Thursday, May 18, 2023. Was the US government attempting to make deals with Saddam Hussein after the start of the Iraq War, Judge Clarence Thomas' corruption leads to a Senate hearing, and much more.
Starting with a new claim. The Iraq War has left many people dead. The most famous death would be Saddam Hussein, Iraq's leader. The US invaded in March of 2003 and Saddam went into hiding and eluded capture until December of 2003.
From WIKIPEDIA:
On 13 December 2003, in Operation Red Dawn, Saddam was captured by American forces after being found hiding in a hole in the ground near a farmhouse in ad-Dawr,
near Tikrit. Following his capture, Saddam was transported to a US base
near Tikrit, and later taken to the American base near Baghdad.
Documents obtained and released by the National Security Archive detail
FBI interviews and conversations with Saddam while he was in US custody.[126] On 14 December, US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer confirmed that Saddam Hussein had indeed been captured at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit.[127] Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody.
Saddam was shown with a full beard and hair longer than his
familiar appearance. He was described by US officials as being in good
health. Bremer reported plans to put Saddam on trial, but claimed that
the details of such a trial had not yet been determined. Iraqis and
Americans who spoke with Saddam after his capture generally reported
that he remained self-assured, describing himself as a "firm, but just
leader."[128]
British tabloid newspaper The Sun
posted a picture of Saddam wearing white briefs on the front cover of a
newspaper. Other photographs inside the paper show Saddam washing his
trousers, shuffling, and sleeping. The US government stated that it
considered the release of the pictures a violation of the Geneva Convention, and that it would investigate the photographs.[129][130] During this period Saddam was interrogated by FBI agent George Piro.[131]
The guards at the Baghdad detention facility called their
prisoner "Vic," which stands for 'Very Important Criminal', and let him
plant a small garden near his cell. The nickname and the garden are
among the details about the former Iraqi leader that emerged during a
March 2008 tour of the Baghdad prison and cell where Saddam slept,
bathed, and kept a journal and wrote poetry in the final days before his
execution; he was concerned to ensure his legacy and how the history
would be told. The tour was conducted by US Marine Maj. Gen. Doug Stone, overseer of detention operations for the US military in Iraq at the time.[132]
During his imprisonment he exercised and was allowed to have his
personal garden, he also smoked his cigars and wrote his diary in the
courtyard of his cell.[133]
On 30 June 2004, Saddam Hussein, held in custody by US forces at the US base "Camp Cropper," along with 11 other senior Ba'athist leaders, was handed over to the interim Iraqi government to stand trial for crimes against humanity and other offences.
A few weeks later, he was charged by the Iraqi Special Tribunal with crimes committed against residents of Dujail
in 1982, following a failed assassination attempt against him. Specific
charges included the murder of 148 people, torture of women and
children and the illegal arrest of 399 others.[134][135]
Among the many challenges of the trial were:
- Saddam and his lawyers contesting the court's authority and maintaining that he was still the President of Iraq.[136]
- The assassinations and attempted assassinations of several of Saddam's lawyers.
- The replacement of the chief presiding judge midway through the trial.
On 5 November 2006, Saddam was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. Saddam's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar,
head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court in 1982, were convicted of similar
charges. The verdict and sentencing were both appealed, but subsequently
affirmed by Iraq's Supreme Court of Appeals.[137]
And that's how we in the world have known the events.
The late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein rejected a US proposal to name
his vice president without power in return for his release, the head of
Saddam's legal defence team has revealed. Khalil Al-Dulaimi told Al-Arabiya TV that the US also asked Saddam to stop fighting against US soldiers in Falluja and leave the country, but he refused.
The claim could be false. It could be true. It could be both in that the offer(s) were made to Saddam but the US government had no intention of honoring them.
Now let's go to a US hearing.
This is not a first. Believe it or not, we’ve been in nearly this
exact situation before. Back in 2011, the nonprofit group Common Cause
uncovered that Justice Thomas hadn't reported years of his wife's income
paid by a right-wing dark-money group. The New York Times reported
that Justice Thomas also had not disclosed gifts of free private jet and
yacht travel from the same right-wing billionaire -- the same kinds of
undisclosed gifts from the same right-wing billionaire that were
revealed last month.
