First Draft: Malaka of the Week: Evan Bayh
The Brad Blog: The Rise of the Tea Bags
Fried Green al-Qaedas: Putting things in perspective
Pruning Shears: It isn't reform unless it gives Goldman an aneurysm
Raw Story: Pentagon officials won't confirm Bush propaganda program has ended
The Washington Independent: Wingnut smackdown: Birther lawsuit dismissed
d r i f t g l a s s: Nobody left but the crazies (h/t Frank Chow)
Burnt Orange Report: Lawyers speaking out in response to Todd Willingham's "utterly disgraceful" trial attorney
Abu Maqawama: The most important article on Afghanistan you'll read this week
Open Left: A second fire has started on the public option fight, this time in the House.
TPMMuckraker: Pelosi's claim that the CIA misled her is validated by the House Intel Committee
The Satirical Political Report: Bush breaks the mold as a motivational speaker
October 22, 2009 CBC The Hour
Bill Maher blast Bush and Obama on the economy and lots more
October 20, 2009 PBS News Hour
The tenure of Berkeley law professor John Yoo has come under fire amid a backlash over the role he played in the Bush administration, advising on the legalities of now-controversial interrogation tactics used on terror suspects. Spencer Michels reports.
SPENCER MICHELS: Since the beginning of the school year, protesters dressed as prisoners or detainees have dogged law professor John Yoo at the University of California at Berkeley. They want the university to fire him for advising the Bush administration, as an attorney in the Justice Department, that it could legally torture suspected terrorists to get information.
PROTESTER: This is a not just a question of academic opinions. This is a question of war crimes. People like John Yoo, these people should be fired.
SPENCER MICHELS: Forty-two-year-old John Yoo has taught here since 1993, except for 2001 to 2003, when he worked for the Justice Department in the Office of Legal Counsel.
During those years, after 9/11, the U.S. was interrogating prisoners, suspected terrorists, at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Yoo wrote several memos on how far the interrogators could go in pressuring prisoners to reveal information. Those memos argued that techniques such as water- boarding, sleep deprivation, and exploiting a detainee's fear of insects were, in fact, legal.
Yoo's actions have reverberated throughout Boalt Hall, the Berkeley law school where Yoo teaches. Students and faculty are debating the bounds of academic freedom, and whether a professor should be held responsible for controversial work done outside the university.
DAVID ARABELLA, law student: I believe that he does have a right to teach here, because people can have controversial views. But, personally, I'm not going to enroll in his class.
SPENCER MICHELS: The law school dean, Christopher Edley, who has served in several Democratic administrations, has been besieged by messages, the majority against Professor Yoo.
To the Villagers, the left have to be the ones to always, always compromise. If a president dares to govern to the left, it's mutiny in the Beltway. I don't remember the media getting all too upset when Bush's wingnut base freaked out over immigration reform and killed it. Tom Tancredo was invited to go on every talk show there was and even ran for president on it.
Tweety goes on and on saying the Democrats never even had fifty votes so if they wanted to use reconciliation they never had the votes to do it anyway, so they are just total failures. Really, Tweety? I wonder where he got his information from. A 900 number maybe...the Psychic Network...
Matthews: Yeah, so a lot of this has been talk, so Vick you pick up on this. Given the fact that the Senate's not going to approve a public option because they can't get any where near sixty...
Right...
...and by the way I'm wondering were they ever going to get fifty.
Yeah. And all these guys are going through reconciliation-- we're going to ram it through-- they never had fifty! Okay, that's just my hunch and my belief.
Matthews: And I would argue that if you're going to be the party that believes in government, which the Democrats do believe more than Republicans do, they believe in positive government-- you have to be able to govern and prove that you're affective at governing. If you blow it, you can't say you believe in government because you've failed at government. Thank you very much. That's a little redundant.
WTF does this mean? If you believe in government, but you fail to pass a bill---does that mean you don't believe in government? Isn't that what governing is all about? Republicans just say they hate the government so they can get elected to work FOR the government. Conservatives make a lot of money being IN the government, you freaking buffoon.
This type of health-care reform has never been done before. Ever. And with idiots on my dial only talking bullshit it really makes it hard for working families to ever get a fair shake. The Villagers like Tweety, with their million-dollar houses, actually think they represent average working-class families, but his rant just shows a lack of understanding about the basic workings of how political parties operate in America.
What does it mean to Chris when Bush (at one time Chris Matthews got very warm and fuzzy looking at the codpiece) failed to privatize Social Security? Lucky for us he didn't get a chance to destroy that also. OK...NEXT!
