Expect Wikileaks' founder to be on the run within days...

But not for releasing documents and videos showing U.S. procedures and actions during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor for the recent release of documents and cables.

Nope, the first only endangered U.S. troops and allies, while the second has mostly just embarrassed U.S. officials.  While there has been a lot of public posturing over the document releases, not much is likely to come of those - Wikileaks is outside of the U.S. and thus outside of the U.S. legal system (the person who allegedly downloaded the documents and fed them to Wikileaks?  Not so much...)

What's sure to generate a drive to hunt down, and shut down, Wikileaks is the next target of a document release, as promised by Julian Assange, the organization's/website's founder.

From CNNMoney -

WikiLeaks' founder claims he has the goods that could take down a big U.S. bank. But there's little sign anyone believes him.


Julian Assange, the founder of the site that has gained notoriety by publishing secret U.S. military and diplomatic documents, said in an interview this week that the next WikiLeaks target is a major bank.

It should be interesting to see how the D.C. types rationalize going hard after Assange and Wikileaks over the bank expose (assuming Assange's promise is real) while for all practical terms ignoring the more serious endangerment of troops (I don't care about the embarrassment of government officials, and I'm guessing that most other folks don't either).

You can be sure they'll find a way though - troops don't make "contributions" to politicians the way that Wall St. banksters do.

Press release of the day...

...Didn't have to look far for this one - it's from the Republican caucus of the Arizona State Senate...

From the press release -

Senate President-elect Russell Pearce recently received a coveted national award for his dogged efforts to fight illegal immigration. Sen. Pearce nabbed “Daring the Odds: The Annie Taylor Award” from The David Horowitz Freedom Center. A ceremony was held for Sen. Pearce and other courageous award winners at Restoration Weekend 2010 at The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

OK, I'm not one who describes hatin' on brown-skinned people as "courageous" but given the makeup of the GOP caucus in the lege, we probably should be happy that white robes and hoods haven't replaced the bola tie as Arizona's signature clothing item.  Yet, anyway.

The fun part of the press release came later, in the last paragraph...

The Annie Taylor Award is named for Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She braved the falls in 1901, in a barrel she designed herself. When she exited the barrel, she said “No one should ever do that again.”

Ummm...if I understand all this correctly, they are crowing about Russell Pearce receiving an award that equates Pearce's nativism with climbing into a barrel and going over Niagara Falls in that barrel.

Now, going over the Falls in a barrel is a great metaphor for what the Republicans are doing to Arizona, except they aren't the ones in the water, we are, and we don't even have a barrel to protect us (safety measures being signs of "creeping socialism" or some such blather).

Something tells me that there is going to be an opening in the communications office of the Republican caucus of the Arizona State Senate in the near future.

BTW - At least Ms. Taylor had the wisdom to realize that maybe what she did wasn't bright.  So far, there's no evidence that Pearce and his ilk have any such wisdom.

More on the Horowitz awards/Restoration Weekend here, courtesy the Canadian blog Enormous Thriving Plants.

BrewerCare Body Count: 1

From KTAR -

After battling Leukemia for the past year, Mark Price has passed away at a Valley hospital from chemotherapy complications.


Price, whose story had been followed nationally, had found an anonymous donor to privately pay for the more than $200,000 needed for a bone marrow transplant after the new budget cuts for Arizona's Medicaid program eliminated coverage for many types of transplants.

Sad to say, there will probably be many more to come.

My condolences go out to Mr. Price's friends and family...

Light blogging for the foreseeable future...

Due to a couple of self-assigned research projects, blogging activity will be light over the next few weeks, though not nonexistent.  Expect coverage of the process to constitute the next redistricting commission and the upcoming session of the legislature. 

And if any of AZ's electeds lodges one of his feet in his mouth (not that such a thing could *ever* happen ;) )...

A little light post-dinner* reading...

