Via Interoccupy.net:

Brent Betterly, Brian Jacob Church, and Jared Chase (known together as the NATO 3) were brought in front of Judge Thaddeus Wilson on Tuesday, June 11th for another status hearing. They were accompanied by multiple sheriffs deputies and a court full of supporters watching closely over the proceedings. The proceedings provided more information on the Chicago cops failing to preserve their cell phones and text messages from the investigation, which appear to be significant pieces of evidence in the State’s politically motivated prosecution. The defense also introduced a couple more motions to dismiss charges.

Assistant States Attorney Matthew Thrun submitted the prosecution’s response to multiple ongoing discovery issues still standing from the court’s ruling four weeks ago. This response was accompanied by hundreds of photographs stemming from the pre-NATO Summit surveillance program spying on activist groups in Chicago planning protests last spring.

Contained within the prosecution’s answer to discovery was the revelation that officers involved in field intelligence team 7150 (the unit in charge of all pre-NATO surveillance and infiltration) destroyed or disappeared personal cell phones used during the investigation. It seems that multiple officers in the unit used their personal cell phones to exchange information between themselves and different officers as well as their supervisors in the course of the operation. According to the material offered up to the court today by prosecutors, the private cell phone service providers used by the officers did not store their text message data and the officers mysteriously (and conveniently for them) no longer have those phones in their possession. Thus, these crucial pieces of evidence will not be available to the defense.

Additionally, the prosecution failed to hand over the First Amendment worksheet and subsequent re-applications for this worksheet. The court had ruled four weeks ago that these internal police department documents were to be handed over to the defense, and on this issue Judge Wilson was clearly frustrated with the clear stalling tactics. Wilson instructed the prosecution to tell high-level police officials that “this court has a schedule and I intend to stick to it,” adding that he would issue a ruling to show cause if the documents had not been handed over to the defense before the next court date. He went on to say that “the federal court would be appalled to learn that [...these files...] are not in order to be presented.”

Continue reading »

Oh my. Weird Mark Sanford is getting creepy:

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford must appear in court two days after running for a vacant congressional seat to answer a complaint that he trespassed at his ex-wife's home, according to court documents acquired by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The complaint says Jenny Sanford confronted Sanford leaving her Sullivans Island home on Feb. 3 by a rear door, using his cell phone for a flashlight. Her attorney filed the complaint the next day and Jenny Sanford confirmed Tuesday the documents are authentic.

The couple's 2010 divorce settlement says neither may enter the other's home without permission. Mark Sanford lives about a 20-minute drive away in downtown Charleston.

Sanford is in the midst of running for a vacant congressional seat against Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

"I am doing my best not to get in the way of his race," Jenny Sanford told the AP. "I want him to sink or swim on his own. For the sake of my children I'm trying my best not to get in the way, but he makes things difficult for me when he does things like trespassing."

There has been no comment from Sanford or his campaign as yet, but don't be surprised if we hear another "God forgives people who are imperfect,” recital, as we heard after his days long disappearance into the Appalachian Trail that turned out to be a trip to Argentina to visit his mistress, who is now his fiance.

Update: National Republicans "are pulling the plug on Mark Sanford's suddenly besieged congressional campaign," Politico reports, "a potentially fatal blow to the former South Carolina governor's campaign against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch."

And that's all she wrote, folks!

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies perform CPR on Larry Delassus Dec. 19 outside the Department A courtroom where he went into cardiac arrest. Photo by Trujillo law partner, Bob Khakshooy

A bank foreclosure can be a horrifically stressful event on a young and healthy person. But imagine coping with a bank trying to take away your home because of a typo on their part, and not any fault of your own, when you are a frail, disabled veteran. That's the battle 62-year-old Larry Delassus had to fight even though court records show he paid his mortgage two months ahead of schedule and also paid his property taxes in advance.

Via:

On the morning of Dec. 19, 2012, in a Torrance courtroom, Larry Delassus' heart stopped as he watched his attorney argue his negligence and discrimination case against banking behemoth Wells Fargo.

His death came more than two years after Wells Fargo mistakenly mixed up his Hermosa Beach address with that of a neighbor in the same condo complex. The bank's typo led Wells Fargo to demand that Delassus pay $13,361.90 ­— two years of late property taxes the bank said it had paid on his behalf in order to keep his Wells Fargo mortgage afloat.

But Delassus, a quiet man who suffered from the rare blood-clot disorder Budd-Chiari syndrome and was often hospitalized, didn't owe a penny in taxes.

One of his neighbors, whose condo "parcel number" was two digits different from Delassus', owed the back taxes.

In a series of painfully tragic events, Wells Fargo relied on its typographical error to double Delassus' mortgage — from $1,237.69 to $2,429.13 — as its way of recouping the $13,361.90 in taxes Delassus didn't owe. Delassus, a retiree living on a $1,655 check, couldn't meet the mysteriously increased mortgage. He stopped paying, and soon was far behind on his mortgage.

One especially difficult moment during his battle with Wells Fargo came in May 2011, shortly after another bad bout of illness, Delassus' condo was sold by the bank. In a videotaped court deposition later, Delassus breaks down crying. "I came back from the hospital, and that very day, they sold the son of a b*tch," he says. "I'm homeless. I did not have a home. My condo — 16 years, gone. Gone."

There's much more on Larry Delassus' battle with Wells Fargo here.

Once Wells Fargo had acknowledged their typographical error, there doesn't seem to be any logical reason that they didn't bend over backwards to return Mr. Delassus to square one with his mortgage...the 16-year mortgage holder who never missed a payment, and return him to that point with all the erroneously tacked on fees wiped away.

Delassus' attorney Anthony Trujillo, a friend and next-door neighbor, recalls deposing Wells Fargo Litigation Support Manager Michael Dolan in 2012, and asked what his definition of “fair” was.

“Fair is a place where they have ponies and merry-go-rounds,” Dolan said.

A check shows a donor's support for the campaign of Mike Miller, who defeated John Ward, that was released when the Montana district court judge unsealed the bank records of Western Tradition Partnership at the request of Frontline and ProPublica. (Photo credit: text to link herePBS Frontline )

By Kim Barker,ProPublica, and Rick Young and Emma Schwartz, Frontline, Nov. 5, 2012, 10:19 a.m.

Nov. 5: This post has been updated.

This story was co-published with PBS Frontline.

The donors wrote notes on their checks like "Go get 'em!" or "Stop Obama." They scrawled in names of candidates for office in Montana and Colorado, or simply "oil & gas."

But unlike donors to political committees, the names of those who gave to Western Tradition Partnership, or WTP, were never supposed to be made public.

That changed Friday after a Montana district court judge released the social welfare nonprofit's bank records at the request of Frontline and ProPublica, saying citizens had a right to know.

It was the first time that a court has ordered a modern dark money group's donors to be made public, firing a warning shot to similar organizations engaged in politics.

The WTP bank records, which cover a period from March 2008 to December 2010, show that the group raised almost $1.1 million from other social welfare nonprofits, corporations, a political committee and individuals. It received $650,000 from the nonprofits, $70,000 from an Oklahoma businessman and his company and $50,000 from a Colorado homebuilder. Most WTP contributors, however, gave on a smaller scale: 495 of the group's 607 donations were for $100 or less.

The total amount raised by WTP, now known as American Tradition Partnership, was not large, compared to the tens of millions of dollars dark money groups like Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity have collected in the 2012 election cycle.

But the details available on WTP, which has worked to elect conservatives in Montana and Colorado and has won national attention for a lawsuit that led the Supreme Court to apply its Citizens United ruling to states, are striking.

The bank records highlight WTP's ties to groups backing libertarian Ron Paul. The Conservative Action League, a Virginia social welfare nonprofit run at the time in part by John Tate, most recently Paul's campaign manager, transferred $40,000 to WTP in August 2008, bank records show. Tate was also a consultant for WTP. In addition, WTP gave $5,000 to a group called the SD Campaign for Liberty, affiliated with Paul and the national Campaign for Liberty.

Continue reading »

Well, at least we know how Justice Antonin Scalia will be leaning as new cases arrive at the Supreme Court this year. He offered a glimpse into his decision-making process during an event at the American Enterprise Institute. RightWingWatch has an excellent run-down on AEI here.

Scalia calls himself a “textualist” and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them.

So Scalia parts company with colleagues who have come to believe capital punishment is unconstitutional.

“The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state,” Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute.

Scalia also took issue with justices who try to be true to the values of the Constitution as he applies them to a changing world. This imaginary justice goes home for dinner and tells his wife what a wonderful day he had, Scalia said.

This imaginary justice, Scalia continued, announces that it turns out “’the Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean.’ No kidding.”

According to the Washington Examiner, Scalia was asked by an audience member how he stays hopeful in the face of the Obama administration's "failure to leave lawmaking to Congress."

Scalia first responded, "Who says I'm hopeful?" before saying he soldiers on.

"I feel like I'm Frodo in 'Lord of the Rings,' " he said. "The evil eye will get us sooner or later, but it's worth the fight."

Personally, I think Scalia got into the wine for the wine and cheese reception before his speech. His remarks are bolder than his usual partisan, pompous rhertoric. And my aren't we lucky with this windbag on the bench that we're not still burning witches, or any number of "crimes" and their punishments that been vanquished from the books in our changing world.

Justice Scalia's reference to the Obama administration as "the evil eye" is an exclamation point on his career of allowing his right-wing leanings to influence his rulings, and there have been multiple calls for his impeachment. It's well past time we got it done, then he can go peddle his books and criticize anyone he wants, and leave outdated laws in the past where they belong.

Late addition: As noted by The General, at least Scalia may be more "moderate" than Mitt Romney.

Anonymous has claimed to have leaked hours worth of video footage of the NYPD's 2011 raid on Zuccotti Park, filmed by 14 different cameras by the NYPD.

After requesting a comment, The Gothamist has received a response from NYPD Deputy Commissioner, Public Information Paul Browne who had this to say about the "leak":

Deputy Commissioner, Public Information Paul Browne returned our request to comment: " 'Purports' is the operative word," Browne writes, in reference to our inquiry of the footage that Anonymous purports to have taken from the NYPD. "Contrary to the narrator's account, there were scores of protesters who took video with no attempts by the police to confiscate it."

"Further, the west side of Zuccotti Park on Church Street was lined with television news personnel and satellite trucks, many of whom filmed events that night," Browne adds, omitting the fact that a press pen for the media was erected out of sight of the park, and that most members of the media weren't permitted to observe the raid.

Browne says that the "officer" at the outset of Anonymous' video is not wearing an authentic NYPD uniform, as its patches are out of place and the badge is "clearly bogus." To Browne, the voice of a man stating he is a detective is a sign that the footage was likely turned over in discovery, and is part of the court record: "It was not 'leaked' by the police, but possibly by someone suing us, and not much of a leak since it's park of the court record."

So this release is a leak, but not likely from a detective. There is a lot of video footage, and possibly never seen by the general public before now. This is going to take me some time, but if I come across anything significant, you'll all be the first to know.

A South African court is set to release 270 miners who were arrested on charges of murder after police there gunned down 34 of their co-workers, and wounded 78 others.

The release was due to start on Monday around 2:00pm (12:00 GMT), after the public prosecutor on Sunday provisionally dropped murder charges brought against the miners for the killings by police at platinum giant Lonmin's Marikana mine.

"We still have to establish what the numbers [due to be released] are and get a true reflection of what the intention of the prosecution was," Mapule Keetse, the lawyer for the detained, told the AFP news agency.

Murder had been added to the chargesheet against the miners last week, after they were originally charged with public violence, illegal gathering and attempted murder.

"The murder charge against the current 270 suspects, which was provisional anyway, will be formally withdrawn provisionally in court on their next court appearance," Nomgcobo Jiba, acting national director of prosecutions, announced on Sunday.

Jiba said other charges, including public violence, would remain.

The announcement of the release follows intense criticism from political parties, trade unions, civil society and legal experts.

The strike by the miners of Gold Fields' KDC gold mine is said to likely continue. The miners were seeking a wage increase to $1,500 a month.

More at AlJazeera.

Voting Rights Act: The State of Section 5

by Suevon Lee ProPublica, Aug. 30, 2012,

Aug. 30: This post has been updated.

A single provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been playing a key role on the election front this year. Section 5 has blocked photo voter-ID laws, prohibited reduced early-voting periods in parts of Florida and just Tuesday barred new redistricting maps in Texas.

