This is heartening news, and goes a long way toward breaking the culture of fear by bringing these men into our midst. Yes, I assume the security will have to be stringent, but there's something to be said for bringing this trial home:

Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- and four co-defendants will be tried in federal court in New York instead of a military commission, a federal official said early Friday.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of orchestrating th e bombing of the USS Cole when it was docked off the coast of Yemen in 2000, will be tried at a military commission, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decisions have not yet been formally announced by the Justice Department.

The long-awaited decisions on prosecution, part of President Obama's quest to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, do not affect the vast majority of the 215 prisoners held at the prison. The decisions come on the same day that White House counsel Gregory B. Craig, a key manager of Obama's Guantanamo Bay policy, is expected to announce his resignation.

[...] "I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheik Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice," Obama said. "The American people insist on it, and my administration will insist on it."

I'm so glad someone who has been there has finally said it:

(I)n a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, (former Marine Corps Captain Matthew) Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay.

U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said in an interview. "We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him."

While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis." He asked Hoh to join his team in Washington, saying that "if he really wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives and treasure," why not be "inside the building, rather than outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact?"

Hoh is quick to say he's not some hippie peace-nik. Sigh. Why does he make that sound like a bad thing? But Hoh does feel that our presence does nothing but escalate violence and turmoil with the Afghans.

(M)any Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there -- a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

As the White House deliberates over whether to deploy more troops, Hoh said he decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.' "

"I realize what I'm getting into . . . what people are going to say about me," he said. "I never thought I would be doing this."

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John V. Santore at Media Matters makes a convincing case that what Glenn Beck is doing in attacking President Obama's appointees as "communists" and "Marxists" is simply a new form of McCarthyism.

Now, what do we do about it?

Step 1: Expose both Beck and his enablers for what they are: liars, smear artists, and political charlatans.

James Rucker of Color of Change has a superb post up about the nuances of dealing with hatemongers like Beck:

In the wake of Van’s resignation, some have wondered whether kicking the Beck hornet’s nest makes sense. I’ve got two thoughts in response. First, Beck and Fox trying to change the topic and counter-attacking with such force is probably a good indicator that we’re getting to them; if anything, now would be the time to go harder. Second, I believe we have no choice. Beck has promised to take his witch-hunt to others in the administration, and has set his sights on Cass Sunstein as his next target. He has no plans to stop, and neither should we.

But it’s not just “czar”-hunting that’s at stake here. The right wing media machine, of which Beck is now one of the leading members, is the single greatest force standing in the way of change. They have already helped derail the conversation on health care, elevating accusations of Obama’s alliance with the Third Reich to some semblance of credibility. And they will do the same to the upcoming debates over clean energy, immigration, and every progressive policy priority. We simply don’t have the luxury of ignoring them. We must challenge them head on, expose their distortions, take away their advertisers, and position their views where they belong: far outside the bounds of any rational political discourse.

Be sure to read the whole piece.

It's been patently self-evident that Van Jones was just the appetizer for the sharks at Fox, whose ultimate goal is to take down Obama himself.

Beck has been boasting that he took down Jones by simply using Jones' own words and repeating them.

Well, folks in glass houses ought to think carefully about the wisdom of throwing stones, if you know what I mean.

The catalog of Glenn Beck's toxic discourse is long and nasty. When it comes to giving advertisers something to think about, the well is deep and dark. No doubt a lot of it is going to be bubbling back up into public view soon.

Because nothing brings down the liars and crooks like the light of day, shining brightly under the rocks whence they crawl.

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It was obvious when the Obama White House stood back and let Van Jones get run over by the right-wing bus that he just happened to be first in line.

These wingnuts are just getting warmed up. That was self-evident yesterday on Fox, when not just Glenn Beck, but Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly piled on as well. These guys are now headed straight for the rest of Obama's progressive appointees, and ultimately are after Obama himself.

