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| Dear Friends,
I am happy to announce the opening of my new, full-time law practice, Fong & Luu. As many of you know, I have been taking cases for over a year. After receiving more inquiries than I could take on a part-time basis, I decided that the time was right for me to practice law full-time. I'd like to thank my friends and family for their support as I take my practice to the next level.
Joining me in practice is my good friend and former Asian Law Alliance colleague, Dat C. Luu. Dat is a graduate of Santa Clara Law and UC Berkeley. Dat has been working with the public sector for many years. His experiences with various cultural groups and his multilingual ability add diversity to our firm. In addition to English, Dat is fluent in Vietnamese, Mandarin and Cantonese.
Fong & Luu has a number of practice areas: real estate (including loan modification and foreclosure defense), personal injury, immigration and business entity formation. Please feel free to contact us for any of your legal questions!
Best,
Tim
Fong & Luu
3333 Bowers Avenue
Suite 130
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Tel 408-627-7810
Fax 408-457-9417 | | |
| Looks like the Tea Bagger folks are really kicking it up a notch and really disrupting the health care town hall meetings that Congressional Reps are holding during the summer break. Last night there was reportedly a fistfight.
There have been some posts on Daily Kos about various tactics used to keep the dialogue open at the meetings, and prevent the Tea Baggers from destroying the dialogue. What I think would work very well would be for supporters of healthcare reform to show up with drums and beat on them (in unison) whenever the Tea Baggers tried to interrupt things. You could have all the pro-reform people in matching t-shirts and American flag headbands. You'd need some chants too. I've seen this done in Korea and it's very effective. You basically get a wall of noise.
What's important is to confront the Tea Baggers and to show Americans that the people who support healthcare reform are willing to step up when challenged. Some so-called intellectuals may believe that confronting idiocy "only makes it stronger" because you can "give in to get your way." Usually that kind of commentary is followed with some kind of b.s. new age "eastern philosophy." That's pretty much ridiculous coming from the mouths of most people I've heard it from. "Giving in" implies you actually have the cohesiveness to make giving in a choice. 99 percent of the so-called intellectuals who mouth cheesy pieties about "giving in to get your way" do not have the kind of personal practice to even make it a choice. A lot of this type of talk comes from Esalen and the people there who got into aikido. Problem is they didn't really understand what was meant by "don't resist"-- you have to accept the force into you, but that's how it feels, not what you see on the outside. On the outside the person looks like they are a brick wall (to a point of course) while the subjective experience is of the power passing through you, i.e. accepting the power. In a practical real world sense, if a person is putting in their time meditating and performing certain types of esoteric practices, good luck trying to push them over if they don't want to be moved. That's a byproduct of their training. There are specific things that people do to produce the kind of resolute mindset that allows a person to self immolate or stand in front of a firehose.
Of course, a strong resolve could also be used to take decisive action to directly confront thuggery, if that is the choice a person wanted to make.
It is important for the pro-healthcare reform people (and the left generally) to show that they are willing to stand up for what they believe in .
This is because most Americans are not interested in being monks. They don't want to throw their lot in with a movement that won't be there for them when things get tough. When organized labor was successful in the US, it was because people were willing to throw their lot in with groups like the Longshoremen and the UAW. People knew that things would get ugly , but they also knew that they were part of a group that would use direct confrontation when necessary. If you don't believe me that Americans love a good confrontation, then tell me why MMA, NASCAR and football are so popular with Americans today? There are a lot of Americans who will tell you that in their view, there is about a nickel's worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, so they choose the party that they think represents their values the best, and that has people who will fight for what they believe in. I'm not the only person who has observed this-- Joe Bageant has written about it extensively. There's a great bit in one of his books about his experiences talking to guys who work for a Rubbermaid plant. They have terrible health benefits and bad pay. They are proud people who want strong leadership. If the left wants to gain even some of those people as supporters, it had better show that it knows how to confront people directly.
Plus, I think the drumming and chanting in unison would be pretty fun.
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| Big news today is that the Senate Finance Committee has allegedly removed the public option from the healthcare reform bill. The public option would create a government backed insurance plan that people could choose as an alternative to the private insurance companies. Doctors would still have private practices, only the insurance plan would be government managed. Many people think that the public option would force insurance companies to actually compete to offer plans that are more affordable. However, what we actually know is that a public plan would be the beginning of socialism, since it would threaten the prerogatives of insurance companies, and we can't have that.
