Wisconsin GOP: Cracking down on Wisconsin citizens

Will Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Walker's disgraceful political hit-man Chief David Erwin and the Republican Party succeed in suppressing citizens' popular will at the Wisconsin state capitol?

A lot of bystanders around.

And the Wisconsin Democratic Party has since before the Recall refused to speak out for the rights of citizens attacked (literally) practicing their constitutional rights.

In Wisconsin, citizen groups and pissed-off lawyers are responsible for ensuring the rights of Wisconsin citizens.

The state Democratic Party has taken a pass, and continues to do so.

Hasen: GOP Election-rigging scheme legal but politically foolish

Rick Hasen's, Democrats, Don’t Freak Out! Why fears that Republicans will gerrymander the Electoral College are overblown, is a 30 mg doze of Valium for those fearful of a GOP coup.

Bottom Line: Republicans Are Against Democracy

Update: Wisconsin's Scott Walker is not repulsed by the GOP notion -- proposed to be enshrined in law -- that a minority of voters ought to legally defeat a majority of voters for president. Walker says he’s open to considering the GOP electoral college vote rigging scheme

The voter obstruction programs of the Republican Party across the nation in the last election ought to have made clear Republican Party's hostility to the democratic foundation of the our republic.

The Republican Party has tried to prevent as many undesirable people from voting, as it could for years.

The Democratic Party has no such voter disenfranchisement program.

For the Democrats, a citizen's right to vote is sacred.

Now, Republicans in Virginia and other battleground states are pursuing an effort to rig the election for GOP presidential nominees by dismantling the majority-of-citizens'-votes-prevails practice in states' electoral college votes.

Republicans gerrymand the congressional districts and then allocate electoral votes based on gerrymandered maps. Statewide popular votes total would no longer matter.

So, Obama winning the popular vote in Republican-rigged states would nevertheless result in Obama gaining a substantially less electoral vote total, throwing the election to the Republicans.

This is unAmerican; and one hope for a backlash against this shameful and unAmerican effort.

Christian Stork: Aaron Swartz' Prosecutors Employ Outrageous Bullying Tactics as SOP

Update II: Anonymous Takes Over Sentencing Commission Website

Update: "In my view, the Aaron Swartz prosecution is very typical of the Justice Department's policy of going after people in such a big way that the point is not necessarily to prosecute them, but it is to destroy them personally." See John Kiriakou Hopes Aaron Swartz's Death Sparks Discussion of Prosecutorial Overreach.

Christian Stork has a great follow-up on the Aaron Swartz suicide following the crusade against him by the local US attorney's office.

The US attorney in question, Carmen Ortiz, likely is no fan of Robert H. Jackson, who warned against this type of abuse of process by US attorneys in a famous address in 1940.

"Any prosecutor who risks his day-to-day professional name for fair dealing to build up statistics of success has a perverted sense of practical values, as well as defects of character. Whether one seeks promotion to a judgeship, as many prosecutors rightly do, or whether he returns to private practice, he can have no better asset than to have his profession recognize that his attitude toward those who feel his power has been dispassionate, reasonable and just," said Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, April 1, 1940.

Ortiz is a politically ambitious hack; using the power of office with no apparent conception for the consequences other than her own advancement.

A Beautiful Call for Civil Rights and Humanity

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts administers
the oath of office to President Barack Obama
during the Inaugural swearing-in ceremony
at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 21, 2013.
(Official White House Photo by Sonya N. Hebert)

Tempered by calls to recognize the humanity of those who deny this station to our fellow countrymen and women, the 2013 Inauguration of President Obama will live as a call for civil rights.

The language of President Barack Obama's Second Inaugural Address and those speaking on January 21, 2013 evoke King, RFK, and the best that America has offered the world.

"The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great," said President Obama. ...

"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."

MLK Fought for Voting Rights

"So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Republican and Tea Party agree.

And they wish to obstruct, suppress and prevent the right to vote of those who would dare vote non-Republican.

This is an attack on democracy itself: Such is the Republican Party. Cantor, Walker, Ryan—sick and cowardly as those in the Party who go along with the attack on civil rights for the sake of political convenience.

The anti-equality party lost the war on civil rights, on liberty.

But the civil rights of America remain under attack.

King would suggest we defend these rights and that decent people in the Republican Party join, rise up and condemn the attacks.

As any sentient American can see, the civil rights movement today will find very few allies—can we name one—in the Republican Party.

Scott Walker's Chief of Political Police Targets Veterans

David M. Erwin
Chief of Police
Wisconsin Capitol Police

Update II: Erwin-Walker citations (some 125) against political opponents are being dismissed by the bundle.