* = I was going to make the title of this one "A little light post-tryptophan-induced-coma reading" but decided that would be too long... :)

...From the Mitchell (S.D.) Republic, a piece about a state Democratic Party that was hit even harder in this month's election than the Arizona Democratic Party -

George McGovern says the South Dakota Democratic Party can become competitive again with the right approach and plenty of effort.

McGovern, who has a Mitchell residence, has an idea how to do it: Follow the playbook he devised more than a half century ago.

He was the executive secretary of the South Dakota Democratic Party in the 1950s when the Democrats were in worse condition than they are now.

When he took the reins of the party in 1953, the party was at its nadir. Democrats were outnumbered 108-2 in the Legislature and held no statewide offices.

One of the people quoted later in the article opines that money is the only significant factor in elections in the 21st Century and that grassroots organizing is overrated.

I disagree - lack of money may lose elections, but money doesn't win them - votes do.

...A different (Republican) take on the grassroots organizing model of the Democrats - it may not have prevented this year's electoral carnage, but it may have served to minimize the damage - from The Explorer (AZ).

...Sarah Palin showcases her willful ignorance of the world on Glenn Beck's radio show.  Of course, it being the *Glenn Beck" show, her IQ could reach into the high single digits and still elevate the intellectual level there...

GUILTY

Tom Delay, one of the two men most associated with the Republican corruption scandals of the early and mid-2000s (the other being lobbyist/convict Jack Abramoff), was convicted today on money laundering charges in Texas.

From CNN -

A Texas jury on Wednesday convicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on charges of illegally funneling corporate money to help elect GOP candidates to the Texas Legislature.


DeLay was found guilty of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, court bailiff Gilbert Soto said. He was accused of funneling $190,000 to help elect Republicans to the state House and Senate in 2002.

He probably won't get the maximum sentence, which would be more than 100 years in prison, but it's heartening to see that justice was done.  If rather slowly.

Anyone got a guess on how many members of the new R majority in the U.S. House *won't* learn lesson?

Arizona is picking up where the rest of the country is slacking off...

...unfortunately for Arizonans, this isn't a good thing...

From the Phoenix New Times -

Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce and Jan Brewer's Arizona: Hate Crime Stats Climb

As if you need more proof that Arizona is the "state of hate," look no further than the FBI's recently released hate crime report.


From 2008 to 2009, Arizona's number of reported hate crimes increased by more than 18.3 percent. This is up over the year prior, 2007 to 2008, which saw a 14.9 percent increase in hate crimes statewide.

The numbers themselves show the creep upward. In 2007, there were 161 incidents reported in Arizona; in 2008, 185; in 2009, 219. This bucks the national trend, which shows reported hate crime incidents declining nationwide.

Most of the data is pre-SB1070, but well into the rise of nativism as a political force in Arizona. 

By contrast, Texas (just about as nutty as AZ) reported 262 hate crimes, approximately 50% more than Arizona.

Of course, Texas has a population that is more than 400% more than Arizona's.

Yippee.

The FBI finally moving in on banksters...

From ABC News -

The FBI has raided three hedge funds, part of a widening investigation of suspicions of pervasive insider trading in the $1.7 trillion hedge fund industry.


The funds include Diamondback Capital Management LLC and Level Global Investors LP, two Connecticut funds run by former managers of Steven Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors.

The third fund is Boston-based Loch Capital Management, a person familiar with the raid said. Loch has had close ties with a witness who pleaded guilty in a separate insider trading probe that centers on hedge fund Galleon Group.


The raids come as federal prosecutors prepare to unveil a series of new insider trading cases against hedge fund traders, consultants and Wall Street bankers, several lawyers familiar with the investigation said.

It's about time - this should have started happening long before there was even a hint of a Congressional bailout of Wall Street.

Look for the Rs in Congress to retaliate by cutting the budgets of the FBI and SEC next year...

The Arizona Republic: A return to the bad old days?

