UK scrambles to explain SAS Libya blunder: News24: World: News
UK scrambles to explain SAS Libya blunderFrankly, I don't think they need James Bond. What is needed and what is wanted may be different.
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UK scrambles to explain SAS Libya blunderFrankly, I don't think they need James Bond. What is needed and what is wanted may be different.
China: Tibet won't fall apart if Dalai Lama dies | Stuff.co.nz
the order was conveyed verbally, as is often the case with official directives that the government does not wish to defend or explain.
Christchurch is ''utterly'' committed to holding its Rugby World Cup matches, despite the damage wreaked on the city by last week's earthquake, Mayor Bob Parker says.The comments in the article are interesting. They want to bring in cruise ships to give housing to the guest when the world cup for Rugby comes. But why wait. Thousands are without homes and safe sleeping quarters now. Bring in the ships to Christchurch now and then you'd have some support for the tourists in the months to come.
Questions have been raised about whether the city will be able to host the event, given predictions that it may take months to get essential services up and running following last week's 6.3-magnitude quake.
Christchurch is scheduled to host five pool games and two quarterfinals in the Cup which begins on September 9, 2011.
The Obstinate Dr. Heicklen
By Scott Horton
The New York Times reports on the case of Julian P. Heicklen, a 78-year-old retired chemistry professor from New Jersey, who now faces federal criminal charges. What has the mild-mannered Dr. Heicklen done?
Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood [at 500 Pearl Street in Manhattan] and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience. That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates a law against jury tampering.
Federal prosecutors in New York have reached the alarming decision that informing individuals on the street in front of the courthouse (some of whom may be en route to serve on a jury pool) about the doctrine of jury nullification is a criminal act. Their view would find no sympathy among the authors of America’s constitutional system.
Jury nullification has a long and noble history in America. William Penn’s trial in 1671 is often taken as the first textbook case illustrating the doctrine. Charged with “breaching the King’s peace” (more or less the charge that prosecutors previously tried against Heicklen) because he convened a gathering of Quakers in London, jurors were charged to convict Penn. They steadfastly refused. There was no doubt that Penn had broken the law. The jurors’ quarrel was rather with the prosecutors who brought the charges and the judge who ran the court, whom they viewed as instruments of repression, and with the law itself, which, as it was being applied, was manifestly unjust. In the end Penn and the jurors all went to prison, but the injustice of the entire process belongs to the chain of events that presaged the American Revolution and led the nation’s founders to embrace nullification.
At the sedition trial of journalist John Peter Zenger in 1735, Andrew Hamilton recounted the story of the Penn trial to a New York jury and admonished them that whatever the law and facts, they had the right to acquit Zenger if they held that to be the just result. They followed his advice in an outcome that laid the foundation for American press freedom.
America’s Founding Fathers made their case to juries arguing for nullification. John Adams, when defending John Hancock in 1771, insisted that the juror has not merely the “right” but actually the “duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court” and its understanding of the law. Conscience should serve as a safety valve, he argued, against unjust laws, or against just laws, unjustly applied.
Since then, jury nullification has been used to block the prosecution of those who helped slaves flee captivity or who simply offered them education; to free those who faced prosecution for resisting military service in unpopular wars or whose conscience forbade them to bear arms; and to end the prosecution of women who sought abortions and the doctors who served them. In the December 1926 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Walter Lippmann made the case for the use of jury nullification to address some of the extreme prosecutions resulting from the Volstead Act. In the December 1995 issue, Paul Butler argued that minorities should use jury nullification to press social issues.
The “controversy” relates not to nullification as a doctrine but to a far narrower issue: can the jurors be told that they have this right? Prosecutors and judges detest this notion because it strikes at the core of their power to interpret and guide the application of the law. No doubt about it: nullification makes their lives difficult. Consider the recent dilemma of prosecutors and judges in Montana, unable to find a pool of jurors willing to convict anyone for possession of marijuana, no matter the evidence.
Julian Heicklen’s conduct is remarkably like that of the seventeenth century pamphleteers whose obstinate insistence on rights and fair process belongs to the animating background of the American Revolution. Consider the case of John Lilburne, for instance, who was repeatedly arrested and tried for distributing pamphlets articulating a vision of natural rights and whose stout defiance of prosecutors and judges led directly to the notion of the right of confrontation and the exclusion of secret evidence. Consciously or not, Heicklen even embraces their tactics—like Lilburne and early dissenters, he kept his silence in response to questioning from the bench. Heicklen is just the sort of defendant that jurors in days gone by would have recognized as a victim of persecution and would have acquitted. And the federal prosecutors, no doubt aware of this fact, are eager to keep his case before a judge who shares their belief that jurors must be kept ignorant of the existence of the doctrine of jury nullification.
