Worst reason for firing a city prosecutor

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Huffington Post - A city prosecutor in New Orleans, LA., was given a summons this week after a joint allegedly fell out of his pocket in court -- while he was chatting with a police officer.

According to WDSU.com, assistant city attorney Jason Cantrell was in Orleans Parish Magistrate on Monday when a marijuana cigarette fell out of his pocket and onto the floor. A police spokesman says Cantrell had been talking to an NOPD officer at the time.

The Times-Picayune writes:

Sources painted a comical picture of the incident, saying a pair of cops glanced at the joint on the ground, then at each other before making arguably the easiest collar in the annals of police work.

Officers were seen chuckling as their colleagues led Cantrell out of the courtroom about 4:15 p.m. to write him up.

Cantrell, 43, was reportedly "cited and let go under a city policy for low-level marijuana cases." Police say Cantrell was a first-time offender.

But it seems that this case of the butterfingers has had far-reaching consequences for the hapless attorney.

The New York Daily News reports that Cantrell has resigned from his city post and his wife, who is currently running for New Orleans City Council, has been "forced to apologize for him."

“I absolutely do not condone his actions,” LaToya Cantrell said, according to the newspaper. “I love my husband unconditionally and am very concerned for his health and well-being, and for that of our family. I hope that this incident will encourage Jason to seek the professional help.”

Bear Stearns finally charged

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Guardian, UK - The taskforce charged with prosecuting US banks behind the excesses of the housing boom and bust has brought its first case – to mixed reviews.

President Barack Obama appointed New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman to head the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group in January in his state of the union address. "This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans," Obama said.

Late on Monday, Schneiderman announced his first case would be against Bear Stearns, once one of Wall Street's biggest players and now part of JP Morgan.

According to the complaint, Bear Stearns and its lending unit, EMC Mortgage, defrauded investors who purchased mortgage securities packaged by the companies from 2005 through 2007.

The suit argues that wrongdoing was widespread at the firm, and that Bear Stearns made material misrepresentations about the quality of the loans in the securities, ignoring warning signs of trouble ahead as they sold them to investors. The same allegations have been made in several private lawsuits brought against JP Morgan.

John Coffee, a professor at Columbia law school, said it was a "significant move" but said cynics were questioning both the timing and the target. "It's about time there was action, and this is a much broader case than we have seen so far, much broader than the risk-averse SEC [the US's top financial watchdog] would be prepared to bring," he said. "But it's Bear Stearns, not JP Morgan," he said.

Victories in the voter ID crisis

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NY Times - “Every voter restriction that has been challenged this year has been either enjoined, blocked or weakened,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice, which is part of the New York University School of Law and opposes such restrictions. “It has been an extraordinary string of victories for those opposing these laws.”

Voter ID laws have been taken off the table in Texas and Wisconsin. The Justice Department has blocked such a law in South Carolina, which has appealed in federal court. In Florida and Ohio, early voting and voter-registration drives have been largely restored. New Hampshire is going ahead with its law, but voters who do not have the required document will be permitted to vote and have a month to verify their identity.

Strict voter ID laws remain in Kansas, Indiana, Georgia and Tennessee, but they are not seen as battleground states. And while Pennsylvania seems likely to institute a version of its law in the coming year, it will not affect this election.

Real Christian want to help the poor

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Center for American Progress - Polls show that 93 percent of Christians express concern about global poverty. In addition, a 2011 survey found that 67 percent of Catholics consider helping the poor as central to the Catholic identity—by comparison, only 64 percent say the belief in Mary as the mother of God is a core Catholic belief. Another 2011 poll reported that majorities of every major religious group, as well as those who are religiously unaffiliated, think the country would be better off if the distribution of wealth were more equa

Wednesday morning line

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Sam Smith If you want the recent history of our politics in just one graph, this one works pretty well. It's a Google Ngram chart of the frequency of the term "anti-trust" as found in American books since 1800. It peaked in 1981, precisely when the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Obama era began.

Reader Ramsey Ludlow rightly SNAPPed our TANF for confusing the acronym for the food stamp program (SNAP) with that for other temporary welfare aid (TANF). As she notes, TANF is "block grant funding for a slew of benefits- including job training- and has been essential, in my experience, as the boot strap the Republicans keep wanting folks to use to pull themselves up. Way more than food stamps."
Nonetheless, I'm not going to apologize because I think the terms were deliberately put there by politicians to make it difficult for anyone to know what the hell is going on. For example, why can't we say "bailout" instead of TARP and why not the ancient and immediately understandable "public works" instead of "stimulus," which I thought was a sexual term you used in polite company? Perhaps we should forget about immigrant language problems until our politicians and media start speaking English again.



Wouldn’t it be nice to havea cable news channel exactly halfway between the soporific PBS News Hour and the shoutingMSNBC? In the meantime, I would love to line up the staff of the News Hour,tickle them and see if any of them could be made to laugh.I doubt it.

The Truther Dream Ticket

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Well since the Truthers keep on insisting that 84% of Americans believe that we were lied to about 9/11, these two should be a shoe-in come November.

(CNN) – Exactly one year after announcing her White House bid on "The Tonight Show," actress and comedian Roseanne Barr won the presidential nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party Saturday in Los Angeles.
Barr's vice presidential running-mate is Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and anti-war activist best known for her protest outside of then-President George W. Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch.

Some of Jon Gold's Co-Signers

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Jon's been flogging his "Statement for 9-11 Justice" petition lately; these folks certainly know how to circulate petitions; submitting them somewhere effective, not so much. Anyway, the signers are pretty much the usual crackpots: Cindy Sheehan, Dahlia Wasfi, Ray McGovern, Daniel Sunjata, etc. But just for fun, I googled some of the names on page 11:

Andrew Coldrick. Andrew has a page on Causes.com of all the causes he's into. Aside from 9-11 Truth, he's opposed to chemtrails, Zionists, RFID chips and aspartame, supports Ron Paul, and believes that cannabis cures cancer. In short, he fits the Truther demo to a T.

James David Childers. Possibly this guy, who certainly has some interests in common with Manny Badillo.

Helen Harris-Scott. Sued Michael Jackson's estate for $50 million.

This isn't the woman's first legal battle with Jackson, either. Nor is it the first one she's likely to lose, or the first she probably concocted after a few too many drinks.

Helen Harris-Scott filed a lawsuit against Michael in 2006, claiming Jackson installed a tracking device in her car, wiretapped her phone and even had "organized criminals watching me inside my house in L.A. and reporting to him."