Were I a government official in France, that is the one fact I would remind myself of each and every morning – if only to keep myself from such stupidity:

Christine Lagarde said Berlin should consider boosting domestic demand to help deficit countries regain competitiveness and sort out their public finances.Her comments break a long-standing taboo between the French and German governments about macroeconomic imbalances inside the 16-country bloc which have been dramatically exposed by the Greek debt crisis.

“[Could] those with surpluses do a little something? It takes two to tango,” she said in an interview with the Financial Times. “It cannot just be about enforcing deficit principles.”

“Clearly Germany has done an awfully good job in the last 10 years or so, improving competitiveness, putting very high pressure on its labour costs. When you look at unit labour costs to Germany, they have done a tremendous job in that respect. I’m not sure it is a sustainable model for the long term and for the whole of the group. Clearly we need better convergence.”

You hear that, Germany?  You are doing too well, and need to tone it down so that you are more like France (and Greece).

While not ruling out an EMF, she said it was not a priority for the eurozone. The bloc should first focus on ensuring that debt-laden Greece followed through on promised austerity measures and then show “a bit of creativity and innovation” to find scope within the existing EU treaty for beefing up budgetary surveillance and discipline.

You’re kidding me, right?  The idea that Germany has any sort of responsibility regarding Greece flies in the face of even the most basic of common sense – Greece is where it is because of California-like systems that have bloated the unproductive at the expense of the productive.

Even with around 9% unemployment, Germany thrives because – if for no other reason – when they make something they usually get it right.

Fuck you, China.

Germany has, on average, 5 weeks vacation for employees, and better pay than probably the rest of the EU.  That France would even open it’s cock-holster and talk about how Germany needs to make thing more equal simply re-enforces my belief that French women run that country, and miss the sensation of being fucked by a winner.

h/t QandO.net

Dana, you might want to inform Pfc Pico…

She has competition.

Let’s recap:

Originally, the Democrats — with huge majorities in each House — set out to pass a health care reform bill. It only took them a year and after much huffing and puffing and pork, the House managed to pass a bill by 5 votes. The Senate passed a rather different bill (with different pork) by the bare 60-vote majority needed to get past a united Republican filibuster.

The usual way to proceed would be to send both versions to a Conference Committee. The Conference result goes back to each House for final passage. Unfortunately for the Democrats, they can’t do that because they lost the Massachusetts Senate seat (largely over this bill) and now they don’t have the 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.

After having said, in the wake of that defeat that they would not use reconciliation, they are now saying they WILL use reconciliation. Mainly because nothing else will work.

(”Reconciliation” for those that don’t know, or want to lie about it, is normally used for adjusting a previously passed budget in light of new information or needs. Like “Add $1 billion to unemployment insurance payouts” or “Move $1 billion from the F-22 program to Food Stamps.”)

There are well defined limits on what the reconciliation process allows, which has limited abuse. Among other things, it can only change spending and taxes, and it has to amend a previously enacted law.

Anyway, they are going to try to pass ALL the health care changes they want (and no doubt a goodly portion of new pork) through the reconciliation process. This would normally go like this:

1. The House passes the Senate bill without change and the enrolled bill goes to the President.
2. Presumably the President signs it, enacting it into law.
3. The House then passes a Reconciliation bill, adjusting amounts, taxes, and financial requirements for qualifying for same.
4. The Senate then votes on the bill with debate already limited to 20 hours by rule — no filibuster possible.
5. Presumably that also passes and is sent to the President.
6. Presumably the President signs it, enacting it into law.

Unfortunately, this will also not work, failing at point #1. So what Pelosi wants to do is combine Steps 1,2 & 3 into one vote, and condition the result on Step 4 happening, too. If the Senate does not agree to the reconciliation package, the Senate bill isn’t deemed to have passed.

Now, you may say “But how can they include the Presidential signature step in their machinery?” Indeed you might, and others have. Some even consider this a bit, well, unconstitutional, if you know what I mean. Something about a bill needing to be signed by the President before it is law. Another something about separation of powers.

You might also ask “How can the House condition their vote on the actions of the Senate?” And here, too, there is no good answer other than “they probably can’t.” There are two Houses of Congress and they are to do things independently. This is called bicameralism, and the Supreme Court has insisted on it in the past. Also, a bill is to pass both House identically (although typos are not invalidating). The Supreme Court has insisted on this, too. The Senate and House can make up their own Rules, but they cannot make up their own Constitution.

