A three #judge panel has upheld #campaign finance limits, rejecting a challenge filed against the Federal Election Commission by the Republican National Committee.

In a 14-page decision written by conservative Judge Janice Rogers Brown, the D.C.-based panel considered the RNC's challenge to aggregate contribution rules. These rules prohibit individuals from contribuing more than an aggregate of $46,200 to candidates and their authorized committees during a two-year election cycle. The rules also limit to a total of $70,800 contributions to other political entities.

The RNC and Alabama resident Shaun McCutcheon challenged the aggregate contribution limits as a violation of the First Amendment. The court, though, distinguished between campaign spending, which is core political speech, and campaign contributions, which are somehow something different.

"Contribution limits are subject to lower (judicial) scrutiny because they primarily implicate the First Amendment rights of association, not expression, and contributors remain able to vindicate their associational interests in other ways," Rogers wrote.

Intriguingly, Rogers acknowledged that the "plaintiffs raise the troubling possibility that Citizens United undermined the entire contribution limits scheme," but underscored that ultimately the overall future of campaign finance law, especially the revisiting of the mess that remains of Buckley v. Valeo,"is a question for the Supreme Court, not us.

A former #DC #fire captain has lost her #legal challenge, in a case with roots in one of Washington, D.C.'s most notorious fires.

In a highly detailed 38-page opinion issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lambert dismissed the claims of Vanessa Coleman, who said D.C. Fire and Emergency Services officials retaliated against her and violated her free-speech rights.

An African-American with some 20 years on the job, Coleman was serving as a captain on March 12, 2008. That night, a fire broke out in a high-rise apartment building in the city's Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. It left some 200 people homeless, and a lot of questions in its wake.

Coleman says that upon arriving on scene, she began a check of the basement before being interrupted by the operations commander at the scene, Battalion Fire Chief John Lee, who diverted her towards the third floor. Judge Lamberth noted that "later investigation revealed that FEMS’ failure to check the basement first had been fatal to the department’s efforts to control the fire, which had in fact begun in the basement."

Many disputes then ensued, as the department tried to figure out what happened and as then-Capt. Coleman made public her position. Chief Lee subsequently accepted an official reprimand. Coleman did not; she fought on.

Some of Coleman's public comments were incendiary, and her bosses ordered her to undergo a pscyhological evaluation. She called that retaliation and refused. The department fired her in October 2009.

Judge Lamberth goes carefully through each element of the complaint; illustratively, he reasoned:

"Defendants claim that they acted in response to plainitff’s erratic, paranoid, and otherwise worrisome behavior – as manifested in the 'barrage' of dozens communications and memoranda which plaintiff documents in her filings in this case. These filings, as well as plaintiff’s other behavior, gave the defendants legitimate concern about plaintiff’s mental state, and her ability to safely command her company."

 

 

#Prisoner Kim Millbrook convinced #Scotus to take up his case Monday, a remarkable achievement considering his current circumstances and how the whole thing began.

Millbrook, 44, is currently incarcerated at U.S. Penitentiary Lewisburg in Pennsylvania. He won't get out until 2033, according to Bureau of Prisons records.

In a 14-page handwritten complaint originally filed in U.S. District Court in Scranton, Millbrook said he was sexually assaulted by a federal correctional officer. He said the officer compelled him to perform oral sex, while another officer held him in a choke hold and a third officer looked on.

"They told me that if I did not do as I said, they would kill me," Millbrook wrote in his clean, legible handwritten complaint. "Also, if I told anybody, they would kill me."

A trial judge dismissed Millbrook's suit, as did the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals; the appellate court rejected, as well, his request to have counsel appointed. Some judges, apparently, are weary of him altogether. Earlier this year, in one of Millbrook's unrelated cases, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals warned Millbrook that "continuing to file frivolous papers may result in sanctions."

So it's very much against the odds that Millbrook will have his case heard by the Supreme Court, which agreed to consider the following questions:

Whether 28 U.S.C. §1346(b) and 2680(h) waive the sovereign immunity of the United States for the intentional torts of prison guards when they are acting within the scope of their employment but are not exercising authority to 'execute searches, to seize evidence, or to make arrests for violations of Federal law.

Suffice it to say, the case could shape how vulnerable prison guards may be in the future to inmate lawsuits.

The #Navy is revising how it manages #legal services, officials announced Thursday.

Future JAG officers, take note: this will affect how your career starts.

Starting in October, the Naval Legal Service Command will essentially divide responsibilities into two separate categories. Civil legal assistance for Navy personnel, such as help with wills and landlord disputes, will now be administered out of nine Region Legal Service Organizations.

