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Bend over and grab your ankles. The rats nest of Clinton operatives in Washington DC is far deeper than anyone ever imagined. "FBI Director James Comey has a long history of involvement in Department of Justice actions that arguably ended up favorable to the Clintons. In 2004, Comey, then serving as a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, apparently limited the scope of the criminal investigation of Sandy Berger, which left out former Clinton administration officials who may have coordinated with Berger in his removal and destruction of classified records from the National Archives. The documents were relevant to accusations that the Clinton administration was negligent in the build-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack. On Tuesday, Comey announced that despite evidence of "extreme negligence by Hillary Clinton and her top aides regarding the handling of classified information through a private email server, the FBI would not refer criminal charges to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department. Curiously, Berger, Lynch and Cheryl Mills all worked as partners in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, which prepared tax returns for the Clintons and did patent work for a software firm that played a role in the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state. Lynch and Comey both served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. They crossed paths in the investigation of HSBC bank, which avoided criminal charges in a massive money-laundering scandal for which the bank paid a $1.9 billion fine. After Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself in the Valerie Plame affair in 2004, Comey appointed as special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who ended up convicting "Scooter" Libby, a top aide to then Vice President Dick Cheney, of perjury and obstruction of justice. The charge affirmed the accusations of Plame and her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson - both partisan supporters of Bill and

The "ethical" situation is far worse than described. Attorney disciplinary rules require that a lawyer, including all lawyers in the same firm, owe a lifetime duty of loyalty to a client, a duty that does not end with representation in a particular matter. Accordingly, Lynch had what the disciplinary rules refer to as an "actual conflict of interest" between her duties of loyalty to both Hillary and the U.S. government that required her withdrawal from representing either in the decision whether to prosecute Hillary. Saying that she would rubber stamp what Comey recommended was not the required withdrawal. Comey is an investigator, not a prosecutor. This was a situation for appointment of a special counsel to represent the Department of Justice in the decision whether to prosecute, not satisfied by rubber stamping Comey's recomendation,.

It's complicated.  The bottom line is that we know where the $1.6 Billion in customer assets, squandered and "lost" by Corzine, is.  JP Morgan is holding the bulk of it, and due to recent changes in the 546(e) section of the Federal Bankruptcy code, JP Morgan and the other big banksters will be able to keep that money from it's rightful owners.  Oh, yeah.  One other thing.  The big banksters now running off with the assets of investors are the very same people who lobbied hard and heavy ($$$) to have the changes in the code pushed through by their unwitting stooges in Congress. excerpt: This week in The Institutional Risk Analyst we published a comment on the ongoing financial genocide at MF Global, "MF Global: Where's the Cash?"  http://us1.irabankratings.com/pub/IRAstory.asp?tag=515 The comment correctly identifies the location of the "missing" $1.6 billion as JP Morgan Chase and other bank custodians of MF Global.  The trouble is that even though we now know where the missing customer money has gone, namely JPMorgan, there is little chance that the defrauded customers of Jon Corzine will ever recover a dime. Here's the link to a video by William Rochelle of Bloomberg News explaining how the safe harbor in Section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code likely will prevent MF Global customers from ever getting their $1.6 billion back -- even when it's located, as it has been evidently. ... (MONEY SHOT) The problem here is that the existing laws against pillaging customer accounts and other acts of fraud are in conflict with the bankruptcy statute designed to make the world safe for large banks and over-the-counter derivatives.  Specifically, the post 2005 bankruptcy laws prohibit trustees from clawing back the $1.6 billion in stolen customer funds.  Indeed, the Bankruptcy Court and trustee are precluded from pursuing the banks just as the trustee in the Madoff fraud has likewise been stymied.    In addition to the clients of MF Global who were ap

Good summary of the most recent and entirely un-Constitutional act of definace and tyranny.  Keep in mind that Obama does not have the authority to suspend or alter any natural rights, especially those specifically protected by the Constitution from any and all branches of the federal government.  Nor does Congress have the authority to grant that power.  There is only one way to alter the Constitution, and that is through an onerous amendment process requiring the approval of 2/3 rds the States. Recall also that in 1798, the passage of the Alien & Sedition Act similarly sought to compromise the Constitution and reatly expand the authority of the Feds.  Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, author of the Constitution, fought and defeated the A&S Act by going directly to the State Legislatures to force their US Senators to repeal the A&S Act.  This worked extremely well; but that was before the 17th Amendment separated US Senators from their State Legislatures. Still, i think the approach holds.  I suggest we petition the State Legislatures to declare these Executive Orders and Martial Law Congressional authorizations Un-Constitutional; taking the arguments directly to the Supreme Court.  Immediately. excerpt: As of March 16, 2012, your land, your food, your water and your abilities as a laborer are now a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States government at any time they choose to initiate the provisions of this order, which according to the order itself, can be during an emergency or a non-emergency. While some reports indicate that the general impact of this new executive order is negligible, when considered with the broader implications including the  introduction and passage of laws allowing for the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial, restricting the general assembly of individuals to protest, the establishment of an internet 'kill switch' contingency plan and jamming

Note that this is a poll in a group that is loyal to the Democratic Party and confines itself to voting Democrat in the main elections. As such, their influence is negligible. Progressives who are willing to run spolier campaigns as independents, like Ralph Nader have far more potential to move the Democratic Party than those who stay within its fold.  Ditto for Tea Partiers and the Republican Party. What's needed is a coalition to form a new party based on areas of agreement, rather than the divide-and-conquer split between the two major "parties" that guarantees a bankster/War Party win. 

