Money & Power [View all]

“This world and yonder world are incessantly giving birth: every cause is a mother, its effect the child.
When the effect is born, it too becomes a cause and gives birth to wonderous effects.
These causes are generation on generation, but it needs a very well lighted eye to see the links in their chain.”
Jalal-ad-din Rumi

Secretary Kristi Noem's apparent ignorance regarding habeas corpus should concern everyone here. She is said to be the head of the Department of Homeland Security; however, she takes rigid instructions from Stephan Miller. And Miller is tasked with destroying habeas corpus.

It is important to trace the most recent threat to habeas corpus, to see if we might identify some of the links that brought us to today. Back in the mid-1990s, Newt Gingrich sought to damage not only the House of Representatives – definitely leading to the corruption we see today – but to inflict a “reform” that would damage the right of those convicted in state court, to access the federal courts. This, despite habeas corpus being included in the Constitution.

Sadly, going against the legal advice of scholars, including his own his own counsel, President Clinton signed it into law. The republicans had refused to hold hearings on the bill, but to be fair to President Clinton, it's being sold as an “anti-terrorism” law after Oklahoma City federal building bottom, there was scant public interest – only legal scholars.

We should all be aware of the nature of those who seek to end the right of habeas corpus.

“Men without dignity are like clowns without an audience, pathetic and lost.”
Rubin “Hurricane” Carter

In October of 1966, my friend Rubin was arrested for a triple murder that took place in June. The lead detective told a guy who saw the killers at the bar that Rubin and his young friend John Artis were “Muslim assassins.” This was in part because the two gunmen wore suits, and were armed with a pistol and shotgun. Sixteen months earlier, in NYC, two men wearing suits and armed with a pistol and shotgun had murdered Malcolm X. Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of the murder, although only one of them was actually involved.
Rubin and John were convicted in 1967. Rubin got triple life, to be served consecutively, while John's sentences ran concurrently. Their case remained stuck in state court until 1985. John had been paroled by then, and Rubin had served about half the time in solitary confinement. Despite the state's extreme efforts to have the case kept out of federal court, his legal team was able to get it moved there in 1985.

The federal judge overturned Rubin and John's conviction, basing his ruling on habeas corpus. For the rest of his adult life, Rubin became an advocate for the wrongly convicted. His work almost always involved the federal courts and habeas corpus. I remember very well how upset he and the lawyers he worked with with President Clinton signing Gingrich's attack on habeas corpus into law.


“What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear?” – Decimus Junius Juvenalis (Juvenal )

It should be obvious by now to anyone and everyone paying attention that the convicted sex offender/felon is intent upon exercising unrestrained power. He wants to be the global emperor, in the same way that Simon bar Sinister wanted to be the biggest, most powerful man in the world in the Underdog cartoons. As Simon noted in one episode, “I want money and power and money and power and money and power and money and power!”

On February 21, 2014, an article by Rubin titled “Hurricane Carter's Dying Wish” was published in a New York newspaper. In it, he expressed his hope that one specific case could be re-evaluated. He wrote, “ If I find a heaven after this life, I’ll be quite surprised. In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first 49 years, and have been in heaven for the past 28 years. . .To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all.” He understood that habeas corpus was required for there to be available for the wrongly convicted.

On June 14, as jurors in the court of public opinion, we can deliver a verdict on this lost and pathetic administration. Please be certain to attend a rally near you.