(h/t Heather at Video Cafe for the video)
The Obama administration has been sticking to many of the tactics Bush used in his efforts in dealing with terrorism. The FISA fiasco was telling and now we have The Patriot Act. It's not surprising that any president would like to keep the status quo when they take office if they've been handed an office that has more power over our civil liberties than ever before. Sure, Obama is not Bush or Cheney, and I doubt he'd ever act like them, but that is no justification for not reining in the Patriot Act.
Reining in the excesses of the Patriot Act (and, relatedly, of ever-expanding eavesdropping powers) has long been a top agenda item for civil liberties groups -- and, at least so they claimed, for Democrats generally. In fact, when Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 last year in the middle of the campaign, he emphatically vowed that he would "fix" the problems with the FISA framework. But right as these reforms are finally being considered, the administration seizes on the Zazi case to insist that no such changes should be made:
At the same time, the Obama administration is pressing Congress to move swiftly to reauthorize three provisions of the USA Patriot Act set to expire in late December. They include the use of "roving wiretaps" to track movement, e-mail and phone communications, a tool that federal officials used in the weeks leading up to Zazi's arrest. . . .
"The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States," a senior administration official said. "It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates."
So the Obama administration has its first allegedly big Terrorism case, and they can hardly contain themselves as they exploit it to justify a continuation of the very Patriot Act and FISA powers which Democrats (and, in the case of FISA, Obama himself) long claimed to oppose. Indeed, key Obama ally Dianne Feinstein has worked diligently in the Senate not just to block Patriot Act reforms, but to make the law even worse, and has repeatedly cited the Zazi case to justify that.
Glenn posted the above video from Julian Sanchez, who destroys the FOX Noise fearmongering arguments of why we just have to have FISA and TPA.
Cato's Julian Sanchez examines -- and absolutely destroys -- the fear-mongering claims from Fox News about efforts to reform the Patriot Act and FISA, with a particular focus on Fox's efforts to use the Zazi plot to justify the need for these powers
.
The Sunday talk shows certainly love John McCain. It's a joke that ABC has John McCain on as its guest almost weekly. He was just on August 23rd. Didn't he lose the general election? Being a guest once in a while is no biggie, but ABC's slavish behavior towards Sen. McCain is disturbing. They should just consummate their love affair and have him on every Sunday if they think his opinion outweighs all others.
I sure don't remember the media putting on John Kerry every week after he lost to Bush in 2005.
September 12, 2009 News Corp- Fox & Friends
Heather: Shorter Ralph Peters- Killing more brown people solves everything and we need that "decider" W back. Or maybe he meant Dick Cheney. God knows Bush wasn't deciding anything for eight years. We need to be getting the hell out of that country, not sending more troops.
Original Bush caricature by Allan Cavanaugh. Open Thread below...
Showing that once more that Republicans have no class and no respect for government and Americans, Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina yelled out "You lie!" when President Obama reassured Americans that his health care reform plan did not include illegal aliens. Politico:
"There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," President Obama said.
A loud voice from the Republican side of the hall answered, "Lie" -- my colleague Glenn Thrush reports it was Rep. Joe Wilson (R - S.C.) -- drawing a second "It's not true," from Obama and a shake of Nancy Pelosi's head.
The bill is designed to exclude those immigrants, though some Republicans have called for more explicit bans on funding for illegal immigrants and have claimed the bill will funnel money to illegal immigrants.
FactCheck.org described those claims as "false" and noted that one version of the legislation already includes an explicit bar on federal funding for illegal immigrants' health care.
Disgusting. Can you imagine the uproar if a Democrat had so little class as to do that during one of Bush's speeches? To be fair, Wilson was condemned on both sides of the aisle. Even McCain said that Wilson should apologize.
There is an http://act.ly/iq petition going viral, asking @CongJoeWilson to apologize for yelling "YOU LIE" in President Obama's speech.
If you'd like to sign,please click here.
UPDATE: Joe Wilson is being challenged by Rob Miller for SC-02. You can donate to Miller's ActBlue page here.
UPDATE #2: Wow. In less than two hours, challenger Rob Miller has raised over $11K. Clearly quaking in his boots at the disgust leveled at him, Wilson has issued the following apology:
“This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the President’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the President for this lack of civility.”
at-Largely: Bush/Cheney knew it was a crime when they kidnapped and held detainees
PERRspectives: Excerpts of President Obama's speech to America's students
Fafblog!: America: Still F*cked in the Head
AfterDowningStreet: At the Beck and Call of a Sunshine Patriot
Helena Cobban: Sweden and the Israel-linked organs story
Zen Comix: Michael Hussey's blog Pushing Rope, where I cross post my comix, has been running a series of posts about The Tampa Bay Tribune Online using bloggers content without paying the bloggers.
