Letters to the Editor
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CAFC
This patent lawyer is shocked -- SHOCKED, I tell you! -- that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has mucked up an area of law to the point of requiring magic words.
Oh, wait, I deal with the results of their mysterious decisions on almost a daily basis. They change their minds all the time.
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This has always...
tempered my liberal tendencies. Government is NOT inherently good; on the contrary.
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Say WHAT??
Her Republican colleague, Susanne T. Marshall, had never been an attorney or even graduated college, but had been appointed to the court after a long career as a Republican staffer on the Senate committee for governmental affairs.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't graduate college, and I just might be arrogant enough to think that I could sit in judgment over an issue as complex as government employee whistle-blowing... but if anyone else ever thought that, I would be the first to call them INSANE .
How is this even possible? Is our government so taxed that they cannot perform a simple CV review before allowing an appointment to a federal bench- relevant to an issue as important as oversight- of someone who has no experience or instruction in jurisprudence??? Was this woman ever even a paralegal? A court clerk? What in the sweet Jeebus are they doing in Washington?
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Say What?
Whistle-blowers aren't protected if the problem is common knowledge within the office, or in cases involved coverups of inspections. How on earth were those precedents set? Is there some strange language in the whistle-blower protection that allows for these non-sensical interpretations or have judges simply ignored the law, making up stuff as they go along and Congress has allowed them to get away with it? Seriously, Congress has the right to impeach judges who ignore the law in their interpretations. In no other court, our Judges allowed to just make stuff up.
I think the best solution would be to allow Federal employees the same rights as Civilian employees. They should be allowed to use the full Federal Court system to sue the Federal government for damages due to wrongfull termination or retalitory behavior because the employee reported illigal activity of their employerer.
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Laws are worse than useless.
I don't care what law there is, how long the code of conduct is, how many people staff the agency compliance office, what the "values statement" of the agency is, etc., etc., if an agency, federal or state, wants to get rid of a whistleblower, they will. There are a thousand ways and a thousand pretexts and most of them work quite well.
My advice to potential whistleblowers -- based on my personal experience -- is that if you blow the whistle you might as well pack up your shit and wait to be escorted out the door or to the basement. Period. Your performance is irrelevant. Your length of service is irrelevant. The fact that you have a "really good case" is irrelevant.
This whole law thing is very dangerous, because it gives the potential whistleblower the idea that he or she is "protected." Read my electronic lips: THERE IS NO PROTECTION. There never will be any protection. Whistleblower laws are not made of steel; they are made of tissue paper. Try this out: find a land mine. Lay a kleenex on the land mine. Now step on the land mine. The protection you get from the kleenex is the same protection you'll get as a whistleblower.
You want to blow the whistle. Great, get a new job or a new career. You're going to need it. Life sucks, and it sucks worse for a whistleblower. It shouldn't be that way, but it is and always will be. That's the reality on the ground. Whistleblower protection my ass.
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they say america is a republic, but so is china.
apparently that's no longer a guarantee of democracy and justice any more.
i live in new zealand, where we have ombudsmen who operate independently of the government and the executive. they are charged with three roles: investigating maladminitration, protecting freedom of information and advising and protecting whistle blowers, a responsibility granted to them by the protected disclosures act.
these ombudsmen will help you deal with unreasonable actions and decisions made by government departments and accessing official documents, and protect your interests if you're a whistleblower.
if we can have a transparent, accountable government so can you.
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No surprise to me
All things related to George Bush have a formula that includes taking over, reducing or removing resources, asserting perfect performance while denying any wrong doing or incompetence. This is all done for one purpose... to make money. When Bank Boston was taken over by Bank of America, shortly after GW became president, the facilities and ATMs quickly went down hill in terms of cleanliness and security. Bank of America is owned by corporations that feature Bush and other administration investors. The biggest problem with this administration is CONFLICT OF INTERREST. This has been the problem from day one. As long as these republicans remain in power we can expect to be asked to do more and be given less until we have the rights and privileges equivalent to the surfs of the Dark Ages.(Q Monty Python: Help! Help! I'm being repressed!)
This formula can be applied to the War on Terror with stark accurracy. Send in troops, deny them proper supplies and equipment, implement completely retarded policies, claim victory, grant contracts to companies owned by Bush or other high officials of the administration (Q Halliburton... )
The Bush administration is not into public service, but self service and we are paying the price.
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Sinister
"George Randall Taylor, a chief of police at a Navy base in Bermuda, exposed coverups of rapes on the base. He was then forced into a psychiatric hospital."
And that's what used to happen in the darkest days of the Soviet Union - criticize officialdom and you were declared insane and carted off to a psychiatric institution.
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i have a sort of good news, bad news idea
obviously whistleblowing is a fools errand. however that's what the press is for. unfortunately "investigative reporting" is on the way out, because of the expense and also the implicit hindering of "access". but Salon is already doing this - sort of. how about making it a department? initially just to collect diverse complaints. it will of necessity, grow slowly - that is good. it is expensive. after few high profile cases the advertising will be done by someone else and it could perhaps become a permanent (and very much needed) fixture. online journalism has certain advantages that print and media don't. i think this could be one of these.