The Los Angeles Times Thursday runs a prominent article titled Huffington Paid Little Income Tax:
MTV commentator and author Arianna Huffington, who launched her campaign for governor with criticism of "fat cats" who fail to shoulder a fair share of taxes, paid no individual state income tax and just $771 in federal taxes during the last two years, her tax returns show.
Huffington, who released her tax returns for the last two years to The Times, lives in an 8,000- square-foot home in Brentwood above Sunset Boulevard that is valued at about $7 million. She socializes with many wealthy and prominent people.
But the returns show that at least for the last two years, her income was far outweighed by losses that she reported were incurred by Christabella Inc., the private corporation she owns and uses to manage her writing and lecturing business.
Here's the text of the Fox lawsuit against Al Franken.
First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams (father of MSNBC's Dan Abrams) will be representing Penguin Books, the publisher of Franken's book.
Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana grades the Presidential contenders on their medical marijuana stances:
Edwards has publicly stated that he would not change marijuana laws, and he favors the Justice Department's arresting patients and caregivers who defy federal law. (emphasis supplied)
....Responding to questions from Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana on July 7, 2003 on C-SPAN, Edwards reiterated his intention to set up a commission to study the therapeutic benefits of medical marijuana. When asked if he would jail seriously ill patients while his commission studies medical marijuana, Edwards responded "what'd you just say, there are raids?" However, when asked a week later on July 15, 2003 whether he would continue the current policy of jailing sick patients, he responded "the government has a responsibility to enforce the laws," echoing a comment he made six weeks earlier.
On May 29, 2003, Edwards was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, as saying,.....) "It's the job of the Justice Department to enforce the law as it presently exists."
Gephardt has switched positions and although he once voted against medical marijuana, he now says he'd support it. He gets a C-:
What Gephardt has said: When Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana's Linda Macia told Gephardt at a campaign stop on July 20, "I'm a patient and a medical marijuana advocate. I'm really ill, and I can't use drugs at all. I'm allergic to narcotics, I need your help. States' rights for sick people to--," Gephardt immediately said, "That's what I'm for...states' rights." When asked if he would sign federal legislation to allow seriously ill people to use medical marijuana with their doctors' approval, he responded, "Sure."
Note: We haven't seen a transcript confirming the above conversation.
John Kerry has backtracked the other way, earning a C grade:
Kerry previously said he favored federal legislation to allow people with cancer, AIDS, and other serious illnesses to have medical marijuana, with their doctors' approval. However, Kerry recently retreated from that stance, saying he wants to rely on a scientific review before he makes any decisions about protecting patients.
Joe Lieberman is another candidate who has switched positions. In 1999, he opposed medical marijuana. He's better on the issue this time around, but still earns only a D+:
(615 words in story) There's More :: Permalink :: Comments
The ACLU has filed suit in federal court in Chicago seeking access to racial profiling data.
The ACLU wants the Bush Administration to show it's serious about promising to fight racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies.
Toward that end, lawyers for the civil rights group in Chicago Wednesday asked a federal court to order the release of data that will help determine whether federal law enforcement agencies are engaged in racial profiling. The lawsuit seeks the information from the Justice Department and the new Department of Homeland Security under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
“If the Bush Administration and the Attorney General are serious about confronting and correcting racial profiling across the nation, a good first step would be to release for public scrutiny all information that gives citizens confidence that their government's actions are lawful and non-discriminatory,” said Harvey Grossman, Legal Director of the ACLU of Illinois. “Making the data collected by federal law enforcement officials available to the public is a step toward building a strong bond of trust and confidence between law enforcement and the people.”
Talk about pulling out all the stops....Billionaire Warren Buffett has agreed to join Arnold's campaign as senior financial and economic adviser.
As to media blackouts, not only are Arnold's movies off-limits, Adriana has suspended her LA Times column, and MSNBC and NBC are attaching this disclaimer to their Arnold Coverage:
His wife, Maria Shriver, is on a leave of absence from NBC News. MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.
