Archive for June, 2010

30 Jun

Kagan Takes Gun Off Table

Calls Recent SCOTUS Cases ‘Good Precedent’

The McGlynn: I call it pure crap.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan seems determined — if not poised — to take another Republican argument against her candidacy off the table, as she testified on Tuesday that she considers recent cases upholding Second Amendment rights to be “good precedent going forward.”

Kagan said that there was now “no doubt” that the right to bear arms as established by District of Columbia v. Heller was “binding precedent.” If she were to make it to the bench and hear a gun-related cases in the future, she added, her “responsibility would be to apply to the Constitution as understood and previously applied by the court and that means as understood and interpreted by the court in Heller.”

“I do think that Heller is the law going forward,” she said. “I have not had, myself, the occasion to delve into the history that the courts dealt with in Heller. But I have absolutely no reason to think that the court’s analysis was incorrect in any way. I accept the court’s analysis and will apply it going forward.”

The comments are the clearest yet that Kagan would do little to change the current legal constructs of gun-rights laws should she be confirmed. That isn’t to dismiss the ability of Congress to try and pass additional legislation on the matter. But if such legislation were passed and subsequently challenged in the courts, the nominee would likely strike it down if it violated the legal premises put forth in Heller.

The same held true, Kagan said, with respect to the decision handed down by the court on Monday in the case of Chicago v. McDonald, which held that the city’s nearly 30-year ban on handguns is illegal.

“I do think that those decisions [Heller and McDonald] are settled law and are entitled to all of the weight that any precedent of the Supreme Court has,” said Kagan.

Prior to her confirmation hearings, there were clear indications that Republicans planned to make hay of Kagan’s supposed hostility to Second Amendment rights. As a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, she had said she was “not sympathetic” to a man who had claimed his rights were disregarded after being arrested for carrying an unlicensed firearm. Republicans had pledged to hammer her on this memo during the confirmation hearings. But by not challenging the court’s most recent Second Amendment cases, Kagan has effectively made the topic moot. And, in the process, she has underscored the real political influence that the gun-rights lobby has within the halls of political power — in all three governing branches.

Posted in General by: themcglynn
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30 Jun

Spiritually Bankrupt

Dan Rather

Host, Dan Rather Reports

This is written with a sense of sadness and some mixed feelings. While not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, I have great respect for the church and its followers.

The church has done and continues to do much good in the world. I’ve seen it among the poor, the downtrodden, and the ill all around the globe. But with a team of other investigative reporters, we uncovered some things that should be brought to light and pondered.

Earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI issued the first apology to priest abuse victims from St. Peter’s Square – a gesture intended to show that church leadership is finally ready to confront this growing scandal.

But in reporting a recent story, we found that behind the scenes – and in court – the church has taken a much less contrite and more confrontational position. Our investigation found that in various dioceses across the United States, church leaders were going great lengths to avoid making amends with the same victims of abuse they claimed to be trying to make peace with.

Facing waves of lawsuits by now-adult victims, we found the church has reacted more like a big business than a sacred institution: Wealthy dioceses have claimed to be broke and taken the drastic act of filing for bankruptcy. Only when forced to open their ledgers in bankruptcy proceedings does it become clear that several of these dioceses were actually flush with assets – cash, real estate, parishes – that it could have made available to victims seeking restitution.

WATCH:

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Take the Diocese of San Diego: In 2007, just before several abuse cases were scheduled to begin, it filed for bankruptcy. It sought this protection despite owning hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate – everything from commercial buildings, to open land, to parking lots. Only after it became clear that the bankruptcy judge was ready to dismiss the diocese’s bankruptcy filing did the church seek to settle with victims. At the end of the bankruptcy proceedings, the judge, a Catholic, scolded the church for being “disingenuous.”
In Davenport, Iowa, diocese officials went on a spending spree just before it claimed insolvency and filed for bankruptcy in 2006 – spending that included nearly $20,000 for the very-much-alive bishop’s future funeral.

In Wilmington, Delaware — the most recent diocese to file for bankruptcy– church officials have tried to limit liability by claiming the property owned by its parishes is separate from its own. It all came down to a $120 million investment fund administered by the diocese. Various diocese entities –including schools, parishes and cemeteries– had invested $75 million in the fund. The diocese argued that that money should be off-limits to victims’ lawsuits. But the bankruptcy judge didn’t buy it. On June 28, he ruled that all of the money should be up for grabs.

We spoke to one of the plaintiffs in Wilmington, Jim Holman, who has a unique perspective. Holman was abused by a priest when he was a teenager. Now, he’s a bankruptcy lawyer who has guided dozens of companies through Chapter 11 filings. He’s clearly not adverse to the concept of bankruptcy — But he said the church, as a sacred body, should be held to a higher standard than the average corporation.

