Mississippi Blinding

It's been an eventful week for the Lott clan. On Monday, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) announced that he'd be retiring late this year. The next day, FBI agents raided the law office of his brother-in-law, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. Yesterday, Scruggs, his son, and three associates were indicted for bribery.

-- Paul Kiel atTPM Muckraker, Nov. 29, 2007

A search warrant was executed this week in the law office of Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs. Barely a day later, he also was indicted on charges of bribing a state trial judge. Conservatives and liberals, alike, are chortling over what they imagine to be the imminent downfall of one of America's most successful, and richest, trial lawyers.

No surprise, really. Both sides see the event through partisan prisms that tend to blind one to the whole truth, whatever that turns out to be.

Republican neocom fanatics who reflexively side with corporate interests against individuals view "plaintiffs' lawyers" as bogeymen out to undermine America's capitalist foundation. As for Democratic Party liberals, it seems they can't see beyond the fact that the sister of Scruggs' wife is married to U.S. Senator Trent Lott, which makes the two men brothers-in-law. On no discernible evidence other than that, a good number of Lott critics are suggesting the Scruggs indictment explains why, just two days beforehand, the senior Mississippi senator announced that he intends to resign his seat before January rolls around.

Color us skeptical. It may be, as alleged, that a third man, also a lawyer, who supposedly offered a bribe to a Mississippi state judge was acting for Dickie Scruggs. Or, it may be that he wasn't. It may be that this other lawyer offered a bribe. Or, it may be the judge was fishing for a personal campaign contribution, as is the widespread practice among judges in that state.

With no proven facts to speak of yet, what we're left wondering is what does the known history of each side in this drama suggest about their motives and capabilities? On that score, we're ready to give more than the legal presumption of innocence to Scruggs. We give him the benefit of a doubt.

The most likely reason for Senator Lott's resignation, as it seems to us, has nothing to do with Scruggs or his family ties. It's more in harmony with Lott's character and political history that he simply doesn't want to wait an extra year to pig out on lobbyist fees.

It's the political ties we find more intriguing. Dickie Scruggs and his law firm, as we have noted before, are among the leading litigators battling property insurance companies over their penurious -- some juries would say, even fraudulent -- handling of Hurricane Katrina claims. Scruggs undertook to represent well over a thousand devastated hurricane victims in Mississippi -- including that self-same brother-in-law, Trent Lott, who was the scourge of trial lawyers himself until he needed one. The Scruggs firm also led the way in knitting together a number of other law firms to form what's now known as The Katrina Group.

As Newsweek noted a few years ago, Scruggs has a long history of representing the little guy against the insurance industry and their corporate clients. He made his bones suing tobacco companies, then represented thousands of blue collar ship-builders afflicted with asbestosis. More recently, the intrepid lawyer added the health insurance industry to his list of targets.

One can surmise there are plenty of huge, well financed corporations out there who would happily contribute whatever it takes to see Dickie Scruggs brought down. If that isn't reason enough to reserve judgment at the news of his indictment, consider this:

• The indictment was engineered by U.S. Attorney Jim M. Greenlee in the Northern District of Mississippi. Greenlee has been a "loyal Bushie" U.S. attorney throughout the entire period Karl Rove Bush's lapdog, Alberto Gonzales, was busy politicizing the Justice Department.
  
• Allegations of Justice Department "selective prosecution" and "targeting" of prominent Democratic party supporters across the nation have been at the heart of investigations by both the House Judiciary Committee and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
  
• It's already a matter of record that the Justice Department has been using "criminal prosecutions to help Republicans win elections" in Mississippi by selectively prosecuting Democrats. Although he's given to both parties, Scruggs is best known for being one of the largest individual contributors to Mississippi Democratic Party candidates.
  
