Guest editorial at TvNewsLIES.org

by Bob Alexander, founder of Superbeans.com

http://www.alternet.org/rights/145322/supreme_court%27s_%27radical_and_destructive%27_decision_hands_over_democracy_to_the...

Supreme Court's 'Radical and Destructive' Decision Hands Over Democracy to the Corporations
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted January 21, 2010.

"The Supreme Court has just predicted the winners of the next November election," Sen. Chuck Schumer announced this morning. "It won't be Republicans. It won't be Democrats. It will be Corporate America."

Indeed, in a momentous 5 to 4 decision the New York Times called a "doctrinal earthquake," the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an unprecedented ruling today that gives new significance to the phrase "corporate personhood." In it, the Roberts court overturned the federal ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns, ruling that forbidding corporations from spending money to support or undermine political candidates amounts to censorship. Corporations, the court ruled, should enjoy the same First Amendment rights as individuals.

Source: news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has refused to allow victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to pursue lawsuits against Saudi Arabia and four of its princes over charitable donations that were allegedly funneled to al-Qaida.

The court, in an order Monday, is leaving in place the ruling of a federal appeals court that the country and the princes are protected by sovereign immunity, which generally means that foreign countries can't be sued in American courts.

The Obama administration had angered some victims and families by urging the justices to pass up the case.

In their appeal, the more than 6,000 plaintiffs said the government's court brief filed in early June was an "apparent effort to appease a sometime ally" just before President Barack Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia.

At issue were obstacles in American law to suing foreign governments and their officials as well as the extent to which people can be held financially responsible for acts of terrorism committed by others.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8056233.stm

The US Supreme Court says FBI Director Robert Mueller and ex-Attorney General John Aschcroft cannot be sued by a former 9/11 detainee for alleged abuse.

The justices on Monday reversed a lower court ruling that had allowed a lawsuit brought by Javaid Iqbal to go forward.

Mr Iqbal, from Pakistan, argued the two officials were responsible for a policy that saw him singled out for abuse on the basis of his religion and race.

The court ruled that his complaint failed to back up this claim.

Mr Iqbal spent some six months in solitary confinement in a federal prison in Brooklyn in 2002.

In his lawsuit, he said he had suffered physical and verbal abuse and had been singled out for mistreatment because of ethnic and religious discrimination.

The government argued that there was nothing to link Mr Mueller and Mr Ashcroft to the alleged abuse of Mr Iqbal.

'Secure conditions'

In a ruling by five votes to four, the Supreme Court justices overturned a ruling by a New York appeals court that had allowed Mr Iqbal's lawsuit to proceed.

This is a book on the origin of the "state secrets privilege", which has been used to gag Sibel Edmonds and many others. I'm always skeptical of the motives behind establishment books, but sometimes they have useful info, even Shillnon's 9/11 Commission book- and if they are propaganda, then they're instructive for studying from that perspective. A Russian commented once about how the people there were able to figure out the real news, by reading between the lines (or lies) of Pravda.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2008057144_privilege20.html

"Claim of Privilege": Trail of "state secrets" followed like an absorbing mystery
"Claim of Privilege," a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Barry Siegel, chronicles the story of a fatal 1948 Georgia plane crash; the legal battle of the families of the dead to get the truth about its cause; and how their fight has affected the Bush administration's efforts to cloak its "war on terror" strategies in secrecy.

By Kevin J. Hamilton
Special to The Seattle Times
"Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets"

by Barry Siegel

This is the outline for a speech i recently delivered in my Communications class- 13 people including the teacher, no one had ever heard of her, 3 seemed uninterested/annoyed, the rest were interested, some deeply, some seemed a bit shaken up, at least 3 (including the teacher) took note of her website "justacitizen.org" when i mentioned that at the end. I'll be adapting this as a longer article with sources linked, but this outline format worked well for the speech- i practiced it about 5 times and basically just delivered the outline- 7"30'