The Politics of Hitting on Straight Men

One thing I find absolutely intriguing is the response I recieve whenever I take the notion to hit on a straight male. The responses range from a flattered "I'm not interested" to flaming red hostility, but overlaid over all of that is a belief that straight men some how must be, should be, and are exempt from being hit on by gay men. I don't buy this coda and have broken it so many times its not even standing anymore really. As I think back though, I have had some interesting experiences in this regard. Once, in Indiana, I was sitting on a bench outside of the hotel on campus waiting for a cab and I hit on this boy, a very cute half Arab, half Black boy who worked on campus. To my advances he quickly responded "isn't that illegal?!!" I was like, no..um...Lawrence vs. Texas was a few years ago..and even still...and then of course there are the instances where the advances are accepted, however interestingly they fit into the context of a certain poem by Nikki Giovanni....

The Changes in Music: From the End of the Jazz Era

After reading Billie Holiday's biography and thinking about the life and career of artists such as Nina Simone, I began to think about the social and political changes in music that took place mid20tth Century. The jazz era, of which Billie Holiday was a part of, was a transitional era, but was definitely an era in which singers, specifically female singers, were to stand on stage, look pretty and sing hetero-normative syrupy songs about love, unrequited love, and how much they needed men for white men in business suits. Change number one with Billie Holiday-"Strangefruit" introduced a new kind of polemic into the mix with the first protest song sung by a female singer and introduced into popular music. Change number two-consider Nina Simone who was soo loved at the beginning of her career because sang prettily and made coquettish gestures (if still, very much aware and still carrying a sting) towards the white male, capitalist patriarchal system. The 1950s and the early 60s were still a time of romance and dainty women...you had Nancy Wilson asking "Guess Who I Saw Today?" and Diahann Carroll humming about the hypnotic qualities of a Sleeping Bee lying in the palm of your hand....but came 1963 and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and you saw Nina Simone sit down at her piano at Carnegie Hall and tell her white patrons exactly where they were going,why they were going there and railing her damnation of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama. I think that, perhaps more than any other moment, signaled the end of the Jazz era and the rushing in of radical and angry music makers, both male and female, lashing out at the power structure and leading the way towards revolution and change throughout society. It also signaled the liberation of the songstress/coquette who stood still with little movement to look pretty and sing songs for men in business suits...many lashed out at this-including Abbey Lincoln who spoke of her disdain for the art form and how she, a farm girl from Michigan didn't fit into such a "pretty, feminine" world as was created by the masters of the Jazz era. The late sixties forward signaled movement....and liberation..and a new mode, method, and message, for the female singer especially.

Crossing the Line
Laura Tillman
The Nation
August 26, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/article/154166/crossing-line

Brownsville, Texas

Diana, a slight, 30-year-old office manager wearing a
smart blouse and pencil skirt, has a tired note in her
voice. In the privacy of her office, she has spent the
afternoon discussing an event in her life that she
previously never recounted to anyone. She is talking
about her abortion. Or maybe her miscarriage. She's glad
she never has to know which.

A single mother of two boys, Diana was unemployed and in
the hospital when she began to suspect she was pregnant.
It was December 2006, and she had missed her period for
two months. Her doctor conducted a urine test, which
came back negative, but when Diana still hadn't gotten
her period in January, she started to panic. She knew it
wasn't the right time for another baby. She wasn't
working and had been suffering severe symptoms of
brittle diabetes, a rare form of diabetes that requires
frequent hospital visits and brings bouts of depression.
She felt unstable and wasn't able to afford her
medications. "I thought, If I am pregnant, I want to
take something to not be pregnant," she says.

For most women in the United States, this would mean a
trip to a doctor or abortion clinic. But where Diana
lives, in Brownsville, Texas, just north of the border,
Mexican pharmacies are only a few miles away. Items said
to be abortifacients-including pills, teas and shots-are
well-known to be cheap and accessible just across the
bridge. Misoprostol, a pill that makes up half of the
two-drug combination prescribed for medical abortions in
the United States, is easy to purchase over the counter
in Mexico because of its effectiveness in treating
ulcers. When used alone and taken correctly, it will
produce a miscarriage between 80 and 85 percent of the
time.

Meanwhile, the closest abortion clinic, in Harlingen, is
some thirty miles away. That might not sound like much,
but without a car it is difficult to make the trip
discreetly. This was one of several reasons Diana didn't
want to go to the clinic. It was also prohibitively
expensive: potentially more than $900, because she was
already a few months into her pregnancy. Also, she was
scared that the doctor wouldn't want to operate because
of her diabetes. Finally, Diana had been there once
before to escort a friend. The whole time she'd felt
like she was being judged by the strangers around her;
she imagined their eyes on her as she sat waiting.

Widespread opposition to abortion in the Rio Grande
Valley may not be obvious at first: it is not discussed
in polite conversation. But spend a little time here and
the bumper stickers that cry out from cars, the messages
that dot billboards on the expressway and the rhetoric
inside many churches resoundingly confirm an
antiabortion message. There are accessible clinics, and
the procedure is legal. But within many women's homes,
their communities, their churches and their minds, a
trip to the abortion clinic amounts to a damnable
transgression. In fact, abortion is so stigmatized, many
women don't even realize it is legal. Terri Lievanos,
who worked for years as an education coordinator for
Planned Parenthood of Brownsville, says that this is
true even among women born in the United States: "They
come in here and say, 'Wait a second, abortion is
legal?' They've only heard it discussed in a negative
way."

For Diana, who was born in Mexico and raised in a deeply
Catholic household, the prospect of being seen at a
clinic was more emotionally taxing than the risk of
taking a mystery drug and enduring the consequences at
home by herself. A friend told her that he knew where to
buy an abortion pill-most likely Misoprostol, although
Diana says she doesn't know its name or what he paid-and
drove across the border to pick it up for her. Diana
took the drugs, two pills over two days, with no medical
guidance. Nothing happened for nearly two weeks. Then
she began to bleed. The intense bleeding lasted four
days, and she had severe cramps. On the fourth day she
began to have painful contractions. A small sac dropped
into her toilet. "It wasn't moving, so I flushed it. I
didn't know what to do. I was scared that if I looked at
it, I'd be traumatized for life." Diana called her
mother and her sister the next day and told them she'd
had a miscarriage. She didn't mention the pills. They
urged her to go to the hospital. "The doctor looked at
me, and I was fine," Diana says. "I told them it was a
miscarriage. I didn't tell [them] about the pills."