That is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Chair of the Senate Judiciary's Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, & Federal Rights. The Supreme Court, as many have noted, has become an illegitimate court. This is the result of many actions including tossing aside precedent and, more recently, the non-stop scandals of Crooked Clarence Thomas resulting from his using a public office to enrich himself. That's corruption plain and simple and it qualifies as such without a need to determine how much influence was purchased or which cases were impacted. We, the American taxpayers, provide Clarence with a salary. That wasn't enough for him. Or his wife. So they sought to use the position of Supreme Court justice to enrich themselves -- tawdry, yes; however, it's also corrupt and unethical.
It's a betrayal of the American people and it's betrayal of the office.
In a press release, the senator's office provides this overview:
In 2011, Justice Thomas's undisclosed private jet and yacht trips
from highly political Republican billionaire Harlan Crow were sent to
the Judicial Conference’s Financial Disclosure Committee for a
determination as to whether Thomas may have broken the law. It also
came to light during that era that Justice Thomas had for years failed
to disclose income his wife received from the Heritage Foundation, a
right-wing think tank with frequent business before the Court.
Recent reporting from the Washington Post
revealed that in 2012, Leonard Leo, the orchestrator of right-wing
influence campaigns around the Supreme Court, directed payments of at
least $25,000 to a consulting firm run by Ginni Thomas and asked that
her name be left off the paperwork.
In April, bombshell reporting by ProPublica
exposed that Justice Thomas and his wife accepted extravagant vacations
worth as much as $500,000 on the dime of Harlan Crow and did not
disclose the travel. That report was later followed by an additional ProPublica story
detailing Crow’s purchase of a string of properties from Justice Thomas
and his family members, which was not properly disclosed. Further reporting by ProPublica indicates that Crow paid for multiple years of tuition for Justice Thomas’s grandnephew to attend private boarding schools.
Congress created the Judicial Conference through statute and with
passage of the Ethics in Government Act, Congress imposed clear
financial disclosure and recusal rules that apply to the Supreme Court.
"The assault . . . comes in waves," insisted Subcommittee Ranking Member John Kennedy and he tried to conjure up some innocent Court that was under attack but considering how the suit he wore assaulted the eyes, who could follow whatever nonsense he was attempting to pass off as logic? In addition to that, his hair had distracting waves -- as though newly permed, he spoke as though he took diction from Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman's character in HIGH ANXEITY -- note the similarities in the heavy hitting on the letter "s"), continuously dug his tongue into the side of his mouth while speaking and don't get me started on the glasses. It was all too distracting and he came across like an Angela Lansbury wanna-be -- is that why he's so anti LGBTQ+? Did he go through life with people mistaking him for gay? I don't know but it's hard, having seen him now, not to laugh about
this line in THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER's report on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calling (non-relative) John Kennedy out for his racist attack on Mexico: "The Louisiana Republic is known for not mincing words" -- no, no, honey, all he does is mince, he's non-stop mincing.
"Are you kidding me?" he shook his head, grinning and looking like a lunatic. When you're accusing a witness of mob connections, you're going to look like a lunatic anyway. We don't have time for his unhinged mincing and we're not going to pretend that this fat femme throwing out crackpot conspiracy theories had anything of value or of interest to offer ("colorful remarks" was what the Chair termed Kennedy's lengthy opening remarks) nor are we going to waste our time attempting to fact check what appears to be the criminally insane (Senator Dick Durbin is the Chair of the Committee and participated in the Subcommittee hearing and that included refuting and correcting Kennedy's unhinged ravings -- he has far more patience than I do). Equally true, Kennedy didn't even pretend to be interested in any response to his wild accusations as evidenced by the fact that he walked out of the hearing after his grandstanding remarks.
