MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT     

Let's start here, with a question from the website Wall Street Parade:

The public, and Congress, have a pressing need to question how a law firm that was cited by a U.S. District Court, an Appellate Court and the U.S. Supreme Court as playing a central role in coordinating the illegal activity of Big Tobacco – activity that callously harmed the health and welfare of both children and adults, ended up sending three of its lawyers to the top slots at the Nation’s highest law enforcement office.

Both Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, and Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division were Covington & Burling partners before they joined the Justice Department.  Dan Suleiman, who also worked at Covington and Burling, became the new deputy chief of staff and counselor to Lanny Breuer on July 16 of this year.  Since 2008, employees of Covington & Burling have contributed $347,951 to President Obama’s campaigns.

In the past, Covington & Burling's clients have included Monsanto, Union Pacific, Merck, Warner-Lambert, Eli Lilly, Turner Broadcasting, IBM, General Motors, BankBoston Corporation, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Blackwater (Xe), Chiquita Bananas (in which Eric Holder defended the company against a lawsuit brought by families of individuals slain by Colombian paramilitary groups receiving money from Chiquita), the Southern Peru Copper Company (accused of human rights violations and pollution) among a bevy of other mega-financial and corporate entities.

Among this list, it is important to remember that Covington & Burling received a lacerating critique from a federal judge in 2006 for its long-term representation of the Tobacco Institute and Philip Morris. Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reprimanded attorneys for not just representing Big Tobacco, but for taking part in a conspiracy to deceive the public and regulators:

(Photo: mafleen)

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The hanging chad may be a relic from the not too distant past, but anyone who waited in line for hours to cast their vote, anyone who thought they were legitimately registered but were forced to cast a provisional ballot because their name wasn’t on the voter rolls, or anyone who found that their polling place may have been changed at the last minute, knows that year after year and election after election, we still can’t the voting process right.

During his election night victory speech, President Barack Obama acknowledged as much by referring to the long lines experienced by thousands of voters, and saying, “by the way, we have to fix that.”

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT                           

"Lanny Breuer, Justice Department criminal division chief, is stepping down," a Wednesday Washington Post headline announced.

We'd like to think that it was a Tuesday BuzzFlash at Truthout commentary that did the trick: "The New Untouchables Are Wall Street Executives, Despite Evidence Many Likely Criminally Violated Sarbanes-Oxley Act." In that piece, BuzzFlash observed that Breuer is ultimately responsible for not prosecuting any key Wall Street executives, many of which – on the evidence available – oversaw a tsunami of criminal violations of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  

Many Americans are not aware of Sarbanes-Oxley, which has many legal requirements in it.  A key regulation it places on corporations, under penalty of law, is full disclosure of financial transactions and any discovered fraudulent activity.  The latter breaking of the law was key to how the subprime mortgage breakdown was the gateway to the collapse of the economy in 2008.

Yet, Breuer, who was – and likely will be again – an insider DC megabucks lawyer representing banks too big to fail and global corporations, settled on fines (or let the Securities and Exchange Commission do a slap on the wrist to corporate and financial masters of the universe). As the Washington Post confirms, "Prior to his appointment at the Justice Department, Breuer worked at the Washington office of the Covington & Burling law firm, alongside [Eric] Holder."

In short, Breuer and Holder are responsible to the American people for prosecuting the same masters of the universe clientele who they represented for lavish salaries at Covington & Burling.  We can't read the minds of Breuer and Holder, but given DC precedent, it is quite likely that they will return to mega-bucks salary partnerships at a DC law firm again representing the kind of people who they are supposed to be prosecuting.   If they criminally indict Wall Street executives, their financial value as attorneys decreases.  That's the bottom line.

Besides, these guys are of the same elite managerial class that the Wall Street "made men" are. 

(Photo: Hyperion327)

ROBERT C. KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Their grief is too profound and too public. Their words have to be taken seriously — allowed to mix with the politics and the self-interest and the fear, those generic trivializers of the national conversation.

“This is a Promise we make to our precious children. Because each child, every human life is filled with promise, and though we continue to be filled with unbearable pain we choose love, belief, and hope instead of anger.”

The website is called the Sandy Hook Promise. It advances no particular agenda, except to proclaim . . . the value of life.

WILLIAM RIVERS PITT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In case you missed it, Sec. Panetta has lifted the prohibition against women serving in combat roles in the military.

Regarding this, and speaking to the issue of equality, I offer a tremendously uncomfortable truth: the fighting in and aftermath of American wars have, in many instances, been great leaps forward for civil rights in our history.

African American Union soldiers in the Civil War were widely regarded as ditch-digging serfs, until the need for combat soldiers pressed them into the fight, where they served with distinction...and once someone has worn the uniform of an American soldier and served under fire, only the basest racist had the gall to deny them equality. This was further enforced in WWII, where African American service in war further obliterated the distinction between Black and White when it comes to full citizenship for those who have worn the uniform in combat.

...and only a fool would dismiss the leap forward made by American women after Rosie the Riveter basically won the war, a fact that showed women, along with the culture at large, that they belong in the workplace right next to everyone else. Rosie was arguably the first modern American feminist; ask Betty Friedan, who knew she was made for more than housecleaning in the post-war ennui, and started a revolution.

ERIC ZUESSE FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Ninety percent of the corporations that were criminally convicted between 1989 and 2000 donated overwhelmingly to the Republican Party in 2012.

A study by the Corporate Crime Reporter, Russell Mokhiber, found that, “Ten out of the current top 100 donors to the 2012 political campaign have ple[a]d guilty to crimes.” The criminal-convictions file that was considered in his study included convictions during the ten years between 1989 and 2000.