She doesn't tell people she had an abortion, she says,
because she never went to a clinic. "When people ask me
if I had a miscarriage, I'll tell them yes," Diana says.
"I didn't actually go get the abortion. I don't know if
it's the pill that actually caused the abortion." As far
as Diana is concerned, it's possible the miscarriage was
caused by the drugs. It's also possible that it wasn't.

Diana is one of many women along the US-Mexico border
who appear to be seeking out drugs like Misoprostol as
an alternative to an abortion clinic. Whether this
represents a broader trend is difficult to say, given
the lack of data and the underground nature of self-
induced abortions. But it is hardly a new phenomenon.
Even before abortion politics roiled the debate over
healthcare reform and the 2009 murder of Dr. George
Tiller, many women in the Rio Grande Valley were looking
to have abortions in private, in order to escape the
scrutiny of their neighbors and the fear of being
attacked publicly. It is far easier to be able to say
"miscarriage" in a city like Brownsville than it is to
admit to an abortion. To protect herself, Diana asked
that only her first name be used in this article.

Dr. Lester Minto works at the abortion clinic in
Harlingen, a nondescript, out-of-the-way building. He
says that some clients first find out about the facility
when they are taken there by church groups to protest.
"I wear a bulletproof vest to work," Minto says. "If the
patient sees me that way, how does the patient feel?"

Minto estimates that some 20 percent of his patients
have tried Misoprostol before coming to him. "That tells
me there are many more who are using it who don't need
to come to me." Finances are a major factor. "It's
something you can try for a small amount of money," he
says. In Texas, abortion care is not covered by Medicaid
except in cases of rape, incest and life endangerment-
and even in those cases the costs are reimbursed less
than half the time. This means that a woman like Diana,
without private insurance, could pay anywhere from $450
to more than $900, compared with $87 to $167 for a
bottle of Misoprostol in a Mexican pharmacy. "But deeper
than that," he adds, echoing Diana's sentiments, "I am
the abortionist. They come to me for an abortion. If I
don't touch them, maybe it wasn't really an abortion."

At Whole Woman's Health, an abortion clinic in nearby
McAllen, executive director Andrea Ferrigno tries to
provide an antidote to the antichoice billboards and
fake cemetery erected by antiabortion activists just
beyond the clinic's property. She papers the walls with
inspirational quotes, displays stacks of pamphlets about
courageous women in history and plays movies on a TV up
front to help clients relax. But she knows that even
with these measures, some women will still be undone by
social pressure. "Women are intimidated; they're
stressed," says Ferrigno. "We need to be protected, but
we also want to be visible. I want women to walk out of
here with their heads held high." This is an uphill
battle. "What we're dealing with now is thirty-five
years of women being very publicly shamed by antichoice
protesters," says Gloria Feldt, former president of
Planned Parenthood. "Underground abortion is one of the
consequences."

Diana moved to Brownsville at 4, but her parents
maintained strong ties to their home country. They never
discussed sex with her. "It was implied that you
wouldn't have sex until marriage," she says. "It was
still a taboo subject." Jackie Christensen, a
Brownsville teacher who taught high school health
classes for more than two decades, says this is typical.
"I would always start the class by asking if the
students had ever talked with their parents about sex,"
she says. "I'd be lucky if one or two raised their
hands." It wasn't until Planned Parenthood came to
Diana's high school to give a presentation about sex and
contraception that Diana became informed on the subject.
These days, Planned Parenthood is no longer permitted to
make such presentations in the district, and
contraception is prohibited in the classroom.
Christensen says she tried to fill in the gaps for her
students but that many health teachers felt too
uncomfortable. "A lot of health teachers didn't want to
teach that topic," she says. "They wouldn't go into
detail." Stories of underground abortions were so common
that she took to warning against them during health
class. "I'd tell my students, 'If you do things your own
way, there could be damage to the uterus,'" she says.

The familiar history of botched abortions has made
Misoprostol increasingly popular among women seeking out
a less dangerous private alternative to abortion,
particularly in places where abortion is illegal. The
Planned Parenthood in Brownsville reports visits by
women who have used syringes, taken cocktails of
prescription drugs, douched with battery acid and beaten
themselves in the abdomen to attempt abortion. "These
pills are beginning to revolutionize abortion around the
world, especially in poor countries," New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote this summer, noting
that the drug would be difficult to ban because of its
other uses, which include stopping postpartum
hemorrhages. Rebecca Gomperts, founder of the
organization Women on Waves, which provides reproductive
health services around the world, agrees. "It creates
autonomy," she says. "The fact that [women] can just
take a medication is huge, because they don't have to
depend on someone else doing something to their bodies."

Gomperts believes that using Misoprostol can actually be
preferable to going to a clinic, particularly if a woman
has access to information on how to use it correctly,
knows how long she has been pregnant and can get medical
help if something goes wrong. Still, there are
significant risks: if used incorrectly, Misoprostol can
cause the uterus to rupture and bring about internal
bleeding. "In one of the most extreme cases, the girl
took over a hundred pills," Dr. Minto, of the Harlingen
clinic, says. "It's amazing that she survived." Diana,
too, was lucky. She now knows that taking the pills that
far into her pregnancy was dangerous. She could have
caused her child to have birth defects, had the drug not
worked and had she carried to term. Or the pills could
have caused her to hemorrhage or prevented her from
having children in the future. That, she says, scares
her.

A number of recent studies looking at self-induced
abortions in the United States suggest that women across
the country continue to seek out alternatives to clinics
that are embattled, increasingly costly and
geographically inaccessible. Dr. Dan Grossman, of Ibis
Reproductive Health, whose research on the topic has
focused on various US cities as well as the Rio Grande
Valley, says the group of women attempting self-induced
abortion is fairly diverse. An ongoing study by the
Guttmacher Institute corroborates this: 79 percent of
women who tried self-induced abortion were from the
United States, and that number was spread across twenty
states.

"I think our findings suggest that there are still
significant barriers to abortion care in the United
States," Grossman says. "Those include the high cost of
abortion care-and in most states Medicaid cannot be used
to cover abortion care." Low-income women feel these
barriers more acutely. Three-fourths of women who have
an abortion say that, like Diana, they cannot afford a
child, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Forty-two
percent of women having abortions are below the federal
poverty line.