I know that not too long ago, I opined that the AZ Republic was less a "conservative" paper than a "corporate" one, dedicated to protecting the bottom lines of Big Business (not that there is much difference between the two, but it explains the reluctance of the Rep's editorial board to endorse the likes of nativists Russell Pearce and JD Hayworth during recent election cycles - their habit of turning private hatred into public policy has the side effect of shrinking the number of people looking for low wage/ no benefit jobs, driving up Big Business' labor costs).

However, it looks like the AZ Republic is returning to the its original purpose as the press release outlet for the Arizona Republican Party.

Last week, it ran a week long "investigation" of the troubles with Arizona's public pension systems, ultimately ending the series with a call to reform the system, perhaps by changing the public retirement systems in AZ to 401k-like systems, where an employee's retirement benefits are primarily based on how much they've taken out of their paychecks and put into an investment account.

Unfortunately for the Republic's editorial board/message discipline staff, such a change would require the voters of Arizona to approve a change to Arizona's constitution.  Something that may not be so easy to pull off since most Arizonans actually know a couple of public employees, whether as neighbors, friends, or family members. 

It's hard to gin up blind hatred of a group of people that folks actually know.

Hence the need for the Republic's week-long demonization of public employees and retirees.

Anyway, quotes in the articles from Kirk Adams, Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, and Russell Pearce, Republican Shadow Governor president of the Arizona Senate strongly hint that they already have legislation in mind to put a question on the 2012 ballot to amend the state's constitution.

Now, it may just be a coincidence, a matter of random timing, but the agenda for next week's conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right wing organization that gives industry bigwigs and lobbyists a chance to influence state legislators, is posted already.

Early on Wednesday, the first full "working" day of the conference (though it is difficult to characterize elected officials partying on the corporate tab as actually "working") is an interesting item -

Public Pension Reform Working Group  9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.  Independence FG

Hmmmm...

...Wonder how long it will be before the Arizona Republic makes it official and puts the names of Brett Mecum and Matthew Roberts on the paper's masthead?

Mecum and Roberts are, respectively, the Executive Director and Communications Director of the Arizona Republican Party.

The two wings of the AZGOP waging a civil war for control...

...not of their party, but for the carcass of Arizona...

This is the time of year when the political parties "reorganize" - elect new/reelect old leadership and prepare for the next political cycle.  The Democrats do it; the Republicans do it, even the Libertarians and the Greens do it.

Right now, the local chapters of the major parties are holding their reorg meetings, electing their own leadership as well as delegates to their respective parties' state committee.

Those state committee members will elect new state party leadership slates in January.

The Democrats have experienced some changes in local leadership roles, but most (all?) of those transitions have been peaceful progressions as the state's minority party tries to learn from and adapt to the results of November 2nd's results.

The Republicans?  Not so much, not with the learning, and most certainly not with the peaceful.

 - The LD11 Republicans effectively deposed Randy Pullen, chair of the AZGOP for the last two cycles (four years) by not reelecting him to their state committee.  As he won't be a state committee member, he cannot run for a state party office.  The rift has been widely credited to "establishment" Republicans (in the persons of John McCain supporters) taking back control of the district from "tea party" Republicans (in the persons of supporters of Pullen).

- The LD22 Republicans have their own "establishment v. tea party" dynamic going on, with some serious nastiness going on in the weeks leading up to their reorg meeting. 

- The LD19 Republicans had some ballot box stuffing and interesting use of proxies going on in their reorganization meeting, and the root cause of the strife seemed to stem from a "tea party v. establishment" conflict.

All of this may lead to a messy state party reorganization meeting in January, or the establishment wing of the AZGOP may have effectively silenced the tea partiers by then.

Since it looks like that the "establishment" types are ascendant, the January meeting may be a public rubber stamping of whatever they've put together by then.

Until that time, however, let me provide a pictorial summary of the Rs' LD reorganization meetings -

Pic courtesy the Flickr page of user savagetom2008











Let's call the carcass on the ground "Arizona."  I'll leave it to readers to figure out for themselves which GOPer wing is represented by the jackal, and which is represented by the vultures.