Update: Innocent man arrested after Capitol Police mistakenly arrest one black guy, thinking he was another black guy. Capitol Police screwed up the arrest, after which Walker's DoA put out a press release reading in part: "A tragedy was avoided and our Capitol remains safe because of the actions of our officers yesterday." No apology yet from Walker, the DoA or Erwin.

Wisconsin Capitol Police Chief David Erwin is some piece of work.

Erwin has been shamelessly violating the First Amendment rights of Scott Walker's political opponents since joining Walker's regime as Chief at the Wisconsin state capitol.

Now, Lou Kaye reports, Erwin and his band of go-along police are targeting veterans at a Madison capitol Sing-Along.

Kaye has two videos at the link above.

Erwin has declined to explain the actions of the capitol police in any detail, and has pooh-poohed First Amendment concerns.

Holding Prosecutors Accountable in Killing of Aaron Swartz

Corruption

Update: US Atty Ortiz issues statement. Turley: "the statement is at best misleading and at worse intentionally deceptive."

"There's a reason former Senator Russ Feingold is a college professor whereas former Senator Chris Dodd is now a multi-millionaire. There's a reason DOJ officials do not go after bankers who illegally foreclose, and then get jobs as partners in white collar criminal defense. There's a reason no one has been held accountable for decisions leading to the financial crisis, or the war in Iraq." - Matt Stoller
When prosecutors become overzelaous careerists or corrupt partisans, injustice follows. Most prosecutors are careerists or corrupt partisans.

In Wisconsin, who can forget Bush-Cheney-Rove's US Attorney Steven Biskupic and his reign of terror against innocent defendants?

Well, most everyone.

Our country buries corruption, especially in the judicial branch of govenment where ignorance pervades the American political culture.

Now, we have a moment that can shake the political system.

After being literally 'hounded' to death by the US Attorney's office, 26-year-old Aaron Swartz' suicide should spell the end of the careers of prosecutors—Masachusetts' U.S. attorney Carmen Ortiz and assistant US attorney Stephen Heymann—who are guilty of killing this brilliant young man who worked for free to better our society. But let's be clear: The US government killed Aaron Swartz.

And this death ought to shine a light on what is routine: Use of the prosecutors' office for political retribution and careerism, justice be damned. "The more savage the penalties prosecutors can threaten, the more likely the defendant (guilty or innocent) is to speed things along by pleading guilty and accepting a light penalty," writes Clive Crook in The Atlantic.

Notes Scott Horton in Harper's Magazine. "A petition has now been launched requesting that President Obama remove U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz over her actions in the Swartz case."

There is in this tragic injustice a window for some manner of reflection, and some measure of reform on the what prosecutors are doing to our families.

Ortiz and assistant US attorney Heymann, for their part, should be banned from the legal profession and face disgrace.

Writes Glenn Greenwald:

 [I]t is imperative that there be serious investigations about what took place here and meaningful consequences for this prosecutorial abuse, at least including firing. It is equally crucial that there be reform of the criminal laws and practices that enable this to take place in so many other cases and contexts. ...

This is not just prosecutorial abuse. It's broader than that. It's all part and parcel of the exploitation of law and the justice system to entrench those in power and shield themselves from meaningful dissent and challenge by making everyone petrified of the consequences of doing anything other than meekly submitting to the status quo. As another of Swartz's friends, Matt Stoller, wrote in an equally compelling essay:

What killed him was corruption. Corruption isn't just people profiting from betraying the public interest. It's also people being punished for upholding the public interest. In our institutions of power, when you do the right thing and challenge abusive power, you end up destroying a job prospect, an economic opportunity, a political or social connection, or an opportunity for media. Or if you are truly dangerous and brilliantly subversive, as Aaron was, you are bankrupted and destroyed. There's a reason whistleblowers get fired. There's a reason Bradley Manning is in jail. There's a reason the only CIA official who has gone to jail for torture is the person – John Kiriakou - who told the world it was going on. There's a reason those who destroyed the financial system 'dine at the White House', as Lawrence Lessig put it.

There's a reason former Senator Russ Feingold is a college professor whereas former Senator Chris Dodd is now a multi-millionaire. There's a reason DOJ officials do not go after bankers who illegally foreclose, and then get jobs as partners in white collar criminal defense. There's a reason no one has been held accountable for decisions leading to the financial crisis, or the war in Iraq.

This reason is the modern ethic in American society that defines success as climbing up the ladder, consequences be damned. Corrupt self-interest, when it goes systemwide, demands that it protect rentiers from people like Aaron, that it intimidate, co-opt, humiliate, fire, destroy, and/or bankrupt those who stand for justice.