Beck had on Michelle Malkin to help him line up the next row of victims, who appear primarily to be John Holdren and Valerie Jarrett. Hannity, too, clearly has Jarrett in his sights; he featured a clip from her chat at Netroots Nation, talking up the value of having someone like Van Jones in the administration.

But really, this bus isn't just aimed at progressive appointees. It's directed ultimately at Obama himself. Beck made that clear in his segment with O'Reilly (who miraculously comes off as the voice of reason in all this), when he essentially admitted that the purpose of this whole campaign is to paint Obama as a closet Marxist who secretly wants to transform America into a communist state.

In other words, this is about delegitimizing the Obama presidency. That's been their purpose from Day One, and they appear to be right on schedule. With a helping hand from the Obama White House itself.

Rep. Mike Pence has been on the forefront of pushing this Van Jones scandal created by Glenn Beck (good to see he gets his walking papers from such an impeccable source, isn't it?), calling for his resignation and saying that Jones' "extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this Administration or the public debate."

But as Jeremy Scahill points out, Pence isn't bothered by the extremist views of Erik Prince of Blackwater/Xe, who has contributed thousands of dollars to Pence:

On Friday, Pence, who describes himself as “Christian, Conservative, Republican, in that order,” said Jones’s “extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.” Beyond the obvious here (the hate-filled rhetoric we see every day from racist, right-wing wackos, including those in public office), it is an interesting comment considering that Pence is an extremist right-wing evangelical Christian who has taken thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Blackwater’s owner, Erik Prince. Prince has also donated to Pence’s Political Action Committee “Principles Exalt a Nation.” In December 2007, three months after Blackwater operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, Pence and his Republican Study Committee, which serves “the purpose of advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives,” organized a gathering to welcome Prince to Washington. “Not only has Mr. Prince personally been targeted by partisan warfare repeatedly over the past months, but the use of contracting throughout the government has been under attack by this Congress,” Pence’s committee’s statement said. Should Pence resign for cavorting with and accepting campaign cash from a man who allegedly “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” in the words of a former employee?

I think it's time for the majority party to start acting like one. If Republican-controlled Congress could set aside time to debate condemning MoveOn.org for their Gen. "Betray Us" ad, then the Democratic-controlled Congress ought to be making sure that the double standard of IOKIYAR no longer stands.

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The resignation of Van Jones was a "loss for the country," according to Gov. Howard Dean. "I think he was brought down," Dean told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

John Amato:

Howard Dean said he spoke to Van Jones and said...

Well, he was told by the people waving clip boards around that he was signing something else and I think that's too bad.

Digby writes:

I would hope that these leftist extremists like Color of Change will think twice before they go after an upstanding company like FOX News because the lesson here is that somebody is going to pay a big price for doing it. In fact, it probably would pay to keep a close eye on the FOX gasbags from now on to get an idea of which groups or individuals have offended the network and get rid of them before anyone has a chance to make a public stink. It would save everyone a lot of time and trouble.

We have members in the Republican party like the Michelle Bachmann's that say and do insane things all day long, but they just get a pat on the back from the media and say thank you, may I have another.
The Washington Post actually let a little truth slip into their article about the FOX witch hunt.

But there's more to this story than just the usual Lani Guanier human sacrifice ritual:

Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck all but declared war on Jones after a group the adviser founded in 2005, ColorofChange.org, led an advertising boycott against Beck's show to protest his claim that Obama is a racist.

This is yet another example of Fox News annihilation strategy against anyone who criticizes them. And it works.

It's kind of ironic that they constantly accuse Obama of being a "Chicago" politician when it Roger Ailes who adheres to the classic dictum from The Untouchables:

Malone: You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That's* the *Chicago* way!

Murdoch and Ailes have made it quite clear that if you mess with Fox they will unleash the crazies. They're taking Van Jones' scalp to send that message. He won't be the last. It's not a coincidence that the Washington Post put this surprisingly insightful paragraph far down in the story. In fact, I'm a bit surprised they let it slip through at all.