Note how far we have come from the normal process. Note how certain this is to end up in the Supreme Court’s lap, dragging the Court even further into the political arena. Note how unremarkable past “Nuclear Options” seem in comparison. Proving once again that no one’s Life, Liberty or Property is safe while Congress is in session.

All so that the President does not lose face and he can say to the American People that “We won.” Worked so well last time.

The NY Times reports that Senator Reid’s wife and daughter were in a multi-car accident in which they were rear-ended by a speeding semi truck and slammed into other cars.

Senator Reid’s wife of 51 years is in hospital with a broken back and neck. Luckily, the spinal cord appears intact. His daughter appears to have suffered only minor injuries. I wish Senator Reid and his family the best and hope for a speedy recovery.

The California Assembly is considering a bill to make it a crime for registered sex offenders to use any social networking site. It’s almost certain to pass; no legislator is going to stand up for the rights of sex offenders, particularly when children might be involved.

The law defines “social network Web site” as “any Internet Web site designed with the intent of allowing users to build networks or connect with other people and that provides means for users to interact over the Internet.”

This definition is, unfortunately, completely unworkable.

The intent of the legislature is clear to anyone who is familiar with the politics: keep sex offenders away from sites like Facebook where children might unwittingly be exposed to them. The fact that it would also prohibit sex offenders from using professional networking sites like LinkedIn is just collateral damage, and not something that we need to worry about too much, both because sex offenders are bad people and because most of them can’t get jobs that would use professional networking, anyhow.

But a literal reading of the words would seem to ban any form of web-based email (webmail being displayed on an internet web site, and being designed to allow users to connect with other people and providing a means for users to interact, via email, over the Internet). In an increasingly email-dependant culture, that’s a highly problematic restriction. It’s so problematic, and so clearly not the intent of the legislature, that the California courts are likely to read the definition more narrowly, allowing email but excluding actual social networking sites, which will end up in practice being defined by something other than the definition in the law.

So the first problem with the bill is that poor drafting creates a result so obviously absurd that it invites courts to step in and redefine the terms in the law.

But the second, bigger problem is that there is no sensible way to draft such a definition.

I mean, it’s one thing to say that Facebook is clearly verboten, but that the web-based interface to Outlook (used in many corporate environments) is ok. But what of gmail? I mean, gmail is email, as long as you don’t enable buzz, so it should be ok … but buzz is self-consciously a facebook lite, and the intent of the legislature is probably to ban it. So are sex offenders allowed to use gmail but required to turn buzz off? How are they supposed to know that? (And if they can’t, does the law really give them fair notice of what conduct is prohibited?)

This problem will only get worse as the technology evolves: google seems to be betting that the future of online conversation is in a blurring of the distinction between social networking, email, and text messaging – and they’ve lost very few such bets in the past. In that world, with the distinction between email and social networking elided, how does a court decide which websites are allowed and which aren’t? I suppose they could develop a “predominent purpose test” which looked to whether the site was predominantly email (like outlook web access) or predominantly social networking, and just draw arbitrary lines in the tough cases. But that will create a brittle, unpredictable system.

On the one hand, the legislature could fix this problem by narrowing its definition. But fundamentally the entire approach seems doomed.

The very last bullet-point on the page:

Requires large employers to cover their employees and individuals who can afford it to buy insurance so everyone shares in the responsibility of reform. Under the President’s plan, large businesses – those with more than 50 workers – will be required to offer their workers coverage or pay a fee to help cover the cost of making coverage affordable in the exchange. This will ensure that workers in firms not offering coverage will have affordable coverage options for themselves and their families.  Individuals who can afford it will have a responsibility to purchase coverage – but there will be a “hardship exemption” for those who cannot.

Might I say, with all due respect, “Fuck you, Mr President”.

To start with, 50 employees is nothing.  It certainly is not what I would call “the starting of large”.  One restaurant could easily top 50 employees.

More importantly, if the government thinks it will be forcing me to buy health insurance, the government can go fuck right off and die.

I look forward to them trying to enforce their will in this matter.

Posted by Shipwreckedcrew:

I’m pretty confident that you will not see a comprehensive analysis of the decision by Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis abrogating the proposed findings of intentional misconduct made by the Office of Professional Responsibility against former DOJ Office of Legal Counsel Members John Yoo and Jay Bybee.