Brownsville, located in one of the poorest counties in
the country, illustrates this economic divide. Driving
through one of the new subdivisions, you could easily
assume the city is middle-class. The adobe and brick
homes look alike, with tall palm trees punctuating the
wide lawns. Lakes where ibises, anhingas and ducks dive
for food provide a scenic backdrop for the city's
wealthier families. But Brownsville's poor neighborhoods
resemble those across the snaking Rio Grande and the
eighteen-foot border fence along its northern bank.
Houses here are cobbled together from cheap wood and
scrap metal, dogs run wild and the smell of sewage wafts
through the streets. There is no medical school or law
school for hundreds of miles, and while many soldiers in
the military come from this area, there's no veterans'
hospital either. As in many poor areas in the United
States, health services are often acquired at the
emergency room, with little preventive medicine being
sought. Here, women don't often have a consistent
relationship with a physician they trust. Instead, care
is delivered at times of emergency. In such an
environment, a mission like Ferrigno's at Whole Woman's
Health remains incredibly challenging. Without better
healthcare education, affordable coverage and
information for women about their reproductive rights,
risky, self-induced abortions will continue. A drug like
Misoprostol may be proving to be a safer alternative,
but it is no substitute for reproductive care that
happens out in the open, with the expertise of a medical
professional.

For her part, Diana understands this. Now that time has
passed, she has reflected on her experience. She knows
she took a risk and admits she would have had regrets
had things turned out differently. But when asked what
she would tell another woman who is seeking an abortion
and weighing her options, Diana takes a moment to reply.
"Logically, you should go to a clinic," she says. "If
you have the money, you should. It's safer. But the
whole thing of being in a clinic like that is, it
traumatizes people too. Really, the more private thing
and the more convenient thing to do would be to just
take the pill."

_____________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.

Somewhere in Heaven Eleanor Roosevelt is Cheering: Obama taking the U.S. Human Rights Record Before the U.N.

Here is the complete document drafted by the Obama administration, submitted before the U.N. In this review, the president deals quite directly with Arizona and its SB1070...

A Great Article By Roland Martin-For Those Who Would Put Glen Beck's Name In The Same Sentence as Martin Luther King

Are We A Nation? -Sweet Honey in the Rock

Ever Heard of the Dewey Lunch Counter Protest in Philadelphia?

A Black LGBT sit-in during the Civil Rights Movement. Intersections of history.

Religion, Politics, and War: A Powerful Essay by Harry Targ

Thursday, August 19, 2010
RELIGION, POLITICS, AND WAR
Harry Targ

Childhood Remembrances

When I was a kid I had to go to Hebrew school to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah. I confess I would have preferred being in the school yard playing baseball to studying Hebrew.One of my few remembrances from days of religious study, aside from my resentment about time away from the ball field, was reading the stories of the tribes of Israel conquering or killing political/religious enemies. Acts of violence and hate seemed to me to be sanctioned by a wrathful God, my God.

Down the street from where we lived were St. Timothy’s Church and school. The building was an imposing broad red-brick structure. There was no contact between the children who went to school there and those of us who attended public school a few blocks away.

Ideology and the Place of the United States in the World

When I grew up, began to study international relations, became an activist against the war in Vietnam and started teaching foreign policy, I saw the power of ideology in mobilizing whole peoples to hate others. War, while a byproduct of economic interest, was facilitated by ideologies of hate; by creating “the other,” who were less than human and believed in the wrong God.

Millions died in the Crusades, the Inquisition in Spain, the taking of the lands of the Western Hemisphere and Africa, the occupations of China, Indonesia, Indochina, and the Middle East. Most of those deaths were justified by obedience to the Christian God.

In 1996 I was asked to give a talk at a church on “Is United States Foreign Policy Moral or Not?” I went to Ruth Sivard’s compilation of data on wars over the centuries, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1996. I counted up the war deaths of peoples in wars in which the United States was a direct participant, such as Korea and Vietnam, or in which the United States was indirectly involved such as Guatemala, Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua. The number of those who died in those wars between 1945 and 1995 in which the United States had a role totaled 10 million.

Of course, participation in most of these wars and covert operations was justified by a mix of secular and sacred terms: democracy, markets, and God. President Reagan had reiterated the religious zealotry articulated by virtually every politician, banker, or theologian who called for US militarism. The United States was “the city on the hill,” the “beacon of hope” for the world.

Lloyd Gardner in his recent book, The Long Road to Baghdad, A History of U.S. Foreign Policy From the 1970s to the Present, argues that there is a vision of global perfectibility behind United States foreign policy from its rise to great power status at the dawn of the twentieth century, to Woodrow Wilson’s vision of making the world safe for democracy, to Harry Truman’s announcement of our great struggle against communism in 1947, to John Kennedy’s “new frontier” and Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam, to the Reagan Doctrine, and George W. Bush’s proclamation that nations are either with us or the enemy.

Underlying all this is the proposition, as Bob Dylan suggested, that “God is on our side.” Gardner writes that “Bush equates American foreign policy here with God’s will….God is on the side of justice; America has chosen the side of justice as its goal; therefore, God will bless American policy. Obstacles to this mission were only to be expected from forces on the wrong side of history.”

The Campaign Against Islam in the United States

Now politicians are demanding that the constitutional right of sectors of the Islamic community in New York to build a community center be denied because they offend the sensibilities of the Christians and Jews living in the city, indeed in the entire nation. They ignore the history of their co-religionists who have misused people’s faith to justify conquest and mass slaughter. They deny the fact that the presence of their religious institutions in other lands or located throughout communities in the United States create fear and anger among those of different faiths or no faith.

Perhaps most scurrilous of all is the way that the public mind is being manipulated and used for purposes of political gain at a time when joblessness, environmental devastation, and hatred spread across the land.

The little boy studying the Old Testament sixty years ago was uncomfortable about aspects of his religion that he could only partially understand. The great American writer, Mark Twain much earlier described the irony of religious fanaticism as he reported on a massacre of Muslim rebels fighting U.S. military occupiers at the dawn of the twentieth century in the Philippines:

“Contrast these things with the great statistics which have arrived from that Moro crater! There, with six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright, and we had thirty-two wounded. . . . The enemy numbered six hundred-including women and children-and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States.”

I wholeheartedly support the building of a mosque near ground zero.

Poem For Abbey Lincoln

She walks the night

in blue and black satin

the spirits whispering

softly to her



Don't you hear

the amber and the agony

that pour from her mouth

with every note she sings?

Such wealth is not man made

or the by-product of rugged individualism

it is the blues call in the night



It is the lassoed

harnessed

dispossessed

secrets

of the Universe

cast forth

like a puff of magic

glitter and gold

before your very eyes

Ask the trees

where she came from



Grounded on the earth

but walking in the heavens

with a reach that can inspire

and a voice melifluous that touches

the very heart of humanity.

What Kind of Crazy Story is This From Alabama?

Two days after Big Bob Chick­­en Day and three days before Christmas 2003, the U.S. Department of Defense sent Axion Corp. owner Alex Latifi a frantic request. U.S. troops in Iraq were rolling into battle in underequipped Humvees. Huntsville, Ala.-based Axion had a contract to build Hum­vee ma­chine-gun mounts. The deadline was weeks away, but Defense needed them now.

