Yes, that is essentially what US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University.

   Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

   “Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.” […]

   “Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

In taking apart Holder’s justification for murder, David Swanson so chillingly describes the government can kill you anywhere, anyplace, anytime they choose without evidence, charges, arrest or approval:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it’s legal to murder people – not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, but to target and kill an individual sitting on his sofa, with no charges, no arrest, no trial, no approval from a court, no approval from a legislature, no approval from we the people, and in fact no sharing of information with any institutions that are not the president.[..]

Nor can promising to imprison people without a fair trial justify murdering people.  But Holder does not do that.  He promises kangaroo courts:

   “Much has been made of the distinction between our federal civilian courts and revised military commissions.  The reality is that both incorporate fundamental due process and other protections that are essential to the effective administration of justice – and we should not deprive ourselves of any tool in our fight against al Qaeda.” [..]

Holder then explains, sensibly enough, why non-military courts work just fine (unless an extreme record of nearly 100% convictions worries you):

   “Simply put, since 9/11, hundreds of individuals have been convicted of terrorism or terrorism-related offenses in Article III courts and are now serving long sentences in federal prison.  Not one has ever escaped custody.  No judicial district has suffered any kind of retaliatory attack.” [..]

Holder turns next to the presidential power to imprison people that was signed into law on New Year’s Eve as part of the National “Defense” Authorization Act:

   “This Administration has worked in other areas as well to ensure that counterterrorism professionals have the flexibility that they need to fulfill their critical responsibilities without diverging from our laws and our values.  Last week brought the most recent step, when the President issued procedures under the National Defense Authorization Act.  This legislation, which Congress passed in December, mandated that a narrow category of al Qaeda terrorist suspects be placed in temporary military custody.”

This legislation did nothing of the sort.  For one thing, Obama unconstitutionally altered it in a signing statement as it applied to a huge prison full of largely non-al Qaeda prisoners in Afghanistan.  In addition, there has been quite a bit of discussion of the power this bill creates to imprison U.S. citizens. [..]

And, despite tremendous, often willful, confusion, the history is clear that Obama insisted on the power to imprison U.S. citizens and to do so outside of the military.

This is madness. The Constitution does not permit any of this. Holder quoted no legal standards. As the New York Times reported in its article on Holder’s speech, “the speech had contained no footnotes or specific legal citations”:

{..} and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo – or in an account of its contents published in October by The New York Times based on descriptions by people who had read it.

The administration has declined to confirm that the memo exists, and late last year, The Times filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act asking a judge to order the Justice Department to make it public. In February, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a broader lawsuit, seeking both the memo and the evidence against Mr. Awlaki.

And where are the Democrats and so-called “progressives”? As Glenn Greenwald at Salon writes, “Yet, with some righteous exceptions, the silence is deafening, or worse“:

How can anyone who vocally decried Bush’s mere eavesdropping and detention powers without judicial review possibly justify Obama’s executions without judicial review? How can the former (far more mild powers) have been such an assault on Everything We Stand For while the latter is a tolerable and acceptable assertion of war powers? If Barack Obama has the right to order accused Terrorists executed by the CIA because We’re At War, then surely George Bush had the right to order accused Terrorists eavesdropped on and detained on the same ground. [..]

To recap Barack Obama’s view: it is a form of “terror” for someone to be detained “without even getting one chance to prove their innocence,” but it is good and noble for them to be executed under the same circumstances. To recap Eric Holder’s view: we must not accept when the Bush administration says “just trust us” when it comes to spying on the communications of accused Terrorists, but we must accept when the Obama administration says “just trust us” when it comes to targeting our fellow citizens for execution. As it turns out, it’s not 9/11/01 that Changed Everything. It’s 1/20/09. [..]

Find a defender of Obama’s assassination program and all you’ll hear is exactly the same thing: this is only being directed at The Terrorists like Awlaki, so we don’t need any court review or due process. Here was Holder yesterday: “it is imperative for the government to counter threats posed by senior operational leaders of al Qaeda, and to protect the innocent people whose lives could be lost in their attacks,” and assassination orders are only issued once “the U.S. government has determined, after a thorough and careful review, that the individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.” [..]