• Barely three weeks ago, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and other news sources began reporting that Scruggs was funding "a new attack ad on Republican insurance commissioner hopeful Mike Chaney." Last July, he gave a quarter of a million dollars to "Mississippians for Fair Elections, a PAC 'created to raise awareness about the role the insurance commissioner plays'" in Mississippi government.
• Last June, Scruggs filed a 100-plus page complaint in the Southern District of Mississippi, accusing State Farm Insurance Co. of a "racketeering enterprise" to suppress or destroy engineering reports it received from its own chosen expert evaluators that found insured homes had been damaged by high winds rather than flooding water. The allegation is the legal equivalent of nuclear war, potentially subjecting State Farm to treble damages and a host of other severe punishments.
  
• Just one day before the indictment was made public, Scruggs filed an amended complaint [pdf format] in the ongoing litigation. As described by Biloxi reporter Anita Lee "a team of policyholders' attorneys led by Richard 'Dickie' Scruggs" added new allegations that State Farm had actually financed the start-up of an engineering firm which then wrote hurricane damage reports with conclusions dictated by State Farm:

  The owner of an engineering firm hoped to make up to $1.5 million over three months by adjusting Hurricane Katrina claims for State Farm, borrowing $150,000 and establishing a line of credit with State Farm Bank to set up shop on the Mississippi Coast in September 2005, according to records filed late Tuesday in federal court.

  Because of the arrangement, Forensic Analysis & Engineering Corp. was beholden to State Farm, which wanted to minimize its Hurricane Katrina losses for wind damage, the lawsuit says. Another vendor that adjusted Katrina claims, the independent adjusting firm E.A. Renfroe & Co. Inc., at times owed 80 percent of its income to State Farm, the court records say.

• The 73-year old Calhoun County, Mississippi, judge, Henry Lackey, who claims a Scruggs intermediary tried to bribe him waited less than 48 hours before hitting the interview circuit to share his story with Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.
  

Not to mention (though we will) the indictment was handed down just a couple of weeks before Scruggs was scheduled to host a large fund raiser at his home for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

It may be difficult for folk living in a normal state, or even a politically subnormal state like Florida, to believe that the federal and state judicial systems in a place like Mississippi could be so bent that the weight of the law might be brought down on someone just because they belong to the wrong political party. But the erudite international lawyer and Harper's Magazine blogger, Scott Horton, has some familiarity with the depths to which his native South can sink.

He's been exposing the through-and-through corruption of Alabama's system for much of the past year, now. Here's a sampling. It isn't easy reading but it is eye opening.

Horton has occasionally remarked that things in neighboring Mississippi are much the same. As he wrote a few weeks ago:

In the last several months, we have looked in some detail at the prosecution of Democratic Governor Don E. Siegelman in Alabama. There is now substantial evidence that this prosecution was politically motivated, involving a number of key figures in the Alabama G.O.P., Karl Rove, U.S. attorneys in Birmingham and Montgomery, and political appointees at the Justice Department in Washington.
* * *
[W]hile studying the Siegelman case, I have been looking over a series of cases in Mississippi which are remarkably similar to the Siegelman case in many ways. At this point I believe, based on documents and evidence which have come to me, that the Mississippi prosecutions will also shortly be exposed as being politically motivated and directed. In any event it is clear that they were designed to, and did, have a key role in influencing elections in Mississippi for the benefit of the Republican Party.

"For five years Washington has had a Department of Political Persecutions where the Department of Justice used to stand," Horton also has written.

It is some measure of the damage done to the Justice Department under the Bush administration that one can even entertain the thought Scruggs' indictment may be politically inspired. But we know, now, that the Justice Department has perverted justice elesewhere for just that reason. The likelihood that's its happening again in Mississippi is too plausible to be dismissed.

When Driving to Pensacola Beach....

UPDATE BELOW

When driving to Pensacola Beach ... for the holidays, just remember that the other cars you see may well be driven by lunatics like this woman, who was "so bored" she began filming herself on the road from Atlanta to Pensacola. On camera, she says she's itching to "go faaaassst," waves both arms in the air as she plays air guitar, nearly falls asleep when her eyelids droop, and yawns uncontrollably.

