Critique of tax protester legal claims
UPDATE (December 28, 2006): Sheldon Richman also points out this excellent GWU law professor's website on tax protestor claims.
Posted by Lippard at 12/22/2006 08:14:00 AM 0 comments
From: security curmudgeon (jericho@attrition.org)
To: Todd Shriber (nascar24_08530@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 17:30:44 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Question for you or other Attrition members
: Wow, I feel dumb now. I honestly cannot rember if there were pigeons on
: campus or not. A lot of crazy squirrels, but I can't remember pigeons.
: Just for my own edification, why do you need to know that? I'll find out
: for you.
Hey, squirrels work fine. First, let's be clear. You are soliciting me to
break the law and hack into a computer across state lines. That is a
federal offense and multiple felonies. Obviously I can't trust anyone and
everyone that mails such a request, you might be an FBI agent, right?
So, I need three things to make this happen:
1. A picture of a squirrel or pigeon on your campus. One close-up, one
with background that shows buildings, a sign, or something to indicate you
are standing on the campus.
2. The information I mentioned so I can find the records once I get into
the database.
3. Some idea of what I get for all my trouble.
From: lyger (lyger@attrition.org)
To: Todd Shriber (nascar24_08530@yahoo.com)
Bcc: security curmudgeon (jericho@attrition.org)
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 03:15:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: the squirrels are nice here...
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Todd Shriber wrote:
": " I'll take a quick look on Saturday and get the changes
": " to you immediately following that. Let me know if it's
": " OK for me to log into that site.
todd... no more.. omfg we are SO busted.. fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK
everything was PERFECT until their night noc ran a reverse udp traceroute
back to one of the hosts we had set up after that, straight DOWNHILL.
i've already been called twice by my isp asking about unusual activity,
some other shit about access attempts to a federally monitored system they
have everything in logs including the rot-26 stuff that finally got me
access all goes back to your login sorry i really fucked up BAD
theyre prob gonna end up calling you since they have your info just duck
and run if you can, i'm going deep underground if they ask about me or
attrition we don't know each other you know youre just as guilty and
liable so when they come knocking dont say anything without a lawyer and
when you ask them to put the gun down say it nice because that shit isnt
fun
man dont even visit attrition.org again theyre trying to check web logs
one last email should be ok but we're so fucked sorry
Domain Name | house.gov ? (United States Government) | |||||||||||||||||||
IP Address | 143.231.249.# (Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives) | |||||||||||||||||||
ISP | Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives | |||||||||||||||||||
Location |
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Language | English (United States) en-us | |||||||||||||||||||
Operating System | Microsoft WinXP | |||||||||||||||||||
Browser | Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) | |||||||||||||||||||
Javascript | version 1.3 | |||||||||||||||||||
Monitor |
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Time of Visit | | Dec 22 2006 8:55:54 am | ||||||||||||||||||
Last Page View | Dec 22 2006 8:55:54 am | |||||||||||||||||||
Visit Length | 0 seconds | |||||||||||||||||||
Page Views | | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||
Referring URL | http://blogsearch.go...Todd Shriber&ie=UTF8 | |||||||||||||||||||
Search Engine | blogsearch.google.com | |||||||||||||||||||
Search Words | todd shriber | |||||||||||||||||||
Visit Entry Page | http://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.html | |||||||||||||||||||
Visit Exit Page | http://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.html |
Posted by Lippard at 12/22/2006 07:38:00 AM 1 comments
Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.
These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board.
Leverett and Mann provide citations to other published material which describes the redacted sections, allowing the blanks to be filled in.
The Bush administration's behavior here is simply insane.Posted by Lippard at 12/22/2006 07:24:00 AM 1 comments
Labels: Arizona, censorship, CIA, politics
Posted by Lippard at 12/20/2006 06:58:00 PM 3 comments
Labels: economics
Reuland has more at the Panda's Thumb.
- Bloch is a far-right wing activist and a notorious homophobe.
- Upon taking office Bloch immediately removed references to sexual orientation discrimination from the OSC website. Bloch has indicated that he will not protect gays from discrimination in contradiction of White House policy.
- Bloch is alleged to have used the OSC for partisan political purposes by ignoring claims made against Republicans while vigorously pursuing complaints lodged against Democrats.
- Bloch doubled the number of political appointees in the OSC, giving high paying salaries to many of his friends and fellow right-wing activists who have no relevant experience. He has simultaneously eviscerated the OSC’s professional staff, much of whom has either been fired for not relocating on short notice or resigned in frustration.
- James McVay, who wrote the preliminary report concerning Sternberg, is one of Bloch’s more controversial political appointees. He has no experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal-sector work.
- Many hundreds of meritorious cases, which by all accounts should have been investigated, were dismissed without investigation by Bloch’s office. Meanwhile, matters over which OSC has no jurisdiction have been pursued rigorously. (Sound familiar?)
- According to the OSC’s own polling, Federal employees are extremely dissatisfied with the work being done by the OSC, and effectively no whistleblowers have received relief as a result of the complaints they filed.
- When complaints were made about Bloch’s behavior and mistreatment of the staff, Bloch not only dismissed the complaints, he allegedly retaliated against the people who made them and issued a gag order preventing the OSC staff from speaking to anyone outside of the agency. Ironically, it is precisely this type of retaliation and intimidation of whistleblowers that the OSC is tasked with investigating.
- As a result of OSC failing to discharge its duties and taking revenge on aggrieved staff, former staff members and numerous whistleblower protection groups have filed a complaint with the Office of Personnel Management, which has launched an investigation (still on-going, as far as I can tell). Additionally, two Senate committees were forced to hold hearings concerning Bloch’s behavior.