He (Holder) said, for instance, that “the Supreme Court has made clear that the Due Process Clause does not impose one-size-fits-all requirements, but instead mandates procedural safeguards that depend on specific circumstances.” That part is true: in the 2004 case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration’s argument that it could detain American citizens accused of Terrorism without any process for them to contest the accusations against them, though the Court held that something less than a full-scale trial could satisfy the Due Process clause. But as Marcy Wheeler points out, the Court imposed “due process” requirements that are the exact opposite of what the Obama administration is doing with its assassinations.

The very idea that presidential assassination powers will become accepted policy for every future president, that the core of the Constitutional protection of due process can be based solely on the word of the president and made in total secrecy without the opportunity to view, or even refute, any evidence is abhorrent and evil.

These articles with their extensive citations by credible authors are must reads:

Attorney General Holder Says Murder Is Legal

by David Swanson, anti-war activist and author of Day Break and War Is A Lie, who runs the websites DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org (formerly AfterDowningStreet.org)

Attorney General Holder defends execution without charges

by Glenn Greenwald, best selling author, former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and contributing writer at Salon

Eric Holder’s View on National Security: Three Branches. Except for When the Third becomes Inconvenient.

by Marcy Wheeler, author and runs website emptywheel

When the US Government Can Kill You, Explained

by Adam Serwer, writer for Mother Jones

Time to Play “What if Alberto Gonzalez Said That?”

by John Cole, blogger and runs website Balloon Juice

How We Can Help President Obama Today

by Charles P. Pierce, contributing write at Esquire

Assassinating U.S. Citizens: Holder says “Yes We Can”

by Jesselyn Radack, director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project.  

Featuring an all-star cast including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Lynch, Kevin Bacon and others, “8” is a play written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and directed by acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner. It is a powerful account of the case filed by the American Federation for Equal Rights (AFER ) in the U.S. District Court in 2010 to overturn Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state of California. Framed around the trial’s historic closing arguments in June 2010, 8 provides an intimate look what unfolded when the issue of same-sex marriage was on trial.

This was a live production of the reading of Dustin Lance Black’s “8″, a play based on the transcripts from the hearings before Judge Vaughn Walker on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 which banned state sanctioned same sex marriage. I join Teddy Partridge in his congrats to Judge Walker for having Brad Pitt play his roll. George Clooney and Martin Sheen play Daivd Boies and Ted Olson, the lawyers who argued the case for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. Also, Kevin Bacon plays Charles J. Cooper, the lead attorney for supporters of Proposition 8, and Jane Lynch is Maggie Gallagher, co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage. The actual play is about 90 minutes.

In February, a three judge panel of the 9th Circuit upheld Judge Walker’s decision. The supporters of Proposition 8 asked the Ninth Circuit to grant them an en banc rehearing of the 2 to 1 decision.

Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein and former presidential candidate and consumer advocate, Ralph Nader visited Harvard Law School to  discuss the constitutional crimes of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H.Obama It is well worth the hour to watch if you love this country and respect the Constitution and our laws.

February 10, 2012

Ralph Nader ’58 and Bruce Fein ’72 visited Harvard Law School for a talk sponsored by the HLS Forum and the Harvard Law Record. At the event, “America’s Lawless Empire: The Constitutional Crimes of Bush and Obama,” both men discussed what they called lawless, violent practices by the White House and its agencies that have become institutionalized by both political parties. [..]

Both men took issue with the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets the budget and policies of the Department of Defense and generally expands the power of the government to fight the war on terror. The Act permits, among other practices, the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without trial. Fein encouraged those in attendance to contact their members of congress about repealing it.

Bruce Fein has been my “hero” since he called for the simultaneous impeachment of both Bush and Cheney as a requirement of congress mandated by the Constitution and then drafted articles of impeachment of Barack Obama for the same reasons. The Constitution and its enforcement is not a spectator sport.

Just when you thought that the Obama administration’s assault on the Internet and his plan to censor free speech and creativity couldn’t be worse, Obama gets more creative. Meet the “son of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)”, the Trans-Pacific Partnership which could impose even stricter provisions than ACTA.

