Doing Justice

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch concluding her announcement about suing the ever-loving shit out of the state of North Carolina:

Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades. Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead. But no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward.

Now that's what I call a Department of Justice.

Justice Dept. to Locals: Stop Fleecing the Poor

Are you old enough and Southern enough to remember referring to impoverished white people as "white trash"?

That racist expression distinguished people who were trashy but white from people who were just trashy - that is, all non-white people.  Blacks in the South east of the Mississippi; Blacks, Mexicans and American Indians west of it.

The need to distinguish white trash from regular trash arose from the legal and social structures that sought to punish economically all non-whites - who were almost all poor - but which sometimes swept up poor whites, too.

After 150 years, the U.S. Justice Department might finally put an end to at least that vestige of slavery and Jim Crow.

Think Progress:

(In March), officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a letter to chief justices and court administrators across the country warning them against operating modern-day debtors’ prisons and deploying other tactics that harm the poor.

In the letter, Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights division, and Lisa Foster, director of the office for access to justice, warn against seven practices that turn courthouses into a source of revenue, rather than justice.

The letter reiterates that courts shouldn’t jail people who don’t pay fines and fees levied by the court without first determining whether they are able to pay. It says that courts should also consider options for those who can’t afford to pay the fines and fees that don’t include jail time. The letter mentions money bail schemes that result in poor people being jailed “solely because they cannot afford to pay for their release,” and condemns the use of arrest warrants or drivers license suspensions as a way to coerce people into paying. Those tactics make it more likely that the poor will be arrested, fined, and jailed simply because they couldn’t afford what they were charged with in the first place — while also making it likely they will miss work and fall further behind on payments.

In some places, the letter notes, defendants can’t even start a judicial hearing until their debts are cleared, an “unconstitutional practice” that is “often framed as a routine administrative matter.” The letter also warns against the practice of using private companies to enforce debt collection or probation, allowing them to profit from discretionary fines tacked on top of what defendants owe courts.

“Individuals may confront escalating debt; face repeated, unnecessary incarceration for nonpayment despite posing no danger to the community; lose their jobs; and become trapped in cycles of poverty that can be nearly impossible to escape,” the letter says. “Furthermore, in addition to being unlawful, to the extent that these practices are geared not toward addressing public safety, but rather toward raising revenue, they can cast doubt on the impartiality of the tribunal and erode trust between local governments and their constituents.”

SNIP

While debtors prisons were abolished in the 1800s and Supreme Court cases found that jailing people because they can’t pay debts without assessing their ability to pay violates the constitution, these practices have seen a resurgence across the country. Courts, particularly those in municipalities that are strapped for resources, levy fines and fees against defendants, and when they can’t pay often put them in jail until they can come up with the sum. Other municipalities turn the debtors over to private probation companies that can tack on fines and fees to what the defendants already owe at their discretion and have been accused of using intimidation tactics like threatening jail time to get clients to pay up. Yet those who have the resources to pay court fees on the spot can avoid jail time and probation.

SNIP

The department has also had its eye on problems with the money bail system. “When bail is set unreasonably high, people are behind bars only because they are poor,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at the White House in December. “Not because they’re a danger or a flight risk — only because they are poor. They don’t have money to get out of jail, and they certainly don’t have money to flee anywhere. Other people who do have the means can avoid the system setting inequality in place from the beginning.”

If It's So Above-Board Wonderful, Why Hide It for Months?

Simply the fact the leaks start at Newsweek is enough to make us suspicious. But delaying the report time after time after time over more than six months? Then oopsie! letting one part fall on the floor in front of a Village suckup like Isikoff? And surprise! it absolves criminals everybody knows are guilty?

Eric Holder, you lying, cheating motherfucker: Americans are not stupid. And when the repugs start impeachment proceedings against you, don't expect supportive defense from the people in whose face you just shat.

From bmaz at FireDogLake:

Mike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman put up a post about an hour ago letting the first blood for the Obama Administration’s intentional tanking of the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) Report. In light of Obama’s focused determination to sweep the acts of the Bush Administration, no matter how malevolent, under the rug and “move forward” the report is not unexpected. However, digesting the first leak in what would appear to be a staged rollout is painful:

SNIP

The news broken in the Newsweek Declassified post is huge, assuming it is accurate, and the sense is that it is. In spite of the weight of the report, the report tucks the substantive content behind the deceptively benign title “Holder Under Fire”. The subject matter is far too significant though for it to have been casually thrown out.

