A place for your unrelated comments, intelligent or not so much.

I'm gone for the day and won't be around tomorrow either.

Open Thread.

Not Snark:

Obama's Lawless Presidency Close To Totalitarianism

The chief executive who swore to faithfully execute the nation's laws picks those he'll ignore and makes up others through regulation and executive order. He sees no need for a Congress or Constitution.

[. . . ]Then came ObamaCare, which would prove to be a monumental assault on the First and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.

Obama needed the Congress for that particular brand of totalitarianism I think.

These people are certifiable. They are the Republican Party.

The brouhaha about what Mitt Romney said about Wawa touch screens overshadowed a bigger point, as explained by Joan McCarter, Medicare requires more paperwork to avoid fraud. But it also revealed that, shocking I know, Mitt Romney is a liar. Mediate explains:

[T]he mainstream media are so accustomed to being worked over by right-wing cries of “bias” that they leapt to condemn MSNBC’s completely reasonable editing of the clip, even as they ignored the glaring lie Romney told in the longer clip. As it turns out, MSNBC did him a favor by omitting his stupid comparison, but they won’t get much thanks for it. [...]

Romney’s anecdote about the optometrist and the 33-page change of address form:[?][...] He only missed it by 31 pages. That’s right, the form that’s so very inferior to the sandwich computers at “Wawa’s” is two pages long, four if you include the instructions. That optometrist is either delusional, or a delusion of Romney’s. Either way, it’s inexcusable for journalists to let this go,

We'll see what happens today. Probably nothing.

Speaking for me only

Via Atrios (not sure what he thinks about this), the WSJ writes about the Fed's ability to lower interest rates has been rather ineffective at spurring demand:

The U.S. recovery is hobbled by an economic divide that separates Americans not by income or wealth but by their access to credit. The housing bust left behind millions of people with credit records damaged by plunging home prices, lost jobs, past overspending or bad luck. Many are now walled off from the low interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve to spur the economy and remedy the aftereffects of the borrowing boom.

Shrunken access among credit have-nots is triggering more than personal plight. It has weakened the influence of the Fed—one of the best hopes for spurring stronger economic growth—and raised doubts within the central bank about whether it is doing much to reduce unemployment.

The credit divide factors into their thinking. Fed officials have been frustrated in the past year that low interest rate policies haven't reached enough Americans to spur stronger growth, the way economics textbooks say low rates should.

It never factored into the VSP's thinking about the housing and homeowner crisis. This is the failure of Tim Geithner especially, who blocked real help for homeowners while choosing to give free money to the banks.

The banks are fine now. The country is not.

Geithner remains a corrupt incompetent who, if Obama loses, will be the cause of the loss.

Speaking for me only

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, will hold a hearing this morning on solitary confinement. It begins at 10 am ET. BOP Director Charles Samuels will be speaking. I wonder if his medical director and co-defendant, Newton Kendig, will be with him. Sen. Richard Durbin is chairing the hearing. There will be a webast at the Senate's website.

The lawsuits are trickling in now. (More here. I hope the side arguing against solitary confinement gets the most media attention.

The biggest horror story I've read yet is that of John Jay Powers, in the suit filed yesterday:

Mr. Powers was convicted of bank robbery in 1990. At that time, he had no history or symptoms of serious mental illness. While in custody, he witnessed three inmates murder another inmate, stabbing him 13 times. He was transferred to protective custody, twice testified against the murderers, and suffered repeated threats against his life by other inmates. Around this time, he began to suffer from PTSD. He briefly escaped from prison and was transferred to ADX in 2001, where he spent nearly 10 years in an isolation unit and became mentally deranged.

[More...]

I've uploaded the George Zimmerman jail transcripts and bank records. The transcripts are all in one document so you don't have to download 6 separate transcripts. The bank records may take a while to open, as they are 34 pages and 2.64 MB.

The links to the audio of the calls are here.