“This, let’s preserve every avenue of defense with regard to our liquid assets — you know, it’s– it’s an understandable reaction if you’re dealing with a widget factory,” Holman told us. “It’s not an understandable attitude when you’re dealing with this kind of civic wound.”

While the church hierarchy has finally acknowledged the civic wound of sexual abuse by priests, it has preferred to deal it on its own terms. And not just in the United States, but around the globe. Just last week, authorities in Belgium raided various church buildings, including one where a group of the country’s top church leaders were holding a meeting. Police taking part in “Operation Chalice,” as the raid was dubbed, refused to allow the stunned bishops attending the meeting to leave, and even confiscated their cell phones. It soon got out that the investigators had even dug into the crypts of two former archbishops.

Pope Benedict XVI denounced the raids. The Belgian authorities, he said, had trampled on the church’s own internal abuse investigation. Even worse, it had affronted the Vatican’s sovereign immunity. It’s hard to know at this point whether he has a fair argument, since the details of the investigation haven’t yet surfaced. There should be no surprise if many observers argue that there’s one thing telling about the pope’s response to the raids: In describing them as “deplorable,” he was arguably using even stronger language than he has used to criticize the pedophile priests and their protectors that have gotten the Roman Catholic Church into this mess.

Dan Rather Reports’ “Spiritually Bankrupt” will air Tuesday, June 29 at 8 PM and 11 PM Eastern on HDNet. It will also be available on iTunes on Wednesday.

Posted in General by: theoleary
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30 Jun

Events of Interest and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective

Taliban attacks Nato base

Airfield struck to “send a message” to US general set to take command in Afghanistan.

	Petraeus to review Afghan war rules
	Afghan madrassa raid provokes clashes
	Afghan army not ready to take over
	Foreign troops die in Afghanistan
	War ‘harder than expected’

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Hurricane halts oil spill cleanup

Hurricane Alex has halted some efforts to clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and delayed plans to capture more oil gushing from the worst spill in US history.

The US National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Alex had strengthened into a hurricane on Tuesday with winds of about 120 kph, and was expected to make landfall near the Texas-Mexico border late on Wednesday.

Alex, the first hurricane of the season, is not expected to affect recovery efforts at the site of the blown-out well, 80 kilometres off the Louisiana coast, but the storm’s outer edges complicated the cleanup.

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Iraq war inquiry resumes

Sparrow brings you the latest as Chilcot returns from hiatus to hear foreign office evidence

Diplomat questions Blair’s handling of Bush

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How Russian spies infiltrated suburban America

Carefully-crafted American normality shattered with the arrest of 11 people on charges of being part of deep cover espionage ring

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US banks off the hook until 2022

Political reality has forced compromise into the drive to place restrictions on financial

Posted in General by: themcglynn
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29 Jun

Events of Interest and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective

Russia denounces US ’spy’ arrests

Moscow describes allegations as “baseless” as 11th suspect is detained in Cyprus.

	‘Russian secret agents’ held
	Obama: US-Russia ties ‘reset’
	US and Russia sign nuclear pact

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		Afghan troops ‘overrated’

Afghan troops ‘overrated’

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		Israel’s ‘unspoken alliance’ Author of book on Israel’s relationship with Apartheid South Africa talks to Al Jazeera.

Israel’s ‘unspoken alliance’

Author of book on Israel’s relationship with Apartheid South Africa talks to Al Jazeera.

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Gun lobby victory as every American’s right to bear arms upheld by ruling

National Rifle Association celebrates US supreme court ruling that ends localised gun control laws in America

Blackwater deal in Afghanistan questioned by Congress

Deal worth £146m for military work in Afghanistan comes despite accusations over murder and indiscriminate killings in Iraq

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Scientists ‘expect climate tipping point’ by 2200

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

The global climate is more than likely to slip into an unpredictable state with unknown consequences for human societies if carbon dioxide emissions

continue on their present course, a survey of leading climate scientists has found.

Almost all of the leading researchers who took part in a detailed analysis of their expert opinion believe that high levels of greenhouse gases will cause a fundamental shift in the global climate system – a tipping point – with potentially far-reaching consequences.

The 14 scientists, all experts in their fields of climate research, were asked about the probability of a tipping point being reached some time before 2200 if global warming continued on the course of the worst-case scenarios predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Nine of the fourteen scientists said that the chances of a tipping point for the high scenario were greater than 90 per cent, with only one saying that the chances were less than 50:50. At current rates of CO2 emissions , the world is on course for following the higher trajectory on global warming suggested by the IPCC.

The survey, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was carried out by a team led by Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to try to assess the level of consensus among climate scientists over some of the uncertainties about future predictions.

Click to continue reading “Events of Interest and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective”

Posted in General by: themcglynn
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28 Jun