Defense legal work for administrative proceedings and courts-martial, in turn, will be handled out of four consolidated Defense Service Offices located at San Diego, Washington, D.C., Norfolk, and Yokosuka, Japan. These will replace the existing eight Naval Legal Service Offices.

"The demand for Navy JAG Corps' services is greater than ever, but the nature of our practice has changed significantly over the past several years," Vice Adm. Nanette DeRenzi, the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, said in a statement.

As part of the change, the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps will focus the first two years of all new JAGs' careers on training in prosecuting and defending cases, providing legal assistance, and advising Navy commands.

A JAG report to the American Bar Association elaborates on the Navy's legal work, and declares that the change in JAG career training will "broaden the professional development of new judge advocates and more quickly prepare them to assume increased responsibility."

The #Justice Department's Office of Inspector General on Wednesday issued its long-awaited report on the 'Fast and Furious' gun-walking scandal that has long captivated Congress.

The 512-page report concluded that the Fast and Furious operation and its predecessor begun in the second Bush administration, Operation Wide Receiver, were "seriously flawed in several respects." The operations were undertaken "without adequate regard for the risk it posed to public safety in the United States and Mexico," investigators said, adding that there were problems with the use of certain informants.

Investigators further criticized the lack of oversight from Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms officials.

"Although both Operations Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious should have qualified as 'sensitive' investigations given the 'international implications' involving Mexico and their non-traditional strategies and tactics, neither case received the type of oversight from ATF Headquarters the procedures seemed to contemplate," investigators noted.

Immediately following the report's release, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the immediate retirement of Kenneth Melson, the former Acting Director at ATF, as well as the resignation of Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, a longtime career prosecutor.

Operation Fast and Furious, and its predecessor, entailed ATF investigators allowing guns to be sold in the United States to illegal buyers, with the hopes that the guns could ultimately be tracked to Mexican drug cartel leaders.

Justice Department investigators, while acknowledging that ATF has instituted "significant and helpful reforms" following the collapse of Fast and Furious, added that "more rigorous oversight" of the agency is still needed. On Thursday, some of that oversight will occur in the latest hearing conducted by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

"The Inspector General’s report confirms findings by Congress’ investigation of a near total disregard for public safety in Operation Fast and Furious," Issa said, adding that "it’s time for President Obama to step in and provide accountability for officials at both the Department of Justice and ATF who failed to do their jobs."

Nonetheless, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California declared the report as a vindication of sorts.

"It confirms what has long been known – that the Attorney General and his leadership team were not involved with and did not know about the flawed tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious. It also confirmed that the ill-conceived and botched ‘gun walking’ operations were begun under the Bush Administration," Schiff said.

In a key #FEC #campaign finance case, an appeals court Tuesday reopened the possibility of Federal Election Commission rules permitting anonymous contributions for so-called "electioneering" activities.

A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, issuing a per curiam decision, reversed a trial judge who had struck down the FEC rules.

The original challenge was brought by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. Van Hollen won at trial, with a judge invalidating the FEC rules and saying disclosure was required. In kind of a weird twist, the FEC itself did not appeal, but into the breach stepped the Center for Individual Freedom and the Hispanic Leadership Fund.

Noted the appellate court, a bit tartly:

"The FEC’s failure to participate in this appeal makes it impossible for the court to fully understand the agency’s position on numerous issues that have been raised by the parties with respect to the meaning of the statute, the intended reach of the disputed regulation, and the import of the Supreme Court’s decisions addressing campaign finance law."

Nonetheless, the appellate court directed that, and follow along here:

"Upon remand, the District Court shall first refer the matter to the FEC for further consideration. The FEC will promptly advise the District Court whether it intends to pursue rulemaking. If the FEC elects this option, then the District Court should approve arrangements for the agency’s prompt reconsideration of the matter through rulemaking. If the FEC elects instead to defend the current regulation, then the District Court should allow the parties to present arguments."

#Tax #Court #Judge Mark Holmes continues to show his distinctive writing flair, in a decision issued Monday involving a Ms. Marla Crites.

Sometimes, as Judge Holmes shows, it just takes a little something to make an opinion stand out.

He sets the case up this way:

The Commissioner says Marla Crites owes a $5,000 penalty for filing a frivolous amended return. She had filed a perfectly normal 2005 tax return nearly three years before, but argues now that limitations by not imposing the penalty within three years of the filing of her original return. she is not a 'person' and that, even if she were, the Commissioner blew through the statute of limitations by not imposing the penalty within three years of the filing of her original return.

This is nice and simple, written for anyone to understand. The judge then delves into the details of Ms. Crites's case, including questions of whether she was raising frivolous claims. The IRS wanted him to penalize Ms. Crites, but he noted that one of her arguments was actually a unique one, without prior history.

