Yesterday, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa announced a human rights inquiry into crackdowns on protestors. Human rights violations would not be tolerated, he claimed.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa announced the move in a speech at an extraordinary Cabinet meeting Wednesday, saying such violations would not be tolerated, BNA reported.

[snip]

The king said the new five-member commission, which is expected to report its findings by the end of October, would be headed by law professor Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, a United Nations war crimes expert.

“Any person, whether acting on behalf of the government or any other capacity should be aware that we have not given up on our principles and would not tolerate any human rights violations,” the king told the Cabinet, according to BNA.

“Such acts do not help anyone, but hurt everyone.”

King Hamad also issued a royal decree Wednesday ordering that suspected protesters facing military trial be transferred to criminal courts, and opened the door for fresh appeals, BNA reported.

Here’s what is going on today, as chronicled by Angry Arabiya.

Hamad our reply to ur speech… DOWN DOWN HAMAD!!!!! #Bahrain

Out riot police in front of us. We’re walkin towards them

Suffocatin from tear gas…

Every askin for pepsi. Our faces burning

We’re all women here, maybe 20-25, they’re attacking

They beat up a aguy and are taking him, the women shouting “leave our brothers”

Sound bomb just passed by my frnds head!

These are the houses some bahrainis live in! #Bahrainhttp://yfrog.com/kkjn4fwj

Helicopters above us now

Ppl still honking “down down Hamad” #Bahrain

Riot police retreated, covered my mouth with my sheila, walkin again. #Bahrain

Tear gas again….

Wat a great ppl, every1 has their doors open. Every1 welcoming us in2 their homes, trying to protect us.

Running into some of my bravest frnds, havnt seen them since the glorious days of pearl roundabout. #Bahrain

We’re unarmed, shouting slogans. They’re all armed, shooting at us constantly. Waving to us to go closer to them #Bahrain

Sound bomb is direct translation from arabic, some1 tells me they’re called stun grenade in english..

Heading to the street again, boys infront of us. Shouting “down down Hamad” #Bahrain

“Ur prisons are full of innocent souls” #Bahrainhttp://yfrog.com/kes6cqtj

We’re safe. Its time 4 prayer. My brave frnds who r not afraid of the riot police just saw a lizard and freaked out lol #Bahrain

I guess it’s not surprising that a close ally of the US might think dropping tear gas, like freedom bombs, are a good way to support human rights.

DDay and Masaccio and Yves Smith have already covered Bank of America’s offer to pay 2 to 3 cents on the dollar to make good on its securitization misrepresentations. But I wanted to point out one issue of timing.

In her coverage of it, Yves notes the following:

So with all these considerations arguing for fighting a few more rounds, and BofA in the past taking a very aggressive posture on disputing these cases, why would it settle?

The other side has no ability to judge what it might get since it has not gotten access to the loan files (the Clayton reports that everyone makes noise about which found pretty significant violations of representations, did not look at which were significant from a risk of loss perspective. So they may make for great headline, but they aren’t very helpful in this context.

Put it simply: BofA can judge what its risks are VASTLY better than the investors. There are a lot of reasons why it would make sense for BofA not to settle now. Yet it was all over this like a cheap suit. That says it must regard this settlement as a real bargain.

While DDay alluded to this in his post, I wanted to make an explicit reminder. BoA has agreed to this settlement just weeks after Abigail Field did the work the Attorneys General and other regulators should have been doing. And she found that for a sample of NY foreclosures, Countrywide had endorsed none of the notes of Countrywide-generated mortgages.

Last November, a decision in a New Jersey bankruptcy case brought to light the testimony of Linda DeMartini, operational team leader for the litigation management department for Bank of America, which intended to prove the bank had the right to foreclose on a debtor’s mortgage. Instead, her testimony was key to the judge’s ruling that Bank of America (BAC) couldn’t foreclose, and along the way DeMartini made two statements that called into question the securitization of Countrywide loans. She testified that Countrywide didn’t deliver the notes to the securitization trustee, and that Countrywide notes weren’t endorsed except on a case-by-case basis generally long after securitization ostensibly occurred. Both steps are required, in one form or another, under all securitization contracts.

