This is infuriating. If there was any doubt in your mind as to whose side the political establishment is on, this should settle it:

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.

Inouye's office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

"The defense contractors have been storming his office," said a source with knowledge of the situation. "Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR's (or other contractors') own terms -- with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely."

A Democratic aide on the Hill, also with knowledge of the situation, confirmed the account, as did a source who works on defense contracting matters outside of Congress. "The contractors are putting on a full-court press on this amendment... they are all doing it," said the latter source.

Project Censored, a media research project operating out of Sonoma State University in California has spent several years looking at media accountability and how the freedom of the press aids democracy:

At Project Censored, we examine the coverage of news and information important to the maintenance of a healthy and functioning democracy. We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations, and institutions).

The latest edition of Project Censored is in and available on Amazon:

Here's this year's top 25 stories:

• 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
• 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
• 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
• 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
• 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
• 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
• 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
• 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
• 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
• 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
• 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
• 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
• 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
• 14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
• 15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
• 16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
• 17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
• 18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
• 19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
• 20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
• 21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
• 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
• 23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
• 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
• 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

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Poor old crazy birther Orly Taitz just can't get any respect. Dylan Ratigan treats her with the disdain she deserves in this segment where she's asked to react to the ruling against her. And it looks like the judge has had a belly-full of her as well.

Judge ready to slap Orly Taitz with $10,000 fine:

Orly Taitz, one of the leaders of the Birther movement, may have finally crossed one too many lines. The courts will, after all, overlook the occasional frivolous lawsuit, even when filed by an attorney who can't get basic procedural issues right -- just the cost of doing business. But even a federal judge has a breaking point, and Clay Land appears to have reached his.

Earlier this week, Land dismissed a suit that Taitz had brought on behalf of Army Capt. Connie Rhodes, a surgeon who claimed that she couldn't follow her orders to deploy to Iraq because she's not sure President Obama is eligible, under the Constitution, to hold his current position. At the time, Land warned Taitz that if she filed any more "similarly frivolous ... actions in this Court" she'd face sanctions.

Taitz, of course, didn't seem to listen. Instead, she filed an angry motion asking Land to reconsider his decision and stay Rhodes' deployment. Apparently unaware of that old saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar (not true, incidentally, but that's an issue for another time), Taitz essentially accused the judge of committing treason. And, referring to the U.S. District Court on which Land serves, she wrote, "there is increasing evidence that the United States District Courts in the 11th Circuit are subject to political pressure, external control, and, mostly (sic) likely, subservience to the same illegitimate chain of command which Plaintiff has previously protested in this case, except that the de facto President is not even nominally the Commander-in-Chief of the Article III Judiciary."

For some reason, Land wasn't especially happy about this.

In an order issued Friday, Land denied Taitz's request and announced that he was considering making good on his threat of sanctions. He ordered the attorney-slash-dentist "to show cause why the Court should not impose a monetary penalty of $10,000.00 upon Plaintiff’s counsel for her misconduct," and gave her 14 days to do so.

Land also took a swipe at Taitz's performance as an attorney, writing at one point that "competent counsel would have understood" one part of the law that was at issue. The implication was obvious.

We're not trying to start any lawsuits here, but let's face it; some songs just sound too much like other songs to be a coincidences. Or do they? Music doesn't usually come with footnotes or bibliographies, so on Friday nights we engage in wild speculation about where our favorite songwriters might have owed someone a hat tip. Welcome to Friday Night Ripoffs (?) at the LNMC.

"Warning" (the title track from your DJ's favorite Green Day album) sure sounds a helluva lot like The Kinks' "Picture Book". Green Day are clearly no stranger to the creative lift (See: "Boulevard of Broken Dreams/Summer of 69 or Brain Stew/25 or 6 to 4) and to me, this sounds too close for chance. What do you think? Coincidence or theft? What other songs pose that same question to you?

(h/t to Dylan for the heads up on this one.)

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Keith has the run down on United Health Group's Stephen Hemsley who's leading the charge against health care/insurance reform and who was recently sending employees armed with talking points to attend protests and town halls. First up, his campaign donations from OpenSecrets: United Health Group Contributions to Federal Candidates:

House
Total to Democrats: $138,700
Total to Republicans: $100,500

Senate
Total to Democrats: $71,500
Total to Republicans: $58,300

Next we have the lawsuit they settled just one week before President Obama took office. Health insurer accused of overcharging millions:

One of the nation’s largest health insurers has agreed to pay $50 million in a settlement announced today after being accused of overcharging millions of Americans for health care.

The New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation after receiving hundreds of complaints about Oxford Insurance and its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, which claims to rely on “independent research from across the health care industry” to determine reimbursement rates. In actuality though, it relies on Ingenix, a research firm owned by UnitedHealth Group.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says Ingenix has been manipulating the numbers so insurance companies pay less. In a just-released report, he contends that Americans have been “under-reimbursed to the tune of at least hundreds of millions of dollars.” Although UnitedHealth Group and Oxford Insurance were the only entities investigated, other major insurers use Ingenix, including Aetna, CIGNA and WellPoint/Empire BlueCross BlueShield.

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