It almost couldn’t get worse. There is a long and sordid history since Bloch took over the OSC of cronyism, political bias, shirking, and unfair treatment of staff. Scott Bloch makes former FEMA director Michael Brown look like a brilliant leader and seasoned professional by comparison.
This explains how the OSC managed to produce an preliminary investigation on the Sternberg affair that is so completely divorced from reality. Put simply, it was a political hatchet job, yet another in a long line of abuses that the OSC has become infamous for. What’s perhaps most telling about all of this is that in spite of having a major backlog in cases, in spite of trying to pare down this backlog by dismissing meritorious cases without investigation, the OSC somehow found the time to investigate a case for which they knew they had no jurisdiction. Amazing, isn’t it? If you are a whistleblower who needs protection, or a gay federal worker who’s been discriminated against, the OSC simply doesn’t have time for you. They’re too busy pursuing cases outside of their jurisdiction in service of the Culture Wars.
Considering that Sternberg should have known that the OSC lacked jurisdiction, it is my belief that the Discovery Institute referred him to Bloch’s office knowing that even though the case was outside the OSC’s purview, even though there were more appropriate venues for handling a legitimate grievance of this kind, Bloch and McVay would dutifully issue a preliminary report that would serve the propaganda purposes of the DI. One even wonders if the DI wrote the report for them.
Posted by Lippard at 12/20/2006 02:23:00 PM 9 comments
Labels: creationism, Discovery Institute, intelligent design, politics, Richard Sternberg affair
The root problem, as some experts see it, is the T.S.A.’s reliance on IDs that are so easily obtained under false pretenses. “It would be wonderful if Osama bin Laden carried a photo ID that listed his occupation of ‘Evildoer,’ ” permitting the authorities to pluck him from a line, Mr. Schneier said. “The problem is, we try to pretend that identity maps to intentionality. But it doesn’t.”
...WHEN I asked Mr. Schneier of BT Counterpane what he would do if he were appointed leader of the T.S.A., he said he would return to the basic procedures for passenger screening used before the 2001 terrorist attacks, which was designed to do nothing more ambitious than “catch the sloppy and the stupid.”
He said he would also ensure that passengers’ bags fly only if the passenger does, improve emergency response capabilities and do away entirely with ID checks and secret databases and no-fly and selectee lists. He added that he would shift funds into basic investigation and intelligence work, which he believes produces results like the arrests of the London bomb suspects. “Put smart, trained officers in plainclothes, wandering in airports — that is by far the best thing the T.S.A. could do,” he said.
Hat tip: Bruce Schneier's blog.
Posted by Lippard at 12/20/2006 10:03:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: politics, security, TSA incompetence
Posted by Lippard at 12/20/2006 09:43:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: creationism, intelligent design, law, philosophy, politics, science
Read the details at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. By my reading, the Smithsonian would have been well within its rights to give Sternberg the boot on the basis of his violations of policy and failure to take proper care of museum specimens which he had taken from the collections and was keeping in his office.1. What little ill-treatment Sternberg may have gotten (in fact, all of the comments expressing distrust and anger at Sternberg and urging his dismissal were made not to his face, but in private emails that he never saw) was largely self-inflicted, the result not only of his violation of procedures in regard to the Meyer paper, but in regard to several other instances of professional malfeasance and prior examples of poor judgement as PBSW editor.
2. The evidence does not support the conclusion that Sternberg was discriminated against in any material way. At absolute worst, he was greeted with professional mistrust and anger on the part of some of his colleagues, who were upset that his actions in regard to the Meyer paper brought disrepute to the Smithsonian and to them as associates. Disapproval and criticism, of course, are not the same thing as discrimination nor are they a violation of his civil rights.
3. Sternberg has grossly exaggerated several alleged instances of "retaliation" in the early days of the scandal. In particular, he claimed that he had his keys taken away, his access to the Smithsonian's collections taken away, and lost his office space. In reality, the keys and office space were exchanged as part of larger museum changes and he retains the same access today that all others in his position have.
4. The accusations, in particular, against the National Center for Science Education - that they conspired with Smithsonian officials to "publicly smear and discredit" Sternberg - are not only not supported by the evidence in the appendix, they are completely disproven by the emails contained therein.
5. All of that leads to the only possible conclusion: that this is a trumped-up report orchestrated by political allies of the Discovery Institute, particularly Rep. Mark Souder and former (I love saying that) Sen. Rick Santorum. They have put out a report that simply is not supported by the evidence and was designed, intelligently or otherwise, to support the disingenuous PR campaign that includes the attempt to position themselves as victims of discrimination.
Posted by Lippard at 12/20/2006 08:48:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: creationism, Discovery Institute, intelligent design, politics, Richard Sternberg affair
Posted by Lippard at 12/20/2006 08:20:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: creationism, law
The case will be considered for review by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 5, 2007, and Didden's side is being supported by the Institute for Justice.With the blessing of officials from the Village of Port Chester, the Village's chosen developer approached [entrepreneur Bart] Didden and his partner with an offer they couldn't refuse. Because Didden planned to build a CVS on his property--land the developer coveted for a Walgreens--the developer demanded $800,000 from Didden to make him "go away" or ordered Didden to give him an unearned 50 percent stake in the CVS development. If Didden refused, the developer would have the Village of Port Chester condemn the land for his private use. Didden rejected the bold-faced extortion. The very next day the Village of Port Chester condemned Didden's property through eminent domain so it could hand it over to the developer who made the threat.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this extortion under last year's Kelo eminent domain decision. The court ruled that because this is taking place in a "redevelopment zone" they couldn't stop what the Village is doing.
Posted by Lippard at 12/19/2006 09:07:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Arizona, charitable giving, Institute for Justice, law, politics