Shortly before his death, Thomas Jefferson noted with disdain that judges were working hard to bury jury nullification. It reflected a pernicious “slide into toryism,” he remarked in a letter to James Madison in 1826. In Jefferson’s view, judges and prosecutors who rejected the jury’s right of nullification were betraying the values of the Constitution and instead embracing those of the British Crown. “They suppose themselves… Whigs, because they no longer know what Whigism or republicanism means.” The fundamental question to put to the “tory” prosecutors who have brought the Heicklen case is simple: what about the First Amendment?
Board member Thomas Sumpter said the planned reduction is "inconsistent" with the district's plans to improve and expand arts education.This is GREAT to have a board member question a policy and do something about it. Well done.
Athletic Business Newswire - Study Probes Criminal Records of College Football Players
When London was awarded the 2012 Olympics, organizers promised an ambitious legacy: to get two million more people in England involved in sports and physical activity.The Brits are GREAT at "sit down sports." The photo is sorta funny, as the guy is sitting down with the exercise equipment.
From Erik |
Based on a combination of environment, health care, culture and infrastructure, Vancouver topped the list of the world's most liveable cities for the fifth straight year, according to a new report.
The Liveability Ranking and Overview assesses living conditions in 140 cities around the world. A rating of relative comfort for 30 indicators is assigned across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure. The survey gives an overall rating of 0-100, where 1 is intolerable and 100 is ideal.
The full report can be purchased for US $500.
Three cyclists caught on Evans Pass in Lyttelton during the earthquake yesterday dodged boulders the size of busses as they ran for their lives, and a jogger may have been killed.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®
My 13 year old son, Nico, asked me yesterday: If you would like to stop receiving these emails, please click here
Dad, what's a civil liberty?
Well, Nico, in some countries, if citizens want to meet, to assemble, to discuss politics, they can't.
If they try to assemble, the police will come and bust it up.
In the USA, we can meet openly.
We can discuss politics, and the police can't do anything about it.
We have this thing call a civil liberty, this freedom -- to meet, to assemble, and to speak.
Which is what we are doing tonight.
At the Earth Dog Cafe in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
Featured speakers:
Dr. Margaret Flowers on the failure of private health insurance industry -- and what we can do about it.
And Kevin Zeese on the $700 million a day we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and what we can do about it.
Plus a Q/A session.
We've had a good response to our initial publicity for this event.
Should be more than 100 people there tonight.
Earth Dog Cafe.
Tonight -- 6 pm to 9 pm.
Music by The Hayride Trio.
It's the second in a series of monthly meetings to discuss the political economy of the USA.
Hope you can join us tonight.
best
Russell Mokhiber
304.258.4454
PS: See yesterday's article in the Martinsburg Journal here:
http://www.journal-news.net/
I am eager to find some information on a class action lawsuit against Jordan Tax Services.
They contacted me with a 30 day notice that I did not pay a bill 4 years ago. They never cached the check I sent and never informed me of missing any payments until 4 years later. I disputed the charges which they ignored, instead they filed a court case and communicated to me months later that they are taking me to court, with an entirely different face value they stated in the first letter. They are demanding extra fees that I know they never spent on my case.
Two more people I know are dealing with very costly demands from the same company which details are even more horrifying than mine. How many more there is? How long do we have to put up with the unprofessional business practices of this company?
City Solicitor Daniel Regan said OMI has not, to his knowledge, closed its probe of the incident.Hey Mr. Regan -- what are you waiting for? Finish your work and do your job already.
Read more: http://www.pittsburghpostgazette.com/pg/11053/1127103-53.stm#ixzz1EiBcq2XS
The Making a Difference with Data (MadwDATA) site ( http://www.madwdata.org.uk/ ) features examples of how to use open data and case studies from different public sector organisations, as well as a discussion forum, interviews and details of workshops and other events.
Erik Rauterkus is a sophomore at Obama Academy and is the fastest person on the swim team. The boys swim coach Mr. Gasparovic says “Erik is 120% in everything that he does.” With City Championships coming up, Erik had a few words to say on the subject.