corrente

This is a story I've been following for years before blogs were ever thought of--which is not to be confused with how long the case has actually been going on, which is nigh onto 10 years--but I just thought I'd throw it in so everybody could (1) take a break from Rove Frogmarch Watch, and (2) enjoy some nice, clear, non-weaselly words from a government official:

(via WaPo)

In a scathing rebuke of the federal government's treatment of Native Americans, a federal judge yesterday ordered the Interior Department to include notices in its correspondence with Indians whose land the government holds in trust, warning them that the government's information may not be credible.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who has presided for nearly 10 years over a class-action suit on behalf of 500,000 Indians whose land the government has leased to mining, ranching and timber interests, issued one of his most strongly worded opinions on the case. [snip]

Lamberth wrote: "For those harboring hope that the stories of murder, dispossession, forced marches, assimilationist policy programs, and other incidents of cultural genocide against the Indians are merely the echoes of a horrible, bigoted government-past that has been sanitized by the good deeds of more recent history, this case serves as an appalling reminder of the evils that result when large numbers of the politically powerless are placed at the mercy of institutions engendered and controlled by a politically powerful few."

The Interior Department, in a statement, said [snip. They said "Boo hoo hoo, he's talking mean about us!"]

Yesterday, he wrote 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."

Ahh. Like a cool breeze on an overheated day, ain't it? I commend these words to other members of the judiciary, who may wish to cut and save them for use in other cases in the near future.