It's the reason South Carolina is in federal court this week to try to convince a three-judge panel its photo voter-ID law will not disenfranchise minorities. It's the reason that Texas went to trial on the same issue last month — and on Thursday, lost.

Not surprisingly, then, Section 5 is increasingly the target of attack by those who say it is outdated, discriminatory against Southern states and unconstitutional.

Under the provision, certain states and localities with a history of anti-minority election practices must obtain federal approval or "preclearance" before making changes to voting laws. In present day, that requirement is burdensome, "needlessly aggressive" and based on outdated coverage criteria, two petitions filed in July with the U.S. Supreme Court argue.

Section 5 applies to nine states — Texas, South Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia and Alaska — and currently to parts of Florida, California, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Michigan and New Hampshire. The original coverage formula looked at whether states imposed unfair devices like literacy tests in November 1964, whether less than 50 percent of the voting-age population was registered to vote as of that date, or if less than 50 percent of eligible voters voted in the November 1964 presidential election. In 1975, the formula expanded to include jurisdictions that provided election materials only in English when members of a language minority made up more than 5 percent of voting-age citizens.

Momentum is building at the highest levels to narrow or even eliminate this provision. In a 2009 majority opinion to a Section 5 challenge from Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 in Texas, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that preclearance and the coverage formula "raise serious constitutional questions," though the justices didn't settle them at the time. In January, in a separate concurrence to the judgment in the Texas redistricting case, Justice Clarence Thomas stated that Section 5 is unconstitutional (for more on how that case reached the Supreme Court, see our previous explainer).

Continue reading »

When: Wednesday, August 8th 2012, 5-7pm
Where: Gracie Mansion (88 E End Ave, NYC)
RSVP on Facebook | #OccupyGracieMansion

The 1% mayor of NYC is so sure he can buy anything and anyone, as easily as he bought the office of mayor, including an unprecedented third term.

In his attempt to transform our city into his own 1% fantasy land, he has created a police state: where minority citizens are daily terrorized with stop and frisk; where only the most healthy, wealthy and white are welcome, and the “unwanted” are driven out of their homes and neighborhoods; where peaceful protesters are attacked with pepper spray and batons, and brutally evicted from lovingly built unique realizations of true democracy.

The 1% mayor has shown nothing but contempt for the disability community, has stomped on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and bought high-placed defenders of corporate-power in order to use our law against us in court.

On Wednesday, August 8th, will you swallow the 1% mayor's lie that he wants to honor the ADA, play along with his hypocrisy, forget your dignity and disability pride? Or will you join the Disability Caucus of Occupy Wall Street and let the 1% mayor know we cannot be bought for a hamburger and a pat on the head?

Schedule:
5:00: Sound Demo (Bring your own drum/ noise maker)
5:30: People’s Picket (Bring your own protest Sign)
6:00: Community Feast (Bring your own favorite dish)
7:00: Sleepful Protest Planning Session (Bring your own sleeping bag)

This is a non-violent protest action open to all who are angry about the mayor's 1% policies, which continue to marginalize New Yorkers of all backgrounds.

A federal court awarded $200,000 in the case of an Orlando activist, Timothy Osamar, who was imprisoned for 18 days after scribbling with chalk “The revolution will not be televised” and “All I want for Christmas is a revolution” in front of city hall last December:

Via:

Osamar was arrested for violating a city ordinance prohibiting "writing or painting advertising matter on streets or sidewalks." He was the first person to be charged with the ordinance - and also the first person to challenge it. You see, Osamar was a member of Occupy Orlando and his 'advertising matter' was political in nature. Yes, there's an Amendment for that.

Osamar was paid $6,000 in damages while his three lawyers split $35,000. But the city's biggest payouts went to its own lawyers - two separate agencies charging $83,293 and $72,070 for a grand total of $155,363. A spokeswoman for Orlando told the Orlando Sentinel the city had no choice in the matter, "The city of Orlando was the defendant in the lawsuit and had no choice but to provide a defense."

Just last week, an art event in Los Angeles, the "Chalk Walk," was stormed by LAPD clad in riot gear with many arrests and rubber bullet injuries.