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Banned
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Originally Posted by j8ear
This does not surprise me a bit.
<h3>Members of Law Enforcement, the judiciary, and the political classes are essentially immune from following the law.</h3> Either through the legislation they pass, the rulings they make or the unwritten code they adhere to.
Equal protection means only that they are equally protected from responsibility .
imho,
-bear
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Not all of them are...certainly not an "outsider" from Arkansas:
Quote:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/03...e_inves_1.html
Intel
3/15/07
6:15 PM
Bush-Cousin Judge Won't Be Investigated for Car Crash That Killed New Haven Cop
A federal judge who is George W. Bush's cousin killed a New Haven, Connecticut, police officer in a traffic accident in October, and this afternoon New Haven police decided not to pursue criminal charges. Judge John Mercer Walker Jr., a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, is first cousin to former President George H.W. Bush — they share a grandfather, George Herbert Walker — and first cousin once removed to the current president. On October 17, in what a New Haven police spokeswoman termed "difficult weather conditions," the 66-year-old Walker was driving an SUV that struck 38-year-old Officer Daniel Picagli, a seventeen-year veteran of the New Haven police department.
Picagli was working extra duty, directing traffic at a road construction site in the Wooster Square section of the city, and died October 21 from injuries sustained in the accident. Picagli was wearing a black rain coat and a reflective vest when the accident happened, the Associated Press reported. Visibility was poor where the accident happened, the New Haven Register said. Walker was not tested for drugs or alcohol at the scene....
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...-officer_x.htm
Officer struck by Bush's cousin dies
Updated 10/22/2006 10:05 PM ET
....The SUV was driven by John M. Walker Jr., a senior judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, who maintains court chambers in New Haven. He was leaving work when the accident happened, police said.
No charges have been filed.
Police Chief Francisco Ortiz said the accident remained under investigation, but officers did not feel it was necessary to test Walker for drugs or alcohol.
Walker, 65, voluntarily stepped down this month as chief judge of the court. He was appointed to the court in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush, who is a cousin of the judge......
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/ny...=1&oref=slogin
Officer Is Struck by S.U.V. Driven by a Federal Judge, the Police Say
By ALAN FEUER
Published: October 20, 2006
.....Officer Picagli, 38, remained under the care of doctors at Yale-New Haven Hospital, Ms. Winchester said. He was standing on a dimly lighted stretch of Chapel Street in a black police raincoat and a yellow reflective vest when Judge Walker’s black Ford Escape sport utility vehicle struck him.
The judge stopped immediately after the accident, Ms. Winchester said, and officers at the scene determined that there was no reason to administer a field alcohol and drug test.
“He’s been very cooperative and very disturbed,” Ms. Winchester said. She added that Judge Walker had, in fact, called the department several times to check on Officer Picagli’s condition.......
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On page #3, and reported six days after it happened:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...46190-2003Oct5
Bush Family Babysitter Killed in Fairfax
<h3>Sunday</h3>, October 5, 2003; <h3>Page C03</h3>
A babysitter for the family of Marvin Bush <h3>was found dead Monday night</h3> outside the family's Fairfax County home, and police said that she had been crushed when her car rolled into her, pinning her between the vehicle and an outbuilding on the property.
Fairfax County police said Bertha Champagne, 62, had worked for several years for Marvin Bush, President Bush's brother, and lived at the family home on Fort Hunt Road in the Alexandria section of Fairfax.
Officer Courtney Young, a police spokeswoman, said Champagne had gone outside the house about 9 p.m. Monday, reportedly to retrieve something from her car.
The vehicle had been in gear, police said, and appeared to have rolled in her direction when Champagne was in front of it.
After pinning Champagne, Young said, the car continued rolling toward Fort Hunt Road, near the intersection of Edgehill Drive.
Champagne was taken to an area hospital and declared dead that evening. Young said she did not know the cause of death.
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S.O.S....no? One set of rules for the Bush family, and a harsher set for the rest of us:
Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harken_Energy_Scandal
Debt Swap Transaction
In 1990, the US energy company Harken Energy entered into a business partnership called Harken Anadarko Partnership (HAP) with Harvard University which ultimately became the vehicle by which Harken Energy could transfer $20 million in debt to Harvard.
Harvard contributed $64.5 million worth of property. Harken contributed drilling operations valued at $26.1 million, which also carried $20 million of bank debt and liabilities. Harken held a 16% interest in the Harken Anadarko Partnership (HAP); Harvard owned the remaining 84%. The actual operation remained under Harken’s control, however. From 1990 until 1993 the Harvard-run HAP paid Harken about $1 million per year to operate the partnership's oil and gas.
Though made public, investors did not directly equate the transferred debt as a decrease in equity, allowing the share value of Harken stock to rise, and senior Harken managers liquidated their shares. See market liquidity.
Harvard Management, an independent fund that manages the university's endowment, invested heavily (almost $30 million) in Harken beginning in 1986 around the same time Bush was made director, at one point giving the fund one-third control of Harken. Bush, a graduate of Harvard Business School, could well have been what made Harken (a relatively little oil company in Texas) so attractive to Harvard Management.
Bush's Stock Sale
During the early 1990s Harken continued to suffer cash flow problems. On May 20, 1990 an internal Harken memo warned that its financial position was such that it may not be able to meet the June 15 payroll.