Axion’s 61 workers met some grueling deadlines that December. Latifi treated them to juicy chicken and fluffy lemon pie from Big Bob Gibson’s joint. He offered overtime, a $100 bonus and a turkey to anyone willing to work Christmas.

“Our fighting men and women are in danger,” Latifi, a naturalized American citizen born in Iran, told workers. “Do it for your country.”

Everyone volunteered.

“He’s the best boss any of us ever had,” former Axion employee Connie Kidd says. “We’d work on Christmas, even without poultry.”

Just five months later, federal investigators raided Axion and Latifi was caught in a four-year investigation involving the Army Criminal Investigation Command, FBI, Im­migration and Customs Enforce­ment, NASA, a hazmat team, IRS, Ala­bama Bureau of Investigation and U.S. postal inspectors. The U.S. Department of Justice sent lawyers from its National Security Division to help U.S. Attorney Alice Martin prosecute Latifi on charges that a report he filed was falsified and a drawing of a Black Hawk helicopter part he sent to China was classified.

Latifi, 61, faced up to 40 years in prison if convicted on all charges. His assets were frozen; records, computers and cell phones seized.

Preparing for trial, Latifi’s lawyers were stunned by the first entry in the lead investigator’s official notebook. “It said Latifi was a Democrat and gave $30,000 to a Demo­cratic politician’s charity for abused children,” says Jim Barger, an associate at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz.

The trial was potholed with crazy. The government’s key informant was a fired company secretary convicted of stealing from Axion and forging Latifi’s signature. She said on the witness stand she sabotaged Axion records. The judge excluded a top government fraud attorney from court for bizarre conduct. The drawing at issue was marked both “unclassified” and “uncontrolled.” China owns Black Hawk helicopters and can examine the part anytime it wants.

After a seven-day October 2007 trial, Latifi was acquitted of all charges. But his business is gone.

The strange case seems to bring up some crucial questions about how DOJ pursues arms export pros­ecutions, though DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd disagrees. (“You should not be writing about this case! It’s weird! It’s an anomaly. It’s a weird anomaly!” he fumes.) But the U.S. Office of Professional Responsibili­ty is investigating defense attorneys’ charges that Martin launched a po­litical and baseless prosecution of Latifi. And arms control lawyers—a scant but growing breed—are following the case avidly.

Martin was appointed U.S. attorney for northern Alabama by President George W. Bush and took office 18 days after 9/11. In 2007 an Alabama GOP operative testified before a House Judiciary Committee that Martin and another Alabama U.S. attorney wrongly prosecuted former Democratic Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman at the behest of Bush’s deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove.

Martin denies all charges of political bias. Before she could indict La­tifi on arms export control charges, she says, the National Security Divi­sion reviewed the evidence and gave its required approval.

Latifi is the only defendant to prevail in the 100 arms export cases Justice pursued last year, and he questions the department’s priorities.

“I never failed a quality inspection,” Latifi says, still distraught. “I produce better parts than the Penta­gon specs require. While they were investigating me, huge contractors were electrocuting soldiers in Iraq with bad wiring and making them sick with contaminated water. How many would be alive if the U.S. spent the resources thrown at me on investigating those contractors?”

Martin told the ABA Journal, “If KBR or Halliburton committed an illegal act in my jurisdiction in Ala­bama, I would have prosecuted them. I prosecuted the case that was brought before me.”
BROKEN LIVES

Former Axion workers sit in their empty factory, telling a reporter about their former jobs.

Sean Bailey, 36, was an outstanding Axion employee. “I had appreciation stars for good work all over my shirt,” Bailey says, his smile as sweet as Alabama’s Red Mountain honey. “I never had a dad, so Mr. Latifi was like my father. I helped make this” —Bailey grabs a helicopter seat—“for our soldiers. If a copter crashed, maybe the man could survive.”

Bailey runs his hand across the seat, smile fading. “When Axion closed, I had to sell my vehicle and my home. My wife walked out. The end came so fast.”

Former line manager Wayne Smart is also struggling in a harsh economy. As Smart discusses Axion, his foot begins bleeding. He cut it hooking an abandoned car to his pickup.

“I earn money trading scrap metal for cash,” Smart says. “It’s hard. I almost lost my house. So many people are picking up scrap metal now, there’s not much left.”

The workers’ unlikely mentor was Alex Latifi. Latifi grew up in Iran, the son of an Arab sheik who hunted wild boar with Gen. Norman Schwarz­kopf’s father. He came to America in 1971 to study engi­neer­ing at the Uni­versity of Alabama. He married his classmate Beth and became a citizen in 1982. His company eventually earned $4 million in annual revenues focusing on small parts.

Latifi’s strength was deconstructing parts to find ways to make them quicker and better. All defense contractors are scrutinized by Defense Department quality assurance representatives who make scheduled and surprise inspections of parts and ship­ments. They pore over all paperwork, especially test reports.

Latifi’s QAR was Henry Stickrod, a tough ex-Navy chief petty officer who slapped 50 cents on the table whenever Latifi offered him coffee.

“Alex got so involved in improving a part, required paperwork would pile up—common for small contractors,” Stickrod says. “The contracting system favors giant contractors with teams of secretaries.”

Three times, Stickrod killed Lati­fi’s contracts when he thought Latifi would miss paperwork deadlines. “But Alex fulfilled hundreds of other contracts making a much improved, cheaper part,” Stickrod says.

Ironically, the Black Hawk part—a bifilar weight assembly used to help stabilize copter blades—that put Latifi in Martin’s crosshairs was a success for the U.S. Army. The assembly is made from tungsten.

Contractors typically buy tungsten in 185-pound blocks, whittle it into shape and charge about $4,500 per part. Leftover shavings are molded to create another part. The Army basically pays twice for the same tungsten. Latifi found a Chinese supplier selling 22-pound chunks. Whittling smaller blocks halves production time; Latifi could charge just $2,860 per part.

Latifi asked if the supplier could machine the tungsten before shipping. The Chinese asked for a drawing of the part.

Black Hawk parts are on a U.S. Ar­my CD labeled “for official government business only.” The Defense Department requires each drawing too sensitive to be shown to foreigners be stamped with a “classified” warning. The assembly drawing was unstamped. Latifi hired a mechanical engineer to create a dumbed-down drawing to send to China.

But Axion secretary Elizabeth Le­may was giving federal agents a different story. In October 2003, while embezzling from Axion, Lemay contacted the FBI. She was fired in February 2004 for stealing $12,730 from Axion. At her arrest, Lemay told police, “Before you put on the handcuffs, you better call the FBI. This is bigger than you.”