From TechDirt

… we were noting calls from the industry for the USTR (US Trade Representative) to negotiate a hardline in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which involves a bunch of Pacific Rim countries …

Apparently, the US government has already indicated that it will not allow any form of weakening of intellectual property law for any reason whatsoever in this agreement. In fact, the USTR has directly said that it will only allow for “harmonizing” intellectual property regulations “strictly upwards,” meaning greater protectionism. Given the mounds of evidence suggesting that over protection via such laws is damaging to the economy, this is immensely troubling, and once again shows how the USTR is making policy by ignoring data. This is scary.

Both ACTA and TPP are backed by the US Business Coalition whose members include the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Motion Picture Association of America. There’s that guy Dodd again. These are some of the issues that they want TPP to address and how they would effect you and the Internet. Rashmi Rangnath rrom the policy blog Public Knowledge highlights the demands:

• Temporary copies: The US Business Coalition paper urges TPP countries to include a provision requiring protection for temporary copies. Temporary copies are copies made when you access webpages, or music, or any other content on the Internet. In addition, your computer makes transient copies, such a buffer copies, in the course of replaying such content. These copies have no value independent of the ultimate use they facilitate – your viewing of the movie or listening to the music. Treating them as worthy of copyright protection allows rights holders to claim additional rents where none are due.
• Circumvention of digital locks: The paper urges TPP countries to prevent circumvention of digital locks. The WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) were the first international instruments to impose this obligation on countries. Within the U.S., these treaties were cited as the reason for the enactment of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The harms caused by the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions have been well documented. In a nutshell, while on the one hand the DMCA attempts to prevent copyright infringement by prohibiting an infringer from breaking digital locks (ex: locks used on DVDs) on the other hand, it also prevents lawful uses (ex: preventing you from breaking the locks on the DVD you purchased to play it on your computer running on Linux).
• Copyright terms: The paper urges the TPP to provide for longer copyright terms. Current copyright term in the U.S. is life of the author plus 70 years. The TRIPS agreement, which is the baseline IP agreement to which most countries adhere, requires a copyright protection for life of the author plus 50 years. …
  
  Too often, copyright owners lose interest in works whose commercial lives have ended; works become obscure; and historians, educators and documentarians interested in using the work cannot do so because they cannot find the owner to seek permission to use the work. All of this warrants a reassessment of the proper copyright term, not an extension of current copyright terms.
• Statutory damages: The paper urges TPP to include a provision on statutory damages, ostensibly similar to the U.S. statutory damages regime. As PK and its allies have pointed out, the U.S. statutory damages regime has led to excessively large damages awards. This regime has resulted in discouraging reliance on fair use thereby stifling innovation because of the threat of a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

The coalition suggests many other worrisome provisions such as requiring ISPs to act as copyright cops and treating individual infringers with the same severity as large-scale pirates.

The author of this article makes particular note that the Obama administration has been very careful not to share the text of the “agreement with the public while it was given to the corporate insiders and the nations involved in the negotiations.

What was that President Obama said about “transparency”? Is this what he means when he says that he values the Constitution?  

As Wikipedia noted on its website after SOPA and PIPA were taken off the table, “we’re not done yet”. Guess what, they were right, we aren’t done yet and it’s even worse. While we turned our backs on this transparent president was busy working on a “trade” agreement that is even worse than both those bill. It has been in the works since before 2008 and is designed to bypass the constitutional requirement of Senate ratification by calling it an “executive agreement.” Negotiations were held in secret and kept form the public and congress under the guise of “national security.”

What is this “agreement”?

It is called ACTA, Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a multi-country trade agreement that, according to Wikipedia:

{} is for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement. The agreement aims to establish an international legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet, and would create a new governing body outside existing forums, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, or the United Nations.

The agreement was signed on 1 October 2011 by Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States. In January 2012, the European Union and 22 of its member states signed as well, bringing the total number of signatories to 31. After ratification by 6 states, the convention will come into force.

Supporting and negotiating countries have heralded the agreement as a response to “the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works”, while opponents have lambasted it for its potentially adverse effects on fundamental civil and digital rights, including freedom of expression and communication privacy. Others, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have derided the exclusion of civil society groups, developing countries and the general public from the agreement’s negotiation process and have described it as policy laundering. The signature of the EU and many of its member states resulted in the resignation in protest of the European Parliament’s appointed rapporteur, as well as widespread protests across Poland.

