Rice isn’t the most popular among the neocon psychos like Perle and Kristol, so she and Bush have to make tough to placate those psychos. Bush so far as to proclaim victory on behalf of Israel.

Posted by: Thrasyboulos | Aug 17 2006 22:24 utc | 4

My point is that his pronouncement of Israeli victory was political, aimed at the neocons and their constituents. My opinion is that he knows very well what happened.

Posted by: Thrasyboulos | Aug 17 2006 22:55 utc | 6

That Condi is quite a piece of work, yet she is hated by the True Belivers. I think it’s just the job. They have to hate anyone that is associated with diplomacy, no matter how fleetingly, like Condi. Anyway, not to figure her out? Does she ever open her mouth and not lie? Who can forget the Al Queda breifing paper? OK, almost everyone but the testemony about it was so over the top that BS doesn’t begin to describe the dishonesty. Where does such come from? I am at a loss to explain it.
I mean I’ve got Powell figured out. He’s the consumte actor. Playing Mr. Gravitas but not actually giving a shit about anyone or anything except his pockbook. But Condi. I mean there can be only so many Powell’s. Condi isn’t ever going to have an eight figure net worth and people flocking to see her Night of the Living Dead face spew platitudes.

Posted by: rapier | Aug 18 2006 0:44 utc | 8

Now it all makes sense.
This is probably what she told the Lebanese PM, causing him to let her know she’s no longer welcome in Beirut.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Aug 18 2006 2:36 utc | 10

Thras…
Rice isn’t the most popular among the neocon psychos like Perle and Kristol, so she and Bush have to make tough to placate those psychos.
Yes. Perfectly understandable. The POTUS and his Secretary of State feel they have to hide under the bed when the real powers walk into the room. (!!!???)

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 18 2006 4:22 utc | 12

Condi is the perfect Secretary of State for the administration. She’s willing to play the fool for those with half a brain or more, and the lighting rod for the bullshit artists for the brain-dead. In her role as a homely, apparently sexless clotheshorse, she can shuttle at her master’s whim to befuddle the poor diplomats who are forced to waste time with her. Meanwhile Bolton is off threatening and blustering to give the real message, “Fuck you, bitches, we do what we want.”

Posted by: Dick Durata | Aug 18 2006 4:54 utc | 14

opps, I posted that (#15) in the wrong thread sorry…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 18 2006 17:32 utc | 16

Speaking of traditional class struggles and structure…
Upper crust conceals Civil cases
Saw this article written back home. This is par for the course, as you’d all agree, but it’s also very symptomatic of just how bad the problem between castes here in America has grown. Laws are being broken here not just by the rich, but by the Judges who are screening their cases for them illegally. Voters are unable to make informed decisions at the ballot when civil cases are hidden from public view. Amplify this local problem in Broward county and apply it to the entire United States and you see a SIGNIFICANT problem here..

More cases have been hidden from the public in Broward Circuit Court, including the divorces of public officials and business people. BY PATRICK DANNER AND DAN CHRISTENSEN
dchristensen@MiamiHerald.com
More than 300 civil cases filed between 1989 and 2001 in Broward Circuit Court were kept secret from the public, showing that the hiding of select lawsuits was a deep-rooted practice.
Dozens of the confidential divorces and lawsuits involve the powerful and influential, including politicians, judges, lawyers and law enforcement officers.
Those cases come on top of another 107 civil cases that were kept off the public docket between 2001 and 2006, reported by The Miami Herald in April. At the newspaper’s request, the Broward clerk’s office searched its records and located another 314 cases.
All the cases are now on the public docket, under new rules issued this summer by Chief Judge Dale Ross, but their contents remain sealed.
Secret cases are extremely rare — just 421 since the clerk began electronically docketing cases in 1989. Last year alone, there were 44,775 civil and family court cases filed in Broward Circuit Court.
But the fact that many hidden cases involved local leaders disturbed advocates.
”It’s depressing,” said Paul K. McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum foundation in Arlington, Va. “It’s secret justice for some and public justice for everyone else. The problem is secret justice is not really justice.”
Among the newly discovered hidden cases:
• Broward County Commissioner Diana Wasserman-Rubin’s divorce from her first husband, Boca Raton lawyer Jeffrey Wasserman, in the early 1990s, when she was chairwoman of the Broward School Board.
• Broward Circuit Judge Ana Gardiner’s divorce from lawyer William Gardiner III, filed six months after Gardiner took office in 1998. It vanished from the public record the next day.
• Broward Circuit Judge Jeffrey Levenson’s divorce, removed from the public docket in 1998 when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Fort Lauderdale. Levenson said he asked to seal the case for security reasons, but didn’t know it also had been removed from the docket.
”That’s weird,” Levenson said.
Wasserman-Rubin and Gardiner did not return telephone calls.
• The divorces of several former public officials, such as Broward Commissioner Howard Craft and Fort Lauderdale Mayor Robert Dressler. Craft, whom records indicate was not represented by an attorney, could not be located for comment.
Dressler’s divorce lawyer, Bruce Little, said he didn’t know the ex-mayor’s case was off the docket — or that his own divorce was also.
DIVORCES HIDDEN
The Miami Herald previously reported that divorces involving Circuit Judge Thomas M. Lynch IV; County Court Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren; ex-Broward Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant and North Broward Hospital District Chairman Paul Sallarulo were kept confidential. Also hidden were lawsuits against a former presidential speechwriter, the South Broward Hospital District and Holy Cross Hospital.
Sensitive information in cases can legally be sealed under certain circumstances. But no state law authorizes judges to remove cases from the public docket. And federal courts with authority over Florida have declared the practice unconstitutional.
It’s unclear why the cases were off the public docket. Broward Clerk of Courts Howard Forman has said it happens only when judges order it. Judge Ross said clerks might have misconstrued judicial orders. He did not return two calls seeking comment.
”The fact that we’re finding more and more of these cases is alarming,” said Adria Harper, director of the First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee.
`WHAT’S HAPPENING?’
“It makes you question what’s happening with the judicial system. Is there a lack of communication between judges and clerks? Are there judges who are arbitrarily just improperly sealing cases as political favor, or whatever? What’s happening here?”
A review of the recently opened dockets showed judges typically acted to seal cases at the request of one or both parties. They often did so without issuing public notice or holding a hearing, as required by law.
OTHER COUNTIES
But progress dockets — a log of the court proceedings — indicate judges sometimes issued sealing orders without being asked, and clerks sometimes closed off cases when no sealing order was issued.
Such cases also have been found in Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Sarasota counties. Court officials in Miami-Dade have said cases are not hidden there.
Other newly uncovered Broward cases include:
• A 2000 lawsuit against Fort Lauderdale’s Mutual Benefits Corp by investor Rory R. Enright over an insurance policy. Four years later, the nation’s largest viatical settlement company was shut down for allegedly running an elaborate Ponzi scheme that took in more than $1 billion from unsuspecting investors.
The case was later dismissed, and the judge granted Mutual Benefits’ motion to seal it. Bruce Culpepper, Enright’s lawyer, said he didn’t know the case had been removed from public view.
• A 1998 case involving Jennifer Bush, whose mother was found guilty of deliberately making her child sick to attract attention for herself.
The state sued to terminate parental rights, a proceeding the Florida Supreme Court ruled in 2001 should remain secret. Beverly Pohl, a lawyer for the mother who wanted the case heard in open court, said it appeared to her that under a state statute, any information pertaining to such proceedings should not be open to the public. Nevertheless, the progress docket now is accessible.
• The 2000 divorce of Coral Springs-based home builder Itzhak Ezratti of G.L. Homes. ”In all my years practicing law, I’ve never asked for, or been the recipient of, a motion or request to basically undocket a case,” said Andrew Leinoff, a Miami lawyer who represented Anna Ezratti. Itzhak Ezratti did not respond to calls for comment.
• The 1990 divorce of Preston G. Stern, a one-time Coral Springs doctor who pleaded guilty to sexual battery on a patient. Parties involved in the case couldn’t be located for comment.

