OOTDnews: 07/12/11

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Obama says he cannot guarantee Social Security checks will go out on August 3

By Corbett B. Daly

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.
"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue.

Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.

The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.

Lawmakers from both parties want to use the threat of that deadline to work out a broader package on long-term deficit reduction, with Republicans looking to cut trillions of dollars in federal spending, while Democrats are pushing for a more "balanced approach," which would include both spending cuts and increased revenue through taxes.

The Debt Limit fight: A primer

Democratic and Republican lawmakers are expected to hold another round of negotiations with Mr. Obama at the White House Tuesday afternoon on long-term deficit reduction, though talks have yielded little results to date.

Mr. Obama told Pelley "this is not just a matter of Social Security checks. These are veterans checks, these are folks on disability and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out."

The interview will air Tuesday evening on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.

Mr. Obama's comments followed remarks from the Senate's top Republican, who said Tuesday that he did not see a way for Republicans and Democrats to come to agreement on meaningful deficit reduction as long as Mr. Obama remains in office.

"After years of discussions and months of negotiations, I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is probably unattainable," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor.

Still, McConnell said Republicans would "do the responsible thing" to avoid default, suggesting that a deal on the debt ceiling could be reached without a "real" deficit reduction package.

"The president has presented us with three choices: smoke and mirrors, tax hikes, or default. Republicans choose none of the above. I had hoped to do good, but I refuse to do harm. So Republicans will choose a path that actually reflects the will of the people, which is to do the responsible thing and ensure that the government doesn't default on its obligations," he said.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he wants a deal that would allow the U.S. to avoid confronting the issue again until after the 2012 elections and vowed on Monday that he would "not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension."

"This the United States of America and, you know, we don't manage our affairs in three-month increments. You know, we don't risk U.S. default on our obligations because we can't put politics aside," Mr. Obama told reporters at the White House yesterday.

From: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20078789-503544.htm

Brian Dickerson: When judges violate the law, taxpayers pay the bill

BRIAN DICKERSON

Twice in the last six weeks, Dearborn District Judge Mark Somers has been summoned to other judges' courtrooms to answer allegations that he fired court employees in violation of Michigan law.
Twice, Somers testified that he had done nothing wrong.

And twice, jurors -- 16 in all, sitting in two different civil trials -- unanimously concluded otherwise, awarding two former employees more than $1.1 million in damages.

With attorney fees and interest, Somers' liability will almost certainly exceed $2 million -- even if a third ex-employee comes up empty when her whistle-blower lawsuit against Somers goes to trial next year.

But Somers isn't sweating. He's still pulling down his $138,000 salary as chief judge of Dearborn's district court. The assistant state attorney general who has defended him in all three lawsuits never sends him a bill. And Dearborn taxpayers will likely bear the cost of any damages ultimately collected by the plaintiffs -- just as taxpayers and municipal insurers in Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, West Bloomfield and Southgate were left holding the bag when lawsuits against judges in their communities were settled in the plaintiffs' favor.
What is more galling is that none of those judges has ever been removed from office, suspended or even publicly reprimanded by any disciplinary body.

Jurors have found the judges' conduct -- and their credibility as witnesses in their own defense -- wanting. But neither the Judicial Tenure Commission nor the Attorney Grievance Commission -- the organizations responsible for policing the ethical conduct of judges and lawyers -- concedes that those judges have done anything unethical.

So much for holding the men and women who oversee Michigan's courts to a higher standard.

Detroit attorney Joel Sklar, whose client was awarded $734,000 in her lawsuit against Somers, marvels that judges who have violated the law in their own courthouses continue to sit in judgment of others.

"You wonder," Sklar muses, "whether they think their black robes make them invincible, or just invisible."

A lack of credibility

In 2006, a jury awarded $3.1 million in damages to Michelle Horton, a former Bloomfield Hills District Court employee of the year who complained that the court's sitting judges had colluded to fire her illegally.

Witnesses testified that the judges had turned on Horton in solidarity with a newly elected colleague who suspected her -- erroneously, as it turned out -- of plotting to embarrass his wife. Jurors learned that, at one point, Bloomfield Township detectives had staked out the Capitol Grille to determine if Horton was accepting free drinks from lawyers with business before the court.