Lemay’s three-year jail sentence was suspended. She and her probation officer did not respond to requests for an interview.

This summer, the team that won the Latifi case dines al fresco at the trendy Hot and Hot Fish Club, ignoring thunder, rain pelting patio umbrellas and heat lightning shimmering in the twilight. The attorneys are too happy to notice.

“Here’s to love of justice crossing political boundaries,” Henry Frohsin toasts. “Our team includes a Yellow Dog Democrat [Frohsin], two young independents [Barger and Elliott Walthall] and a devout Republican who’s a former Miss Alabama beauty queen [Catherine Long]. When pretrial stress built too much, Catherine put on a swimsuit and sash and played piano. Deeply disturbing. She wore her tiara to celebrate the acquittal.”

Long rolls her eyes and says, “My role in this law firm family is younger sister with obnoxious big brothers.”

They were all working in Baker Donelson’s Birmingham office in 2004 when Latifi contacted Frohsin, a shareholder at the firm and a former U.S. attorney. Long and Walthall had not yet graduated from law school. They missed day two of the 2007 trial to be inducted into the bar.
PROBE BEGINS

The year martin launched a full-­blown investigation of Latifi, the DOJ ramped up regional task forces and working groups to help U.S. attorneys prosecute arms export cases. Wendy Wysong, a partner at the Washington, D.C., office of Clifford Chance, prosecuted arms export cases while at the U.S. Commerce Depart­ment. She says in 2004 the obscure field of law became the hot, star­mak­ing field for U.S. attorneys.

When Lemay contacted the FBI in 2003, agents passed her to the Army Criminal Investigation Com­mand, still known by its old acronym CID, in Alabama. CID became the lead agency in the investigation.

That’s highly unusual, says Larry Mackey, a partner at the Indianapo­lis office of Barnes & Thornburg and former federal prosecutor who convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Normally, the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement lead such an investigation. “CID serves the role of police detective, investigating rapes, murders, armory robberies on military bases, payroll fraud,” Mackey says.

CID public affairs chief Chris­topher Grey declined to comment on Latifi’s case but said, “Our major procurement fraud unit helps to recover about $130 million annually from individuals and companies involved in contract fraud—all this with less than 100 special agents.”

During discovery, Frohsin and Barger asked for the notebooks of all investigating agents. Barger says As­sis­tant U.S. Attorney David Estes refused to let them photocopy the material.

“He said we would have to stay inside the evidence room and take notes,” Barger says. “When we got there, hundreds of files and investigators’ notebooks from other cases covered our work table and overflowed out of open boxes. Not exactly a tight ship.”

The Defense Department continued buying Axion parts as the investigation trudged into 2005. Estes is an Army National Guard lieutenant colonel who served in Iraq from November 2004 to November 2005. While he was gone, Martin had another assistant U.S. attorney bring Latifi’s case to a grand jury.

There was no indictment. Investi­gators kept foraging.

June 7, 2006, was the day Latifi says killed Axion. Agents from 10 federal entities executed a second search warrant. This time, agents didn’t simply copy Axion computer hard drives. They seized all Axion computers, files and disks. They seized Axion cell phones as well as those belonging to every Latifi family member and carted all the computers out of Latifi’s home. Martin froze $2.5 million in assets belonging to Axion and Latifi.

Yet Defense still continued buying parts from Axion. Latifi cashed in retirement savings to pay his workers and vendors. But without his compu­t­ers and records, fulfilling contracts became impossible. In December 2006, he finally had to let his workers go. He paid them for Christmas.

The investigation continued into 2007.

“Can you imagine if the feds seized Lockheed Martin’s or ITT’s assets and computer system—without any charges—while the government investigated?” Frohsin asks. “Every lobbyist in D.C. would howl until the feds backed down. We asked Martin to put up or shut up.”
ILL-TIMED PHILANTHROPY

Latifi’s generosity also brought trouble with the prosecutors. Back when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979, some of Latifi’s relatives were murdered for being pro-American. Latifi kept in touch with family and friends and tried to help in any way he legally could. After a nephew died because he could not be evacuated to a hospital, Latifi pledged $250,000 to an Iranian charity for medical evacuation helicopters.

His business attorney and friend, Jerome Gabig, says the gesture was “generous and really stupid.”

The 2005 donation was legal, but Gabig reminded Latifi he was under a microscope and begged him to wait. Latifi felt the investigation would drag on forever.

“I’m a West Point graduate; I bleed red, white and blue,” Gabig says. “Alex kept saying he trusted justice in America to protect his rights. But we’re in a war. That check rang warn­ing bells with Dave Estes at exactly the wrong moment,” Gabig says.

Elliott Walthall, Jim Barger, Henry Frohsin,
Catherine Long
Photo by J. Hanshaw, Photography Inc.

Estes agrees. “We thought he might be moving assets to Iran,” says Estes. “I called in the IRS to investigate him as well.” The IRS found no evidence of criminal conduct.

On March 30, 2007, Martin announced an indictment of Latifi and Axion on six counts of export control violations and filing false test reports.

Barger did a computer search on the Black Hawk part’s serial number to show Estes the drawing was sold online by reputable publishers and thus in the public domain. The men discussed Axion, rather than Latifi, pleading guilty to a count that would take prison off the table.

“Estes called me back and said Alice would not accept any plea that didn’t include Latifi,” Barger says.

Frohsin wanted a forgery expert to examine the fraudulent test report Latifi allegedly signed. Latifi said Lemay forged his signature. Oppos­ing counsel gathered for a conference call.

“Alice Martin said something at this meeting that forced me to file a complaint against her with [the Of­fice of Professional Responsibility]; my sworn duty as an officer of the court left me no choice,” Frohsin says.

Frohsin asked whether prosecutors would drop a related charge if handwriting experts declared the signature a forgery. According to the Baker Donelson lawyers, Martin re­plied, “We don’t care if Latifi is innocent. Our goal is to put him out of business.”

When asked later by telephone whether she made that statement, there is utter silence for a long moment.

“If you know someone is a bank robber,” Martin said carefully, “then you want to put him out of the business of robbing banks, no matter what.”

Martin says she remembers her sentiment, not her exact wording.

After their conference call, Frohsin called his troops to his office and said, “Tape your ankles. We’re hittin’ the field for the big game.”
TRIAL TIME

Trial began on a glum, rain-soaked day. Long wrestled exhibits up the stairs (the elevator was broken) to the tiny Florence, Ala., courtroom where U.S. District Judge Inge Johnson heard Latifi’s case.