Those other drivers, just like this woman, may confess in mangled syntax, "For some reason I can't speak properly when I drink." After eating a "ribwich" while driving, they could become so smeared with barbeque sauce they are tempted to take their hands off the wheel to demonstrate how greasy they've become.

Those other drivers, you can bet, frequently will be taking their eyes off the road as they play around with music CDs. They could be repeatedly gazing at their own image on a video cam screen. Likely, they will fall asleep at wheel, as this woman nearly does.

Most disturbing of all, remember that those other drivers on the road well may be afflicted with such bad judgment that they will post the evidence of their gross negligence on the Internet for all to see.
UPDATE
12-2 pm

Alas, the video has been removed from YouTube. After entertaining us for several days -- not to mention educating us about driving habits of those heading for Pensacola Beach -- it seems the budding Atlanta film-maker/imminent auto wreck victim has had second thoughts. Maybe, just maybe, her judgment is improving.

Good luck to her... and anyone she may encounter on the road.

Panhandle Christmas Crimes

File this in "There will always be a Florida Panhandle."

The Great Bra Caper:

The manager of Victoria’s Secret in Santa Rosa Mall discovered the disappearance of 126 bras after the manager of another store suggested she check her stock.

A similar theft had just been reported at Victoria’s Secret at University Mall in Pensacola.

The bras reportedly disappeared sometime after 8 p.m. on Nov. 18, according to an Okaloosa County Sheriff ’s Office report. Their value is $5,460.

Missing are 50 Very Sexy Push Up Bras, 12 Very Sexy Wireless Bras and 64 Very Sexy Flip Bras in various sizes, according to the report.
* * *

On Aug. 22, nearly $5,000 worth of panties was stolen from an open table.

Ladies, if you happen to find some "very sexy" bras under the tree this year, be sure to call 9-11.

Happy Thankstaking

Jon Swift:

Since the days of the pilgrims Americans have been giving thanks, but isn't it about time we got some thanks for all that we have done for the world? Just once I would like to celebrate Thankstaking instead of Thanksgiving. Just once I would like the rest of the world to show us a little gratitude.

Traditionally the Pilgrims started Thanksgiving in 1621 to thank the Wampanoag Indians for helping them through a difficult winter. For the last 400 years we've been thanking the Indians for what they did for the colonists, so would it kill them to take one year to thank us for civilizing them and for introducing them to casino gambling, which has proven to be such a boon to their culture?

Regrettably, the Wampanoag can't thank us because most of them were killed off by the colonists and those who claim to be their descendents can't prove they who they are so they aren't officially recognized. But there are plenty of other Native-Americans who could certainly take an hour or two off from running the blackjack tables to say, "Miigwetch, kimosabe."

There's more, and it's as entertaining and dementedly insightful as always.

That's Six Inches?

Just before local elections in New Orleans last summer, the U.S. Corps of Engineers published new flood risk maps for the districts of Lakeview and Old Metarie showing how Corps improvements have improved the area's flood protection on a block-by-block basis. The maps didn't include specific technical data, so it wasn't possible to independently verify their accuracy. But they sure looked pretty:

The maps showed that the improvements made to the city canals' drainage systems would reduce flooding during a major storm by about 5.5 feet in Lakeview and nearby neighborhoods. The maps were based on a storm that has the likelihood of occurring at least once in 100 years.

So pretty, in fact, that the New Orleans Times-Picayune says Federal Gulf Coast Recovery Chief Donald Powell "called the reduced flood risk one of the most important events in the state's recovery."

Now it seems all those boastful men at the Corps made a small estimating mistake. Instead of 5 1/2 feet, the protection offered is just six inches.

Il Menu Ispirato

The story: Friends rent an apartment in Rome for a 10-day vacation. Return home, thrilled.

The scene: Friends spend two days at home preparing a dinner party for friends and family, with all they have learned about exotic Italian cheeses, wines, pastas, meats, vegetables, and -- the very best part -- desserts.