[snip]

To check DeMartini’s testimony, Fortune examined the foreclosures filed in two New York counties (Westchester and the Bronx) between 2006 and 2010. There were 130 cases where the Bank of New York (BK) was foreclosing on behalf of a Countrywide mortgage-backed security. In 104 of those cases, the loan was originally made by Countrywide; the other 26 were made by other banks and sold to Countrywide for securitization.

None of the 104 Countrywide loans were endorsed by Countrywide – they included only the original borrower’s signature. Two-thirds of the loans made by other banks also lacked bank endorsements. The other third were endorsed either directly on the note or on an allonge, or a rider, accompanying the note.

The lack of Countrywide endorsements, combined with the bank’s representation to the court that these documents are accurate copies of the original notes, calls into question the securitization of these loans, as well as Bank of New York’s right, as trustee, to foreclose on them.

Shortly after Field’s report, NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman started an investigation of the problem. And, as Field notes in her article,

And if Countrywide’s mortgage securitizations systematically failed as it appears they did, Bank of America’s potential liability dwarfs its shareholder equity, as the Congressional Oversight Panel points out.

In other words, the proof–which we all knew existed–is finally surfacing that Bank of America could and probably should be wiped out by its liability for Countrywide. The dog and pony show calling this a huge settlement no doubt is designed to convince everyone BoA has found a way to put this problem behind it. And remain in business.

So, yeah, $8.5 billion to remain in business is a bargain.

The lawyer representing the innocent victims of drone strikes in Pakistan just got denied a visa to speak at Columbia Law. (h/t curiouser_georg)

I am a Pakistani lawyer who is suing the CIA for killing innocent civilians through drone strikes in my home country. This month, the US state department prevented me from travelling to the United States to participate in a conference hosted by the human rights programme at Columbia University law school in New York City.

I have been granted US visas before and no reason was given by the state department for refusal on this occasion: despite repeated enquiries, we were merely told there was a “problem” with my application. If seeking justice through the law – instead of violence – is the reason for banning my travel, then mine is another story of how government measures in the name of “national security” have gone too far.

Although I have previously held consultancies with USAID, and helped the FBI investigate a terrorism case involving a Pakistani diplomat, my relationship with the US government changed dramatically in 2010, when I decided to take on the case of Karim Khan. Karim Khan was away from home on New Year’s Eve 2009 when two missiles fired from what we believe was a CIA-operated drone struck his family home in North Waziristan and killed his son, aged 18, and his brother, aged 35. Informed over the phone of their deaths, he rushed back to find his home destroyed and his brother’s family – now a widow and two-year-old son – devastated.

[snip]

To avenge their deaths, Khan could have joined the Taliban insurgency against the United States. Instead, he put his trust in the legal system. In November 2010, we initiated legal notices against the CIA and the US secretary of defence for their wrongful deaths. Since then, more than 35 families from Pakistan have come forward and joined us in our legal proceedings.

So, why would the US government want to prevent me from discussing these cases at Columbia law school?

They’ve done this before–for example, with anti-renditions activist Edward Horgan.

Still, I wish the folks in charge of rule of law programs at DOJ would get in touch with those at DHS to remind them that rank hypocrisy is not a good way to win hearts and minds.

Remember that swipe fee measure that passed the Senate twice? It lowered the amount credit card companies can charge merchants to $.12 a transaction. It was a stunning victory that retailers (which admittedly includes WalMart but also includes your locally owned business struggling to stay in business) won that battle twice.

Well, lucky for the banksters, they had one more ace in their pocket: The Federal Reserve, which just cut the baby in half and set transaction fees at $.21 plus some anti-fraud amounts.

The Federal Reserve is set to limit the fees that banks charge retailers for swiping debit cards to 21 cents, a higher cap than initially proposed.

Banks succeeded in convincing the Fed that its initial proposal of 12 cents was too low after a six-month lobbying blitz. They currently charge an average of 44 cents per swipe.

