April 2008: BBC's Newsnight interviews US Judge Advocate Diane Beaver about the Bush administration's legallese cover-story for war crimes.

I truly loathe the notion of torturers and those who ordered torture getting away with it.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called for the commission as way to heal what he called sharp political divides and to prevent future abuses.

He compared it to other truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era.

"We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past," Leahy said in a speech to the Georgetown University law school.

"Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened," he said. "And we do that to make sure it never happens again," Leahy said.

I'm unclear on how just saying "now we know" will stop any of it happening again. Trials and prison sentences would surely accomplish far more as a deterrent to possible future copycats - that's partly why we don't just slap the wrists of abusers or rapists and say "we know what you did!"

Leahy said he had not yet begun to promote the idea with the administration of President Barack Obama or with the Democratically controlled Congress. But he suggested it could be formed by both Congress and the White House, and said the panel must have credibility across the political spectrum.

Issues to investigate would include the Justice Department's firings of several U.S. attorneys, which Leahy said may have been motivated by a White House aim to influence elections, policies on the treatment of terrorism suspects and other areas "where (congressional) committees were lied to."

This included the war in Iraq, he said. "There were lies told to the American people all the way through."

Screw bipartisanship and "credibility across the political spectrum". When one party's senior leadership for eight years has deliberately broken international and US laws while their supporters make excuses for them, they should be treated as having given up any right to respect or to having a voice in how their crimes are handled. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party's leadership seems divided into two camps. One cannot shake off its fear of the GOP's noise machine and its fear of losing elections to do what is right. The other apparently has no intention of looking too hard into crimes they might want to commit themselves.

I firmly believe America can handle the truth - my experience as an ex-pat living here is that Americans are mainly good and just and I believe that if all the secrets are revealed in courts of law then Americans will be outraged and demand justice - but its political leadership either cannot or will not.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Auto-correct can be a very helpful feature of any word-processing program. But when conservatives use it, they run the risk of embarrassing themselves.

The American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website, for example, takes its AP articles and replaces the word “gay” with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.

The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.

That means — you guessed it — the track star was renamed “Tyson Homosexual.” The headline on the piece read, “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.” Readers learned:

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

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AP:

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey says the Supreme Court's decision on Guantanamo detainees won't affect military trials against enemy combatants.

Mukasey, speaking Friday at a Group of Eight meeting of justice and home affairs ministers, said he was disappointed with the decision.

But he told reporters it won't affect military trials to be held at the U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Bush administration has been ignoring the concept of equal branches of government and oversight for 7 1/2 years, why stop now? Habeas Corpus? C'mon, that's not for those swarthy Middle Eastern types.

The Rude Pundit: Get ready for the mainstreaming of contemporary racism and bigotry.

Connecting.the.Dots: Nobody loves Blackwater but Bush.

Firedoglake: The Gitmo "war crimes" trials take another shameful turn.

distributorcap NY: Romance at short notice is Bush's specialty.

Orcinus: When everyone is packing heat.

Majikthise: Recommended Reading

Download | play Download | play (h/t BillW)

Bill Moyers provides an update to the segment offered last week on torture and detainees in the War on Terror™. Mohammed al-Qahtani--long held up as the 20th hijacker on 9/11--was released from Guantanamo without prejudice after more than six years of imprisonment and torture.

"Mr al-Qahtani never made a single statement that was not extracted through torture or the threat of torture," the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represented al-Qahtani, said.

Mohammed al-Qahtani was one of the six terrorism suspects for whom the Defense Department had famously sought the death penalty in an attempt to look tough (or at least, competent) in prosecuting terrorists. However, it appears that since the government's case rested largely on "confessions" achieved through torture, and thankfully, justice has not been perverted by this administration enough to convict them solely on those extracted confessions.

This is an excellent time to let you know that next week, I'll be participating in a week-long symposium focusing on torture with other bloggers to celebrate the relaunch of the ACLU Blog of Rights.

Transcript below the fold

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Altercation:

The Federici family and the E Street family have requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund. The fund's website is now up and running, where it is described as "dedicated to the research and development of new and effective treatments for melanoma through funding for additional clinical trials based upon Danny's melanoma treatments and other methods headed by Dr. Paul Chapman [at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center]. Our other objective is to raise awareness for this aggressive disease."

I met Danny before he got back together with Springsteen's band in the 90's and he was a very kind and gentle man who really loved his music and his family.

Today is the anniversary of my mom's passing away. She suffered with Diabetes (a terrible disease) for many, many years which left her legally blind for a while and in April of 2003---she was diagnosed with a form of bone cancer that quickly spread throughout her body.