The negotiations for the ACTA treaty were conducted behind closed doors until a series of leaked documents relating to the negotiations emerged.

On 22 May 2008, a discussion paper about the proposed agreement was uploaded to Wikileaks. According to the discussion paper a clause in the draft agreement would allow governments to shut down websites associated with non-commercial copyright infringement, which was termed “the Pirate Bay killer” in the media. According to the leaked discussion paper the draft agreement would also set up an international agency that could force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide information about subscribers suspected of copyright infringers without a warrant.

(emphasis mine)

The United States already signed ACTA on October 1 in 2011, just before SOPA and PIPA started to get attention. On January 26, 2012, the European Union and 22 of its member states signed as well. After ratification by six member states, the convention will come into force.

As reported by TechDirt, the Obama’s “US Trade Representative (USTR) has made it clear that it has no intention of allowing Congress to ratify ACTA, but instead believes it can sign it unilaterally”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), for a long time the sole opponent of PIPA, sent a letter to President Obama in October expressing his objections:

Although the USTR insists that current U.S. law, and its application, conform to these standards, there are concerns that the agreement may work to restrain the U.S. from changing such rules and practices. As you know, the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter binding international agreements on matters under Congress’s plenary powers, including the Article I powers to regulate foreign commerce and protect intellectual property. Yet, through ACTA and without your clarification, the USTR looks to be claiming the authority to do just that. [..]

The statement by the USTR confuses the issue by conflating two separate stages of the process required for binding the U.S. to international agreements: entry and implementation. It may be possible for the U.S. to implement ACTA or any other trade agreement, once validly entered, without legislation if the agreement requires no change in U.S. law. But, regardless of whether the agreement requires changes in U.S. law, a point that is contested with respect to ACTA, the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter a binding international agreement covering issues delegated by the Constitution to Congress’ authority, absent congressional approval.

At the conclusion of the letter, Sen. Wyden requested that the President formerly declare that ACTA is not binding on the US. Somehow, that may not happen.

On the bright side, apparently, President Obama has found an issue where there is bipartisan agreement as Republican Congressman Darrell Issa (CA) called ACTA even more dangerous than SOPA:

As a member of Congress, it’s more dangerous than SOPA. It’s not coming to me for a vote. It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.

This video from Inf0rmNati0n expalins how ACTA will effect us as individuals.

So what can we do to stop this? Get out your keyboards and man your cell phones. Call and email the White House and your elected representatives and tell them “Don’t Mess With The Internet.”

Here are two petitions to sign

Please Submit ACTA to the Senate for Ratification as Required by the Constitution for Trade Agreements

End ACTA and Protect our right to privacy on the Internet

The surprise announcement by President Barack Obama that he was appointing New York State’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to head a new group, the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, that would be investigating securities fraud from the housing bubble and financial crisis. The announcement elicited some interesting reactions from the President’s supporters and critics expressing both praise and doubt about the new committee and just how much force it would really have considering the other appointees to the panel. Public opinion seems to be that few if any of the real perpetrators of the housing bubble and financial crisis have been held accountable.

On Friday, the group held its first press conference. US Attorney General Eic Holder, along with Mr. Schneiderman and Housing Secretary Scott Donovan, explained the purpose of the group, on what it would be focusing some of its powers and announced it had already issued 11 subpoenas:

“We are wasting no time in aggressively pursuing any and all leads,” Mr. Holder said. “In sending out those subpoenas, we consulted with the S.E.C. in making a determination as to where they should go.” Officials would not say which companies received the subpoenas.

“We are not going to be looking at the same things they are examining,” he added. “We’re going to be working with them but looking at a separate group of institutions.”

Schneiderman added that by working together with the SEC, IRS and Justice Department state Attorneys Generals would give them more information with which to bring prosecutions and civil suits at the state level:

In addition, the New York State Martin Act, which gives the attorney general broad powers to elicit information during investigations, “is more flexible than federal securities laws,” Mr. Schneiderman said. The New York and Delaware attorneys general also have jurisdiction over the trusts that hold the mortgages that underlie the mortgage-backed securities, making them “the bricks and mortar of this entire structure.”

By coordinating their efforts, group members might be able to share documents and information that usually would be in individual agency silos, Mr. Holder said.

Friday evening, Schneiderman sat down for an interview with MSNB’s Rachel Maddow, where he further discussed the committee’s focus, the agencies that would be involved and the roll of the states. Dayen, who still has strong reservations about the RMBS working group, thinks that the group lacks serious substance mostly because the use of wording like “resolving allegations”, not “crimes” and the lack of supporting staff and the appearance of disinterest by Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer who was absent at the press conference. However, he does see some promise. In the past, the IRS was reluctant to get involved, but as David Dayen at FDL News Desk indicated there could be huge tax fraud implications:

But I want to pull out the sentence I highlighted previously in Schneiderman’s interview which shows that at least he is thinking creatively about this. He said that “We have the Internal Revenue Service in because there are huge tax fraud implications to some of the stuff that went on.” I suppose he could be talking about a few different things (like the tax evasion from the banks using MERS instead of recording mortgage transfers at public records offices and paying a fee), but my guess is he’s talking about REMIC claims.

REMICs are an acronym for Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits. When you’re talking about mortgage pools used in securitization, you’re talking about REMICs. And REMICs have special tax treatment; they are exempt from federal taxes provided they only invest in “qualified mortgages” and other permitted investments. Here’s the important part: under the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the REMIC must receive all of its assets in the trust within 90 days and the assets have to be performing (not in default). Any REMIC violations make the vehicle subject to a penalty tax of 100%, with additional penalties as they apply.

Well, the strong suspicion is that, during the bubble years, the trustees did not properly convey the mortgages to the REMICs. Which makes the whole investment vehicle a massive tax fraud. That’s a huge level of exposure. You’re talking about $3 trillion in REMICs.

This obviously goes much deeper than fraud.

I became Attorney General about a year ago and started digging into this, and realized that New York and Delaware, which is why my collaboration with Beau Biden was so important, we had a unique place. Because all of the mortgage-backed securities were actually pools of mortgages deposited into New York trusts or Delaware trusts. We started looking at what she’s talking about, did they actually get all the paperwork done, things like that. And we realized that there’s a lot of work to do but a lot of potential for proving liability. [..]

To get this done Rachel, you need resources, you need jurisdiction, and you need will. And when I stood there today with Eric Holder and my other colleagues in government and other prosecutors, I really felt that we had that level of commitment […] what we realized as we started to go back and forth over the last few months is that we all need to work together. There are situations that, New York’s securities law is a stronger law in some ways than the federal laws. Some of our statutes of limitations, though, are shorter. So we can’t go as far back. The federal statute is longer. We need everyone together. And the folks that we have in on this… the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rich Cordray just, a whole array of new powers just came into existence with his appointment, which the President just got done very recently. That’s a huge addition. We have the Internal Revenue Service in, because there are huge tax fraud implications to some of the stuff that went on. All of the people who are in this, all of the agencies who are designated, working together, can achieve so much more than any one of us on our own.

h/t David Dayen for the transcript.

There is still a lot of doubt about this commission and it’s purpose and goals. Matt Stoller at naked capitalism is curious to know if this panel will indict Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citibank, for possible violations of Sarbanes-Oxley. He sees two problems with this task force. The first is the Obama administration’s policy “to protect the banking system’s basic architecture, which means the compensation structure and the existing personnel who run these large institutions.” And secondly:

Obama personally believes in the legitimacy of the existing banking institutional framework and he strongly suspects that no crimes were committed.  He has hired a raft of people – including Jack Lew, Tim Geithner, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, and so on and so forth – who agree, and has implemented policies such as Dodd-Frank that assume as much. [..]

These people aren’t stupid, they aren’t without principles, and they aren’t electorally driven.  They are ideologues.  They really believe in a neoliberal political economy, where government throws money at the economy through private channels and private channels do with it whatever they think best.