In most of what I've written and spoken about over the past several years, this is probably the overarching point: the abuse of state power, the systematic violation of civil liberties, is about creating a Climate of Fear, one that is geared toward entrenching the power and position of elites by intimidating the rest of society from meaningful challenges and dissent. There is a particular overzealousness when it comes to internet activism because the internet is one of the few weapons - perhaps the only one - that can be effectively harnessed to galvanize movements and challenge the prevailing order. That's why so much effort is devoted to destroying the ability to use it anonymously - the Surveillance State - and why there is so much effort to punishing as virtual Terrorists anyone like Swartz who uses it for political activism or dissent.

The law and prosecutorial power should not be abused to crush and destroy those who commit the "crime" of engaging in activism and dissent against the acts of elites. Nobody contests the propriety of charging Swartz with some crime for what he did. Civil disobedience is supposed to have consequences. The issue is that he was punished completely out of proportion to what he did, for ends that have nothing to do with the proper administration of justice. That has consequences far beyond his case, and simply cannot be tolerated.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Denies GOP Move to Bypass Courts on Voter ID-Obstruction Case

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has again refused to bypass a court of appeals ruling today holding the Wisconsin GOP voter ID law unconstitutional on its face.

Some four weeks before the February primary election of GOP Supreme Court justice, Patience Drake Roggensack, naked acts of political corruption appear unwise.

The Court's decision is a sign that when the voter ID cases do reach the Wisconsin supreme court, the four GOP justices will not rule against the Wisconsin Constitution and overturn the two permanent injunctions of the lower courts because this action would be too blatant a display of corruption—a view that is conventional wisdom among Wisconsin jurists contacted the past months who are not involved in the cases.

The high court similarly refused to take up the GOP voter ID cases in April 2012.

The court also refused today to consolidate the two state cases that are now before two different Wisconsin appellate courts.

Two state appellate courts have held the GOP voter ID law is permanently enjoined from taking effect.

The voter ID law was passed with only GOP votes, with no GOP dissents, and against the counsel of every good government and civil rights organization.

The motion refused by the court was made by Wisconsin's partisan attorney general, J.B. Van Hollen who faces an election in 2014.

Wisconsin's Constitution, Article III, Section 1—"Every United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district."—strongly protects the right of citizens to vote against the efforts of politicians obstructing citizens' constitutional right to vote.

A government that undermines the right to vote imperils its own legitimacy as a government 'by the people, for the people and especially of the people,' (Judge Richard) Niess wrote in a decision striking down the GOP law. 'It sows the seeds for its own demise as a democratic institution' (Treleven, WSJ).

Two other federal cases also have also been filed against Wisconsin's voter ID law:  Frank v. Walker, (Case 11cv1128), (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin); and Jones et al v. Deininger et al (Case 2:12-cv-00185), (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin).

In a federal case, evidence has been obtained by Monica Wedgewood, an intern working for the ACLU, that military veterans would be prevented from voting, if the GOP law were to take ever take effect.

U.S. Atty Drives Brilliant Net Freedom Activist to Suicide

Update II: See Freedom to Connect: Aaron Swartz (1986-2013) on Victory to Save Open Internet; Fight Online Censors; and

Update: An Open Letter to Aaron Swartz's Prosecutor: 'His Supporters Find You Guilty.'

'This sort of unrestrained prosecutorial abuse is, unfortunately, far from uncommon. It usually destroys people without attention or notice'

Here we have yet another example of a U.S. attorney, Carmen Ortiz, playing with the power of this office with the all the thought of a loose cannon.

Now, Aaron Swartz is dead.

One crime in which both major American political parties do share equal blame is the indiscriminate use of the prosecutor's office (local and national) in creating what Glenn C. Loury terms the current American prison system which has become "a leviathan unmatched in human history."

Some years ago, back in the Bush-Cheney years, a UW-Madison professor told me most US attorneys and district attorneys ought to be sentenced to reading the great American jurist, Robert H. Jackson, and his work on prosecutorial discretion.

Here is the petition to President Obama to remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz.

Ortiz, United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, threw the book at Swartz for downloading academic articles from a for-profit outfit called JSTOR ["an online publishing company that digitizes and distributes scholarly articles written by academics and then sells them," (Greenwald)]. That's it.

Swartz was an authorized user of JSTOR because he was a Harvard fellow.

JSTOR asked the US atty's office not to prosecute.