An examination of this list, by the present reporter, indicates that nine of these ten big-donating criminal firms gave far more to Republican political campaigns than to Democratic ones. Only one firm, Pfizer, donated more to Democrats; and they contributed only slightly more to Democrats than to Republicans. By contrast, each one of the nine big-donating Republican criminal corporations – Honeywell, Lockheed, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boeing, GE, Northrop, Koch Industries, Raytheon, and Exxon – donated far more to Republicans than to Democrats; and the most lopsidedly political criminal firm of them all, Koch Industries (which organized the “Tea Party” starting when Obama first entered the White House), donated a whopping 98% to Republicans.

At least according to this measure, criminal firms prefer Republican politicians overwhelmingly. It is rare, almost unheard of, to find a population that is so lopsidedly favorable to one Party over the other, as this one is: 90% vs. 10%.

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT                 

The Federal Aviation Administration is planning on authorizing drone use that might result in 30,000 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) cruising through US airspace in the next decade. (There are already drones flying intelligence and law enforcement surveillance over American territory.)  Many of these will be for commercial use (for instance, FedEX is preparing to use drones for deliveries to smaller markets).

But as of today, such drones present a chilling possibility beyond the already invasive loss of privacy and crowding of the skies: using a non-encrypted GPS system, the drones can possibly be hijacked and used for destructive purposes, potentially as bomb delivery vehicles by domestic or foreign terrorists.

Assistant Professor Todd Humphreys of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin confirmed to BuzzFlash at Truthout that such a vulnerability exists. Humphreys developed the prototype for what is known as a "spoofer," a device that can seize control of a civilian drone (military drones are encrypted and less vulnerable to hijackings, although they can be jammed and disrupted in certain circumstances – which possibly explains how the Iranians captured a fully intact CIA surveillance drone).

Last year, Humphreys and his aerospace engineering team at the University of Texas demonstrated to the Department of Homeland Security and the FAA how, with equipment costing less than $2000, a drone could be hijacked in a controlled setting with a "spoofer."  A similar experiment also proved successful at Carnegie Mellon University, according to Space.com: "The overall landscape of GPS vulnerabilities is startling, and our experiments demonstrate a significantly larger attack surface than previously thought," a research paper about the Carnegie Mellon study concluded. "Until GPS is secured, life and safety-critical applications that depend upon it are likely vulnerable to attack."

(Photo: Wikiepedia)

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT                            

On January 22, Frontline airs a program asking why the executives on Wall Street who oversaw the economic meltdown in 2007 have remain unprosecuted.

According to a Frontline release, "In 'The Untouchables,' premiering Jan. 22, 2013, at 10 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE producer and correspondent Martin Smith investigates why the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has failed to act on credible evidence that Wall Street knowingly packaged and sold toxic mortgage loans to investors, loans that brought the U.S. and world economies to the brink of collapse."

Frontline asks "asks Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Criminal Division, about his failure to criminally indict Wall Street executives. 'I think there was a level of greed, a level of excessive risk taking in this situation that I find abominable and very upsetting,' says Breuer. 'But that is not what makes a criminal case.'"

Yet, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was designed to prosecute key elements of the kind of activity that Wall Street engaged in prior to the economic breakdown – and of which there is the possibility that they are still engaging in.  All the DOJ has done is fine banks (which is merely a cost of their doing business) along with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The lamentable damage to justice is nothing new regarding Wall Street inviolability from a criminal perspective (in regards to financial accountability).  In fact, "60 Minutes" aired a compelling, lengthy evidence-filled investigative story on December 4, 2011, in which reporter Steve Kroft begins the segment with this statement:

(Photo: Wikipedia)

ERIC ZUESSE FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The NRA argues, on the basis of two reasons, why everyone should be able to get assault-weapons: (1) It’s self-defense against law-breakers; and, (2) It’s self-defense against the United States Government if that becomes “tyrannical.”

Both reasons ignore that a democratic government is supposed to determine, according to its laws, what constitutes “self defense,” and also that in a democracy no individual citizen is supposed to have the final say in deciding that matter. Only the law can do that.

But what happens if the U.S. Government itself becomes “tyrannical” (such as the pro- “small government” NRA allege)? In a democracy, no individual citizen (regardless whether a member of the NRA) is supposed to have the final say in determining when and if the democracy has ended and tyranny has begun. That’s supposed to be determined instead by organized and overt revolutionaries, adhering to the existing duly passed laws, just as happened in the American Revolution. They were no mob. The American way is the rule of law, not the rule of any mob, not even rule by an organized mob. Because a mob can easily be taken over and led by demagogues.

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

On Friday, January 25, three days after the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision -- which established a woman’s constitutional right to abortion -- tens of thousands of anti-abortion protesters will once again hold their annual March for Life rally in Washington D.C.

While there hasn’t been another assassination of a doctor performing abortions since the 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller -- who performed abortions at his clinic in Wichita, Kansas -- incidents of anti-abortion violence against health  clinics have continued. In 2010, Molotove cocktails were thrown at Planned Parenthood clinics in Madera, California and in north Texas. In January 2012, the American Family Planning Clinic in Pensacola, Florida was firebombed, and in April a bomb exploded on the windowsill of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grand Chute, Wisconsin.

Over the past few years, however, the anti-abortion movement has turned to friendly legislatures and has registered a string of policy victories – particularly in states with Republican governors and GOP-controlled state legislatures. These states have imposed severe restrictions on a woman’s right to an abortion. In four states – North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas and Mississippi – there is only one clinic that, along with providing a broad array of women’s health care services, performs abortions.