And time for a blast from the (recent) past - one of the folks mentioned in the LD22 article linked above was Trish Groe, a former state rep from LD3.  In early 2007, she was arrested for DUI.  After a lot of legal contortions (it was a felony-level DUI, then it wasn't, it was going to be prosecuted by La Paz County, then Yuma County, then Maricopa County, then there was a plea deal, then there wasn't), she finally lost her seat in the 2008 primary.  And disappeared from public view.

Until now.

Later...

Scottsdale Mayor Lane discarding expertise of Scottsdale residents...

...if the resident with that expertise is associated with an outgoing member of the City Council...

An email update from the Coalition of Greater Scottsdale (COGS) confirms something I had overheard, that members of City task forces who were appointed by outgoing council members Wayne Ecton and Tony/Marg Nelssen will be removed from their task forces and replaced by appointees of the newest members of the Council, Linda Milhaven and Dennis Robbins.

The email wonders if this is allowed under the rules in Scottsdale (City Charter and/or ordinances).  I'm not sure as the Charter and ordinances are unclear on the status of task forces (a lack of clarity that Lane is almost certainly taking advantage of), but while the City's commissions and boards are specifically covered in both Charter and ordinance language, task forces don't seem to be.

Article 5 of the Scottsdale City Charter gives the Council the authority to "create, change, and abolish boards or commissions" at its discretion, but nothing specifies the appointment procedures.

Section 2-241 of the City Code seems to apply here.

Part (b) specifies

"All members of appointive boards and commissions shall be appointed by and serve without compensation at the pleasure of the council."

Part (d) specifies

"Appointment to a board or commission, except the public safety personnel retirement system board and the personnel board, shall be for a term of three (3) years or until a successor is appointed. "

In short, and in practice, members of boards and commissions are appointed by the Council as a whole and the appointees serve specific terms on those boards and commissions.

However, the only place where task forces and task force members are mentioned is in the clauses of the City's code of ethics that say that the code of ethics applies to members of task forces. 

Otherwise, task forces are more temporary and "ad hoc" than the more formal boards and commissions.

The practice during the Lane administration regarding task forces has been for each member of the Council to directly appoint one member while the Mayor appoints the chair of the task force.

While there is nothing in the City's charter or code that clearly allows that practice, there also isn't anything barring it, either.

Whew.  :)

With all that as background, it seems petty and shortsighted of the Lane regime to discard folks who have been working on a given issue for up to a year or longer simply because of a change in the composition of the Council. 

This seems particularly so given the intent that task forces are temporary.  The time needed for new members to get up to speed can only needlessly lengthen the time that a task force has to spend on its given task, creating inefficiencies in both the use of taxpayer resources and in simple government operations.

Something that a "small government" enthusiast like Lane should find anathema to his professed ideology.

Only he doesn't apparently.

The newest blockbuster for your video game console...

Thanks to a friend for the graphic...

Jan Brewer has lied repeatedly about the reason that transplants aren't covered any longer, usually blaming the new federal health care reform law for it.  Even though she signed the transplant funding cuts into law well before HCR was passed.

When she isn't blaming HCR, she likes to blame the federal stimulus law, saying that it barred cuts to states' Medicaid programs (AZ's is AHCCCS) by any states that accepted stimulus money.  Her story is that since AHCCCS was untouchable, cuts had to come from elsewhere.

The reality is that AHCCCS *wasn't* untouchable, here or anywhere else, and was, in fact, subject to cuts.  Which she and her cronies in the lege started implementing almost from the moment she took over the governor's office.

During the furor over health care reform, many Republicans liked to scream about "government death panels."

Too bad most listeners didn't realize that the screamers were talking about the "death panels" that they themselves were part of.

...Look for Brewer and Co.'s summer movie release of a Pearce/Adams production costarring the state's AHCCCS enrollees and the state's food stamp recipients.

Soylent Green.