Frohsin decided against a jury, fearing escalating casualties in Iraq might spark bias against a defendant from the Middle East. He was further convinced by several courtroom spectators: They often wore matching polo shirts; they muttered “ass- hole” and “bastard” whenever Bar­­ger or Frohsin stood up. A courthouse staffer who approached an unruly group member says the man growled and yipped like a rabies-riddled Yorkie.

Frohsin called them “nutjobs.”

They were not nutjobs. They were government employees who worked for the Defense Contract Manage­ment Agency, the federal agency charged with supervising defense contractors, from titans like KBR and Halliburton to mom-and-pops.

In 2004, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that DCMA was too ill-equipped to tackle critical problems with defense contractor fraud and abuse in Iraq. More recently, DCMA was cited in a New York Times article about faulty electrical wiring installed by KBR that killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. The Times reported a DCMA official said DCMA and KBR had been “fully aware” of the electrical problems before they resulted in soldiers’ deaths in 2007.

Those same years, DCMA was helping Estes search for evidence of fraud in Latifi’s paperwork. DCMA fraud attorney Gill Bass sat behind Estes in the courtroom.
INAUSPICIOUS START

On the trial’s first day, the court received letters for a would-be witness who had worked with Latifi and conveyed some of Lemay’s tips against Axion to investigators. The letters, delivered by the witness’s husband and from her doctor and a psychologist, said she was too mentally unstable to testify.

On day three of the trial, Beth Latifi claimed Bass told her daughters their dad would die in prison. They sobbed. A court deputy demanded Bass’s business card and deemed her behavior “obnoxious.”

The judge, Frohsin and Estes met in chambers.

“I think the best thing to do is put [Bass] out of the courtroom,” John­son said, according to case transcripts. “I have no doubt she is doing what Mr. Frohsin is saying.”

Estes said when he turned to look at the spectators, he saw Bass talking to one of Latifi’s daughters.

Frohsin added, helpfully: “She has been acting bizarre all week long. She blurts out in that courtroom and she calls me a son of a bitch. She calls me an asshole.” During the trial, the Latifis and their attorneys said Bass often punched the air with her fist and said, “Yesssssss!”

DCMA public affairs chief Richard Cole, in an e-mail response to ABA Journal questions, said, “Ms. Bass denies screaming at any time during the trial or calling anyone names. She was not present in chambers when the transcript pages you refer to were transcribed, but takes issue with what was stated. As to court personnel stating she was rude when she was approached, Ms. Bass said the individual never identified herself before asking questions.”

Cole added, “She also denies having any conversation with the defendant’s family even though she sat in the same row as the Latifi family in the courtroom.” Bass was not made available for comment for this story.

After the morning brouhaha, Le­may testified. Barger says she was smug and cocky. She threw Estes, too, when he asked whether Latifi submitted a fraudulent test report. She testified she didn’t know wheth­er that was true.

Frohsin asked her about the tips she gave CID and the FBI; she repeatedly replied, “I don’t recall.”

Frohsin asked whether she recalled anything she said to the lead CID investigator.

“No, I don’t,” Lemay said.

“Do you have a memory problem, ma’am?” Frohsin asked, exasperated.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Lemay replied.

Lemay did admit to altering and sabotaging Axion files and computer records. This proved useful to another prosecution target, Kary Warren, a small Huntsville defense contractor who sometimes tested Axion parts.

During the April 2004 raid on Axion, the doorbell rang at Warren’s home. His wife thought it was the Avon lady. She found 10 government agents lugging a battering ram onto her porch.

“The prosecutors said they knew Alex must be guilty of fraud,” Warren says. “How else could he afford to make Cadillac parts for Kia prices?”

Some DCMA investigators were convinced Warren was a member of a mosque because he was a Shriner. An Alabama law enforcement officer persuaded the DCMA agents that Shriners were a nationwide char­itable group that has funded U.S. children’s hospitals and burn units since 1922.

Lemay had told investigators War­ren turned in a test report without doing the test. Warren did the test, but days earlier Latifi had badgered him for an in-house prog­ress report. Warren was swamped. To get his colleague off his back, he wrote Latifi a note saying the test was done.

Warren thought he could go to prison for that note.

“I couldn’t afford a lawyer; I was facing five years in prison and a $100,000 fine,” says Warren, a strapping man who played football for the University of Alabama. Tears spill down his cheeks. “The pros­ecutors said if I pled guilty to fal­sifying a report, I’d just pay a $300 fine.”

On the stand, Warren couldn’t remember the dates he performed the tests, only that it was before deer season and after dove season. Judge Johnson, a hunter, was familiar with the seasons.

Between them, the hunters in court established that Warren had completed the tests at the proper time.

Warren later was allowed to withdraw his guilty plea by U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon, who said an innocent man deserves no punishment. However, Warren was forced to sell his business and lay off half his work­ers to pay legal fees.
UNCLASSIFIED DRAWING

On day five came the “gotcha” moment. The State Department determines what military parts are prohibited for export. Restrictions vary year to year according to who is in the White House and which countries have warming or chilling relationships with the United States.

Estes called State Department trade expert Mal Zerden. Prosecu­tors made an enormous blow-up copy of the Black Hawk part drawing for Zerden to discuss.

Kary Warren
Photo by J. Hanshaw Photography Inc.

Barger had not had time to study it, so he went through the drill, asking Zerden to confirm it was not stamped as classified.

“Just as a wrap-up I asked if he noticed any noteworthy stampings,” Barger says. Barger expected to get a no and sit down.

But Zerden scrutinized the drawing and offered this: “On the bottom left, it does say ‘unclassified’ and has a long number, ‘uncontrolled when printed,’ then has some more numbers.”

The courtroom became dead si­lent. The DCMA workers were living statues. Lawyers had not spotted the phrase mired in fine print and jargon.

The judge climbed down from the bench to look at the telltale phrase.

Estes objected that they were all misinterpreting uncontrolled and unclassified. But even if Estes were correct, Barger scored a decisive point. The State Department’s own expert thought the drawing was unclassified, so why shouldn’t an Alabama defense contractor share the same conclusion?

When she acquitted Latifi of all charges, Johnson called the U.S. attorney’s case “sloppy.” Martin’s office posted notice of the acquittal two months later. Johnson awarded Latifi almost $364,000 in legal fees under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act.
PROSECUTORS TALK

National security division attor­ney Mariclaire Rourke, who assisted Estes on the case, did not respond to interview requests. OPR e-mailed a statement about its investigation of Martin for the Siegelman case when asked about Latifi.

In a phone interview in July, Mar­tin deferred to Estes as the case’s point man on most questions. Estes is distressed that his honor has been impugned.