The Fed will formally adopt the rule Wednesday, which was required under the financial regulatory law enacted last year. The rule takes effect Oct 1, later than expected.

In addition to the 21-cent cap, the rule will also allow banks to charge a fraction more to cover the costs of fraud prevention.

Good thing the Fed is purportedly insulated from politics. Because otherwise that 6 month lobbying campaign would be responsible for the Fed caving where even our craven Congress did not.

I wasn’t entirely fair when I quipped on Twitter that, if Obama asserts that “as a general proposition, companies need to have the freedom to relocate,” then shouldn’t people, too, be able to flout laws–like mortgage contract laws or immigration laws–to assert their “freedom to relocate.” Obama does say that Boeing has to follow the law.

Nevertheless, Obama does seem to suggest that Boeing’s choice to relocate a plant in South Carolina–allegedly in retaliation for past strikes in Washington State–is a good thing, because “jobs are being created here in the United States.”

With that stance in mind, I’m particularly interested in Obama’s assertion that, “the airplane industry is an area where we still have a huge advantage, I want to make sure we keep it.” That’s true–we are competitive in aerospace. And ignoring labor laws is one way to convince corporations to keep (not recreate, but shift from expensive to cheap states) jobs in the US.

There are other ways, of course, like direct incentives and requirements on American made goods. Obama has been better than recent presidents, but has done nothing near what the countries we compete against have done. But there are affirmative ways to make this happy rather than asking workers to forgo their rights in the name of everyone getting along.

I was thinking of this as I read this follow-up post at POGO. An earlier POGO report–based on a liberated IG Report–had detailed how Boeing had massively overcharged the US for helicopter spare parts.

The DoD OIG scrutinized Army Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command (AMCOM) transactions with Boeing that were in support of the Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD) in Texas. The audit focused on 24 “high-dollar” parts. Boeing had won two sole-source contracts (the second was a follow-on contract awarded last year) to provide the Army with logistics support—one of those support functions meant Boeing would help buy and/or make spare parts for the Army—for two weapons systems: the Boeing AH-64 Apache and Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

Overall, for 18 of 24 parts reviewed, the DoD OIG found that the Army should have only paid $10 million instead of the nearly $23 million it paid to Boeing for these parts—overall, taxpayers were overpaying 131.5 percent above “fair and reasonable” prices. The audit says Boeing needs to refund approximately $13 million Boeing overcharged for the 18 parts. Boeing had, as of the issuance of the audit, refunded approximately $1.3 million after the DoD OIG issued the draft version of its report. Boeing also provided a “credit” to the Army for another part for $324,616. The Army has resisted obtaining refunds worth several million dollars on some of the overpriced spare parts, in opposition to the DoD IG’s recommendations. For instance, one of the IG’s recommendations was that the Army should request a $6 million refund from Boeing for charging the Army for higher subcontractor prices even though Boeing negotiated lower prices from those subcontractors. In response, the Army said that “there is no justification to request a refund.”

Note that last bit: the Army is, in some cases, refusing to ask for its (our!) money back.

To which a POGO reader asks,

POGO reader Mike offers his two cents on Boeing’s taxpayer ripoff:

The real question is when will the Army be held accountable? The Army was permitted to ignore billions in DCAA [Defense Contract Audit Agency] findings on contracts with KBR for war related contracts. The Army and DoD in general will continue to permit contractors to rip off the taxpayers because the contractors hold the power. Nothing will change as along as the Army and other services get away with it.

Any guesses whether the Army will be held accountable for its $71.01 straight pins?

Again, I’m not saying I want the government to outsource purchase of straight pins to China. But if we’re going to subsidize strategically chosen corporations in this way–and, potentially, by ignoring our own labor laws–then aren’t there better, more honest ways to subsidize these companies, ones that offer workers more say than just a plaintive “can’t we all get along”?

In Nicholas Shaxson’s book, Treasure Islands, he traces out a network of offshore locations, like Cayman Islands, where corporations and crooks hide their cash. But he also noted that the incorporation laws in various US states allows those same corporations and crooks to hide money right inside the United States.

