Category Archives: morality

The DoJ Strikes Again

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This case involves a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ex-agent who sued the BATF over its slander of him and its lack of adequate protection of him and his family after he’d done undercover work for the BATF in the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang.

United States Court of Federal Claims Judge Francis M. Allegra opened his latest ruling in blunt terms:

On October 29, 2014, the court…issued an order voiding the prior judgment based upon indications that defendant [the United States; the BATF agent was the plaintiff], through its counsel, had committed fraud on the court.

Fraud on the court is an extremely serious bit of…miscreancy. As Allegra explained it,

Fraud on the court “is directed to the judicial machinery itself and is not fraud between the parties or fraudulent documents, false statements or perjury.”

It’s a direct attack on the ability of our judicial system to function at all; it’s not one litigant lying to the other in order to gain an advantage in a particular case.

The underlying case is an indication of the integrity of Attorney General Eric Holder’s DoJ, but I want to focus on the fraud on the court allegation. Allegra focused on two examples he found indicative of a pattern of fraud on the court perpetrated by Holder’s representatives in the case. The first is this:

Testimony at trial indicated that Valerie Bacon, an attorney in ATF’s Office of General Counsel, attempted to convince SAC Atteberry not to reopen the arson investigation [regarding the destruction of the BATF agent’s home, the blame for which was central to the agent’s slander beef]. In this regard, SAC Atteberry testified:

Q. . . . Did you get any kind of discouragement in any respect from anyone at ATF with respect to reopening this arson investigation?

A. Yes.

Q. Please explain.
…
A. I had a phone conversation, and I also believe I talked to her [Bacon] in person one time when she was in Phoenix, and I believe during the telephone conversation she made a comment to me that if you, meaning myself, reopen the investigation that would damage our civil case.

The existence of this illegal conversation was never passed to the court until Atteberry’s testimony. Indeed,

Defendant’s filings regarding this situation demonstrated not only that its counsel—including supervisors in the Civil Division, who received email communications on this topic from plaintiff’s counsel in March of 2013—were aware of Ms Bacon’s actions prior to the trial in this case, but did nothing to apprise the court of her actions or of the potential that the integrity of these proceedings were at risk.

And this instance:

…a taped conversation (a copy of which is part of the appellate record in this case), revealed that defendant’s [the United States, recall] attorneys may have committed other violations of the duty of candor, including a potential failure to advise the court that an ATF agent who testified in this case may have been threatened by another witness during the trial. The taped communication states that defendant’s counsel ordered the agent in question not to communicate the threat to the court and stated that there would be repercussions if the agent did not follow counsel’s instructions. This matter has since been referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) at the Justice Department.

Notice that. However,

legal filings show that the agency soon suspended its investigation, saying it would wait to hear what Judge Allegra finds.

This is Eric Holder’s OPR, recall. It suspended the investigation which the judge had explicitly requested be carried out, not a file folder created and then…HIAed.

Unfortunately, the judge has no recourse other than the one he took: to address the matter to…Eric Holder. He did, though, bar the seven defense attorneys from appearing further in his court in connection with this case.

Fox News also asked Attorney General Eric Holder if the lawyers involved had been disciplined. The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Of course not.

The judge’s ruling can be seen here.

Because We’re Not Being Spied on Enough

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The Justice Department has acknowledged constructing a database to track the movements of millions of vehicles across the U.S. in real time.

And

A Justice Department spokesman told Fox News that the tracking program is compliant with federal [law]… claiming it “includes protocols that limit who can access the database and all of the license plate information is deleted after 90 days.”

Perhaps (although with this Justice Department or this administration, that’s hard to see), but that doesn’t make it right, or consistent with the precepts of our Constitution. And how do we know the information is “deleted after 90 days?” We don’t know when it was collected, starting that clock. We have only the Eric Holder DoJ’s word that the data are deleted. We know from experience with IRS “lost emails” that “deleted” doesn’t necessarily mean deleted.

Another kicker:

It is not clear whether the tracking is overseen or approved by any court.

The Wall Street Journal had this from its original tale:

The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database’s use has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter.

The program’s current scope is this:

[It] collects data about vehicle movements, including time, direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed strategically on major highways. Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities, according to DEA documents and people familiar with the program.

The documents show that the DEA also uses license-plate readers operated by state, local, and federal law-enforcement agencies to feed into its own network and create a far-reaching, constantly updating database of electronic eyes scanning traffic on the roads….

That’s the problem with a government program—it grows, it never shrinks, it never is eliminated. When the program is a secret one, its expansion is hard to discern, and the program is even harder for a free people to control. When the program is used to spy on the citizens, it’s extremely dangerous to our liberty.

What will happen when the program is further expanded—because anonymous donations to this or that political organization is viewed, by government, to be inimical? What will happen when the program is used to harass groups of Americans of whom the men in government disapprove, or of whom the men in government especially favor? Think that can’t happen? Look no further than this Justice Department and white voter intimidation by New Black Panthers and this DoJ’s avowed policy of not going after voter crimes involving white victims and black perpetrators. Look no further than this administration’s use of the IRS to go after political groups the White House doesn’t like.

Expansion of Ukraine Occupation

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The Russian-backed (with 9,000 of their own) rebels in Ukraine and Ukraine signed a cease fire agreement in September, including an agreement to withdraw their respective artillery units from that cease fire line.

Having done that,

a rebel rocket attack early Saturday morning (24 Jan) killed 29 people [at least 30 according to Reuters] in the port city of Mariupol[]

which Russia has been trying to seize for some months pursuant to their effort to open a land route to Russian-occupied Crimea. The day before,

[T]he rebels rejected a [renewed] peace deal and said they were going on a multi-prong offensive against the government in Kiev to vastly increase their territory.

Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic said this of the Russian/separatist forces’ plans:

Today an offensive was launched on Mariupol. This will be the best possible monument to all our dead because we will avenge them all[.]

So much for the value of a Russian commitment.

Wrong People Punished?

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A Southern California high school basketball coach has been suspended and faces accusations of mercilessly running up the score after his team won a game 161-2, one of the most lopsided scores in state history.

Based on what misbehavior, exactly?

The coach, Michael Anderson of Arroyo Valley High School’s girls’ basketball team had some comments.

I didn’t play any starters in the second half. I didn’t expect them to be that bad.

And on any do-over, perhaps

I wouldn’t play the game at all.

But what would that teach his girls? What would such an insult teach the opposing team’s girls?

The losing coach, Dale Chung of Bloomington High, also had some remarks.

He’s a great X’s and O’s coach. Ethically? Not so much. He knows what he did was wrong.

What about you, Ace? Where are your ethics in your lack of preparation of your team? You set them up for this loss. Where are your ethics with your “They’re victims” nonsense instead of your teaching them to play the game, or even (gasp!) to compete?

I have some questions.

Why must the girls on the winning team’s bench, who are trying to earn a starting position on their team, be held back from doing their best during their chance on the floor?

What about the opposing team’s girls, who offended the game with their apparent lack of effort on the court?

What about the opposing team’s girls’ parents, who didn’t bother to teach their children how to compete?

What is California trying to do to the children in its schools’ care?

An Intolerance from Anti-Discrimination

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Atlanta Fire Department Chief Kelvin Cochran has been fired from the Department altogether by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. Cochran’s reprehensible crime? He wrote a book, Who Told You That You Were Naked?, about morality from the Bible’s perspective. He also wrote about his views of homosexuality as informed by the Bible.

Reed suspended Cochran for a month over that book, and then on the day Cochran was to return to duty, Reed fired him. Reed said he did it because

I profoundly disagree with and am deeply disturbed by the sentiments expressed in the paperback regarding the LGBT community. I will not tolerate discrimination of any kind within my administration.

And yet, Reed is committing exactly that bit of miscreancy. He’s discriminating against a Christian man for his Christian beliefs. Reed’s willingness to be tolerant, and his claim to be anti-discrimination, are to be extended only to those who agree with him. To those who don’t think like he does, he gives the back of his hand, and he tells them to hit the bricks.

This is a textbook example of what the Bible is describing when it talks about hypocrisy.