All three judges implicated in Horton's allegations testified under oath that they had done nothing wrong -- a fact the attorney defending the district court underlined in his closing argument.

"Let's think about all the people who have to be lying to make (the plaintiff's case) work," the defense lawyer, Mark Paxton, told the jury. "Judge (Diane) D'Agostini has to be lying. Judge (Kimberly) Small has to be lying. Judge (Marc) Barron has to be lying."

But it took jurors only a couple of hours to agree that Horton was the one telling the truth. West Bloomfield and six other municipalities who fund the Bloomfield Hills District Court vowed to appeal the jury's $3.1-million judgment, but quietly agreed to a seven-figure settlement on the condition that Horton's attorneys agree not to reveal its value.

Taking the Fifth

Jurors never got to hear Southgate District Judge James Kandrevas' response to allegations he fired his court clerk, Lori Shemka, after she blew the whistle on Kandrevas' unethical conduct.

Shemka charged in a lawsuit that she was fired just days after she alerted the State Court Administrator's Office that Kandrevas was funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into a secret bank account he and another court employee controlled.

In a 2010 deposition arising from the clerk's whistle-blower suit against the court, Judge Kandrevas invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination 222 times. The court's insurer subsequently settled the lawsuit against him for $300,000.

Answering to a higher authority?

The two juries that awarded more than $1.1 million to former Dearborn District Court employees heard testimony that Somers was a zealously religious man who questioned defendants about their church attendance and retaliated when a deputy court administrator complained that he was proselytizing from the bench.

The deputy, Julie Pucci, alleged that Somers unlawfully eliminated her position after learning that she was living with her fiance, Dearborn District Judge William Hultgren. Jurors awarded her $732,000, including $200,000 in punitive damages.

Pucci's federal court judgment came less than a month after a Wayne County Circuit Court jury awarded $463,000 to former probation officer Simone Calvas. Calvas testified that she had incurred the devout Somers' displeasure by associating with Pucci and by conceiving twins out of wedlock.

Dearborn city attorneys have taken the public position that the city, which was not a defendant in Pucci's lawsuit, is not liable for any damages awarded to her. But a multitude of legal authorities and precedents suggest otherwise.

Discipline on the QT?

Late last week, I asked Tom Ryan, a former State Bar of Michigan president who currently serves as chairman of the Judicial Tenure Commission, why the JTC had taken no disciplinary action against any of the judges who jurors determined had violated the law.

Ryan answered by reminding me that the commission "has a number of weapons to deal with these situations," including private "letters of reprimand" and "letters of caution," and that voters should not conclude that the absence of any public disciplinary action means that he and his JTC colleagues have been looking the other way.

But why, I asked Ryan, should the JTC hesitate to make a public example of judges whose misconduct has been exposed in public trials?

"Those are the rules under which we operate," Ryan answered. "It was determined that confidentiality was critical for the protection of the judiciary and the public."

Begging your pardon, counselor, but all judges work for the public -- and no one is served when the JTC and the bar conspire to sweep illegal judicial conduct under the rug.

"There is," as Ryan observed, "a ballot box" at which voters dissatisfied with the performance of elected judges can take action to remove them from office.

But attorneys are notoriously (and understandably) reluctant to challenge any sitting judge. And the JTC and the bar betray their profession when they refuse to call out judges who violate the law.

I covered each of the trials I've described in this column; I saw what jurors saw, and I understand why those jurors decided they couldn't trust the defendant judges who testified before them.

But journalists shouldn't bear the burden of policing bad judges alone -- and taxpayers shouldn't be left holding the bag when juries occasionally hold one of them accountable.

Contact Brian Dickerson: 313-222-6584 or bdickerson@freepress.com

U.S. Rules That Marijuana Has No Medical Use. What Does Science Say?

By Maia Szalavitz

Getty Images

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) ruled on Friday that marijuana has "no accepted medical use" and should therefore remain illegal under federal law — regardless of conflicting state legislation allowing medical marijuana and despite hundreds of studies and centuries of medical practice attesting to the drug's benefits.