Now, notice the ominous punch line, making full use of paragraphing and concise phrasing to accentuate the point as the judge says he will decline to penalize Ms. Crites further:

But this is Crites’s first trip to Tax Court, and by submitting the case under Rule 122, she did save us the burden of trial. And one of her arguments, the statute-of-limitations issue as applied to frivolous amended returns, was one we had not yet addressed and was not itself obviously frivolous. We will therefore exercise our discretion not to sanction her under section 6673.
This time.

#Marine Corps defense #lawyers are raising serious concerns about potential unlawful command influence in ongoing sexual assault cases.

As detailed in a new McClatchy story, a military judge has twice found in recent months that tough comments by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos raised the potential for unlawful command influence. The rulings, moreover, are not the end of it. The chief defense counsel for the Marine Corps, Col. John Baker, says that the unlawful command influence challenge has been raised in about 20 sexual assault cases, and more challenges are on the way.

The challenges arise from the commandant's "Heritage Brief" speeches at myriad Marine Corps bases earlier this year, in which he called for stricter punishments for those guilty of sexual misconduct, and further opined that "80 percent" of sexual assault allegations are legitimate.

Elaborating on the McClatchy story, consider some of the further comments that defense attorneys elicited from potential court-martial panel members, in the wake of the commandant's speeches:

A lieutenant colonel said that he had a meeting with officers after the speech, and his understanding of the message was the commandant was angry that the Marine Corps was not getting enough convictions. A captain said that, based on the commandant's speech, you are guilty until proven innocent. A master gunnery sergeant said that he believed the commandant to be saying that if someone is an offender they must be kicked out of the service. A master gunnery sergeant and a first sergeant both said they agreed with the commandant that 80 percent of sexual assault allegations are true.

A #judge Thursday dismissed a #libel suit brought by an Iranian-born scholar and foreign policy expert who says he was wrongly accused of being part of a "subversive and illegal Iranian lobby."

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, sued Arizona resident Seid Hassan Daioleslam over writings in which Parsi was supposedly characterized as an agent of the Iranian government. Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States," published by Yale University Press.

No love lost here. The lawsuit discovery, U.S. District Judge John Bates noted Thursday, was "contentious."

But for all the apparent digging and bickering, Bates noted, Parsi and the National Iranian American Council members "have for the most part failed to identify which statements they perceive as defamatory and to put forth specific evidence of actual malice relating to those statements."

In a decision worth reading for its careful delineating of what was written about Parsi and why it falls short of showing actual malice, Bates added:

"(Daioleslam) was often sloppy in his reporting, either omitting ellipses, slightly misquoting the underlying source, or failing to put a citation in the appropriate place. But none of the errors misrepresent the substance of the source material or mislead the reader. As many courts considering public figure defamation cases have concluded, sloppiness is not evidence of actual malice."

 

 

 

A #judge has dismissed an #Army veteran's claims that his travel is impeded by his inclusion on a secret terrorist watch list. The judge, though, also offered a distinctly sympathetic ear for the veteran known in court only as John Doe.

U.S. District Court Judge James S. Gwin said he "reluctantly" would have to dismiss the right-to-travel claim, on the technical grounds that it had been filed under the Administrative Procedures Act and there had been no final agency action. But note again that word from the bench:

"Reluctantly."

Gwin went on to say:

"It’s sufficient to say that Doe—a United States citizen and Army veteran—has alleged dangerous mistreatment by his own government, beginning with a secret, torture-filled, and still-unexplained nine-month-long detention in an overseas military prison. (To the extent it matters, the government released Doe without charging him with, or even accusing him of, any wrongdoing.)

Doe, 'who loves his country and its ideals,'  might have accepted an apology from our government, had it ever offered one. But it didn’t. Instead, it branded Doe suspicious, addedhim to 'a terrorist watch list,' and now harasses him at airports. Understandably, Doe wants this to stop."

The right-to-travel case is part of, or spins off of, a larger case over John Doe's alleged treatment at the hands of his own government while he was serving as a contractor in Iraq.

Doe in 2004 went to work as an Arabic translator and was detailed to a United States Marine Corps Human Exploitation Team operating in the United States military bases along the Iraq-Syria border. The Human Exploitation Team, a Marine Corps intelligence unit, gathered and developed military intelligence through local Iraqi contacts. In 2005, Doe says he was imprisoned for no reason, held for nine months and mistreated before finally being released with no charges being filed.

Gwin, who has wrestled with the underlying case for several years, sounds like he finds Doe's allegations credible, calling them "appalling (and, candidly, embarrassing.)"