It should tell you all you need to know about the Obama/Holder DOJ that this hugely important document was part of a Friday night document dump in order to bury it.   My hyperlinking is not any better than the last time I posted here, but here is the URL for the decision:

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/MargolisMemo_021910.pdf?hpid=topnews

Associate DAG Margolis has issued a 56 page scathing rebuke of the Office of Professional Responsibility’s unprofessional witch-hunt of Yoo and Bybee related to their drafting of legal memoranda establishing the legal framework for the application of enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA and Military Intelligence specialists.

It is beyond the format of one blog post to comprehensively summarize the findings of Margolis.  So I want to emphasize here a couple things about the process — the process that involved a review by Margolis of the proposed findings of OPR, and some of his criticisms of the bastardized procedures followed by OPR in a clearly biased and partisan attempt to “get” Yoo and Bybee.

First, a few important facts about David Margolis.  He occupies the position of Associate Deputy Attorney General.  This is the senior most career employee in DOJ.  I believe only two people appear in the organizational chart above him — the Attorney General and  Deputy Attorney General, both of whom are political appointees of the President.

Margolis has been with DOJ for more than 40 years, serving under 16 different Attorney Generals going back to the Johnson Administration.  He has been the Associate Deputy Attorney General for many many years — I’m not certain how many — and one of his principle responsibilities for many years in that position is to review proposed Final Reports of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) regarding investigations into allegations of professional misconduct by DOJ attorneys.

The way the process works is that OPR conducts an investigation into allegations of professional misconduct, and drafts a report detailing its findings.  That report is presented to the subject of the investigation, who at that point has the right under DOJ policy to make objections to the reports findings and/or conclusions.  OPR can chose to modify its final report based on such objections, or not.  Consideration and resolution of any such objections not corrected by OPR is made by Margolis in his capacity as Associate Deputy AG, and his decision constitutes the official DOJ determination as to whether the findings of misconduct are to be adopted by the Department as its official findings in the matter.

So, the review that Margolis undertook following the issuance on July 29, 2009 by OPR of its Final Report on Yoo and Bybee followed the normal procedures employed by DOJ in reviewing and considering allegations of official misconduct.  As noted by Margolis in numerous places within his 56 page decision, his review of OPR’s findings might be the only part of the process that followed the normal procedures.

Margolis begins his critical review of OPR’s handling of this matter by considering what OPR proposed doing even prior to the matter being referred to him for review — on December 23, 2008, following the election of Obama, OPR rushed t0 c0mplete its 191 page first draft of its report, and advised then AG Mukasey and Dep. AG Filip of its intention to release that draft to the public on January 12, 2009, without giving Yoo and Bybee any opportunity to review and raise objections to the draft, and giving Mukasey and Filip only until January 2, 2009, to review and comment.

On Dec. 31, 2008, Mukasey and Filip met with OPR staff  and provided a limited substantive review invited by OPR on December 23, 2008, but also pointed out that a comprehensive review of the draft was impossible in the time period suggested for OPR’s public release given the complexity and length of the report, and questioned the propriety of a public release of the report prior to the subjects being given an opportunity to reveiw, object, and have their objections considered consistent with DOJ and OPR policy.  Subsequent to the December 31 meeting, and in light of the procedural and substantive objections raised by Mukasey and Filip, OPR determined that it “report will not be finalized before the end of the current Administration,” and the draft report would not be made public as previously suggested.

It was only by pulling back from the rush to publish the draft report that substantive criticisms of OPR’s work could be made by AG Mukasey, Dep. AG Filip, and OLC.  As a result of these substantive criticisms, OPR issued a second draft report of its findings.  Margolis’ opinion finds significant flaws in this Second Draft for many of the same reasons he found flaws in the first draft — principally the failure by OPR to apply OPR’s own standard analytical framework in reaching its conclusion whether professional misconduct was involved in the work of Yoo and Bybee.  More on that below.

But, unlike the first draft, the second draft was provided to Yoo and Bybee, and they were invited to respond to the findings and conclusions of the second draft within 60 days.  This was consistent with OPR’s normal practice in these cases — unlike the way it proposed publishing the first draft with no opportunity given to Yoo and Bybee to review.

Yoo and Bybee submitted timely comments and objections to the second draft on May 4, 2009.  Both raised as a primary complaint the fact that OPR’s finding of professional misconduct was made in violation of OPR’s own formal Policies and Procedures setting forth the standards for reaching such a conclusion.