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(Lest we all forget - only thirty-five years ago)

Hard to imagine it was only thirty-five years ago that President Nixon announced his resignation. It certainly answered weeks of speculation and the end to a long and bitter fight that erupted in the White House and almost took the country down with it.

Nixon: "I have never been a quitter - to leave office now is abhorrent to everything in my body. But . . . . "

I'm not sure we actually ever recovered from Watergate and the Nixon years. To many, it seems to be the gift that just keeps on giving.

History is just like that.

From The Late Show with David Letterman, July 24, 2009.

The citizens of Alaska must grow more embarrassed by the day:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Another ethics complaint was filed against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday – less than a week before her resignation – alleging she failed to submit complete gift disclosure forms in a timely manner.

The complaint filed with the attorney general is the 19th ethics grievance against Palin, who responded via Twitter postings that the filings came from a "serial complainer" intent on abusing the political process.

And now an independent investigator finds Palin may have broken ethics laws by taking big bucks from her GOP buddies to pay for legal bills:

The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin is securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters.

An investigator for the state Personnel Board says in his July 14 report that there is probable cause to believe Palin used or attempted to use her official position for personal gain because she authorized the creation of the trust as the "official" legal defense fund. Read on...

Continuing her bid to be the biggest political joke in U.S. history, soon-to-be ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin chose to whine about the charges on Twitter, accusing her accuser of violating ethics laws:

"In violation of Ethics Act more allegations were filed today by serial complainer; gave to press be4 we could respond; ridiculous, wasteful..." Palin wrote in the first of a string of postings on the social networking site Twitter. Read on...

As our Jon Perr notes, Palin could have raised a lot more money and gotten a lot more help from the GOP faithful had she adopted the Scooter Libby 3-step defense method.

This episode of Red State Update is even better than usual. Open thread below.

BREAKING: Please join us on Wednesday, July 15 at 10:30 am Pacific/1:30 PM Eastern for an exclusive chat with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on the new House-written Health Care Reform Act.

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Sarah Palin quit as Alaska's governor because, she claimed, she needed to "do the right thing for Alaska".

But has anyone sat down and figured out how much this stunt is actually going to cost Alaska's taxpayers?

One of our wise Alaska friends e-mailed the other day, pointing out that Palin's resignation is likely going to wind up costing in the vicinity of $200,000 or more, because a special session is going to be required to name a successor to the lieutenant governor's post.

Indeed, Greg Sargent is reporting that one of the reasons Palin repeatedly gave for resigning -- that defending her on the ethics complaints was costing taxpayers a bundle -- was fundamentally false.

All this for the sake of someone who already has a history of quitting on the state when she hit rough sledding -- but using the splash she made from doing so as a stepping-stone to higher office.

John Ziegler, Palin's Biggest Fan, dropped that point in passing the other night on The O'Reilly Factor -- as though it were an admirable thing to do, of course.

Crisitunity at Swing State Project explored this in a bit further detail:

One other thought about Alaska that just about everyone in the tradmed seems to be missing. Sarah Palin did have a job in between being mayor of Wasilla and Alaska Governor: she was chair of Frank Murkowski's Oil and Gas Commission. How long was she on this Commission? Less than a year... until she quit in January 2004 with a big public huff (leaving the Commission in the lurch with only one member), saying "the experience was taking the 'oomph' out of her passion for government service and she decided to quit rather than becoming bitter." She publicly cited her frustration with being unable to be all straight-talky and mavericky about the corruption and backbiting on the Commission, but the resignation also came at a very convenient time for switching over to lay the groundwork for her successful 2006 gubernatorial run.

As DavidNYC at DailyKos acidly observed:

Don't forget that she also quit four different colleges en route to getting a degree in journalism. It seems that the one lesson Sarah Palin's learned her whole life is that quitters always win.