On June 8, 1990, Ralph Smith, a trader for Sutro & Co., called Bush on behalf of an institutional client interested in buying a large block of Harken stock. Smith asked Bush if he was interested in selling. Bush said no, but added that he might be interested in about two weeks.
On June 15, 1990, lawyers from the firm of Haynes & Boone, which worked for Harken, sent a warning about selling on insider information. The memo to Harken staffers had the subject line Liability for insider trading and short swing profits.
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
Bush Sold Stock After Lawyers' Warning
SEC Closed Probe Before Receiving Letter From Harken's Outside Attorneys
By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 1, 2002; Page A04
A week before George W. Bush's 1990 sale of stock in Harken Energy Co., the firm's outside lawyers cautioned Bush and other directors against selling shares if they had significant negative information about the company's prospects.
The sale came a few months before Harken reported significant losses, leading to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.....
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A week later, Bush contacted Smith, and sold 212,140 Harken shares for $4 per share, netting $848,560. Despite having been put on notice by the company lawyer of the importance of filing timely insider reports only a few months before, Bush waited eight months before filing the required forms on the sale with the SEC. Bush used the money to repay a loan used to acquire his interest in the Texas Rangers, a baseball franchise.
Bush says he was unaware of the company's financial condition, despite sitting on Harken's audit board. Bush was investigated for insider trading by the SEC, but no charges were brought against him.
Things got even worse when the company announced on August 20, 1990 that it had a huge, unexpected loss of $23.2 million for the second quarter and it's stock tanked 20% that day.
[edit]
SEC Investigation
According to SEC documents, investigators concluded that neither Bush nor the rest of the company's hierarchy were aware of the magnitude of the loss at the time Bush sold his stock. The investigation was criticized on several grounds, <h3>including the fact that the subject of the inquiry, Bush, was never interviewed by the SEC.
A pertinent point here is that the SEC Commissioner had been appointed by President George Bush Sr., and its counsel had worked for Bush Jr. negotiating the purchase of the Texas Rangers.</h3>
On Oct. 18, 1993, an SEC memo declared the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush, and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him. The letter also stated that the investigation's termination must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the investigation. [citation needed]<b>comment by host: Here is the "citation":
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...bush073099.htm
....Dated Oct. 18, 1993, three weeks before Bush announced his candidacy for governor, the carefully worded letter was addressed to Jordan and said that "the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush, and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him."
Bush took that as vindication. "The SEC fully investigated the stock deal," he said in October 1994. "I was exonerated." Supporting Bush, the head of the SEC's enforcement division, William McLucas, went beyond the letter and stated publicly that "there was no case there."
Hiler, however, was more cautious. His statement said it <h3>"must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the staff's investigation.".....</h3>
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...and...if you ain't a Bush:
Quote:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
Appointment in Whitewater Turns Into a Partisan Battle
By DAVID JOHNSTON,
Published: August 13, 1994
Criticism of the appointment of Kenneth W. Starr as the Whitewater independent prosecutor intensified into a partisan furor today as Democratic senators demanded a public accounting of Mr. Starr's recent political activities and challenged the impartiality of the head of the three-judge panel that picked him.
<h3>Some senators expressed shock at the news</h3> that Judge David B. Sentelle, the head of the three-judge appellate panel that named Mr. Starr, had lunch on July 14 with Senator Lauch Faircloth, a conservative Republican of North Carolina, while the panel was still considering its choice. Mr. Faircloth was a leader of efforts to oust Robert B. Fiske Jr. as the Whitewater prosecutor....
....Past appointments of independent counsels have sometimes caused grumbling, but rarely has an appointment produced so much protest about the partisan loyalties of the prosecutor. Nor has the impartiality of the judges who made the selection ever come under such scrutiny.
Judge Sentelle and Senator Faircloth today acknowledged the lunch, which was first reported by The Washington Post. Also in attendance was Jesse Helms, the other Senator from North Carolina, who is a mutual friend and a Republican. Judge Sentelle has long been involved in Republican politics in the state. President Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Federal bench in 1987.
Judge Sentelle said there had been no discussion of Whitewater or the independent counsel at the lunch. In a letter to a Post reporter that he distributed today through the clerk of the Appeals Court, Judge Sentelle said, "Senator Faircloth is an old friend and we lunch together from time to time." He added, "To the best of my recollection nothing in these discussions concerned independent counsel matters." ....
....Friends say that Mr. Helms is the link between Judge Sentelle and Mr. Faircloth. Mr. Helms and Mr. Faircloth have similar conservative Republican voting records. In legal circles, Judge Sentelle is also regarded as a conservative, but with a more moderate voice than the other two.
In 1987, when a vacancy occurred on the Court of Appeals here, Mr. Helms, who had considerable influence at the White House in the Reagan years, backed Judge Sentelle for the seat. Private Doubts ......
....Privately, some judges said senators are often friendly with Federal judges because the lawmakers frequently provide the names of judicial candidates in their home states to the White House, often proposing political supporters or associates.
But some judges questioned whether Judge Sentelle should have had any contact with a leading critic of Mr. Fiske while the Judge was considering whether to replace Mr. Fiske with another prosecutor. They suggested Judge Sentelle should have been more attuned to appearances, particularly in light of the grounds the court cited for passing over Mr. Fiske......
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