Even more infuriating, when attourneys and judges get together in the judges private chamber, they often cut deals that are essentially “off the record”. All kinds of agrements can be made and there sometimes there is no court reporter to witness it.
Us po’ folk don git no access ta de judge. We’ve lucky if our attourney is sober that day.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 18 2006 19:44 utc | 18

Preumably this would also be affecting the legal profession’s understanding of US case law. If you can’t research/access all the cases, you really don’t know what you’re talking about in case law.

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 18 2006 20:05 utc | 20

Wait! there’s more…
rom The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press :
Secret Justice: Secret Dockets
excerpt: ” Special treatment for prominent divorcees
n Connecticut, a secret docketing system was so hidden that not even the chief justice knew of its existence. Any party could choose to file a case under three different levels of secrecy. In Level 1 or “super-secret” cases, all information, including the case number, the parties’ names, the nature of the case, and all court documents remained off the public docket. Level 2 docketing permitted disclosure of the case number and parties’ names, but sealed all other information. And Level 3 cases were open to the public except for certain sealed documents contained in the court file. This secret docketing system is not found in Connecticut court rules or statutes, but was established as an internal administrative procedure to assist court clerks in processing sealed files.
Last fall, Connecticut Law Tribune reporter Thomas B. Scheffey discovered the secret docketing system while reporting on the divorce of former General Electric Chairman Jack Welch, who filed for divorce in Bridgeport, Conn., ending his 13-year marriage to Jane Welch.”
It was actually the Jack Welch case that blew this practice out into the open in Connecticut. But even more alarming, considering this is Jeb Bush’s Florida:
“..Aside from the Miami Business Daily, who first broke this story, the corporate and legal media have largely ignored the use of secret court dockets by the judiciary. Most alarmingly,
these secret court dockets are being used to hide civil rights lawsuits, criminal drug cases, and even divorce proceedings by wealthy litigants.”
more (pdf)
The word “privilege” has as its roots in :
“private” and “law”
And people wonder why I’m so goddamned
ascetic in other places on other blogs etc..
Ask comarade rgiap, when he returns about
justice, justice might exist perhaps, but not jurisprudence… American justice is nothing more than hypocrisy hiding behind law. Revenge is not justice, which is what our courts have become. A kangaroo in the circus.
Of interest?
The Mystic Heart of Justice Breton and Lehman explore the traditional philosophical definitions of justice, and propose an alternative understanding. Leaning heavily on indigenous and spiritualist traditions as well as the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, they suggest a holistic model of justice that informs everyday life and relationships at all levels.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 19 2006 9:51 utc | 22

Welcome to The Great Judeo-Christian Sin, Outlaw, Guilt, Crime & Punishment T.V. Show
Monolycus thank you so much for that link…
I look around me and this countries national issues as well as it’s national welfare, for example but not limited to Katrina, masterbating Judges, the sadistic Sadian pResident dehumanizing here and abroad, e.g., “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” And I am sick, soul sick by what I see.
As Krishnamurti, –or maybe it was HL Mencken– sd, “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
I have become despair.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 19 2006 11:09 utc | 24