The gist of this complaint, which Margolis in his opinion agrees with Yoo and Bybee, is that OPR’s own standards require that in order for there to be a finding of intentional misconduct, OPR must find that the attorney engaged in conduct with the purpose of obtaining a result that the professional standard or obligation unambiguously prohibits.

Such a finding requires a showing by OPR both that an unambiguous standard of conduct or responsibility exists, and that the attorney purposely violated a standard which he knew unambiguously applied.  The Second Draft made no mention of the application of this analytical framework in reviewing the drafting of the memos by Yoo and Bybee as an instance of intentional misconduct.

On July 29, 2009, OPR issued its Final Report.  Margolis notes that for the first time the Final Report seemed to address the need to identify an unambiguous standard that applied unambiguously, and evidence that Yoo and Bybee purposely violated that standard.  But rather than refer to an established standard based on published Rules of Professional Conduct or Rules of Ethics, OPR “gleaned a duty to exercise independent legal judgment and render thorough, objective, and candid legal service” from a variety of sources, both published and unpublished.  As noted caustically by Margolis:

In addition to gleaning its applied standard from the listed sources, OPR also delcared:  ”Moreover, we looked at the circumstances surrounding these particular requests for legal advice, to assess whether the requirements of the applicable professional rules and Department regulations were met.  In doing so, we began with the premise that “the right to be free from offical torture is fundamental and universal, a right deserving the highest status under international law, a norm of jus cogens…. We thus determined that Department Attorneys considering the possible abrogation or derogation of a jus congens norm such as the prohibition against torture must be held to the highest standards of professional conduct.”

OPR may well have defined the standard to which the Department may decide (or perhaps even has decided) to hold OLC attorneys who author opinions about important matters, but the pertinent question is whether this standard is properly applied to determine whether OLC attorneys complied with the standards imposed on them by Rules of Professional Conduct.  If OPR has failed to identify properly a “known, unambiguous obligation imposed by law, rule of professional conduct, or Department rule or policy,” or has failed to establish that the obligation unambiguously  applied to  the attorneys’ conduct, then its misconduct analysis fails on that basis.

In other words, OPR simply made up a standard high enough that would warrant a finding of intentional misconduct by Yoo and Bybee even though OPR could point to no source that established such an unambiguous standard applied unambiguously to the work of Yoo and Bybee at the time they drafted the memos in question.   OPR ignored its own analytical framework in determining whether such a standard existed, and opted to include a “politically correct” view of the question in place of such an existing standard.

The “reverse engineering” of this “standard” into the July 29, 2009 Final Draft only after objections were raised to the absence of any such analytical framework in the first or second drafts which OPR had wanted to publish, struck Margolis as the exact type of “results-oriented” legal reasoning that OPR accused Yoo and Bybee of engaging in when they drafted the memos authorizing CIA and military personnel to use “enhanced interrogation techniques.”   Pretty much a “pot calling the kettle black” kind of thing.

The final upshot of the Margolis decision is that the OPR investigation and analysis is fatally flawed by its failure to establish that Yoo and Bybee intentionally violated a known unambiguous standard of professional conduct, due to the fact that OPR failed to even establish that such an unambiguous standard existed with respect to the legal analysis they offered in their memos.  As a result, DOJ rejects the Final Report of OPR on the issue of Yoo and Bybee, and the matter is now closed.

Margolis’ decision is, more than anything, a stinging rebuke to OPR for its sloppy, uneven, and likely partisan effort to hound Yoo and Bybee because OPR’s investigators disagreed on a policy basis with the substance of the memos.

I expect that this blog post might be the only place you find that being pointed out.

I’ll try to post more on this subject when I have more time to thoroughly review the Margolis decision.

Shipwreckedcrew

Today is the day we find out if that feckless pile of shit George Ryan gets to collect about $5,000 a month in pension benefits.  The argument is that he should get to keep the benefits he earned while serving in government positions before becoming the Illinois Secretary of State (and Governor – time that is piled under a lengthy investigation into his time as a public official.

I’m not going to be home before 5pm today, so I’m going to miss the announcement, but I suspect he’s going to get to keep his money…

If it were up to me, he wouldn’t get a God Damn Dime.  Fuck you, George.  You used your position to line your pockets, you should have saved the graft money more carefully.

Now I understand why Gates was kept by the Obama Administration as Secretary of Defense…

It’s because he’s just as much of a pussy as the rest of those feckless morons.