The dialogue: Friends seem to have temporarily misplaced the CD-ROM with their vacation photos. There is no home movie or slide show to endure. How sad. Guests make do by exchanging hilarious and engrossing tales of their own lives, the books they have written, and the books they are writing. One of them is finishing an anti-self-help book about why you should avoid those late-night TV info-mercials about how to become a millionaire by buying real estate. They did it, and it nearly killed them.

The menu (with a few scattered splotches of food):

[click to enlarge]

Truly, a dinner party to remember.

Rerun: Mailer vs. Everyone

Dick Cavett, from "In This Corner, Norman Mailer":

"I know someone who sure as hell hates being dead."

The Bank You Know...

... may not be the bank you owe.

On Oct. 10, Judge Boyko, 53, ordered the lenders’ representative to file copies of loan assignments showing that the lender was indeed the owner of the note and mortgage on each property when the foreclosure was filed. But lawyers for Deutsche Bank supplied documents showing only an intent to convey the rights in the mortgages rather than proof of ownership as of the foreclosure date.

Saying that Deutsche Bank’s arguments of legal standing fell woefully short, the judge wrote: "The institutions seem to adopt the attitude that since they have been doing this for so long, unchallenged, this practice equates with legal compliance. Finally put to the test, their weak legal arguments compel the court to stop them at the gate."

* * * [T]he inability of Deutsche Bank, as trustee for the pools, to produce proof of ownership at the time of the foreclosures will fuel borrowers’ concerns that they are being forced out of their homes by entities that may not even hold the underlying loans.

Adds one mortgage securities specialist, "There is no industry repository for mortgage loans. I have heard of instances where the same loan is in two or three pools."

Yikes! If Wall Street investment banks don't even know that the mortgages they think they own are also being claimed by others, who's to say Wall Street arbitrageurs aren't double- and triple-counting even the ordinary investment assets they think they own?

Bait and Snitch

There's a sued sheriff in town.

Escambia County Sheriff Ron McNesby has pleaded no contest to noncriminal charges that stem from a 2004 hunting trip in Wisconsin.

A Richland County judge adjudicated McNesby guilty of two counts of illegal hunting/possession of game/birds and placing bait with nondegradable material.

McNesby, who entered his plea last month, had to pay a fine of about $2,500, and his hunting license in the state of Wisconsin was revoked for three years.

McNesby's mug now goes in the book along with more than fifteen other Pensacola bigwig-wannabees (including a prominent minister who organized 'Christian hunting' parties) who've been nabbed for cheating while slaughtering Bambi and her relatives just so they could bring home a trophy.

It's pretty clear some among them wound up snitching on their hunting buddies. However, the biggest game has yet to be bagged. Similar illegal hunting charges are still pending against George Touart and Mike Whitehead. Those two have raised the defense that they're too stupid to know hunting ethics or laws.

We're with Touart on that one. He's so dumb he could screw up a retirement party -- and has.

As for county commissioner Mike Whitehead, no punishment could be too severe. In Wisconsin, Macho Man Mike was out to massacre helpless deer. Here in Pensacola he's known for making war against endangered species like the Perdido Key beach mouse, using excessive condo building permits as his weapon of choice. The man is a wildlife terrorist.

We think an appropriate punishment would be extraordinary rendition. Let the Wisconsin police blindfold Whitehead, pack him on a plane, and send him to the Milwaukee Zoo. There, interrogators like the ones seen below will know how to deal with him:

Bush Bests Record

No, no. Not that record.....He already has it. This one:

Sixty-four percent of Americans disapprove of the job President Bush is doing, and for "the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they 'strongly disapprove' of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974."

Could this be the reason?

Despite some notable accomplishments in domestic and foreign policy, Nixon is mostly associated today with disdain for the Constitution and abuse of presidential power. Obsessed with secrecy and media leaks, he viewed every critic as a threat to national security and illegally spied on U.S. citizens. Nixon considered himself above the law.

Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court's unprecedented rebukes of Bush's policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law.

Or, is this the reason?

Crude oil prices closed in on 100 dollars a barrel Wednesday after striking fresh record highs on global supply concerns, traders said.

