Posts Tagged ‘law’

Torture maven John Yoo to appear on KQED Monday

John Yoo. Courtesy Infowars.com

UC Berkeley law professor and former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo will appear on San Francisco’s KQED radio Monday at 11:06 a.m. on Michael Krasny’s Forum program.

Yoo was one of three lawyers responsible for drafting memoranda to the Bush administration suggesting legal justifications for “enhanced interrogation techniques” to be used on terror suspects. An internal Justice Department investigation found Yoo and his colleagues guilty of misconduct, but a DOJ administrator Friday overruled the report’s findings and ruled their actions did not rise to the level of misconduct. The ruling saved Yoo and the others from possible disbarment.

Yoo is promoting a book, “Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush.” His appearance last month on The Daily Show, in which he unctuously eluded pointed questions from host Jon Stewart and so confounded the usually incisive interviewer that Stewart actually apologized to viewers, was the very definition of slick and slippery. Here’s hoping KQED’s Krasny — whose roundabout questions can themselves amount to a sort of informational filibuster — has more success.

Minutemen headed to SF on Thursday

A cadre of patriotic local Minutemen are supposedly headed to SF’s City Hall steps on Thursday afternoon. They plan a rally in front of the gilded dome where our broke city gov’t spares no expense in it’s quest to ignore Federal statutes regarding immigration law and deportation. Among the speakers will be SF native son Frank Kennedy, the brother in law of the late Anthony Bologna, 48, who was tragically murdered by AK-47 alongside his two sons, Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16 in June of this year. The suspect is a known thug, here illegally, who obviously was a solid candidate for prior deportation.

Scene Outside City Hall during last Minutemen protest on 7/31/08 ( pic by Bill Hackwell of IndyBay.org )

I imagine an afternoon filled with local news camera crews capturing loud & pointless shouting matches between the Minutemen and left wing activists and Mission District “community organizers” ( insert hearty Giuliani-esque guffaw here). Could be fun for people watchers & those with an interest in colorful signs, chanting & loud bullhorns.

The last time the Minutemen assembled here in July, there were far more counter demonstrators than the dozen-ish flag waving border sealing patriots. To see photos of the mob from IndyBay.org, click here.

I’m sure Mayor Newsom will make a point of not being there…
but for everyone else, the fun starts circa 11 am for the amusement of bureaucrats on break and those forced to come to City Hall to plead for a permit or tithe more taxes to the city.

The theme of the two hour Minutemen photo op is

“Protesting innocent American Victims of Illegal Aliens in Illegal Sanctuary Cities!”

Huh? Why are they protesting the innocent victims? What did they do?

Dog Mauling Daze Are Here Again

Just when you’d all but forgotten the story of the blood thirsty Presa Canarios that haunted the halls of a certain Pac Heights apartment tower, it seems the tawdry tale truly refuses to die.

This week, Marjorie Knoller, was back in court and sentenced, yet again. Knoller was the strange little woman whose giant dogs attacked and killed her neighbor, a college lacrosse instructor named Diane Whipple, back in 2001. The trial stirred up plenty of sordid details, including the pet owners’ “adoption” of an adult white supremacist convict they represented as attorneys, whose dogs they were apparently raising on his behalf.

The case was always controversial, and since a judge threw out the original jury’s second-degree murder conviction in 2002, an odd and continuing legal tug of war has existed between competing benches. In 2007, The California Supreme Court had ruled Knoller’s eventual 4 year sentence for a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter was inadequate. She would need to return to jail.

Knoller, who completed a four year stint (living in Florida and apparently estranged from her former husband who was paroled in 2003) has been brought back to California for re-sentencing that occured this morning. Little Marjorie is now expected to finish a “15 Years to Life” sentence, with eligibility for parole in 10 years when she’ll be 63 years old. The judge reportedly admonished Knoller and fined her as well, including almost $7000 in prison earnings…

Knoller’s attorney, Dennis Riordan, said they plan to file an appeal.

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