Is this the beginning of the end of Rupert Murdoch's media empire?

Murdoch is associated in the minds of anyone who cares to investigate the ownership with Fox News, so small wonder that Mr. Obama is unimpressed with his sorrows.

Woman arrested over hacking scandal
Updated July 17, 2011 22:53:15


Rupert Murdoch with Rebekah Brooks Photo: LtoR Chairman of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, and Chief Executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, leave Murdoch's London residence shortly after Murdoch arrived in Britain to take personal charge of the phone-hacking scandal that felled his News of the World tabloid, July 10, 2011. (Max Nash: AFP)

British police have arrested a woman - reportedly former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks - over the phone hacking scandal.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that a 43-year-old woman had been arrested over allegations of phone hacking and corruption.

They would not confirm it was Brooks, 43, and there was no immediate comment from News International.

However Sky News, which is part of Murdoch's British media empire, and the BBC both reported it was Brooks.

Brooks resigned as head of News International on Friday.

The woman was reportedly arrested by appointment at a police station in London and is currently in custody, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement, without identifying her.

"She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications ... and on suspicion of corruption allegations," it said.

Those arrested so far over the scandal include British prime minister David Cameron's former communications chief and one-time News of the World editor Andy Coulson.

AFP

The questions the select committee must ask Rebekah Brooks, James and Rupert Murdoch
EDITORIAL
Guardian.co.uk, Saturday 16 July 2011 21.45 BST

Those figures at News International behind the phone-hacking scandal must now come clean

The growth of the federal criminal code has come in the wake of attempts by politicians and federal bureaucrats to “do something” about perceived crime rates, to stop illegal drug use by Americans, and to punish individuals who engage in “whitecollar” crime. In the process of expanding the federal role in identifying and prosecuting “criminal” behavior, however, the federal government has become a formidable conviction and imprisonment machine. Unfortunately, as Rosenzweig writes, many of the “crimes” and punishments can be described only as arbitrary, reflecting neither the seriousness of the offense nor the harm (if any) caused to other individuals.

Much of the growth of federal criminal procedures has been tied to the expanded use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which Congress passed without much opposition in 1970 as the centerpiece of President Richard Nixon’s “Crime Bill.” In this article, we focus on prosecutions under RICO. In many ways, this law has turned out to be a modern-day rendition of the infamous Waltham Black Act of 1723, which, according to Follett, “originally outlawed poaching in disguise or in ‘blacked’ face, but judicial interpretations soon divorced its various provisions from their original context, leading to a list of fifty or more crimes punishable by death” (2001, 21).

Similarly, RICO has metastasized from its original intent, which was to deal more effectively with the perceived problem of organized crime. Federal prosecutors have discovered that RICO is a powerful weapon that can be wielded against most business owners, should the feds choose to target them. Rudy Guiliani’s prosecution of Michael Milken and other Wall Street luminaries in the 1980s—the springboard from which Guiliani rose to become first the mayor of New York City and ultimately a popular public speaker collecting $75,000 per speech—involved some of the early attempts to expand criminal RICO provisions to prosecute private business figures who clearly were not mafiosi. Today, federal prosecutors use RICO routinely to win easy convictions and prison terms for individuals who in the course of business run afoul of federal regulations. For every John Gotti who is brought down by RICO, many obscure business owners and managers are also successfully prosecuted under this law.

Much has been written about the RICO statute.1 Rather than a summary of this vast literature, we offer a view of RICO from another angle, examining how it has revolutionized federal criminal law and how it has been used—with federal judges, members of Congress, and the press acting as cheerleaders—to overturn the protections inherent in due-process guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. Overturn is not too strong a word in this regard, given that in a RICO case, those charged are treated as guilty until proven innocent.

In tracing the development of RICO, we find that the law was little more than a “bait-and-switch” statute that has had little or no effect in stopping or inhibiting the crimes—murder, rape, robbery, and so forth—that most concerned the public in 1970. Instead, RICO has enabled federal prosecutors in effect to circumvent the constitutional separation of powers between the national and the state governments. Since RICO’s passage, the once-clear jurisdictional boundaries between state and federal law enforcement have been erased as more and more individuals find themselves in the federal dock with almost no chance of acquittal.

EDIT: It's hilarious that you link a libertatian "think tank," tell us again about what a liberal you are.

You're just beating your "lone voice crying out in the wilderness

As with illegal immigration, our governments at all levels pursue the wrong issues to correct problems.

I am not a liberal, I am a radical leftist who is increasingly hostile to both Liberals and the Democratic Party.

So radical that you sound just like a tory.

Quote:

So radical that you sound just like a tory.

Until we start talking about what I hope and expect people will do with their freedom once we win it back from government oppression.

Your sentence is meaningless.