All of this makes some want to revisit the 2000 election. We won't bother. Here's why: By 1975, when the thoroughly disgraced Nixon left Washington, you couldn't find anyone who would admit having voting for him. By 2008, when and if Bush turns over the reigns of power to a successor, it will be impossible to find anyone in Florida who punched his chad in 2000.

Java Joe Rejects Republicans

Pensacola's own Joe Scarborough, host of the new NBC show "Morning Joe," quoted by Jacques Steinberg in today's NYT:

“I’m just as conservative as I was in 1994, when everyone was calling me a right-wing nut,” he said. “I think the difference is the Republican Party leaders, a lot of them, have run a bloated government, have been corrupt, and have gone a very, very long way from what we were trying to do in 1994. Also, the Republican Party has just been incompetent.”

Is Scarborough still a right-wing nut? Probably. But he's not so stupid as to overlook rank incompetence or the path to higher ratings, or both.

Fruit du Festival d'Art

We went. We saw. We bought. Is it really art? Who cares?

Releasing Terrorists, Jailing Lawyers

"If Bush and Cheney are ever tempted into extreme measures in the United States, Musharraf has provided a template for how it would unfold. Maintain you are moving against terrorists and extremists, but actually move against the rule of law."

-- Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Nov. 5, 2007

When the normally calm and unflappable Prof. Juan Cole sees in the events now transpiring in Pakistan a "template" for how the Bush administration could destroy democracy in the United States, it's time to sit up and pay close attention.

Make no mistake: the coup engineered over the weekend by Gen. Pervez Musharraf wasn't really against Islamic militants. It was against the rule of law in Pakistan. As Prof. Barnett Rubin writes from Islamabad --

Judging by the General's actions, judicial activism is a much more sinister and immediate threat than terrorism, as all of his actions since yesterday have targeted the former rather than the latter. Indeed Musharraf's agents managed to pirate the codes to prevent Geo TV from uploading its programs to satellite, while Maulana Fazlullah's FM station in Swat continues to broadcast calls for jihad without impediment.

What were those "actions?" Even as Pakistan's government was doing a deal to release "28 insurgents from government custody, including some allegedly connected to suicide attacks," as the International Herald Tribune reports, Gen. Musharraf was busy firing the Pakistani Supreme Court, putting hundreds of other judges under house arrest, and re-filling the jails with lawyers.

"Hundreds of opposition leaders and lawyers have been arrested,"Karachi's International News reported in its on-line edition yesterday. Hundreds more lawyers in Islamabad and Lahore were beaten by police, Reuters reports. The Associated Press reports more lawyers were arrested in Rawalpindi and Multan.

The New York Times and others are reporting that Musharraf decided to move when word reached him that the Pakistani Supreme Court intended to rule unanimously this week that Gen. Musharraf was ineligible to continue serving as the nation's president:

His decision to suspend the Constitution and fire the Supreme Court was taken days before the court was due to decide whether his re-election on Oct. 6 was valid. A close aide to General Musharraf said the Pakistani leader had decided to declare an emergency when he was told last week by a Supreme Court justice that the court would rule within days that he was ineligible to continue serving as president. The ruling would have been unanimous, according to the aide.

The UK Guardian -- unconstrained by what has become the lazy and survile American journalistic habit of relying on anonymous government sources -- quotes a political ally of Musharraf to the same effect:

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the ruling PML-Q party, said the decision to impose emergency rule was triggered by fears that the supreme court would rule against Gen Musharraf's recent re-election in a legal appeal. A friendly judge passed the information to the government last Wednesday. "He said the verdict may be unanimous. So we had no choice," he told the Guardian. "The debate was whether to impose emergency before or after [the court ruling]."

Foreign correspondent Griff Witte reports in today's WaPo that the U.S. and Great Britain OK'd Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf's coup against civilian opposition leaders and the Pakistan court system.

A close adviser to Musharraf said Sunday that the president's inner circle believed that before he issued the order, the United States and Britain had grudgingly accepted the idea of emergency rule, despite earlier objections. He said he did not expect any action against Musharraf by the West. "When we convinced them that it would only be for a very short time, they said, 'Okay,' " the adviser said.