“My reputation has been spotless!” he says. “Mr. Latifi is a crim­inal. I don’t regret anything I’ve done.”

Estes has 23 years of military experience. He notes that lives depend on the military to be able to pinpoint every vendor and contractor involved in producing a part in case something malfunctions. He insists the only way Latifi could afford to offer budget prices to Defense was to use repurposed parts or inadequate testing.

“I had a witness, Levi Weir, who said he quit Axion because Latifi wanted him to lie,” Estes says. “But Weir died before the trial.”

Weir died after an extended illness. Stickrod knew him. Stickrod thinks Estes misunderstands the way defense contracting works and misinterpreted Weir’s frustration with Latifi’s absent-minded-professor habits. Stickrod says Weir quit Axion’s staff but worked with Axion as a consultant until he was too sick to get out of bed.

“The dirty, nasty secret of the system is gigantic contractors rip off the U.S. government,” Stickrod says. “They hate little genius engineers like Alex. Once a part is mod­ified, they can lose money from patents. They hire lobbyists and former Defense employees to keep the system in place that keeps prices high.”

Former prosecutor Wysong estimates that 99 percent of arms control cases are settled out of court. Martin casts her decision to go to trial as a class issue: Small-business owner Warren pleads guilty, so why should CEO Latifi be allowed a special plea?

Both Martin and Estes still think Latifi’s drawing enables the Chinese to make a Black Hawk part.

“Here’s a woman’s analogy: If you gave someone a picture of a dress but not the pattern, they couldn’t duplicate the dress,” Martin says.

There are skilled designers who can do that.

“Then it would be like giving someone a picture of a cake but not the recipe,” Martin says. “The part on the helicopter is the cake. The drawing is the recipe.”

Martin is a graduate of Vanderbilt University who worked her way through the University of Missis­sippi law school as a nurse. She made head­lines when Alabama GOP operative Jill Simpson swore that Martin and U.S. Attorney Laura Canary prosecuted former Demo­cratic Gov. Siegelman at the direction of Rove and GOP consultant Bill Canary, Laura’s husband.

“This is actually more painful than a root canal because at least the dentist gives you Novocain,” Martin says, in a second, solo interview. “I don’t know Jill Simpson. I have never met Karl Rove or been in the same building with him, to my knowledge. When I ran for elective office, I got some names of consultants from Bill Canary. I couldn’t afford Bill.”

She starts to name an attorney she considers a mentor, then groans. “Oh, no! I just realized his connection with Kenneth Starr probably won’t clear me with conspiracy the­orists,” she says ruefully.

Her second interview coincidentally falls on a day when former DOJ official Monica Goodling’s political vetting is in headlines.

“In my heart, I see myself as a career prosecutor,” Martin says. “It’s disappointing to see that people in the department politicized hirings.”

She lists regrets she has about the Latifi trial, but they do not include going to trial.

“Well, you read the transcripts; witnesses said something completely different on the stand from what they told investigators,” Martin la­ments. “I wish evidentiary problems were spotted earlier. And I hope this case prompts Defense to clarify how restricted materials should be marked.”

Martin says her office is not considering any further actions against Latifi.

OPR is investigating charges that the Latifi case was an improper and abusive prosecution.

Latifi has sued to obtain Martin’s e-mails, memos and phone records regarding his case. He is suing via the rarely used Hyde Amendment, a legal mechanism that allows exonerated defendants to seek compensation from federal officials if the prosecution was “vexatious, frivolous or in bad faith.”

Meanwhile, Latifi says, he has applied for 40 defense contracts since the trial and gotten none of them.

But Latifi’s soft spot for hard-luck stories has led him to a visionary project. He once hired a downsized and unemployed engineer to do some technical drawings. The engineer now supervises a NASA project. He wants Latifi to help him test soil retrieved from Mars for traces of ancient water.

It’s not very lucrative, but Latifi glows when he talks about the work over a heap of catfish at a lakeside joint in the pine-covered hills outside Huntsville. A giant, blue neon fish winks outside.

The same engineer’s impulse to refine what he sees—what drove Latifi to hire workers like Bailey, Smart and Kidd, and to manufacture tiny parts on mammoth weaponry—draws him to the middle-aged waiter cutting through the crowd carrying trays piled with fried fish and cornbread. The waiter tells Latifi he owned his own restaurant until associates tricked him out of it. The last diners trickle out as Latifi listens to the man’s troubles and dreams.

Latifi writes his cell phone number on one of his defunct business cards and says, “Let’s talk again. Maybe I can help you.”

God, Abbey is Gone

RIP Abbey Lincoln
1930-2010

Write For Lynne Stewart

"Dear Friends,

There will be much to do in support of Lynne Stewart in these next months. For the moment, the priority is to see that Lynne is sent to the Federal Corrections Institution for Women in Danbury rather than somewhere in Texas or even further from her family and friends. WRITE TO THE BUREAU OF PRISONS IMMEDIATELY! TURN YOUR PAIN AT LYNNE'S HORRIFIC SENTENCE INTO FIGHTING BACK. THIS IS STEP 1.

We urge you to write to the Bureau of Prisons (see address below) immediately and ask for Lynne to be transferred to the Federal Correctional Institute for female prisoners. Time is of the essence as the Bureau of Prisons is not bound to accept Judge Koeltl's recommendation that Lynne be kept at MCI for 60 days and then be transferred to Danbury. Lynne could be sent elsewhere at any point.

WHAT THE LETTER SHOULD SAY:

You can explain that Lynne is 70 years old, in remission from breast cancer which could reoccur at any time, and suffering from other serious medical challenges, including high blood pressure and diabetes. It is well-known that health challenges are profoundly affected by the kind of emotional support that only family and close friends can provide. Lynne would surely do much better were she to have access to that kind of support. Given Lynne's serious health problems and her age, there is certainly considerable risk of death in these coming years and moving her away from her family and friends would exacerbate that risk. You can end with "We urge you to offer this minimal humanitarian gesture for this remarkable woman who has served the poor and unrepresented her whole professional life as a lawyer." or something like that. Feel free to write your own letter. Just do it as soon as possible so that these letters reach the Bureau of Prisons before they make a move in another direction.

Letters should be addressed to:
Harley Lappin, Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons
320 First Street NW
Washington, DC 20534-0002

Folks can also call the Bureau of Prisons, 202 307-3198. Of the possible offices to call, the Office of General Counsel (press #3) seems the most appropriate. Leave a message asking for Lynne to be sent to Danbury and explain why. The most important thing is for the Bureau to know we're watching them, that there is great interest in Lynne's case and assignment. Gerardo Hernandez of the Cuban 5 just got out of the "hole" through such pressure.