“We must still try and find a peaceful way to resolve this issue. The only path that is left to us at this point, it seems to me, is that pressure track but it will require all of the international community to work together,” Gates said at a joint news conference with French Defense Minister Herve Morin.

Well then we’re just fucked then, aren’t we.  If nothing else, there is no way the UN’ Security Council will ever allow “Serious Sanctions” (or whatever the fuck they are calling their latest pansyfied attempt at talking down Iran).  How do I know that?

Because I can God Damn read.

An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama’s decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.

“We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela,” declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference.

Yeah, those are totally the sort of people who want to work with us.  For Christ’s sake, they are talking about selling WEAPONS to IRAN!  Why would anyone but a brain-dead chipmunk think that such a place would agree to do anything to punish Iran?

He added: “We have nothing to be afraid of. The North Koreans have stood up to America and has anything happened to them? No. Iran stands up to America and does disaster befall it? No.”

Yeah, there’s the problem.  When all you do is talk, extend deadlines and ignore stated consequences, this is what happens – people and countries start to figure out that they can do whatever they want and we won’t (due to lack of will and/or anything resembling leadership) do anything about it.

“This time China must punish the US,” said Major-General Yang Yi, a naval officer. “We must make them hurt.” A major-general in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Luo Yuan, told a television audience that more missiles would be deployed against Taiwan. And a PLA strategist, Colonel Meng Xianging, said China would “qualitatively upgrade” its military over the next 10 years to force a showdown “when we’re strong enough for a hand-to-hand fight with the US”.

Awesome.  Because what we really need (ignoring the fact that we have troops committed in the Middle East) is a shooting war with a country with probably a billion potential foot soldiers.  Hell, at that point you don’t even need to teach them to reload, you just send wave after wave and eventually you get through.

This country is screwed because we have in charge a group of people who don’t understand that no, talking doesn’t always work.  In fact, it never works if you don’t show you both have the ability to use force, and the willingness to use it.  Why would they listen?  It isn’t like you could/would do anything about it, so just do your own thing, right?

We are screwed, and because we are screwed, numerous other countries are screwed as well.  With a Chinese military nearing parity with the US, what do you think of Taiwan’s continued “freedom”?  With a nuclear-capable Iran, what think you of the odds that Israel doesn’t risk disaster?

This is the end result of having lightweights and incompetents running foreign policy.  We got a year off, as everyone looked at us and gauged our reactions.  This year will see serious pushing back against our “will” (such as it is), and either late this year or by midddle of next year (at the latest), we’ll see something serious.  Some sort of all-or-nothing situation where only someone with a spine and the will/desire to lead can have any good impact.

We don’t have anyone like that in charge, and as a result, we are screwed.  So very screwed.

h/t to Drudge for the first link

h/t to QandO.net for the second

Regarding the recent Supreme Court ruling which classifies as unconstitutional previous restrictions on the donation of money to political campaigns/causes:

Assume the following set of premises:

1) The donation of money to political causes may be classified as a manifestation of the right to free speech (per Supreme Court precedent, apparently).

Conclusion: taxation is unconstitutional, as a restriction on free speech.

Could someone point out the flaw in this reasoning? I mean, I’m certainly willing to accept that there is one, but I’d like someone to point out which of the assumptions I’ve made is incorrectly worded, or unwarranted (per stare decisis), or whatever.

For my part – insofar as both the power of Congress to tax and the right to free speech are expressly delineated in the Constitution – I’m inclined to think that the treatment of monetary donation as a form of free speech is bullshit, especially for anyone who argues that we ought to try to discern the intent of the Framers in our judicial decisions. I’m inclined to think that it was an ill-considered decision designed to complement corporate personhood, and nothing more.

Posted by  Shipwreckedcrew

A federal criminal prosecution initiated in a “reactive” fashion, where the federal authorities are called to the scene in the immediate aftermath of the episode thought to be a federal crime, usually begins with the filing of a criminal complaint.  This is not a “charging instrument” in the sense that the case can go forward based on the complaint alone.  The complaint does, however, give the federal court jurisdiction to authorize the issuance of an arrest warrant, to arraign the defendant following his arrest, and to determine whether the defendant shall be detained pending indictment or released on bond until a preliminary hearing is conducted or an indictment returned by a grand jury.

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Patterico gets all the cool fans…