That’s quite a conflict of ideologies. Stoller concludes with more questions and doubts:

There are many details of the task force that are as of yet not public, so it is not clear to me that doing a case like this is possible.  But it’s quite obvious that mega-bank officials and regulators lying about the perilous state of various financial institutions to the public was a key part of the crisis, and that accountability on this front is probably critical to restoring faith in the system.  It would certainly be a big statement upfront if this is what this task force attempted to take on.  Will it?  That’s a very good question, and one I hope we get answers to, soon.

Here’s hoping that this isn’t just an election year sham and Eric Schneiderman has the will to stand up to the Obama neoliberals.  

I realize that there has been a lot of speculation about what went down in the 24 hrs prior to the SOTU after Miller announced that there was no bank/state settlement deal. There is a lot of speculation about Schneiderman and not without good reason. When I was writing my article for Stars Hollow I was careful not to join in the “sell out” theme that was running hot with some very respected bloggers. I think Obama is desperate. He knows that he is losing the Independents and moderate Republicans and needed to do something fast, especially in the light of the unpopularity of the 50 state agreement and the massive push to stop it. On the other side, and I somewhat agree with RJ Eskow on this, Schneiderman has the upper hand. He is wildly popular and scares the crap out of Cuomo & company. Schneiderman is not dropping the investigation here in NY, he’s expanding it from what I hear.

That said, I think that if this unit doesn’t move quickly in the evidence they already have, evidence BTW Schneiderman has not had access to, he will drop this like a hot potato and walk. Obama is walking a thin line and realizes that Wall St money alone will not get him reelected. I think Schneiderman is playing on that and hopes to at least hold some of them more responsible and get some better compensation for the homeowners that got screwed along with some regulation of the securitization that caused this all.

I have my doubts. There are better ways to do this, namely appointing a special prosecutor with a budget, investigators and subpoena power. I’m not willing to throw Schneiderman under the bus just yet.

I also think Obama wants him to succeed Holder who said he would leave this year even if Obama is reelected. It’s either him or CA’s AG Harris.

This was a complete surprise, so I’m being very cautious here, knowing what I do about Schneiderman and who is politically afraid of him. Like after Obama was elected, I’m watching and listening very carefully. Hoping that it is not as bad as it looks.

Eskow’s opinion appeared in Huffington Post and he disclosed that he is a fellow at Campaign for America’s Future, a left wing strategy center. (This site, however, is not affiliated with any outside organization and opinions expressed here are solely are own.) He gives a good analysis of the reasons for the skepticism of David Dayen, Yves Smith and Duncan Black (Atrios) who said, “It’s hard to see the Schneiderman thing as anything but bad news.”

Eskow dissects the reasons for the skepticism

The administration’s lack of prosecutions has been inexcusable. His administration has refused to prosecute even the most compelling prima facie cases of and has appointed one revolving-door banker after another to key economic positions. Its financial settlements with Wall Street have been disgraceful. For far too long the president pushed the nonsensical argument that “Wall Street and Main Street rise and fall together.”

And with an election coming up, bankers can write big checks that most other people can’t.

He also points out that if the Department of Justice and the SEC had been doing their jobs in the first place neither the Financial Fraud Task Force or this unit would be necessary. It’s hard not to agree with him that committees are “designed for paralysis and gridlock, not efficiency” and that president who promoted “”streamlining government” and “eliminating bureaucracy” would create this committee. Looking back on what happened with health care and financial reform everyone on the left has good cause to be wary of anything that President Obama does at this point and some groups, perhaps shouldn’t have been so effusive in their praise of this deal. Eskow, as do I, thinks that the White House, left scrambling after Iowa AG Tom Miller announced that there was no settlement with the banks and presented with citizen petitions that had hundred of thousands of names, reversed course in desperation. Then with the announcement that Schneiderman would “chair” the committee, there was a rush of exuberant relief that Obama was finally showing some signs of supporting the 99%.

As to the possibility that Schneiderman “caved”to pressure from the White House, Eskow backs up what I have said, Schneiderman has too much leverage:

Whatever Eric Schneiderman’s goals are, I doubt they include being stigmatized by progressives as a sell-out. His actions over the last few months have not been those of a guy who rolls over easily. It’s safe to assume that he wants to prosecute bank fraud, and that this appointment will give him access to the resources he’s needed to conduct a thorough investigation. [..]

