Climate Progress: Science Stunner

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TAPPED: Another Bush official defends smeared DOJ lawyers

The Progressive Puppy: Pat Boone denies his homophobia, then links gays to pedophilles

Brilliant at Breakfast: Quick Dispatch from the Dept, of Great Ideas

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Editorials from Hell's leading daily newspaper, konagod, The Smogger

As the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Politico reveal, the apologists for George W. Bush's regime of detainee torture are circling the wagons. While one anonymous Bush official claimed the Obama's release of the torture memos "laid it all out for our enemies," former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an op-ed written with his CIA counterpart Michael Hayden proclaimed, "The President has tied his own hand on terror." Of course, in his 1700 word screed, Mukasey never acknowledges the possibility that the brutal tactics he defends might be illegal and require prosecution. And that comes as no surprise; back in 2007, Michael Mukasey derided such questions as "hypothetical."

To be sure, Hayden and Mukasey trot out all of the usual Republican talking points. Obama, they charged, not only disclosed "successful" CIA interrogators' "secret sauce" to terrorists, but ensured the agency would return to its timid ways:

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

Despite revelations as recently as three weeks ago that "not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions," Mukasey continued to insist that Abu Zubaida was "coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh" and by extension, 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

But while Mukasey today brushed off any notion that the Bush administration's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques "disgraced us before the world," during his confirmation hearings he hedged his bets.

Following in the footsteps of Alberto Gonzales, who during his own February 2005 confirmation hearings deemed Senators' questions on presidential authorization for torture as a "hypothetical situation," Mukasey tried to skirt the issue of the legality of the practices in question. As ThinkProgress recounted, Judge Mukasey in a written response to Democratic Senators in October 2007 took the same line as his predecessor:

In the four-page letter, Mukasey called the interrogation technique "over the line" and "repugnant" on "a personal basis," but added that he would need the "actual facts and circumstances"" to strike a "legal opinion":

"Hypotheticals are different from real life and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical."

But during the hearings themselves, Mukasey made clear he was already familiar with at last some of the facts, including at least one of the memos released yesterday:

"The Bybee memo, to paraphrase a French diplomat, was worse than a sin, it was a mistake. It was unnecessary."

And like Gonzales, Mukasey refused to disavow specific "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding.

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Greenwald:

A desire for a Democratic victory is, at least for me, about the fact that this country simply cannot endure two more years of a Bush administration which is free to operate with even fewer constraints than before, including the fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney will never face even another midterm election ever again. They will be free to run wild for the next two years with a Congress that is so submissive and blindly loyal that it is genuinely creepy to behold. A desire for a Democratic victory is also about the need to have the systematic lawbreaking and outright criminality in which Bush officials have repeatedly engaged have actual consequences, something that simply will not happen if Republicans continue their stranglehold on all facets of the Government for the next two years.

the revealer

What do the evangelical Promise Keepers (born yet again and coming to a city near you), Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March," Boston's recent Catholic Men's Conference (at which Passion star Jim Cavaziel and a Bush officials discussed their headships), and the Jungian claptrap of Robert Bly's early 90s "Iron John" movement have in common? Serious daddy issues. A fascinating Father's Day report from Paul Zakrzewski

read The Bushies new Groove

"The Bush administration has started its second act, and it is striking how different this one feels."

He started off the second term by saying that Social Security is bust. Nothing like good old fear tactics to get the juices flowing and scaring the crap out of seniors. Reminiscent of something from the first act. Weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds. Feels the same to me.

"The administration has certainly not forgotten the Middle East. Mahmoud Abbas is doing a great job, everybody says. "

A political rally by the militant Palestinian group Hamas turned violent Saturday, as supporters of the rival Fatah faction opened fire, sparking a melee that left more than 25 people wounded, a Palestinian official said.

"The foreign policy of the Bush officials is beginning to sound more like compassionate conservatism all the time.To win the war of ideology against radical Islam, they want to put much more emphasis on global trade."

Did Brooks listen to the Inaugural speech? I thought he talked about destroying tyranny, and spreading democracy not global trade in an effort to make America safe against said ideology.

Anyway, I'm too sick to continue.