- yeah, it's a little gross, but at this point, pretending that Brewer, Pearce, and the rest of the Capitol gang are decent human beings who just happen to hold different political positions than I do is just a waste of energy,

And a lie.

Agenda posted for Redistricting Commission interviews

On Wednesday, December 8, the Arizona Commission on Appellate Court Appointments will meet to interview Democratic, Independent, and Republican applicants for the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

The meeting starts at 8 a.m.; the interviews commence at 9 a.m.

The agenda -

COMMISSION ON APPELLATE COURT APPOINTMENTS


A G E N D A

December 8, 2010

State Courts Building
1501 West Washington
Room 345
Phoenix, Arizona

8:00 a.m. Call to Order ...................................... Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch

Call for Public Comment

Legal Advice from Attorney General Regarding Eligibility Questions

Note: This discussion may be conducted in executive session in order to promote open and frank discussion of applicant qualifications, upon motion and approval by two-thirds of the members in attendance.

Approval of Interview Questions

Note: This discussion may be conducted in executive session to avoid public disclosure of the questions before the interviews, upon motion and approval by two-thirds of the members in attendance.

Approval of November 16 Minutes

Disqualifications and Disclosures

9:15 a.m. Interviews of Democratic Applicants

10:30 a.m. Discussion of Democratic Applicants and Interviews

Note: This discussion may include one or more executive sessions, if necessary for frank discussion of applicant qualifications, upon motion and approval by two-thirds of the members in attendance.

Selection of Democratic Nominees

Note: All voting will be conducted in public session in accordance with Supreme Court Rule 133(c)(5).

11:00 a.m. Interviews of Independent Applicants

11:50 a.m. Discussion of Independent Applicants and Interviews

Note: This discussion may include one or more executive sessions, if necessary for frank discussion of applicant qualifications, upon motion and approval by two-thirds of the members in attendance.

Selection of Independent Nominees

Note: All voting will be conducted in public session in accordance with Supreme Court Rule 133(c)(5).

12:15 p.m. Lunch

1:00 p.m. Interviews of Republican Applicants

2:15 p.m. Discussion of Republican Applicants and Interviews

Note: This discussion may include one or more executive sessions, if necessary for frank discussion of applicant qualifications, upon motion and approval by two-thirds of the members in attendance.

Selection of Republican Nominees

Note: All voting will be conducted in public session in accordance with Supreme Court Rule 133(c)(5).

Adjourn

Public Notice: In accordance with Supreme Court Rule 130(f), the Commission shall hold an executive session upon a two-thirds vote of the Commissioners in attendance in order to promote open and frank discussion of applicant qualifications or to conduct a portion of an interview. To encourage frank discussion, the substance of deliberations in executive session shall not be disclosed by a Commissioner.

Supreme Court Rules 130(f) and 133(c)(5) can be found here.
 
Later...
 

Short Attention Span Musing

...Not sure what it means, but why is it that many of the same Republicans who pontificated that Congressional Democrats messed up big-time when they re-elected Nancy Pelosi as leader in the House after the ugly results from November 2, yet they are gleeful now that they have deposed the GOP state and Maricopa County chairs after the buttkicking that was inflicted on the Democrats (and the rest of the state) because of those same results.

Apparently, they are replacing the GOP symbol of an elephant with a circular firing squad...

...I am probably one of the few on this side of this particular issue, but I've got very little sympathy for the people who are all up in arms about new airport security procedures.  Too many of them, such as certain Republican congressmen, were all in favor of things like a secret "no-fly" list, data mining, and racial and ethnic profiling, pooh-poohing any civil rights concerns as subordinate to security concerns.

Yet now that some of the enhanced security procedures are things that they find concerning, they want to subordinate everybody else's security to their own tender sensibilities. 

I don't like the new procedures, but I don't like getting blown up, either.

And I really don't like hypocrites.

...Republicans, like Arizona's own embarrassment "Congressman" Trent Franks are furious that the first Guantanamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court was acquitted on all but one of the hundreds of charges he faced.  Terms like "travesty of justice" are being thrown around, along with calls for the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and demands that all other trials be held in front of military tribunals, which have a different (lower?) burden of proof for the prosecution to meet.

