USA News and Discussions

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caltrek
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Texas Bar Files Disciplinary Action Against Former Trump Attorney Sidney Powell
by David Lee
March 8, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/texas-ba ... -attorney/

Introduction:
DALLAS (Courthouse News) — The State Bar of Texas has filed a disciplinary action against attorney Sidney Powell, accusing her of professional misconduct for filing several federal lawsuits contesting the election of President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump in 2020.

The bar association’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline filed the lawsuit in Dallas County District Court on March 1, and the case was first made public seven days later. The commission says it sued Powell, of Dallas, after receiving 10 separate complaints against her since December 2020.

“Beginning in or about November of 2020[,] respondent filed multiple federal lawsuits in different jurisdictions (including the District Court of Arizona, the Northern District of Georgia, the Eastern District of Michigan, and the Eastern District of Wisconsin) alleging, inter alia, election fraud has occurred in the national presidential election in 2020,” the six-page complaint states. “Respondent had no reasonable basis to believe the lawsuits she filed were not frivolous.” (Parentheses in original.)

The lawsuit claims Powell violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and five subsections of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct.

The commission alleges Powell took positions in the litigation that “unreasonably increased the costs” of the cases and “unreasonably delayed” their resolution, including an alleged failure to drop a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Michigan when “requested relief was moot.”
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caltrek
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Cracking Down on Russian Oligarchs Should Mean Cracking Down on U.S. Tax Havens
by Chuck Collins
March 16, 2022

https://otherwords.org/cracking-down-on ... ax-havens/

Introduction:
(Other Words) As part of the sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, the United States and its European partners are cracking down on Russian oligarchs. They’re freezing assets and tracking the yachts, private jets, and luxury real estate holdings of these Russian billionaires.

“I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: no more,” Biden said in his State of the Union address. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.”

Targeting Russia’s elites, who have stolen trillions from their own people, is an important strategy to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin, who himself may be among the wealthiest people on the planet.

But the U.S. faces a major obstacle in this effort: Our own country has become a major destination tax haven for criminal and oligarch wealth from around the world — and not just Russians.

While European Union countries have been increasing transparency and cracking down on kleptocratic capital, the United States is a laggard. As the Pandora Papers disclosed last year, the U.S. has become a weak link in the fight against global corruption.
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R8Z
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And, as always, bye bye.
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caltrek
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Of course, there is the problem of defining who, exactly, is the enemy. Case in point:

With Little to Attack SCOTUS Nominee, Republicans Are Going Full Hypocrisy
by Stephanie Mencimer
March 21, 2022

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... s-nominee/

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) While you wouldn’t know it from the attacks Republicans are lobbing at Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, her confirmation is a foregone conclusion. She’s been on the Democratic Supreme Court shortlist since the Obama administration. As a former US District Court judge for eight years and a member of the US Sentencing Commission, and newly appointed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Jackson has been through three separate Senate confirmation proceedings since 2010. Three Republican senators voted to confirm her to the DC Circuit in June. In short, not only is she extremely qualified for the job, but she has already been thoroughly vetted. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has conceded that she has an impressive resume.

As a result, conservatives have very little fodder with which to oppose her. GOP senators have indicated they will weaponize her record as a defense lawyer when she represented alleged terrorists detained indefinitely without trial at the Guantanamo Bay naval base.
caltrek's comment: No wonder there are no justices with public defender experience on the court. In the past, is has been so easy to link them up with undesirable clients in the public's mind. Never mind any otherwise existing platitudes about the right to a legal self-defense by a competent attorney.
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Durbin Destroys Hawley by Allowing Ketanji Brown Jackson to Respond to his Bebunked Attack
by David Badash
March 22, 2022

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/hawley-durbin/

Introduction:
(Alternet) U.S. Senator Josh Hawley‘s misleading and false allegations have been debunked by mainstream, left-leaning, and even right-wing media and news outlets and yet during his remarks on Monday he brought them up again. The Republican Senator from Missouri’s charges, which are tinged with a QAnon taint, basically are that Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was soft on those found guilty of child pornography.

At the opening of Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin decimated Hawley’s attack with a litany of facts, but also by giving Judge Jackson the opportunity to speak to the allegations directly to the Senators and to the American people.

