A Sotomayor Case On Military Coups

I want you ... or ... I want you?

The nomination of Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court has many all "aTwitter".

Readers may wonder why I have not discussed the Sotomayor matter here yet; it is because I thought I would wait for a convergence of several issues, and then discuss the matter in a relevant and challenging context.

This idea of a military coup in the title ought not be considered so far fetched; I was involved in a lawsuit in the early 80's in which a naval officer testified that they, the US military, practice invasions of the United States all the time.

This is confirmed in a decision of the 2nd Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in which Judge Sotomayor partook:

The Second Circuit case arose when, in October 1999, Michael Zieper put a short film on the Internet that was entitled "Military Takeover of New York City." In the film, an unseen narrator -- with shots of Times Square in the background -- discusses plans for the takeover to occur on New Year's Eve 1999, claims the tape came from his brother in the army, and reports that his brother said copies were "floating around the base." However, the narrator also directly raises an issue about whether the tape is real or fake.

Initially, the FBI simply asked Zieper to remove the film -- apparently cognizant that it would be barred by the First Amendment from ordering him to do so. Zieper's attorneys also stressed this point to them later.

However, eventually, FBI agent Joseph Metzinger and Assistant United States Attorney Lisa Korologos got more aggressive. Metzinger sent an FBI agent and several police officers to Zieper's house. Nevertheless, Zieper held his ground.

(Findlaw, emphasis added). The case the researcher / journalist is talking about is Zieper v. Metzinger, Case #055250, Second Circuit, decided 1/19/2007.

It was a case where the court, Sotomayor agreeing, said that FBI agents were immune from liability even though they harassed a film-maker who did a fictional film about the military taking over New York.

The fact is that the military plans many "very bad things" against the United States, as a part of their every day planning, for various reasons.

And lest we forget that the military has also planned actual terrorism against citizens within the United States too. Note:

These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington, including sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated, faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a Remember the Maine incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.

(National Archives Documents, emphasis added). Clearly what the F.B.I. was doing against an artist exercising First Amendment rights, well before 9/11, was wrong and they should have been held accountable.

Judge Sotomayor was wrong in 2007 to uphold fascist tendencies within the United States Government without at least a dissent.

Instead the court panel should have held that government officials that forget our traditions and law should be held liable, or guilty, as the case may be.