The judgment came in response to a 2002 petition by supporters of medical marijuana, which called on the government to reclassify cannabis, which is currently a Schedule I drug — like heroin, illegal for all uses — and to place it in Schedule III, IV or V, which would allow for common medical uses.

The DEA ruled that marijuana has "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States," has a "high potential for abuse," and "lacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision."
Not only does this decision conflict with state laws, however, it also conflicts with a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the branch of the National Academy of Sciences charged with answering complex medical questions for Congress. Way back in 1999, the IOM said:

Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs, primarily THC, for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation; smoked marijuana, however, is a crude THC delivery system that also delivers harmful substances.

Despite the issue of smoking marijuana, the IOM said that medical use of the drug is acceptable when other alternatives have failed.

MORE: Reverse Engineering the Marijuana 'Munchies': What Causes Binge Eating?

In addition, in 2006 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an investigational new drug application, or IND — which grants permission to study a drug with the goal of approving it for marketing if it is safe and effective — for Sativex, an inhalable marijuana-derived drug, which includes both THC and CBD, the main active components of cannabis. So, while one federal agency says the drug is too risky for use even under medical supervision, another is studying it for possible approval for marketing.

The synthetic marijuana-based drugs nabilone and dronabinol (both used to treat nausea and vomiting) are already approved in the U.S. and have been placed in Schedules II and III, respectively. Schedule II includes drugs with high abuse potential like Oxycontin, while Schedule III includes milder painkillers like codeine combined with Tylenol.

MORE: Why Pot Smokers Are Paranoid

Since the IOM report was released more than a decade ago, the evidence for the medical benefits of marijuana and related drugs has continued to increase. In the last three years alone, cannabinoids have been found to help kill breast cancer cells, fight liver cancer, reduce inflammation, have antipsychotic effects and even potentially help stave off the development of Alzheimer's disease and reduce progression of Huntington's disease.

Further, a 2011 review of the effectiveness of cannabinoids for non-cancer pain found "no significant adverse effects" and "significant" analgesic effects.

Although the DEA judgment sounds like a setback for medical marijuana advocates, in one important sense it is an advance. The government had long delayed making a judgment on the petition, but now that it has, it makes it possible for advocates to appeal it in federal court. Now, that process can be set in motion.
It's worth noting, though, that this isn't the first time a petition to reclassify marijuana has been filed and rejected. The Los Angeles Times reported:

The first was filed in 1972 and denied 17 years later. The second was filed in 1995 and denied six years later. Both decisions were appealed, but the courts sided with the federal government.

Still, if an appeals judgment were based on scientific evidence, rather than political considerations this time around, it's easy to imagine a very different outcome.

Report: Gaza Terrorists use Google Earth to Pinpoint Targets

by Maayana Miskin

Terrorists in Gaza have a new tool helping them to fire on innocent civilians living in southern Israel – the popular satellite mapping program Google Earth. A group of terrorists from the Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades recently described their use of the program to a reporter for Slate Magazine.

“The technology is always improving,” a terrorist calling himself Abu Saif told journalist Sharon Weinberger. “Our struggle started with the Kalashnikov, and then it moved to the suicide bomb, then the locally made rocket, and now the Grad rocket.”

Gaza's rocket launching crews use Google Earth to aim their weapons, Abu Said said. The program is seen as superior to maps because it is more up-to-date and gives precise locations for potential targets.

Terrorists who spoke to Weinberger said they plan to continue with rocket attacks despite the deployment of the Iron Dome system, which shoots short-range rockets out of the air. “The Israelis are using a lot of money for this defense, but during the last rocket attacks, our rockets made it through,” explained Abu Hamza, a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist.

Abu Saif suggested that terrorists were getting their hands on new technologies that would help them continue attacks. “At some point in the future, the Grad will be a thing of the past,” said Abu Saif.

Terrorists are believed to have used a laser-guided missile in a recent attack on a school bus that murdered Israeli teenager Daniel Viflic.

Another way in which terrorists are using modern technology is public relations. They have begun making their own videos to send to the media in hopes of gaining support. One recent video filmed by Abu Saif's group was sent to Al Jazeera.

“In some way, rocket making has almost become an extreme form of reality television,” Weinberger suggested, “with the militants understanding that playing to the cameras is as important as, or perhaps more important than, actually launching rockets.”