No matter how this goes forward, there are certain to be cries of outrage from *somebody* - either the Obama Administration backs away from treating the detainees like common criminals and its pledge to try the cases in civilian courts (annoying Democrats and other civil libertarians) or it goes forward with civilian court trials (annoying Republicans to no end). 

In addition, backing away from civilian trials could undermine the credibility of the Obama Administration internationally, yet losing too many of the cases could accomplish the same thing.

Thank the Bush Administration for this mess, and that's not a partisan zinger (don't get used to it :) ).

By having the primary responsibility to gather the evidence and build the cases against the detainees fall to the military, he all but guaranteed the cases would never survive real scrutiny.  He (and his administration) should have allowed the professional investigators and prosecutors of the FBI and DOJ to take the lead in this area, and left the military to do what they do best.

However, people can say "woulda, coulda, shoulda" all that they want, but reality is what it is, and that's what we have to deal with.

Perhaps we should remember one fundamental principle of the American system of justice -

The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.


Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895)

While the possible acquittal of guilty people would be ("will be"?) frustrating, being seen as rigging the trials of accused terrorists will be worse.

If the cases are now referred to military courts (to unruffle domestic political feathers) and it turns out that an innocent bystander was imprisoned and convicted by a military tribunal (not exactly out of the realm of probability), the U.S. will have zero credibility in the Middle East and across the world.

Credibility it will need the next time that the U.S. needs to do something there, whether it is work on brokering a peace deal between Israel and whoever is trying to destroy them this week, searching for terrorists, or just looking for a place to vacation over the holidays.

Update on the Redistricting Commission screen process

The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, December 8.  Interviews, both in-person and telephonic, will be conducted.

All of the applications can be viewed here; a list of the candidates who made the first cut is here.

From an email that was forwarded to me (and there was nothing in the email indicating that the information is confidential or not otherwise subject to public disclosure) -

Dear {Name of Applicant}:


Congratulations on your successful completion of the initial phase of the nomination process for the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. The Commission on Appellate Court Appointments is pleased to invite you to join us for an interview for inclusion on the list to be forwarded for appointments to the Redistricting Commission.

The Commission will conduct interviews on Wednesday, December 8, at the Arizona State Courts Building, 1501 West Washington, Phoenix. Please arrive promptly by 9:00 a.m. and sign in at the reception desk on the 3rd floor. The Commission will interview applicants registered with a Democratic affiliation shortly thereafter. Please allow sufficient time for parking in the Arizona State Capitol Complex and to pass through security screening at the State Courts Building. The attached map highlights the building location and nearby parking lots.

The Commission will pose a few questions and then ask that you offer a one-minute statement explaining why you should be appointed to the Redistricting Commission. We anticipate that your entire interview will last no more than three to five minutes.

Please reply to this email to confirm that you can attend at 9:00 a.m. on December 8. If you cannot appear in person and would like to appear telephonically instead, please reply with a telephone number at which we can reach you between 9:15 and 10:30 that morning.

We look forward to speaking with you on December 8.

Sincerely,

Rebecca White Berch
Chief Justice
Chair

My respect goes out to applicants of whatever political persuasion (or non-persuasion) who actually travel to Phoenix from the nether reaches of the state for what even the chair of the selection commission admits will take no more than three to five minutes of their time.

In my previous post on this subject, I wrote that the next meeting would be on Monday, December 6.  That information was obviously incorrect (I expect that Chief Justice Berch, who is the chair of the Appellate Courts Appointments Commission, has a pretty solid knowledge of the Commission's meeting schedule :) ) and has been updated.

I'm not sure exactly what time that they will be interviewing the Republican and Independent candidates on the 8th, but it probably won't be any earlier.  :)

At least, I hope not, because I won't be arriving to cover the meeting until almost 9 a.m. :))