So, in rides U.S. attorney Carmen Ortiz anyway with a ridiculous indictment against a former prodigy intent on helping the world.

"For Aaron Swartz, the act of sharing was a 'moral imperative.' In his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, released to the Web in July 2008, he specifically targeted the 'world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage,' which he said 'is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.' Swartz called for those with access to such knowledge to make it available to others,' writes Andrew Leonard in Salon.

Glenn Greenwald has more details on the repulsive affair.

But in July 2011, Swartz was arrested for allegedly targeting JSTOR, the online publishing company that digitizes and distributes scholarly articles written by academics and then sells them, often at a high price, to subscribers. As Maria Bustillos detailed, none of the money goes to the actual writers (usually professors) who wrote the scholarly articles - they are usually not paid for writing them - but instead goes to the publishers.

This system offended Swartz (and many other free-data activists) for two reasons: it charged large fees for access to these articles but did not compensate the authors, and worse, it ensured that huge numbers of people are denied access to the scholarship produced by America's colleges and universities. The indictment filed against Swartz alleged that he used his access as a Harvard fellow to the JSTOR system to download millions of articles with the intent to distribute them online for free; when he was detected and his access was cut off, the indictment claims he then trespassed into an MIT computer-wiring closet in order to physically download the data directly onto his laptop.

Swartz never distributed any of these downloaded articles. He never intended to profit even a single penny from anything he did, and never did profit in any way. He had every right to download the articles as an authorized JSTOR user; at worst, he intended to violate the company's "terms of service" by making the articles available to the public. Once arrested, he returned all copies of everything he downloaded and vowed not to use them. JSTOR told federal prosecutors that it had no intent to see him prosecuted, though MIT remained ambiguous about its wishes.

But federal prosecutors ignored the wishes of the alleged "victims". Led by a federal prosecutor in Boston notorious for her overzealous prosecutions, the DOJ threw the book at him, charging Swartz with multiple felonies which carried a total sentence of several decades in prison and $1 million in fines. ...

I always found it genuinely inspiring to watch Swartz exude this courage and commitment at such a young age. His death had better prompt some serious examination of the DOJ's behavior - both in his case and its warped administration of justice generally. But his death will also hopefully strengthen the inspirational effects of thinking about and understanding the extraordinary acts he undertook in his short life. ... From the official statement of Swartz's family: "Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community's most cherished principles."

This sort of unrestrained prosecutorial abuse is, unfortunately, far from uncommon. It usually destroys people without attention or notice. Let's hope - and work to ensure that - the attention generated by Swartz's case prompts some movement toward accountability and reform.

Dumb Ron Johnson: Walmart 'Trying to Grow the Economy,' No Time for Gun Control

Damn, this guy is dumb.

Check out David at Crooks and Liars.

Wisconsin has perhaps the most intelligent U.S. senator (Tammy Baldwin), and the dumbest—Ron Johnson.

The Voting Rights Act to be Argued in February before U.S. SC

Racism is gone from America?

The Voting Rights Act enacted in 1965 is set to be Argued in February before the United States Supreme Court in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder.

Few are optimistic that the Roberts Court will not take a sledgehammer to this pillar of the modern civil rights movement.

To no one's surprise the case pits those who are pro-voting and pro-democracy against the those who cannot stand the thought that black, brown and yellow Americans are hitting the voting polls at what they view as alarming rates.

Elections are for white Americans; proper, land-owning, white Americans.

Jeffrey Toobin sums up the case in The New Yorker.

No Republican, including those who voted for the Voting Rights Act's reauthorization in 2006, has spoken up and defended the Act against the judicial targeting by the Roberts Court.

Congress reauthorized the act by votes of 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate in 2006 for an additional 25 years.

In the 2009, the Roberts Court invited the challenge (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder) now before the Court in another attack on non-Republican Americans.

As Toobin notes in 2009, "Even more than (Justice) Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party."

Stop-and-Frisk Violates Fourth Amendment, Fed Court Says

Being African-American and Latino doesn't mean you lose your Fourth Amendment rights.

That's the effect of an injunction issued by a New York federal court.

The case is: Jaenean Ligon et al v City of New York, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, (No. 12-cv-2274).

From Amy Goodman at Democracy Now:

A federal judge has ruled that New York City police are not allowed to routinely stop pedestrians outside of private residential buildings in the Bronx. The stops are part of the so-called Clean Halls program, which has prompted allegations of police harassment by some residents who say they are being accosted outside of the buildings in which they live. Previous data on the New York Police Department’s 'stop-and-frisk' policy has shown African-American and Latino men make up a hugely disproportionate share of those stopped.