In the struggle for justice! Free Lynne Stewart and All Political Prisoners!

Ralph Poynter and Friends of Lynne Stewart"

Kucinich Bill Against Extrajudicial Killing

111th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. R. 6010

To prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

July 30, 2010
Mr. KUCINICH (for himself, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. FILNER, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. STARK, Mr. ELLISON, and Mr. JACKSON of Illinois) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Select Committee on Intelligence (Permanent Select), and in addition to the Committees on the Judiciary and Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

----------------------------------------------------------

A BILL

To prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. FINDINGS.

Congress finds the following:

(1) On January 27, 2010, The Washington Post revealed that United States citizens have been included on lists maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to be assassinated.

(2) The January 27 Washington Post article reported that the JSOC and CIA maintain lists of individuals deemed `High Value Targets' and `High Value Individuals', whom they seek to kill or capture, that the lists currently include United States citizens, and that the President has authorized military operations with the express understanding that a United States citizen may be killed.

(3) Admiral Dennis C. Blair, then the Director of National Intelligence, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence on February 3, 2010, confirmed the policy of including United States citizens on such lists, stating that `a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission' before the targeting of a United States citizen can be granted and that `being a U.S. citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.'

(4) The Obama administration has publicly authorized the extrajudicial killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a United States citizen born in New Mexico who is accused of involvement in terrorist organizations abroad, the first confirmed United States citizen to be added to a CIA list of targets for capture or killing.

(5) According to an article published in The Nation in November 2009, the private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, now Xe Services, is intimately involved with the targeted assassination programs run by the CIA and JSOC in Pakistan.

(6) Department of Defense Instruction 1100.22, issued on April 12, 2010, states that `security is inherently governmental' and that the `U.S. Government has exclusive responsibility for discretionary decisions concerning the appropriate, measured use of combat power, including the offensive use of destructive or deadly force on behalf of the United States', particularly in operations that have virtually no transparency, accountability, or oversight.

(7) United States Attorney General Eric J. Holder recognized that the Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted many terrorism defendants in Federal courts, stating on Friday, November 13, 2009, that `for over two hundred years, our nation has relied on a faithful adherence to the rule of law to bring criminals to justice . . . Once again we will ask our legal system to rise to that challenge, and I am confident it will answer the call with fairness and justice'.

(8) Executive Order 12333 (46 Fed. Reg. 59941; relating to United States intelligence activities), issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, stated, `No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination'.

(9) Executive Order 11905 (41 Fed. Reg. 7703; relating to United States foreign intelligence activities), issued by President Gerald Ford in 1976, stated, `No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination'.

SEC. 2. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

It is the sense of Congress that--

(1) due process of law is a fundamental principle in the United States Constitution, the United States has a commitment to the principles included in the Bill of Rights, and no United States citizen, regardless of location, can be `deprived of life, liberty, property, without due process of law', as stated in Article XIV of the Constitution;

(2) the participation in, or planning of activities, by the United States Government that result in the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen undermines the rule of law and the moral standing of the United States in the world;

(3) the United States and other responsible nations have a vital interest in upholding the rule of law;

(4) the authority granted to the President in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (50 U.S.C. 1541 note), following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, is not limitless;

(5) this authority has been used by the Executive Branch to circumvent the role of Congress as a co-equal branch of Government, to justify holding prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, for mass domestic spying on United States citizens in violation of their most basic constitutional rights, and to use lethal force against United States citizens abroad who are believed to participate in terrorist activities absent judicial review;

(6) the notion that the constitutional rights of one citizen can be revoked to protect the constitutional rights of other citizens should be rejected;

(7) the use of extrajudicial force against a citizen of the United States that is outside of the internationally recognized battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan constitutes a violation of the law of armed conflict; and

(8) it is in the best interest of the United States to respect the rule of law and set the example for upholding the principles of international and domestic law.

SEC. 3. PROHIBITION ON THE EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLING OF UNITED STATES CITIZENS.

(a) Prohibition- No one, including the President, may instruct a person acting within the scope of employment with the United States Government or an agent acting on behalf of the United States Government to engage in, or conspire to engage in, the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen.

(b) Report on United States Citizens on Targeted Assassination Lists- Not later than 7 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall submit to the congressional intelligence committees a report on the identity of each United States citizen that is on the list of the Joint Special Operations Command or the Central Intelligence Agency as `high value individuals' or `high value targets'.

(c) Assurances to Congress- Not later than 7 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall submit to the congressional intelligence committees a written assurance that no United States citizens are being added to the list of the Joint Special Operations Command or the Central Intelligence Agency as `high value individuals' or `high value targets'.

(d) Definitions- In this section:

(1) CONGRESSIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEES- The term `congressional intelligence committees' means--

(A) the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives; and

(B) the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate.

(2) EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLING- The term `extrajudicial killing'--

(A) means a premeditated and intentional use of lethal force against a United States citizen; and

(B) does not include--

(i) the use of lethal force against a United States citizen after a trial and finding of guilt for such citizen by an appropriate tribunal consistent with due process of law;

(ii) the use of lethal force against a United States citizen who is directly participating in hostilities in a zone of active armed conflict and the United States is a party to such conflict; and

(iii) the use of lethal force against a United States citizen that is authorized for law enforcement personnel under certain circumstances, including self-defense, defense of others, and enabling the release of hostages.
END

Maxine Waters is the wrong Black woman to mess with. They better leave Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel alone.

Don't let the Salahi's get their asses kicked by Whoopi Goldberg.... The wrong Black Woman...

Happy Birthday, President Obama;-)

RIP Lolita Lebron

Lolita Lebron dies at 90; Puerto Rican nationalist was
imprisoned after gun attack on U.S. Congress In 1954,
Lebron and three others opened fire from a spectators
gallery onto the crowded floor of the House, firing
nearly 30 shots. Five lawmakers were wounded. She spent
25 years in prison. Independence activist

Alabama's SB 1070

Representative Greg Wren of the Alabama State House is planning to introduce a bill similar to Arizona's SB 1070 into the State House. Flood him with phone calls and emails. Here is his contact information

State House: Room 517-B
11 South Union Street
Montgomery, AL 36130
(334) 242-7764 Home:


District: 7700 Wynlakes Blvd.
Montgomery, AL 36117

4213 Carmichael Rd.
Montgomery, AL 36106
Home Phone:
District Phone:
Fax: (334) 279-0959
(334) 395-0123
(334) 396-4787

Email:

Website:


repgregwren@yahoo.com

www.gregwren.com