The Chairman of the Committee is Max Baucus, a Democratic Senator from Montana. As Chairman he has a lot of power to shape the bill in his committee. Let's see who his top donors are, shall we?
source.
I was utterly shocked to see that 8 of the 20 top contributors to Senator Baucus were healthcare related companies such as Aetna and Schering-Plough Corp. It really makes me feel good to know that Senator Baucus is looking out for the best interests of big drug companies and the insurers! These are clearly publicly spirited companies that make up about 25 percent of Sen. Baucus fundraising efforts.
If you'd like to let Sen. Baucus know how much you appreciate his public spirited defense of our-most-vulnerable private enterprise entities, please let him know! You can contact him here:
511 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-2651(Office)
(202) 224-9412 (Fax)
Or email him at:
this link
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| I'm tired of hacks talking about laws regarding torture. I watched an interview that John Stewart did with Cliff May about torture. May is the head of a neo-con group, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. May insisted that any Geneva Convention rules against torture were irrelevant because the Geneva Convention does not apply (in his view) to captured high level Al Qaeda operatives. Once he said that he brushed off international law restrictions against torture. This was disingenuous. It was disingenuous because even if the Geneva Conventions do not apply to high level Al Qaeda operatives, the Convention Against Torture [CAT] certainly does.
The CAT is a treaty that bars torture of anyone. The US actually ratified the CAT during the administration of the notoriously liberal President Ronald Reagan. Article 2, Section 1 specifically bars torture:
Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
The CAT does not allow any exceptions for exigent circumstances.
Now, some sharp commentators will doubtlessly point out that in many cases treaties are ratified by the US Government, but do not have force of law within the United States without implementing legislation. That is true-- and the US has implemented the CAT through 18 U.S.C. ยง 2340. Federal law bars torture by any American, regardless of location. Individuals who torture can be punished by death. Conspiracy to commit torture that results in death can result in a life sentence. Torture that does not result in death can result in a fine and/or a 20 year prison term.
So what does this mean? When May claims that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to captured high level terrorists, he may be speaking correctly. However he is misleading people because it makes it seem as if there are no international treaty obligations against torture. There are, and they are embodied by the CAT. Furthermore, federal law forbids torture by any American of any person for any reason.
There are only two reasons that May does not discuss the fact that the CAT and federal law forbid torture. There are two possible reasons-- incompetence or an intent to deceive. If he is speaking in public about torture and our obligations, then it is difficult to believe that he has not, during his preparations and research, run across the Convention Against Torture. For example, a basic human rights cram text, International Human Rights in a Nutshell. This is available online for $27.44 and at any law school library. Presumably the President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has access to a law library, or has friends who do. Failing that, one would think that his expense account would cover ordering a book that costs less than $30.00. I could understand if overnight shipping might break his expense account and be considered a needless extravagance, but surely he could afford the book if shipped via super saver shipping. Now perhaps the neo-con movement has fallen on such hard times that May cannot afford to buy the book via Amazon. Then perhaps he could have availed himself of a Google search. A quick search for [torture human rights laws] on Google brought up, as the fourth link the HREA website, which discusses, as the fourth paragraph the convention against torture. Maybe the neocon movement is having such a hard time that they can't even afford an internet connection. If so, I can almost feel bad for them.
What seems a lot more likely is that May is intentionally obfuscating the fact that international law does bar torture. That is intellectually dishonest and undermines his case. It is dishonest because the statement can be argued to be true, i.e. some people believe that the Geneva Conventions won't apply to high level Al Qaeda prisoners. It implies that there is no international obligation barring the US from torturing a high level Al Qaeda prisoner. However, as shown above, the CAT does strictly bar torture. Thus, if May knows about the CAT (and if he is in any way competent, then he must know about it) then he is willfully deceiving Americans about our international obligations.
He is either incompetent or a liar. Either way he is a hack.
So the next time someone who watches too much TV snidely tells you that "well the Geneva Conventions don't apply to terrorists," just tell him that the Convention Against Torture certainly does. | | |
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