpayer subsidies and is not unionized. Newly hired workers at General Motors and Chrysler, recently bailed out by taxpayers, are paid $14 an hour before deductions. The auto companies used to be in the upper tier of high paying manufacturing jobs. Now the U.S. is a low-wage country compared to some countries in Western Europe and the trend here is continuing downward.

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7 Mega-Cartels That Kill Free Markets and Our Sovereignty
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