Back to reality, Whitehouse noted:
One month ago, Congressman Hank Johnson and I wrote to the
Judicial Conference of the United States, asking it to look at recent
reports that Justice Clarence Thomas violated the Ethics in Government
Act by failing to disclose gifts of travel and luxury vacations provided
by a right-wing billionaire. The Judicial Conference's
responsibilities under that law are quite clear. If there is 'reasonable cause to believe' that Justice Thomas willfully failed to
file, then it must refer him to the Justice Department for
investigation.
In the hearing, Durbin noted that "what this Court has to rely on is the confidence of the American people and the integrity of justices when they hand down decisions. If they hand down controversial decisions and the American people don't like them, they can at least say, 'Well that's the Court. They can go their own way.' But if there's any question about the character and the integrity of these justices, it really undermines the institution of the Court."
Crooked Clarence is a disgrace to this country and he is harming the reputation of the Court with his gold digging greed.
Appearing as the witness before the Subcommittee was Judge Mark Wolf:
My name is Mark L. Wolf. I am a Senior United States District
Judge in the District of Massachusetts. Prior to my appointment in
1985, in addition to practicing law in Washington, D.C. and Boston,
Massachusetts, I served in the Department of Justice as: a Special
Assistant to Deputy Attorney General Laurence H. Silberman (1984);
a Special Assistant to Attorney General Edward H. Levi (1975-77);
and Deputy United States Attorney and Chief of the Public
Corruption Unit in the District of Massachusetts (1981-85).
Since 1985, in addition to my work as a trial judge, I have
been actively involved in the governance of the judiciary. I have
served as Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the
District of Massachusetts (2006-12); as a member of the Judicial
Conference of the United States (2010-12); as Chair of the group
of District Judge members of the Judicial Conference (2012); and
as a member of the Judicial Conference Committees on Criminal Law,
Codes of Conduct, and Criminal Rules.
But
US District Judge Mark Wolf, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan,
said on Wednesday that the full Judicial Conference did not receive
notice of the complaints sent to leaders of the conference and therefore
couldn’t decide how the body should act on them.
“Pursuant
to established conference policies and procedures, if the committee (on
financial disclosures) had considered the letters, my colleagues on the
Judicial Conference and I should have been informed of them in its
reports to the Conference, even if the committee was not recommending
any action by the Conference,” he said.
“Such
information would have afforded me and the other members of the
conference the opportunity to discuss and decide whether there was
reasonable cause to believe Justice Thomas had willfully violated the
act and, if so, to make the required referral to the attorney general,”
Wolf added.
"What is this judge doing? How can we trust his judgment if one Texas billionaire has such a large part of his life in terms of his attention?" is what the American people has to wonder, Senator Durbin noted.
Judge Mark Wolf: It's essentially what you characterize accurately based on what I hear just being a citizen may be the reaction of the man on the street. However, as I wrote in my testimony The Ethics in Government Act emerged after the Watergate scandal for good reasons: Greater transparency of financial activities of public officials -- not just judges -- was understood to be very important to assure, among other things, the impartiality of judges. And I think that act struck, as its written, a very appropriate balance. It gives the Judicial Conference the opportunity and the obligation, to determine whether there's reasonable cause to believe there has been a willful violation. It doesn't permit, though, the Judicial Conference to make the ultimate determination of whether there was. If the Judicial Conference makes a referral to the Justice Department, it should diminish the potential and the perception that the Justice Dept has launched a 'witch hunt' against a judge or justice. Uh, but members of the Judicial Conference don't -- are not all impartial. There are friendships, there are professional relationships there are interests --
Senator Dick Durbin: That goes to the heart of the issue before us. And that is the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States of America has not established a code of conduct and ethical standards that in and of itself are trustworthy. And when this matter came before this Committee, several weeks ago, there were dissenters on the other side, the Republican side, at to whether or not this was even worthy of talking about. They accused us of smear and harassment to even raise the facts brought up by PRO-PUBLICA. And I also want to say there's a second argument we've just addressed here and that's separation of powers. Do we have any business as Congress, when it comes to the ethics of the Court? Well I thought that we did until we received a response from Chief Justice [John] Roberts and let me read it to you. This response was from the 2011 Year End Report On The Federal Judiciary. Chief Justice Roberts wrote:
Senator Dick Durbin (Con't): In other words, I think he's going to the heart of the question as to whether anyone can raise a question about the ethical standards or establish ethical standards -- even those embraced by the rest of the federal government. That, to me, gets to the heart of why we need to enact federal legislation. Senator Whitehouse has a bill on the subject, others do. I'm sure this Committee is going to address it. This is not a witch hunt, this is not a smear, this is not a harassment. This is to try to rescue the reputation of the Court from some very sordid facts that have been disclosed and proven.