The best part is that the taxpayers pick up the tab for it, too. Apparently, "what's right for the people of Alaska" is to give them the shaft -- now that she's "too big" for them, especially.

David Broder in the Washington (Republican Propaganda) Post:

The saga of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and his Argentine romance has been such ripe fodder for the gossip mills that the essential governmental question has almost been forgotten.

Whether Sanford can resolve the mess he has made of his personal life is of little concern to anyone but the people involved.

But when he disappeared for five days, telling no one in his administration or even his security detail where he had gone, he did something totally irresponsible. Had any kind of emergency occurred, South Carolina would have been leaderless.

At the moment Sanford abandoned his duties in secret pursuit of private pleasure, he in effect tendered his resignation.

The Legislature should insist he follow through on it.

Now while I agree with the sentiment that Sanford abandoned his job to follow his little brain, er...heart to Argentina, I'm struck by the difference in Broder's tone from his coverage of Bill Clinton's infidelities:

One of the most revealing statements Broder -- or, perhaps, any political journalist -- has ever made came in 1998. In November 1998, after nearly a year of public opinion polls showing, basically, that people liked Bill Clinton and wanted the Lewinsky investigation to just go away, and of the Washington journalist/pundit crowd vehemently disagreeing, the Post published an article by Sally Quinn attempting to explain the disconnect (which lives on to this day).

Quinn famously quoted Broder explaining why the "Washington Establishment" -- which under anybody's definition includes both Broder and Quinn -- was so angry at Clinton: "He came in here and he trashed the place ... and it's not his place."

Broder's implication -- that Washington was his place, not the president's -- is arrogant enough. But Broder's other comment speaks volumes: "The judgment is harsher in Washington. We don't like being lied to."

What a difference ten years can make. Of course, it has nothing to do with Sanford being a Republican, does it, Dean Broder?

(image courtesy of bjkeefe)

The right is collectively imploding over Sarah Palin's resignation, and as with any sort of passing there comes a period of grieving. Two major stages in that process are denial and anger, and the always-classy Erick Erickson of RedState is already showing signs of both:

1. Sarah Palin resigned, I think, to spare her family from more attacks. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Sarah Palin is doing this just days after a very nasty Vanity Fair article where folks like Nicolle Wallace and, according to Bill Kristol, McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt (though I’m told Schmidt is not involved), savaged her.

2. Unfortunately, by resigning, I think the left and national media will be emboldened to ritualistically engage in the metaphorical gang raping of conservative politicians, particularly those who are female and have children. They’ll decide savaging Palin’s family drove her from office, so the sky’s the limit on the next conservative with kids.

Finally, Erickson goes flat out delusional, comparing Palin's resignation to Obi Wan Kenobi taking one for the team and sacrificing it all to fight the dark side:

4. I’ve had this running thought all day, perhaps because I was watching it on TV in HD for the first time, that this is kind of like Ben Kenobi letting Darth Vader strike him down. Palin is not going to run in 2012, but by doing this she can now become Barack Obama’s worst nightmare, and help rebuild the opposition to Obama. How? Because were she to remain a 2012 contender, she’d keep having stories by anonymous McCain campaign staffers and other 2012 contenders going after her and her family. Take that ambition off the table and it neutralizes a lot of that. So she can focus on candidates and ideas without an ulterior motive focused on 2012.
Read on...

Really? Erick, you know this wasn't about her children. She used them as political props all through the '08 campaign and continued to do it till the bitter end. And in the end, it was her ineptitude and ethical shortcomings that did her in. Perhaps the enduring lesson from this tragic political tale with be that going forward, politicians of all stripes should think twice about exploiting their children for political gain.

Is there an indictment coming for Palin? That remains to be seen, but one thing seems certain -- Sarah Palin is now toxic. She walked away from the people of her state when the going got tough and has shed any remaining crumbs of credibility she may have had left.