Joyce Vance, an MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst and a former U.S. Attorney observes that “Judge Jackson’s brilliance as a jurist is on full display as she responds to a question about whether she’s soft on crime when it comes to child pornography. Does not shy away from describing the crime as depiction of sex abuse but notes she must follow Congress’ sentencing law.”
caltrek's comment: Unfortunately, this attack will probably play well with the QAnon crowd. The same crowd that backed Trump, despite credible sexual misconduct allegations, and two Supreme Court nominees, again despite credible allegations of sexual misconduct. A combination of who-do-you-trust and extreme hypocrisy knows no bounds.
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The GOP’s Attacks on Ketanji Brown Jackson are Nasty Even by Republican Standards
by Ian Millhiser
March 22, 2022

https://www.vox.com/2022/3/22/22991834/ ... ornography

Introduction:
(Vox) One day after Republican senators promised they wouldn’t levy personal attacks against Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, several of them generated a storm of misleading — and often offensive — attacks against her.

On Monday, the first day of Jackson’s confirmation hearing, several Republicans complained about the way that Justice Brett Kavanaugh was treated prior to his confirmation, after Kavanaugh was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman while he was in high school.

Multiple Republican senators promised not to levy similarly “personal attacks” against Jackson. “No Republican senator is going to unleash an attack on your character when the hearing is almost over,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) promised Jackson.

It’s not hard to guess what happened next. Tuesday, the first day of the hearing where senators on the Judiciary Committee could actually ask questions of Judge Jackson, included allegations from five Republican senators that Jackson is soft on child pornography offenders.

Before those misleading attacks kicked off in real force, Graham stormed out of the hearing after attacking Jackson for providing legal counsel to Guantanamo Bay detainees — and suggesting that by doing so, Jackson endangered national security. Two other Republican senators attacked the high school that one of Jackson’s daughters attends
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U.S. Will Accept 100,000 Ukrainian Refugees
More than 3.5 million people have fled during the war.
by Noah Y. Kim
March 24, 2022

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... -refugees/

Entire article (less photograph):
(Mother Jones) President Joe Biden is expected to announce today in Brussels that the United States will accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.

While this would constitute a significant bump in the number of Ukrainians the US has accepted during the conflict, it’s nowhere close to the number that Eastern European countries such as Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary have admitted. US officials have justified the relatively low numbers by noting that most Ukrainian refugees want to stay in Europe so they can return to their home country more easily if the conflict resolves.

According to NBC News, the refugees will be admitted through a range of pathways, “including the US Refugee Admissions Program, nonimmigrant and immigrant visas, and other means.” Another mechanism could be “humanitarian parole,” which allows entry to individuals fleeing violence. The administration will prioritize Ukrainians with family members in the US.

In addition, the US will donate a billion dollars to help European countries assimilate the surge of refugees fleeing the Russian invasion. More than 3.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russian armed forces poured across the border, with the majority escaping into neighboring Poland. While the Polish government has received criticism for its anti-migrant stances during previous conflicts, international organizations have praised Polish officials and civilians for rallying to house and feed Ukrainians.
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'Biggest fraud in a generation': The looting of the Covid relief program known as PPP
They bought Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Bentleys.

And Teslas, of course. Lots of Teslas.

Many who participated in what prosecutors are calling the largest fraud in U.S. history — the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money intended to help those harmed by the coronavirus pandemic — couldn’t resist purchasing luxury automobiles. Also mansions, private jet flights and swanky vacations.

They came into their riches by participating in what experts say is the theft of as much as $80 billion — or about 10 percent — of the $800 billion handed out in a Covid relief plan known as the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. That’s on top of the $90 billion to $400 billion believed to have been stolen from the $900 billion Covid unemployment relief program — at least half taken by international fraudsters — as NBC News reported last year. And another $80 billion potentially pilfered from a separate Covid disaster relief program.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biggest-frau ... 00725.html
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White House omitted light Jackson child porn sentence in document given to senators, GOP says: 'Cover-up'
Republicans say the White House did not include in materials given to the Judiciary Committee a grisly child porn case in which Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson departed significantly below probation office recommendation – and are raising questions of whether the White House "intentionally left it out," which the White House disputes.

Jackson, President Biden's Supreme Court nominee, sentenced the case less than a year ago as she was about to be elevated to the D.C. Circuit Court. Titled U.S. v. Cane, it involved "over 6,500 files depicting children appearing to be of elementary, middle and high school ages, engaged in sexual acts or posing sexually." The probation office recommended a sentence of 84 months in the case but Jackson sentenced the man to 60 months in prison, which was the mandatory minimum.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ketanj ... e-cover-up
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