We'll note this exchange.
Senator Mazie Hirono: Judge Wolf, does the Supreme Court have a code of ethics that applies to them?
Judge Mark Wolf: No.
Senator Mazie Hirono: Is there a code of ethics that applies to the federal district and circuit justice and courts?
Judge Mark Wolf: Yes.
Senator Mazie Hirono: Is there any reason that the Supreme Court should not have a code of ethics that applies to them as it applies to every other federal judge?
Judge Mark Wolf: As I wrote in the article, it was consistent with the code of conduct 2021, I think it would be beneficial if the Supreme Court had a code of conduct. But if I could say, as I wrote in my testimony, as I continue to think about these things, I think that the discussion of enacting a statute that would require the Supreme Court to adopt a code of conduct is distracting from the more important issue about enforceability -- Well, the way the existing statutes are being enforced because if there was a code of conduct for the Court and it was the ultimate arbiter of whether a justice was complying with the code of conduct, you'd have -- I predict -- enforcement problems that are similar to the problems that I've identified to the ethic ends.
Senator Mazie Hirono: Judge Wolf, the enforcement of a code of conduct is, I think, a separate issue that we would need to address. But, really, the bottom line question is: Should they have a code of conduct as applicable to them as to every other federal judge and your answer is yes. We can figure out how to do it. For example, in Hawaii, our constitution requires the Supreme Court to establish a process where it will abide by a code of conduct that we establish. And there is established a commission that does not have any judges and if that commission determines that there needs to be further referral then it does go to the Supreme Court but the judge, justice, who is involved would have to recuse himself. So there are ways that we can do the enforcement part.
The judge agreed and noted that his state (Massachusetts) had a similar system.
The hearing concluded with Judge Wolf responding to some of Senator Kennedy's crazed musings (the ones that took place at the start of the hearing). We'll conclude with this observation that Senator Dick Durbin made:
For anyone -- including my colleagues in the Senate on both sides of the aisle -- to believe that this is normal, acceptable conduct for an elected official -- Supreme Court justice, senator -- to be receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts and vacations, to have your mother's home purchased by an individual so she doesn't have to pay a mortgage any longer . . . The list just goes on and keeps going on.
john stauber really is disgusting. he used to be a media critic. today, the transphobe tweets:
a real media critic would have noted that the trans
hatred was fueled by 'the times' and had nothing to do with 'a few
stories of regret.' it had everything to do with the paper ignoring
science and ignoring medical experts. it had everything to do with
promoting fear based hate - to the point that bette midler did her
ridiculous tweet and then couldn't grasp why people were outraged.
because you fell for a hate trap, bette.
today, john stauber is just another transphobe.
he's an embarrassment.
if
'the times' wants to talk about the war on transpersons, they should
have the guts to admit that they're responsible for it and have helped
carry it out.
THE TIMES article notes that the 'witnesses' around the country are the physical equivalent of astroturf (when one small group of people -- as a campaign -- would write letters to the editor -- the same letter usually -- and send it out everywhere to try to make it look as though they were the majority) -- it's a small group that's paid to go state to state telling their stories. This is intended to harm the rights of transgendered persons. John Stauber is mocking the notion that 'only a few' -- reality, and we've noted this before, we all regret some decision. The tattoo, the haircut, the drink we shouldn't have had, not stopping at 7-11 which would have allowed us to have missed the traffic cop, etc, etc. And as I've noted before, life is about choices. You make the wrong one, own it. Don't blame it on other people.
Whether it's the nearly 50 year old transition-non-transition creep or anyone else, own your decision. Having spent decades in the military, remember that guy, and over 40, he decides he is a woman. Now he's decided he's a man. And now he's attacking the VA and others for what was done to him.
