Bmaz is a rather large saguaro cactus in the Southwestern Sonoran desert. A lover of the Constitution, law, family, sports, food and spirits. As you might imagine, a bit prickly occasionally. Bmaz has attended all three state universities in Arizona, with both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Arizona State University, and with significant post-graduate work (in physics and organic chemistry, go figure) at both the University of Colorado in Boulder and the University of Arizona. Married, with both a lovely child and a giant Sasquatch dog. Bmaz has been a participant on the internet since the early 2000’s, including active participation in the precursor to Emptywheel, The Next Hurrah. Formally joined the Emptywheel blog as an original contributing member at its founding in 2007. Bmaz grew up around politics, education, sports and, most significantly, cars; notably around Formula One racing and Concours de Elegance automobile restoration and showing. Currently lives in the Cactus Patch with his lovely wife and beast of a dog, and practices both criminal and civil trial law.
At Mastodon: @[email protected]
Both Connecticut’s Chris Dodd and North Dakota’s Kent Conrad steadfastly deny any knowledge or fact of preferential treatment in their real estate loans from Countrywide Mortgage, but the fact the story keeps hanging around is disquieting. And apparently it has been doing quite a bit more than hanging around, there have been hearings and testimony.
John Yoo is a cancer on the Constitutional body politic of the United States, and he won’t go away. For some inexplicable reason, Carrie Johnson, and her editors at the Washington Post, have decided to fluff the one man self rationalization and obfuscation tour Yoo has been on as of late:
New filings by the ACLU. Dissect and discuss.Here andHere.
Every day there is a new reminder that the only thing thing that changed on Wall Street as a result of the financial meltdown is that the “too big to fail” entities got bigger through consolidation and they now have all of the taxpayer’s wealth instead of just most of it. Here is today’s installment of hyper-greed.
President Obama, with his response to a question about the Henry Gates arrest taken at Wednesday night’s prime time healthcare press conference, set the nation off on a discussion of race and law. Unfortunately, the discussion has cleaved and both sides fell into regrettable, and sadly predictable roles. We are missing the important lessons the moment should be teaching us.
At tonight’s nationally televised press conference, a reporter asked President Obama a question about the July 16 arrest of famed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Obama set off a firestorm by defending Gates; but despite the righteous words, Obama may have hurt Gates with his words.
There is a new case causing a stir on the state secrets front today. The case is Horn v. Huddle et. al, is filed in the DC District, and has been quietly going on behind the scenes since 1994. From Del Wilber at the Washington Post:A federal judge has ruled that government officials committed fraud while defending a lawsuit brought by a former DEA agent who accused a CIA operative
There are inherent First Amendment and equal protection issues with any “hate crime” legislation as I pointed out when Eric Holder started aggressively pushing Congress. That said, if you are going to enact such laws, they must be targeted, rational and designed to effect the result desired and not any other. The Senate just violated that with their Hate Crimes Bill passed last night.
What the hell, somebody had to write a post with this title, why not me? And fear not fearless readers, I intend to deliver on all elements promised.
I just found an interesting article by Walter Pincus tucked away in the lower half of the website. It contains no new or breaking news, but is an interesting description of just how far the government has run amok in their over-classification and demand to control information flow to the American people and the world.