Consider this: What would it do to the White House if Schneiderman labeled the entire effort a sham, resigned in protest, and continued his investigations alone? He must know he has leverage now, and presumably will use it if necessary.

Escow appeared with Cenk Uygur on “The Young Turks” to discuss the unit and Schneiderman with Cenk’s panel:

I certainly don’t agree with Michael Shure and what basically is “the lesser of two evils” meme. It can be just as bad with Obama. That said, could this turn out as the cynics are predicting? Sure and if it does we here at Stars Hollow, like Eskow, will say so.

Another good discussion of this new committee was with Delaware AG Beau Biden who appeared with Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC and his other guest real estate analyst, Jack McCabe:

I’m not ready to throw in the towel nor am I going to get on the cheer-leading band wagon. I will wait to see what transpires and keep my fingers crossed for the best outcome for the most people, the 99%.

“Duck House”:

I sit on the floor of the Duck House with thirty others, brainstorming for the January action. Neither men nor women dominate the group. We are young, and surprisingly old. Counter-culture and conservatively clad. We question whether it is nobler to seek permits or just show up unannounced. We speak of banners, flyers and street theater-anything to educate the public about our goal.

Even when I still lived in Arizona, I had heard of this place. Democracy Unlimited Humboldt County (DUHC) or “Duck” was on the forefront of the war against corporate power. In 1998, they helped pass a ballot initiative establishing the Democracy and Corporations standing committee in Arcata’s city council here in California.

The Committee’s primary functions are: to research and present to the Council options for controlling the growth of “pattern restaurants” in the community; to cooperate with other communities working on socially responsible investing and procurement policies; to make recommendations to the Council, and/or with the Council’s approval, provide educational opportunities to promote “fair trade”; to inform citizens of corporations with negative social and environmental impact; and to provide advice on ways to foster sustained locally-owned businesses, publicly or locally owned services and worker-owned cooperatives and collectives.–City of Arcata

The committee was hailed by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Jim Hightower. Ralph Nader commented, “I look forward to Arcata being a luminous star in the rising crescendo of democracy in our country.”

Embolden by this success, they passed Measure T in 2004. It forbid nonlocal corporations from contributing to local political campaigns. Two corporations immediately challenged the initiative as unconstitutional. Before the case could be decided by the courts, Humboldt’s Board of Supervisors succumbed to corporate pressure and declared this popularly elected law nullified.

DUHC learned from this experience. They won’t be going it alone, this time. They are but one small seed of democracy, but they are amassing with others to change the political landscape in America. They have joined Move to Amend in a miliary campaign, and this time their aim is not a city ordinance in some far off town on the edge of America, but changing the highest law in the land.

Well worth the 50 minutes.

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes writer Glenn Greenwald for a discussion of his new book, “With Liberty and Justice for Some.” Greenwald traces his intellectual odyssey; analyzes the relationship between principle, power, and law; and describes the erosion of the rule of law in the United States. Highlighting the degree to which the legal system frees the powerful from accountability while harshly treating the powerless, Greenwald describes the origins of the current system, its repudiation of American ideals, and the mechanisms which sustain it. He then analyzes the media’s abdication of its role as watchdog role. He concludes with a survey of the the record of the Obama administration in fulfilling its mandate, argues for an alternative politics, and offers advice for students as they prepare for the future. Series: “Conversations with History”

h/t Michael Kwiatkowski @ Progressive Independence

The two of the lady state attorney generals took the stage on the talk shows discussing their actions to protect their constituents from the thousands of illegal foreclosures that are crushing their states economies. Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley joined Dylan Ratigan for a lively chat about her lawsuit against five major banks and MERS. Later, AG Kamala Harris explained to Lawrence O’Donnell on “The Last Word” her reasons for breaking from the not-50 State Agreement being brokered by the Obama administration.

The ladies are really on a roll. Just this week it was announced that Ms. Harris has teamed up with Nevada’s State Attorney General, Catherine Cortez Masto, to look into a wide array of abuses, including mishandled documents, shoddy loan servicing, and the questionable ways in which mortgages were bundled and sold to investors. Like New York’s AG Eric Schneiderman and AG Beau Biden of Delaware, the ladies see strength in numbers.

This is the hard work protecting consumers that the Obama administration refuses to do.