I was fortunate enough to talk with her on the phone for a few minutes the day before she died and I was able to tell her how much I loved her. She was barely lucid yet somehow knew I was on the phone. "I can hear you, Johnny. I'm not in pain," she said. " I'm proud of you." " I love you mom," was all I could say. "Johnny, I have to go," and then she drifted off.

She was like many Italian moms in New York, marrying a guy named Rocky and raising two kids in the early fifties. She valued family above all, was semi-religious and was one of the many working class moms that handled the checkbook and worked a second job whenever possible to help make ends meet.

She had an inner strength about her that I never really understood or appreciated until I started to have my own physical problems and made the rounds through our health care system. She had to take insulin twice a day just to stay alive and endured many experimental eye surgery's in Manhattan and Johns Hopkins in the early eighties just to try and stave off blindness---which in the end was the one thing that scared her the most. But she always fought through it and lived many years beyond the conventional medical predictions.

She died comfortably with my sister and father (they were married for over 50 years) at her side as I traveled to Florida to see her. I don't usually write these type of posts, but I just wanted to say, "I miss you, Mom."

03/12/1930--04/23/2004

Josephine Amato RIP

All Spin Zone: John "Doubletalk" McCain fails the political courage test.

Collateral News: Remote controlled bugs are the Pentagon's latest attempt to spy on terrorists. Wait a few years and this new technology called 'Hybrid Insect Mems' or 'Hi-Mems' will be in the hands of domestic law enforcement flying around your living room.

The Strange Death of Liberal America: In March the Pentagon released a report that included some alarming findings on the rate of suicide among American troops in Iraq.

Elizabeth de la Vega: Bush's OSHA: No laws, no crimes

TBogg: Put your hand in the puppet head

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Six Pulitzers for WaPo, two for ex-LATers and a triumph for investigations...Richard Cohen has a race problem...Mad Kane's advice for biased journos and bloggers...Russert plays Altoona...Greenspan and our business media ignored reality...The Seattle Times discovers poor people ...Get ready for Round 2 in the Internet's Battle Royale of 2008...Reporter Eric Lichtblau on the WH efforts to kill the NYT's '04 warrantless wiretapping story...Chris Matthews Sucks!...New media: a lot like the old media...As Gitmo trials near, the Pentagon limits what can be reported...

The recent NY Times article on the late, great Steve Gilliard made fresh for me the loss that I (and many others) feel over his silenced voice. At his best, Gilly was ferocious and challenging (though John Amato through his calls with him tells me that he was a sweetheart in real life; I never got the particular pleasure of speaking to him on the phone). I've spent a lot of time looking over various blog posts about Gilly this weekend and this link by "truth" at FDL came flooding back for me just how much Steve Gilliard could incite such emotions. It was this post that I read that dark day in November 2004 when I realized we would be forced to endure another four years of George W. Bush & Co. So on this eve of a new year, just days away from the onset of the primary season to select the new president, I want you to read (or re-read) Gilly's words of The Fighting Liberal:

You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.

What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.

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TPMCafe: It is now clear there were elements within America's government and/or military, working in concert with Iraq's current scarecrow power-holders, who wanted as many people as possible in the world to see video of Saddam being hung.

Unclaimed Territory: The president's praise of fair trials and the rule of law

HOLY CRAP: Jesus did not trust the political world to further his mission...New Kansas Special Prosecutor freely admits to years of close association with a prominent operative of an antiabortion terror group, the Army of God...If you have a strong stomach, read this smirking porker's gag-inducing musings on morality

MediaBloodhound: Should we mourn James Brown or Gerald Ford?...the Rude Pundit has some thoughts. I'm convinced Betty is the Ford who has done the most to help others. 

Bob Geiger: The usual crackerjack collection of editorial cartoons

END-OF-YEAR STUFF: From Foley to Frey: The Year in U.S. Scandals...Ten Video Moments from 2006 -...50 things we know now, that we didn't know this time last year...The P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006...The BRAD BLOG Year in Review 2006...A deadly year for journalists...The most popular Top 10 Lists of 2006...The Top Ten most discussed articles of the year...The ten most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006...

Senator Dodd is stepping up to the plate and tomorrow will stand tall:

Washington- Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), an outspoken opponent of the Military Commission Act of 2006, today introduced legislation which would amend existing law in order to have an effective process for bringing terrorists to justice.

The Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act:

* Restores Habeas Corpus protections to detainees
* Narrows the definition of unlawful enemy combatant to individuals who directly participate in hostilities against the United States who are not lawful combatants
* Bars information gained through coercion from being introduced as evidence in trials
* Empowers military judges to exclude hearsay evidence the deem to be unreliable
* Authorizes the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to review decisions by the Military commissions
* Limits the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and makes that authority subject to congressional and judicial oversight
* Provides for expedited judicial review of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to determine the constitutionally of its provisions

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