Today there is a crisis on Wall Street. It involves enormous losses. It threatens the economy. One reason it is of such magnitude is that the institutions of Wall Street were allowed to become so huge. They are so big that their mistakes and their failures threaten all of us.

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes

Based on fairly extensive readings from about 2002-2003 until today, it seems pretty clear that people who were responsible for or committed torture were well aware from the get - go that what they were doing constituted crimes. That realization is why CIA officials, from 2002 to 2006 or 2007 demanded memoranda, from the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, falsely claiming that the abuse and torture were not criminal acts. The officials wanted these OLC memos so that they could later avoid or defeat prosecutions by claiming that the decision making office of the DOJ had approved the legality of what they were doing. The officials wanted a “golden shield,” a “get out of jail free card.”

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes

If you had to choose, for an important position requiring brains, between a person who was among the best in his class at the Harvard Law School and a person who was near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, you would obviously choose, since the position does require brains, the person who was among the best at Harvard Law, right? Well, maybe wrong, if the position is President of the U.S. (an office held since 2001 by a brainless one) and if the chooser is, as in 2000 and 2004, the American electorate.

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes