Friday, October 21, 2011

Research

 Right now, I am researching the case of Cobell v. Salazar, the landmark class-action lawsuit brought by American Indian representatives against two U.S. Gov't departments. The plaintiffs claim that the U.S. government has incorrectly accounted for Indian trust assets, which belong to individual Native Americans (as beneficial owners) but are managed by the Dept. of Interior (as the legal owner and fiduciary trustee). 


As I was reading through the case, I saw that one of the judges was kicked off the case for loosing his treasured impartiality-he kept ruling for the American Indians and lambasting the Interior and government. He even tried to hold the various Interior Secretaries in contempt of the court.


See for your self below:


The Court wrote that Judge Lamberth believed that racism at the Dept. of Interior continued and is "a dinosaur – the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left behind."


Lamberth writes that "the entire record in this case tells the dreary story of Interior's degenerate tenure as Trustee-Delegate for the Indian trust -- a story shot through with bureaucratic blunders, flubs, goofs and foul-ups, and peppered with scandals, deception, dirty tricks and outright villainy -- the end of which is nowhere in sight."


On numerous occasions over the last nine years," Lamberth wrote in the now-infamous July 12 memo, "the Court has wanted to simply wash its hands of Interior and its iniquities once and for all.''


Those are some pretty harsh comments. The case took 10 YEARS. No wonder Lamberth is fed up. He is known for speaking his mind. And he is from Texas. And one of the most respected and skilled judges on the Court. 


This is why I like Wikipedia: I can easily expand my knowledge base about subjects that are found in 1 concise area and don't have to trawl through stacks of files or PDF's to search for gems of information like this. 



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