Reuters has a superb article showing how one house in Wyoming serves just such a function. It focuses on a house at 2710 Thomes Avenue, Cheyenne, Wyoming that serves as the headquarters for 2,000 different corporations, some of them shell corporations, some of the shelf corporations waiting for someone to buy them. Among the corporations shacking up together at 2710 Thomes?

Among those registered at the little house in Cheyenne are two small companies formed through Wyoming Corporate Services that sold knock-off truck parts to the U.S. Department of Defense, according to a Reuters review of two federal contracting databases and findings from an investigation by the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency. The owner of those firms, Atilla Kan, awaits sentencing on a 2007 conviction for wire fraud in a related matter.

Also linked to 2710 Thomes is former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who was once ranked the eighth-most corrupt official in the world by watchdog group Transparency International. He is now serving an eight-year jail term in California for a 2004 conviction on money-laundering and extortion charges. According to court records, that scheme used shell companies and offshore bank accounts to hide stolen Ukrainian government funds.

Court records submitted in Lazarenko’s criminal case and documents from a separate civil lawsuit, as well as interviews with lawyers familiar with the matter, indicate Lazarenko controls a shelf company incorporated in Cheyenne that owns an estimated $72 million in real estate in Ukraine through other companies.

[snip]

Another man linked to 2710 Thomes is Ira N. Rubin. Prosecutors allege he created a Rube Goldberg-style network of shell and shelf corporations to further his scams.

In December 2006, the Federal Trade Commission sued Rubin for fraud in federal court in Tampa. Documents in the civil lawsuit allege Rubin used at least 18 different front companies to obscure his role as a credit-card processor for telemarketing scams.

These operations, the FTC alleged, offered subprime credit cards that charged an upfront fee debited from customers’ bank accounts, but the cards were never delivered.

True, this may not amount to more evil than Dick Cheney. But it shows how critical these secrecy jurisdictions are to making corporations a vehicle of crime and other abuse. And, as Shaxson has shown, secrecy jurisdictions are also a key tool for corporations to avoid paying their fair share and for dictators to loot their countries. These kinds of incorporation services are a key tool to sucking the money out of the legitimate economy.

At a time when SCOTUS is giving corporations–even flimsy entities like the scraps of paper at 2710 Thomes–more rights than actual citizens, it pays to understand how easy it is for people to avail themselves of corporate personhood.

As Josh Gerstein reports, Leonie Brinkema has unsealed her November 2010 ruling quashing the government’s subpoena of James Risen to testify before the grand jury. Gerstain describes several interesting details revealed in the ruling–including that the government withheld information, including details surrounding the 2005 testimony of, apparently, a Senate staffer. Go check out those details.

There are a couple of things I wanted to add to Gerstein’s analysis, though.

First, when the subpoena was first announced, I suggested that it appeared that the government’s inclusion of ticky tack charges like mail fraud seemed like an effort to invent a reason to require Risen’s testimony.

It appears likely they planned to [subpoena Risen again] all along and crafted the charges against Sterling accordingly. For example, they claim they need Risen to testify, in part, to authenticate his book and the locale where alleged leaks took place.

Risen can directly identify Sterling as the individual who illegally transmitted to him national defense information concerning Classified Program No. 1 and Human Asset No. 1. Because he is an eyewitness, his testimony will simplify the trial and clarify matters for the jury. Additionally, as set forth below, Risen can establish venue for certain of the charged counts; can authenticate his book and lay the necessary foundation to admit the defendant’s statements in the book; and can identify the defendant as someone with whom he had a preexisting source relationship that pre-dated the charged disclosures. His testimony therefore will allow for an efficient presentation of the Government’s case.

Locale issues stem from mail fraud charges that appeared ticky tack charges up to this point. But the government is now arguing that that information–as distinct from whether Sterling served as a source for the information at issue–is critical to these ticky tack charges. Which, it seems they hope, would get them beyond any balancing test on whether Risen’s testimony is crucial for the evidence at question.

As it turns out, Brinkema’s opinion makes it clear that the biggest window she left the government to call Risen at trial was authentication.

Although the government might have a plausible argument that such authentication may be necessary at trial, it cannot argue that the government has a compelling interest in authenticating chapter 9 during grand jury proceedings.

But given that she has rejected the government’s venue articles, it appears the mail fraud charges are a cheap attempt to enlarge the possible window of necessity of calling Risen for authentication.

In other words, it appears likely that Welch is just using a gimmick to try to force Risen to testify.

Which brings us to Risen’s claim the government is harassing him. Of note, Brinkema dismisses the claim that a new Attorney General couldn’t harass Risen, because some of the other lawyers on the case might be Bush dead-enders.

The issuance of the 2010 subpoena under a new Attorney General does not remove the specter of harassment, because we do not know how many of the attorneys and government officials who sought Risen’s testimony in 2008 are still in their jobs and to what extent, if any, they advised the new Attorney General about approving the subpoena.

She also notes that requesting all his book proposals supports a harassment charge; I would suggest it does so more so when you consider the possibility they were harassing Risen for the warrantless wiretap story that would also have been in the book proposal. But Brinkema doesn’t consider the way the Obama Administration has made some crazy ass arguments to defend Bush against illegal wiretap charges, which shows Obama’s DOJ is protecting the program itself as fiercely as Cheney did. In addition, she doesn’t consider Welch’s history of being a sloppy, overly aggressive prosecutor (though her disapproval of the broad scope of the Welch subpoena suggests she’d be open to such an argument).

But given my suspicion that a community of interest subpoena in this case might have served as a fishing expedition for the government’s investigation in the warrantless wiretap case, I’m particularly interested in the date the grand jury was convened in this case.

A grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of Virginia began investigating the disclosures about the [MERLIN] operation in

or about March 2006.

That’s not surprising, mind you. But it does date when a grand jury subpoena asking for a community of record might have been issued. And it does suggest that this investigation started at the same time as the government was going apeshit over their exposure on the illegal wiretap front.

Usually, when Max Baucus tries to craft a grand bargain, oversized legislation starts by getting progressively worse, at which point the legislation finally dies.

But he has finally succeeded in getting a grand bargain, with a deal to extend Trade Adjustment Assistance in exchange for votes on the Korea, Colombia, and Panama trade deals.

Baucus said he had secured an agreement with the White House and Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, to renew the expanded version of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). The program, which funds job-training programs and healthcare benefits for workers hurt by trade, will be extended until the end of 2013.

If that doesn’t already make you vomit, then consider the way the Chamber of Commerce’s Tom Donohue is preening over this agreement.

“For members of Congress who care about American jobs, this is a moment of truth,” said Tom Donohue, the Chamber’s president and CEO. “I urge members of both parties to seize a reasonable compromise and move the trade agenda forward. The time to act is now.”

As if the Chamber gives a hoot about jobs–aside from the ones they can move to countries where labor organization is met with murder.

Update: As Dday corrects me, both these lessons in negotiation describe the same confrontation that took place on June 2.

DDay linked to this story describing Henry Waxman confronting President Obama because he had given the Republicans the impression he would cave on debt negotiations.

One Democrat who was there said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) bluntly asked Obama whether he was willing to fight for Democratic priorities amid GOP calls for trillions of dollars in spending cuts.

In asking the question, Waxman said he’d asked several Republicans about their White House meeting the day before and had been concerned by their response.

“To a person, they said the president’s going to cave,” Waxman told Obama, according to his colleague’s account.

“If you’re not going to cave, eliminating that misunderstanding is very, very important to the negotiations,” the lawmaker said, retelling Waxman’s message. “And if you’re going to cave, tell us right now.”

Obama, however, “didn’t answer the question,” the Democrat added. “Obama got in a huff, and he said, ‘I’m the president of the United States, my words carry weight’ — which is not the answer,” the lawmaker said. “That’s not what anyone challenges. It’s whether he is doing this negotiation in the right way.”