Ooopsies! Someone got caught with their pants down...literally:

Sources in Washington and Nevada say Republican Sen. John Ensign, a rising star in the Republican Party considering a 2012 presidential bid will hold a press conference later today in which he will acknowledge an extramarital affair.

Ensign, a member of the Senate GOP leadership, flew back to his native Las Vegas today in anticipation of the public announcement, sources said, missing a vote considered key to the Nevada tourist industry.[..]

Elected in 2000 and reelected in 2006, Ensign has been a leading conservative among Senate Republicans, playing a key role in demanding the resignation of Larry Craig in September 2007. Ensign called Craig a "disgrace" after he was arrested in June 2007 in an airport men's restroom on disorderly conduct charges. Craig resisted the calls from Ensign to resign but retired from the Senate last November.

Per TPM, the woman worked on the Ensign re-election campaign and her husband worked as one of his Senate staffers. The reason it came to light now?

For a guy who harbored presidential ambitions, this is tough blow to his hopes for 2012. So something had to give. What was it?

Late Update: Politico has more detail, including a reported demand for money from the husband of Ensign's lover: Political insiders in the Senate and in Nevada told POLITICO that Ensign began an affair with a staffer several months after he separated from his wife. When Ensign reconciled with his wife, the sources said, he gave the aide a severance package and parted ways.

Sometime later, a Nevada source said, Ensign met with the husband of the woman involved and had what this source described as a positive encounter. Sources said that the man subsequently asked Ensign for a substantial sum of money - at which point Ensign decided to make the affair public.

Ouch. So cheating on your wife and extortion from former employees? How does that square with this statement made in 2004 regarding the sanctity of marriage:

“Marriage recognizes the ideal of a father and mother living together to raise their children,” Ensign said. “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation. Marriage, as a social institution, predates every other institution on which ordered society in America has relied.”

Ensign, in his comments, noted that Nevadans had amended the state constitution to guarantee the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Ensign emphasized the need to preserve the will of Nevadans who voted overwhelmingly to preserve marriage as well as the need to preserve the will of the majority of Americans.

“I am deeply concerned that a few unelected judges and some locally elected government officials have taken steps to redefine marriage to fit their own agenda,” said Ensign. “It is not right to mold marriage to fit the desires of a few, against the wishes of so many, and to ignore the important role of marriage.”

Yeah, good to see you uphold that sanctity, but my uncle and his partner of 15 years are somehow a threat to it.

John McCain admitted to Bob Schieffer on Face The Nation that the US violated the Geneva Conventions under George W. Bush regarding the abusive treatment of prisoners.

You know, that torture thing.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (Ranking, Armed Services Committee): First of all let me repeat what you just said, Bob. I have opposed torture. It's violation of the Geneva Conventions. I worry about treatment of Americans in future conflicts.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: The-- the allegations are that they gave the wrong counsel that’s and—- and that bad things were done. And we violated fundamental commitments that the United States of America made when we signed the Geneva Conventions. And we disregarded what might happen to Americans who are held captive in the future. And by the way, those who say our enemies won’t abide the Geneva Conventions they will if they know there’s going to retribution for their violation of it.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you about this quickly, Jay Bybee who was one of the people at the Justice department that wrote the memos that gave the CIA what they call the legal reasons to go ahead with all this, he’s now a federal judge. We understand that he very much regrets, or at least he’s told people, he regrets having written those memos. Do you think that he should be impeached or do you think that he should resign or you-- you think he should be left alone?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Well, a resignation would be a decision he would have to make on his own. But he falls into the same category as everybody else as far as giving very bad advice and misinterpreting fundamentally what the United States is all about, much less things like the Geneva Conventions. Plus--under President Reagan we signed an agreement against torture, we’re in violation of that...

So tell me what are the penalties for violating the Geneva Conventions? John McCain freely admitted that our great country violated the agreements we signed up for. Is it an act of vengeance that the people who broke those treaties should be prosecuted or is it just following the law?

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