There's an error in the article where it states that "the government is generally immune from personal injury lawsuits." In fact the federal government generally can be sued for personal injury under the Federal Tort Claims Act, but there is an exception created by the Supreme Court in Feres v. United States: the federal government has no liabllity for personal injuries to members of the armed forces sustained while on active duty and not on furlough and resulting from the negligence of others in the armed forces. See for an overview, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feres_v._United_States However, veterans are entitled in such circumstances to Department of Veteran Affairs disability benefits and medical treatment. Military contractors are very fond of trying to piggy-back onto the Feres Doctrine but it rarely works. I've read a fair bit about KBR's conduct involved. KBR even had multi-million-dollar incinerators there for waste disposal that the government paid for (and their transport to the war zones) to safely dispose of wastes without endangering soldiers, but never set them up. That is pretty solid evidence that they knew of the hazard from using open burn pits. And it's also pretty strong proof that our military auditors in charge of checking contract compliance gave KBR a pass. Did money change hands between KBR and the auditors? War profiteering at its finest. "There is such a thirst for gain [among military suppliers]... that it is enough to make one curse their own Species, for possessing so little virtue and patriotism." George Washington.

"Since the close of World War II, America has sought an integrated policy as the militarization of capitalism. In the intervening years, this was not always easy to achieve, as, depending on circumstances, one or the other, the corporate-financial order, and the military itself, asserted itself and made strong demands on government. The result was never an intracompetitive mold because each needed and recognized the value of the other, but still there were periods of imbalance in their respective surges of governmental policy-emphasis. American capitalism had become a functional duopoly (C. Wright Mills' Power Elite was a good popular discussion of this general structure at an earlier point in our capitalist-development trajectory after the war), the Cold War itself providing a cover for the US globalization of power via market penetration, international financial and monetary architecture under US supervision, and the steady build-up of an Armaments State. There is nothing actually new here about the American historical pattern, except of course the more explicit and pronounced role to be assigned the military in the stabilization and expansion of American capitalism. The military was never at any point following the Civil War a negligible input in synthesizing the materials for an operational ruling class, but essentially, as in the late-19th century policy of the Open Door, business was sufficiently confident of its own power (the "imperialism of free trade") to carry forward the process of expansion largely on its own. Yet, the dynamism of early modern capitalism, realized in part through grinding methods of labor suppression, notably, the privatization of force, helped on by a compliant government, meant that within capitalism itself there was tremendous jockeying for power requiring the imposition of Order if major railroads and industrial firms were to enjoy their secure monopoly status."

Reeks of a false flag attack.

Interesting take on the Restis case by former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean. Where the State Secrets Privilege is at its very nastiest, in my opinion, is in criminal prosecutions where the government withholds potentially exculpatory evidence on grounds of state secrecy. I think the courts have been far too lenient in allowing people to be tried without production of such evidence. The work-around in the Guantanamo Bay inmate cases has been to appoint counsel who have security clearances, but in those cases the lawyer is forbidden from discussing the classified information with the client, who could have valuable input if advised what the evidence is. It's also incredibly unfair in the extraordinary rendition cases, where the courts have let the government get away with having the cases dismissed on state secrecy grounds, even though the tortures have been the victim of criminal official misconduct.  It forces the victims to appeal clear to the Supreme Court before they can start over in an international court with jurisdiction over human rights violations, where the government loses because of its refusal to produce the evidence.  (Under the relevant treaties that the U.S. is a party to, the U.S. is required to provide a judicial remedy without resort to claims of national security secrecy.) Then the U.S. refuses to pay the judgments of the International courts, placing the U.S. in double breach of its treaty obligations. We see the same kinds of outrageous secrecy playing out in the Senate Intellience Committee's report on CIA torture, where the Obama Administration is using state secrecy claims to delay release of the report summary and minimize what is in it. It's highly unlikely that I will live long enough to read the full report. And that just is not democracy in action. Down with the Dark State!   

Pepe Escobar on the U.S. Neocon push to renew the Cold War. 

Dmitry Orlov with a humorous yet inscisient take on the state and future of the oil market. Spoiler: He sees signs of desperation amongst the leaders of the American Empire, reduced to no viable options. 

"inscisient"? Make that "incisive." Follow reading Orlov's piece by reading Mike Whitney's latest at http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/20/are-plunging-petrodollar-revenues-behind-the-feds-projected-rate-hikes/ A lot of confirmation of what Orlov said in Whitney's article, citing hard numbers. Mass layoffs in the U.S. and Canadian oil industry; the petrodolar has stopped providing liquidity for the dollar; and the Fed plans to raise interest rates to force an influx of dollars from developing nations, in order to replace the petrodollar liquidity crisis. Whitney makes a strong case that it's a plot by the big banksters to steal another huge pile of cash at the expense of a huge number of jobs in the U.S. Both Orlov and Whitney say that it's going to be a very rough ride for the 99 per cent and for the population of developing nations. Indeed, Whitney's numbers say we are already over the precipice on jobs and well into free-fall.

But last night, Obama had the gall to claim that all is just peachy-k een on the jobs front. As he helps the banksters offshore another huge number of U.S. jobs.