It’s not the first time Waxman has voiced Democrats’ frustration with Obama’s serial capitulations to the Republicans.

Earlier this month, they had a nearly identical confrontation in part on precisely the same issue (championing Democratic priorities in negotiations).

The challenge — on behalf of the many Democrats who have long complained that Obama is not making enough use of his White House megaphone — was principally delivered by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), according to the attendees. Waxman, lawmakers said, called for stronger action across the board, rather than on a particular issue.

But Obama responded that he has to be more careful and more considered than that, and that he is executing an existing plan.

The president has heard the complaint before. Democrats have accused Obama repeatedly of ceding too much ground to the GOP, especially on health care and the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. But attendees said the critique appeared to rub him the wrong way on Thursday.

“He was a little testy with the Waxman question. Essentially, Mr. Waxman was urging him to fight more,” one legislator said. “The president reminded folks that he’s the president sitting in that chair and he knows how to negotiate.”

Obama also told the assembled Democrats not to count on more fiery rhetoric from the Oval Office.

“He said, ‘There’s a difference between me and a member of Congress,'” another lawmaker said, paraphrasing the president as saying: “When I say something the markets react, all of society reacts, other countries react. I’ve got to be careful with what I say. I can’t just say it for brinkmanship. I’ve got to say it in a way so that I get what I want said, but I don’t upset markets and so on.”

Aside from the way this earlier article–citing a bunch of progressives claiming they had been heard–showed Democrats getting duped into believing Obama listens to them as often as Obama gets shellacked in negotiations with Republicans, I’m most amused by the underlying logic of the report.

Waxman told Obama that every single Republican he consulted had told Waxman Obama was going to cave on Democratic issues.

Obama’s testy response (I love imagining, btw, the 6’1″ Obama getting pissy as the 5’5″ Waxman challenges him on these issues) was that his “his words carry weight.”

But of course, every Republican asked said that Obama was going to cave.

That either means Obama told them he was going to cave (which is the only scenario in which Obama shouldn’t be ashamed at how little weight his word carries with Republicans). Or Obama’s claim his words carry weight is utterly belied by Republican mockery of his resolve.

Maybe after being blown off yet again, the Democrats will stop being the only ones around who believe Obama’s word carries any weight.

Boy has Charlie Savage caused a headache for Barack Obama and Harold Koh.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had a hearing to grill Koh today, in part, because of Savage’s report that Obama overrode OLC, DOJ, and DOD lawyers in deciding that we are not engaged in “hostilities” with Libya and therefore he can blow off the requirements of the War Powers Resolution. Granted, the Obama Administration limited the headache by having just Koh, who sided with Obama in the dispute, and not those lawyers who were overridden, appear at the hearing. Committee Chair John Kerry admitted they had been invited, but declined to attend.

The issue of how Obama came to claim Libya did not involve “hostilities,” by itself, had Koh speaking in circles worthy of his former student, John Yoo.

But what really made things difficult was Savage’s 2007 report on what candidate Barack Obama believed about a President’s war powers. In response to Savage’s question about whether or not the President could unilaterally bomb Iran, the constitutional professor presidential candidate responded,

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Richard Lugar–who by partnering with Senator Obama on a key foreign relations law gave him some credibility in the area–started the hearing by citing both Savage’s article citing the wisdom of candidate Obama and the one depicting President Obama overriding key lawyers on this issue.

It was about that point of the hearing where Charlie Savage revealed, via Twitter, that 15 years ago he served as an intern in Lugar’s office.

When Jim Risch raised the same quote from candidate Obama (Savage said nothing about interning for Risch), the lawyer now sanctioning Obama’s curious definition of hostilities said that candidate Obama’s 2007 stance on presidential war powers was legally incorrect.

So we’ve learned today that 2007 Harold Koh didn’t agree with what 2007 Charlie Savage reported 2007 Barack Obama believed about the law. But in 2011, Savage’s report made clear, 2011 Koh is the key administration lawyer who agrees with 2011 Obama’s views on the law.