September 02, 2009 MSNBC Keith Olbermann
OLBERMANN: In the 48 hours since Dick Cheney called investigating torture an outrageous political act to former prosecutors, one from each party say they disagree.
In our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN: The torture probe is now getting support not only from former prosecutor Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic U.S. senator who joins us in a moment, but also from the nation‘s former top prosecutor, Republican Alberto Gonzales.
First, the senator, the former U.S. attorney in the “National Law Journal,” laying out the legal foundations that justify that require investigation. First, the corpus delicti, the body of evidence establishing the possible existence of a crime. In this case, the Bush administration‘s admission of waterboarding, an act defined as criminal by international treaty and by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the fifth circuit in 1984.
Mr. Whitehouse writing, quote, “For there to be investigation now is unexceptional. The only exceptional is the parties involved: the former vice president of the United States, his counsel, David Addington, Office of Legal Counsel lawyer John Yoo.”
Congressman Jerry Nadler making the same case on FOX News where, of course, the emcee was contractually obligated to interrupt as soon as Nadler mentioned Cheney.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NADLER: The law says very clearly that it is the obligation of the attorney general to investigate, to see whether crimes were committed any time there was torture under American jurisdiction. He must do that, if he didn‘t do that, he‘d be breaking the law. My criticism of the attorney general is that he should not limit the investigation to people in the field who may have committed the torture, to people who may have ordered, such as the vice president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: But it was Fredo, poor Fredo who grabbed the headlines by going against the family. He broke their hearts.
Quote, “Let me just say that I have a great deal of respect for General Holder. I think that the attorney general would have made this on his own and I think as the chief prosecutor of the United States, he should make the decision on his own. Eric Holder is looking at conduct that goes beyond the instructions given by the Department of Justice. And if people go beyond that, I think it is legitimate to question, to examine that conduct to ensure that people are held accountable for the actions they take even if it‘s the actions in prosecuting the war on terror.”
With us now, as promised, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Great thanks for your time tonight, Senator.
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D), RHODE ISLAND: Good to be with you.
OLBERMANN: First, your thoughts on Mr. Gonzales endorsing this investigation. Do you think his approval is sincere here? Or is it a function of relief that the aim is no higher than the operatives at the interrogative level?
September 01, 2009 MSNBC HARDBALL
August 25, 2009 ABC News--Deaths, Missing Detainees Still Blacked Out in New CIA Report:
The CIA and the Obama Administration continue to keep secret some of the most shocking allegations involving the spy agency's interrogation program: three deaths and several other detainees whose whereabouts could not be determined, according to a former senior intelligence official who has read the full, unredacted version.
Of the 109 pages in the 2004 report, 36 were completely blacked out in the version made public Monday, and another 30 were substantially redacted for "national security" reasons.
The blacked-out portions hide the Inspector General's findings on the circumstances that led to the deaths of at least three of the detainees in the CIA's program, the official said. Two of the men reportedly died in CIA in Iraq and the third died in Afghanistan.
The Inspector General's findings about a fourth death involving a prisoner in Afghanistan were made public in the report. A CIA contract employee was convicted of assault in that case and is now in prison.
From The Cafferty File:
Attorney General Eric Holder has named a federal prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture by the CIA. This coincides with the release of the 2004 Inspector General’s report of CIA interrogation tactics including waterboarding, staging mock executions, and threatening suspects with guns, power drills, and the safety of their family members.
It also mentions moving detainees to prisons in countries where torture is practiced. A redacted version of the report was first released after the ACLU sued last year but clearly the details were in the redacted sections.
This is all happening as the President announced a change in intelligence gathering — shifting the responsibility for terrorism interrogations to the FBI and away from the CIA.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said all along the Inspector General’s report would prove that interrogation tactics were successful in obtaining useful information from detainees that prevented additional attacks on the U.S. He says we should be praising the people responsible for conducting these interrogations. Cheney is also raising questions about the Obama Administration’s ability to protect Americans.
Nine Republican lawmakers have sent a letter to the Attorney General urging him not to launch a criminal investigation because it would jeopardize “security for all Americans, chill future intelligence activities,” and could “leave us more vulnerable to attack.”
The point of the investigation is to determine if laws were broken. For most people, when a law is broken there are consequences. The question remains whether the people who authorized all this stuff will ever be held accountable.
Here’s my question to you: Is naming a special prosecutor to investigate torture a good idea?