Smart move by California Governor Gray Davis.
Apparently not taking any chances, he's cranking out judicial appointments.
Davis has appointed 15 judges since July 23, the day the secretary of state announced the recall question would go to voters....There are currently 48 more vacancies on the state's 1,600-member bench, a number that is not unusually high.
Davis will likely fill them all before the Oct. 7 recall election. Most outgoing Governors do the same thing. We're glad he's doing it as opposed to his successor, should there be one. But one thing we don't buy is his spokesperson's assertion this is just coincidence.
Florida Governor Jeb Bush gets a scolding today from the St. Petersberg Times for putting $60 million into new prisons while giving nothing for higher education.
In portraying the only two options as more money or inmates in the streets, the governor is embellishing to make his point. And his rhetorical excess wouldn't be so jarring if he showed a similar sense of urgency for young people who are not in trouble with the law. Louis de la Parte, a respected Senate budget chairman in the 1970s, used to display a poster in his office picturing a young man in a jail cell and advising that "it costs more to send a boy to prison than to college." In this case, the governor is asking for $60-million to house new inmates while the universities are denied $66-million to accommodate eight times as many new students.
If Florida would spend more on treatment and prevention, and provide alternatives to prison for drug and other non-violent offenders, the state wouldn't have so many prisoners, and would have money available for financially strapped colleges and students. It's a policy decision and it falls on squarely on Jeb Bush's lap. Floridians should hold him accountable for this come election time.
We were very surpised to learn today that 43% of those appointed to federal appeals courts in the U.S. have no prior judicial experience .
What's more, there is a racial imbalance in that a recent study shows that:
....white judges - and particularly white male judges - are much more likely to be named to the circuit appeals courts without prior judicial experience.
Bush's judicial nominees have been more likely than those of past Presidents to have prior judicial experience. To date, 61% of those he's nominated have served as judges.
...Historically we've been moving more and more towards this notion of a career judiciary," said [Elliott] Slotnick, a political science professor at Ohio State University. "Republicans in particular have been very interested in people with judicial experience or prosecutorial experience."
[thanks to Matthew at Untelevised.Org for the link]
Al's Number 1 on Amazon....
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:
A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right </font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"
Update: Eric Alterman says Fox has a case !
John Poindexter has submitted a five page resignation letter defending his data-mining and other privacy intrusive programs . You can read the text of the letter here .
Kudos to the Denver Post today for assailing Attorney General John Ashcroft for his recent dictate to prosecutors to keep tabs on federal judges who depart from sentencing guidelines against the Government's recommendations:
Sometimes, we wonder if U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft slept through some of his law school classes at the University of Chicago - you know, that stuff about checks and balances and an independent judiciary. Ashcroft's plan to have prosecutors across the country keep tabs on which federal district judges mete out sentences that are more lenient than those outlined in federal sentencing guidelines smacks of Big Brotherism and impermissible interference with the prerogatives of the judiciary.
After criticizing overly long sentences and the recent Feeney Amendment, the Post concludes with:
When Ashcroft became attorney general, he took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same."
By setting up a "blacklist" of judges who aren't Draconian enough, it sounds more like he's trying to demolish one of the basic pillars of American freedom, an independent judiciary.
The War on Our Freedoms
Richard C. Leone, Ed.
Diane Carmen in the Denver Post outlines why Arnold is unpalatable to many Republicans.
He's on the record as pro-choice, pro-gay rights and pro-gun control. He's supported environmental protection regulations. He almost single-handedly passed Proposition 49, an initiative that calls for $550 million in state funds for after-school child-care programs. He married a Kennedy.
And, if all that's not lefty enough, he even trashed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. "We spent one year wasting time because there was a human failure," he told George magazine in 1999. "I was ashamed to call myself a Republican during that period."
According to Carmen:
This is why the Schwarzenegger phenomenon is so disturbing for those who have staked their careers on their unwavering conservative credentials. Because if the Terminator is the future of the party, they unquestionably represent the past.
We hope she's right.
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