What was done to him? His requests were honored -- medical requests made by an adult. Now he regrets it. Boo-hoo. Grow the hell up. And, as with so many of these types, he never had surgery. He's whining about some hormones he took. He is the whore moan as he moans and whines. And as we noted in real time, his real problem was that transitioning would make him a woman, not the 16-year-old girl that he wanted to be.
The bulk of transgendered persons who receive medical assistance and treatment do not regret it.
Look at plastic surgery. You or I can say Michael Jackson overdid it but it was his face. And he was an adult. And he had the right to get whatever work he wanted done. Now are there people who regret having plastic surgery? Yes. They don't like their nose job or the face lift left them lop-sided or they don't like that people are talking about how they had work done. That's life.
An adult should be able to make choices and an adult should be responsible and own their choices -- good or bad.
And children?
I find it amazing that the hate merchants want to insist on 'parental rights' in what is stocked on a library shelf while dismantling parental rights with regards to your child's health. If a minor wants to have therapy or even surgery, that's to be decided by them and their parent(s) (or legal guardian -- unless they're an emancipated minor). But the hate merchants, in state after state, are stripping parents of their rights and no one's supposed to notice or comment on that. No one's supposed to notice that Candy Jones can get THE COLOR PURPLE pulled from a school library with her 'parental rights' but Candy Jones can't okay that her child take hormones prescribed by a medical doctor. It's not about parental rights, it's about destroying LGBTQ+ people.
THE TIMES article is an improvement over their previous hideous and non-scientific coverage. It is not a cure for all the paper has published before.
GLAAD notes:
Last week the Pulitzer Prizes were announced, and noticeable among
the accolades for strong, authentic journalism was the absence of awards
for individual New York Times pieces.
For more than a year, The New York Times has published
irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people, and repeatedly
elevated the views and opinions of the small fringe of anti-LGBTQ
activists, often without identifying their connections to anti-LGBTQ
groups, amplifying inaccurate and harmful misinformation about
transgender people and issues. Three months after a coalition of GLAAD
and more than 100 coalition partners sent a letter to The New York Times demanding
fair, accurate, and inclusive trans coverage, the Times did not receive
any Pulitzer Prizes for individual articles, nor for Investigative
Reporting (the prize went to the staff of The Wall Street Journal), Explanatory Reporting (awarded to Caitlin Dickerson of The Atlantic), National Reporting (awarded to Carline Kitchener of The Washington Post), Feature Writing (awarded to Eli Saslow of The Washington Post), Commentary (awarded to Kyle Whitmire of AL.com, Birmingham), or Editorial Writing (awarded to Miami Herald Editorial Board, for a series written by Amy Driscoll). The complete list of prizes is here.
The Pulitzer Prizes recognized robust, inclusive, and empathetic
reporting on vulnerable communities, with winners representing topics of
massive impact on diverse, marginalized, and voiceless
people—indigenous and Black populations, children, immigrants,
detainees, prisoners—and stories that did not trade in an artificial
“both sides” dynamic that has characterized the Times’s transgender
coverage. The prizes included recognition of work that featured
inclusive reporting of vulnerable communities by journalists who are
members of those communities, including awarding the prize for General
Nonfiction to Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa for their book, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking).
Despite what the Times’s leadership has claimed, more precise and
empathetic journalism can and should include reporters whose own
backgrounds and experiences reflect the people they are reporting on.
Ignoring critiques as “activism” and silencing colleagues from oppressed
backgrounds reflects a moral, intellectual and emotional failure across
the Times’s leadership. In the three months following the coalition
letter, the Times has refused to publicly acknowledge its coverage
failures, respond directly to the letter, or meet with trans leaders.
GLAAD continued its protest of The New York Times on May 9, with a digital billboard at the entrance of the New York Times building in Manhattan.
Also in awards news this past week, on May 13, GLAAD announced
recipients for the final 18 of this year’s 33 categories of the 34th
Annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York City hosted by producer, Critics
Choice-nominated actor and GLAAD Award winner, Harvey Guillén.
The following sites updated:
