Celebrities, diplomats unite behind child rapist
Note well: No matter what the LA Times would have you believe, he’s not an “accused” child-rapist. He pled guilty. The conviction’s on the books. All that’s left to settle is the sentence.
But Hollywood knows a good cause when it sees it.
The surprise detention of Roman Polanski has been met with indignation in Hollywood and sparked a flurry of media speculation over the real reason behind Saturday night’s arrest in Zurich.
Film mogul Harvey Weinstein has got behind a campaign by French film-makers calling on US authorities not to extradite the Oscar-winning Polish director in connection with a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor dating back more than three decades…
“We’re calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation,” Weinstein said, reviving a theme he adopted earlier in the year after he bought international distribution rights at Sundance to the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
The film uncovered flaws in the legal case against the director, prompting Weinstein to allude to a possible campaign to get the charges against Polanski dropped. At a hearing this year a Los Angeles superior court judge agreed there was “substantial misconduct” in the original hearing.
Again: Convicted child-rapist and fugitive from justice. Magically transformed, by Hollywood libertinism and douchebaggery, into an honest-to-goodness victim who’s being persecuted by the evil empire for, um, forcibly sodomizing a 13-year-old and then skipping bail. I can’t do any better than this righteous Salon piece. Go ye and read, right now.
Get deported, get a refund
A partnership between a Pennsylvania accounting firm and a Mexican human rights group aims to seek out Mexicans recently deported from the United States and offer to help them file for thousands of dollars in tax refunds.The Center for Border Studies and Human Rights Promotion, based in the border city of Reynosa, already has registered 15 such migrants as of Sept. 11, just days after the program's Sept. 3 launch, the center's legal coordinator, Felipe Gonzalez, told BNA.
Undocumented Mexican migrants may have worked illegally in the United States, but they are still entitled to their share of U.S. tax refunds, say officials with the center and with Warminster, Pa.-based accounting firm Warminster Financial.
“If you worked in the United States in 2006, 2007, or 2008, and were paid by check, you can receive up to $15,000 per year,” stated a flier circulated by Warminster. “Depending on how much you've earned, and how many dependents you can claim, you have the right to request a tax refund. It doesn't matter if you are undocumented, were deported, or returned [to Mexico] because you're out of a job.”
It's Bush's fault...!
"Bush did it" is now apparently the reason we can't close Guantanamo within a year. From the Washington Post:
[Gregory] Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. "I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives," he said.
Obama punts national security to the judiciary
In a stunning display of political cowardice, the Obama administration has decided not to seek specific congressional authorization for a prolonged detention statute for Guantanamo Bay detainees deemed too dangerous to set free. It’s the latest troubling flip flop by the president, an utter abdication of the lofty promises he made during his much-heralded National Archives Speech just this May.
This decision not only weakens U.S. detention policy, it will regrettably serve as an invitation to the courts to expand their role in national-security affairs — an area that is properly the province of the executive and legislative branches.
Feds target yard sales
Thinking of having a fall yard sale to clean out some of the clutter from your house? Be careful, or it could get you in trouble with the Feds, and cost you up to $15 million in fines. Its no joke: the Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched a new enforcement campaign, which it calls “Resale Round-up,” targeting the resale of potentially harmful children’s toys and other consumer products. Potential violators, the CPSC warns, include “thrift stores, consignment stores, charities, and individuals holding yard sales and flea markets.” Even e-bay sales are at risk.
Stimulus transparency? Not so much
The goal was to build a reporting system that allows the public to follow the zigzagging paths of dollars awarded under the $787 billion federal stimulus package. A financial GPS of sorts. But despite federal lawmakers’ pledge of transparency, the final stages of most money trails, along with key information about job impacts, will remain invisible to users of the Recovery.org website when it debuts next month.
Only details of a stimulus grant’s passage through its first two stops after it leaves the federal government must be reported, according to guidance memos from the White House Office of Management and Budget. That means billions of dollars will be untrackable and thousands of recipients will be left unidentified through the database, officials acknowledge.
Obama cuts pensions to WWII vets
In a strongly worded message to Congress outlining its priorities for a military spending bill, the Obama administration today said it disapproved of including money for pensions for 26 elderly members of the World War II-era Alaska Territorial Guard.The Guardsmen are among those assigned to protect Alaska from the Japanese during World War II.
Michael Savage calls liberalism a mental disorder. After seeing these examples, I'd say it's hard to disagree, wouldn't you?
There's my two cents.
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