SNIP

Hard to figure how this finding and conclusion could be determined by David Margolis to warrant the “softening” of the original finding of direct misconduct. Margolis is nearly 70 years old and has a long career at DOJ and is fairly well though of. Margolis was tasked by Jim Comey to shepherd Pat Fitzgerald’s Libby investigation. In short, the man has some bona fides.

Margolis is, however, also tied to the DOJ and its culture for over forty years, not to mention his service in upper management as Associate Attorney General during the Bush Administration when the overt acts of torture and justification by Margolis’ contemporaries and friends were committed. For one such filter to redraw the findings and conclusions of such a critical investigation in order to exculpate his colleagues is unimaginable.

One thing is for sure, with a leak like this being floated out on a late Friday night, the release of the full OPR Report, at least that which the Obama Administration will deem fit for the common public to see, is at hand. Mike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman have made sure the torturers and their enablers can have a comfortable weekend though. So we got that going for us.

Anybody still think Obama and Rahm are secretly planning to wrap up all the Smirky-Darth criminals in a couple of years, after dems win health care and jobs and capntrade and DADT and the deficit and EFCA and everybody has a pony?

Anybody? Bueller?

Why Forgiving the Crimes at Just-Us is Not Just Wrong, but Dangerous

When it comes to nailing the essential obscenity of the Smirky/Darth maldministration, no one does it better than the Rude Pundit. On the leniency given to criminals at the Department of Justice, he doesn't disappoint. (Warning: content at link is X-rated.)

Michael Mukasey Doesn't Care About the Security of Americans:
Here's what Mukasey said yesterday: not only is he not going to pursue charges against Monica Goodling et al for giving a political litmus test to candidates for ostensibly non-political jobs, but he thinks they've been punished enough ...

(SNIP)

See, as Mukasey explained, they didn't violate criminal laws, but civil service law, and he's right that that doesn't end up in criminal prosecution. But you know what is actionable in criminal law? Ordering people to violate civil service law. Conspiracy and all that shit.

(SNIP)

Yep, a systemic failure, one where others might be implicated, would seem to warrant action. But, see, that might require further investigation. And that might lead directly to Alberto Gonzales. And if people start to roll over, well, that way madness lies.

Even more (c**t)ish was what was left out of Mukasey's remarks. He did say that those who were hired won't be fired because "it would be harmful to the Department and to the country." You remember back in the day when everything was related to security? When to support the extension of civil service benefits to workers at the Department of Homeland Security meant that you wanted Osama bin Laden to force America's sons to fellate his goats? When if a Democrat happened to mention that some action of the administration was a violation of civil rights, it meant that the Democrats were ready to hand the keys to the White House to Islamonazis or whatever the word was? Wait, wasn't that like last week or so? Anyway...

In that bullshit, overwrought context, what Mukasey left out was that the actions of Monica Goodling et al in Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department placed all of us in greater danger. If you're more concerned with whether or not Johnny or Jenny Civil Servant would take a bullet for aborted fetuses than if they have the skills to do the goddamn jobs at the goddamn Department of goddamn Justice, then you are saying that you don't give a happy monkey fuck about the security of the country.

(SNIP)

Mukasey's right that to fire people because the interview process was fucked is unfair, especially since the Rude Pundit would like to think that more than one of them stared for a moment when, in an interview for a job dealing with immigration, Goodling might ask them what they think about the homosexuals and their desire for marriage before answering in a lie that'd get them the job. (If the Rude Pundit had been asked, as Goodling did, "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?" he'd have answered, "He smells like lime and coca leaves.")

(SNIP)

No, Mr. Former Judge Attorney General Mukasey, as you say, "Two wrongs don't make a right." But you lead the fuckin' Justice Department. You know that to right a wrong means you might have to actually pursue justice. Or don't you give a damn about the safety of the United States?

George Bush, Dick Cheney, all their loyal minions, and wingnut freakazoid repugs in general: Always wrong, always harming the country, all the time.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.