TV News LIES

The tragic debacle that has been the Troy Davis execution has another dimension to it beyond racism, classism, and the miscarriage of justice in a flawed system. That dimension is capitalism, specifically, the corporatization of the prison-industrial complex.

If you've noticed some angry tweets directed at @correcthealth, that's because 'CorrectHealth" is the Orwellian-named "medical company" that, according to the ACLU, "oversees all executions in Georgia" including last night's. It is a for-profit company that stands to make a pile money off of every execution.

The New York Police Department put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate, prayed and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The documents describe in extraordinary detail a secret program intended to catalog life inside Muslim neighborhoods as people immigrated, got jobs, became citizens and started businesses. The documents undercut the NYPD's claim that its officers only follow leads when investigating terrorism.

The 17-year prison sentence imposed on convicted terrorism plotter Jose Padilla is far too lenient for someone who trained to kill at an al-Qaida camp and also has a long, violent criminal history, a federal appeals court ruled Monday as it threw out the sentence.

A divided three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new sentencing hearing for Padilla, a U.S. citizen and Muslim convert convicted in 2007 along with two co-conspirators of several terrorism-related charges. Padilla, 40, was held for more than three years without charge as an enemy combatant before he was added to the Miami terror support case.

Those without a lot of wealth or a lot of power are getting absolutely killed in America today.  The big corporations, the major financial institutions, the ultra-wealthy and those connected to the top levels of government are absolutely thriving even though the economy overall is in shambles.  Meanwhile, "the little guy" is being abused, harassed, regulated, taxed and mistreated like never before.  In general, the big corporations and the government don't spend a lot of time tangling with each other.  Instead, mostly they seem content with attacking the weak members of the herd (the rest of us).  In the United States today, wealth and power have become more concentrated than ever, and the big corporations and the government have figured out thousands of different ways to drain even more wealth and power away from the rest of us.  Most of the time, "the little guy" is not even able to fight back.  Most Americans have very limited resources and a very limited knowledge of the law.  Meanwhile, the "big guys" have almost unlimited resources and can hire huge numbers of lawyers.  So what does that mean for the rest of us?  Well, it means that until society becomes a lot more just, you better do your best to keep from becoming a target of the "big guys".

Father Frank Pavone, one of the country's most visible and vocal opponents of abortion, has been suspended from active ministry outside the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, over financial questions about his operation of Priests for Life.

The suspension was made public in a Sept. 9 letter from Amarillo Bishop Patrick J. Zurek to his fellow bishops across the country, but Father Pavone told Catholic News Service that he was returning to Amarillo and planned to continue functioning as a priest there.

An accomplished former government space scientist admitted in court Wednesday to trying to sell classified information to Israel, but federal agents say they believe they stopped him from actually passing any secrets. Not that they can know for sure.

The investigators say the undercover sting operation that caught Stewart David Nozette might never have been launched if he hadn't been cheating on his taxes. But it has ended with Nozette facing 13 years in prison.