Update: Mark O'Mara told Piers Morgan tonight he will introduce another conversation at the June 29 bail hearing. In it, George and Shellie discuss her testifying at the April 20 hearing. George tells her, "Before you testify, pray first and tell the truth." [More...]

A class action has been filed against the Bureau of Prisons and several top officials by 11 mentally ill inmates, on behalf of all mentally ill inmates, alleging horrific mistreatment at Supermax Prison in Florence, Colorado. The case is Bacote, et al v. Federal Bureau of Prisons. A website has been set up with information about the case, SuperMaxLawsuit.com. According to the 108 page complaint which alleges deliberate mistreatment:

Some prisoners mutilate their own bodies with razors, shards of glass, sharpened chicken bones, writing utensils and whatever other objects they can obtain. Others swallow razor blades, nail clippers, broken glass and other dangerous objects. Many engage in fits of screaming and ranting for hours on end. Others carry on delusional conversations with the voices they hear in their heads, oblivious to reality and the danger that such behavior might pose to themselves and to anyone who interacts with them.

Still others spread feces and other waste throughout their cells, throw it at the correctional staff and otherwise create health hazards at ADX. Suicide attempts are common; many have been successful."

[More...]

NYTimes:

Roger Clemens, whose hard throws intimidated even the toughest batters and turned him into one of the best pitchers in baseball history, was acquitted Monday of charges that he lied to Congress in 2008 when he insisted he never used steroids or human growth hormone during his remarkably lengthy career.

Much more to come from Jeralyn I am sure.

Update (TL): Clemens addresses the press here. Congrats to Rusty and the defense team. I think it's way past time for agent Jeff Novitsky to move on. How many millions did our government spend on Balco, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens? (And its investigation or Lance Armstrong which didn't result in criminal charges.)

Their banks may be insolvent, but their soccer teams are not - Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece advance to the quarterfinals of Euro2012.

The Germans and the Czechs also have advanced. France, England and host Ukraine are battling for the last 2 spots in the quarters.

Open Thread.

Update: I've uploaded the transcripts and bank records here.

Mark O-Mara, attorney for George Zimmerman, has posted the full audiotapes of the six jail calls between Zimmerman and his wife on the website he maintains for the case.

• April 12
• April 15
• April 16
• April 16
• April 16
• April 17

He has also filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider its previous order and keep the remaining jail calls and a statement of W-9 private. W-9 will not be a witness for either party and her statement, which is inflammatory, is not admissible. The state has released the credit union bank records and transcripts of the six calls. I assume the media will publish these.

New Discovery will be out this morning in the George Zimmerman case. It may just be the audio tapes and/or transcripts of the 6 jail calls between George Zimmerman and his wife Shellie Zimmerman.

While we're waiting, here's a question: When the state filed its list of items included in the second round of discovery turned over to O'Mara last week, the list included surveillance video of M&I Bank on Feb. 26, 2012.

Many assumed, including me, it was video of Shellie Zimmerman when she was transferring money. But, it can't be: It was taken on Feb. 26, 2012, the day of the Trayvon Martin shooting, which was a Sunday, and the bank was closed. All that would have been open was an ATM. So what is the significance of the camera surveillance? Some ideas below: [More...]

Happy Fathers day to fathers everywhere.

R.I.P., Rodney King, who drowned in his swimming pool yesterday. He was 47.

I'll be busy today setting up my new laptop. Thanks again to TL readers who helped me buy it. It's a Sony Vaio, just like my last 6 laptops. It has a bigger screen (15 inches and still just 4.5 pounds) so hopefully I'll make less blogging typos. (I had a few Macbooks at one point, but the last one was stolen 4 years ago, and I've yet to replace it.)

I did stop at the Apple Store first yesterday to check out the new retina display model, and while it's nice, it was too expensive and didn't scream out at me, "Buy me." The Sony store was at the other end of the mall, and having picked out which one I was interested in online, I went right to it and it was love at first sight.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.