An unnamed "Western" diplomat (there you are again) disputes that claim, according to Witte. But even as the reporter dutifully transcribed Anonymous' words, there's the strong suggestion of substantiation:

"The U.S., along with Britain and other countries in the E.U. and the Commonwealth, made every effort to try to dissuade Musharraf's government from doing this," the diplomat said on the condition of anonymity, adding that "Rice couldn't have been stronger in several phone calls" to Musharraf.

Therein lies the rub: only the hapless Condoleeza Rice made mere "phone calls." David Sanger and David Rohde explain the contextual importance of that in today's New York Times:

[A]ides to General Musharraf... said they had anticipated that there would be few real consequences.

They called the American reaction “muted,” saying General Musharraf had not received phone calls of protest from Mr. Bush or other senior American officials. In unusually candid terms, they said American officials supported stability over democracy.

"They would rather have a stable Pakistan — albeit with some restrictive norms — than have more democracy prone to fall in the hands of extremists," said Tariq Azim Khan, the minister of state for information. "Given the choice, I know what our friends would choose."

So, it seems the U.S. certainly enabled Musharraf's coup if it didn't outright green light the thing. This isn't the first time the Bush administration has accepted Musharraf's bald-face lies at face value. It also would not be the first time Bush and his authoritarian enablers imitated the crimes of another country's excesses. Bush has shown time and again that his administration can survive, and indeed thrive, only by creating "an atmosphere in which law [is] constantly subverted to political expedience," to use Scott Horton's words from last month's speech about the Nuremberg trials.

"When fascism comes to America," Sinclair Lewis wrote in 1935, "it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." And, as Musharraf has shown us, braying about the terrorist threat.

Can't happen here? Read the new books by Naomi Wolf or Joe Conason and think again. As this excerpt from Conason's book states:

For the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon more than three decades ago, Americans have had reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in our own country. Today we live in a state of tension between the enjoyment of traditional freedoms, including the protections afforded to speech and person by the Bill of Rights, and the disturbing realization that those freedoms have been undermined and may be abrogated at any moment.

Such foreboding, which would have been dismissed as paranoia not so long ago, has been intensified by the unfolding crisis of political legitimacy in the capital. George W. Bush has repeatedly asserted and exercised authority that he does not possess under the Constitution he swore to uphold. He has announced that he intends to continue exercising power according to his claim of a mandate that erases the separation and balancing of power among the branches of government, frees him from any real obligation to obey laws passed by Congress, and permits him to ignore any provisions of the Bill of Rights that may prove inconvenient.

Elsewhere, Wolf had provided a ten-step summary "shopping list" for the Bush administration to "close down democracy." By our count, nine of them have been taken off the shelf. There remains only one: "Suspend the Rule of Law."

Bush's buddy, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has shown him the way.

Arts Festival

Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival
Friday-Sunday
Nov. 2-4, 2007
Seville Square in downtown
Pensacola, Florida

"That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to... ."

-- Oscar Wilde, Art and the Handicraftsman
(1882)

The Surge Continues

Via Intel Dump, Iraqi Army Training:

Annual Pensacola Arts Festival

It may be a little strong to say, as Pensacola promoters do, that "The Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival is one of the most highly regarded and popular arts festivals in America." After all, there are thousands of arts and craft fairs every year. There also seem to be thousands of self-appointed experts who aspire to grade such things. The GGAF doesn't even register with most of them, such as Art Daily, Art Fairs International, Kara Art, Festival Net, and so on... and on... and on.

But it is a first-class event. Without much doubt this coming weekend, at least, it's the best juried arts and crafts fair anywhere in the U.S.

Greg Lawler, who runs the"The Definitive Guide to the Best Juried Art & Craft Fairs in the United States" gives it a B+ -- and he's a tough grader.

We don't pretend to know anything about art festivals, but we know what we like. And we look forward to the Greater Gulf Coast Art Festival every year. Stop by if you can.