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During some of the media's endless coverage of the Fort Hood shootings today, Larry King brought in former POW Shoshana Johnson, Dr. Phil McGraw and former JAG officer Tom Kenniff to speculate about what the mindset of the accused attacker Nidal Malik Hasan may have been. When Kenniff called some of CNN's previous coverage on the topic "psycho-babble", tried to say that a ranking officer could not be suffering from PTSD and asserted that Hasan's motivations looked more like an act of terrorism because he has a Muslim name, Shoshana Johnson and Phil McGraw both rightfully called him out for it.

When Kenniff while attempting to counter McGraw and Johnson asked Johnson if she had ever been to Iraq, she had to remind him that she was a POW:

KENNIF: I spent a year in Iraq, ma'am. Have you ever been to Iraq?

JOHNSON: I'm a POW. I got shot.

Kenniff was obviously unaware that Johnson was in fact the first female African American POW in U.S. history.

KING: We're back.

We are happy to be able to call on our friend, Dr. Phil, the host of his own show, "New York Times" best-selling author and a -- and a member of the fraternity that is from Texas.

In fact, do you know Fort Hood?

DR. PHIL MCGRAW, TV SHOW HOST: I do. I've been there and I've spent time working with some of the widows of soldiers and widows and widowers of soldiers that were lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I've spent time on Fort Hood. And it's a -- it's a wonderful...

KING: It's a huge base, right?

MCGRAW: It's 339 acres. It's a city within itself down there. And on any given day, you can have 30,000 or 40,000 people on the base. It truly is a city within a city and good folks. And, as the general said, it's -- it's their home. I mean this isn't a war zone, it's their home.

KING: I asked the FBI if he had -- the FBI agent if he had ever heard of a psychiatrist committing mayhem. He never had.

Have you?

MCGRAW: Well, no, I have not. But, Larry, we're dealing with a very different kind of war here. And, you know, this is a man that, from what I understand, was doing all kinds of drug and rehabilitation counseling with -- with soldiers and returning soldiers. And we know that there is a tremendous degree of stress with this war. And I think the military will tell you that it's a new animal and nobody knows exactly what to do with it. And I don't know -- everything is speculation at this point. But he was apparently scheduled for deployment, did not want to go. I think he has maybe seen the problems that some of these soldiers were experiencing when they come back to try to reintegrate into society, and maybe the fear got him, and he just snapped.

You can't make sense out of nonsense. And you have to stop and think about this, Larry. How far out of touch with reality and reason do you have to go to actually pick up a weapon and kill your friends, kill your fellow soldiers, your fellow warriors? This is a major mental event. This guy was not just having a bad day. This is a serious, serious --

KING: Joining us in New York is Tom Kennif a commissioned officer with the Army National Guard's Judge Advocates General Group. He is a general with the war in Iraq, and a criminal defense attorney. In Washington, our old friend Shoshanna Johnson, former POW, U.S. Army specialist, now serves on the Advisory Panel for the Veterans Administration.

Dr. Phil is with us here in the studios in Los Angeles.

Tom, what do you make of this?

TOM KENNIFF, FMR. ARMY JAG: Look, Larry, you know, with all due respect to Dr. Phil, you know, having been through the war in Iraq, and having seen what these soldiers go through, you know, with respect to this incident, I need to take a giant step back from all the psycho-babble I've been hearing for the last few hours.

Let's take a look at the facts of this situation. This is not some lower enlisted soldier. This is a major. He is a high ranking field grade officer. That means that he outranks approximately 95 percent of the military.

He has a medical -- he is a medical doctor. He is an MD. That means he occupies a position of prestige, not only within the military, but also within society at large.

He is paid well for the job he does. You know, this looks a lot less like PTSD, and a lot more like the Hassan Akbar case in 2003, where another soldier who has an Islamic last name, throws grenades randomly into tents occupied by his fellow officers, and by his fellow soldiers, for no other reason but to commit acts of terror, and to instill fear on the military installation, and to bring attention to himself.

SHOSHANA JOHNSON, FORMER POW: Hello.

KING: Are you doing, Tom -- by mentioning Islamic last name, are you doing speculating of your own?

KENNIFF: I am speculating. . That's true. We have very limited information right now. But we're all speculating. And what I'm saying is my speculation seems to fit a lot more in with the reality of this case.

JOHNSON: No. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. I think you're talking --

(CROSS TALK)

KING: Hold it. Let's --

MCGRAW: I don't think you can say that. I think that's a terrible innuendo here.

(CROSS TALK)

JOHNSON: As someone who suffers from PTSD, I know exactly what I say to my psychiatrist. And if he is sitting back and hearing this day in and day out, the fear may get to him. The fact of the matter that he is a major, or the fact that he is a doctor doesn't excuse that he is a human being and he feels.

You're saying because he is a major in the Army that he is not going to feel the way a private does.

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Okay, maybe requiring minimum IQs as a standard to run for national office is a bit harsh, but can we at least insist that politicians prove that they are actually human and not some mindless automaton programmed with talking points?

(In the past,) Foxx has claimed Democratic reforms would mean seniors are “put to death by their government,” that health reform is a “distraction,” and that “there are no Americans who don’t have health care.” She was at it again today on the House floor, arguing that health reform is a greater threat to our country than “any terrorist right now in any country”:

Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

Normally, this is where my head makes a very loud thunk against my desk at the stupidity, but instead I just find myself really angry at this illogical fear mongering and ugliness. But what can you expect from a politician ugly enough to call Matthew Shepard's murder "a hoax"?. Obviously her lip service towards valuing life doesn't really mean any living people.

Rep. Foxx, the lives of those 44,000 Americans who die needlessly every year because they do not have insurance is blood on your hands.

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.

Glenn Greenwald

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

.

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An investigation into abuse of terrorism detainees won't be halted following a letter sent to President Barack Obama by seven former CIA directors. "I don't want to start getting into the business of squelching, you know, investigations that are being conducted," Obama told CNN's John King Sunday.

"I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look after an institution that they helped to build," Obama told CBS' Bob Schieffer in a separate interview.

Politico:

The White House’s comments on the sensitive issue have been closely watched by supporters and opponents of further investigation into interrogations some have described as torture.

In August,
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y) urged Obama and his aides not to send signals about what Holder should do in terms of investigating the interrogations.

“I have nothing to say to the president on this, except let Mr. Holder alone. As far as I know, they are," Nadler said at a convention of liberal bloggers and activists. “It would be….improper for the president to decide that there ought to be or ought not to be a special counsel, prosecutions or whatever.”

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David Sirota on CNN's American Morning explaining why the White House throwing Van Jones under the bus was such a terrible idea. They've done nothing but show the right wing that they will cave if they decide to attack a progressive working in the White House.

ROBERTS: The president hired Van Jones to find more green jobs, putting more Americans back to work and helping the environment. Now, Jones is looking for a job himself. He has been under fire for some pointed comments about Republicans and a petition that he signed back in 2004 questioning what the Bush White House knew about 9/11. He has now resigned.

To talk more about that, let's bring in syndicated columnist David Sirota and David Frum, the editor of newmajority.com and former speech writer for the Bush White House.

David Sirota, let's start with you, because you wrote quite a scathing column that appeared on the newleft.org and as well on the huffingtonpost.com, saying you're absolutely outraged by the way the White House handled this.

SIROTA: Van Jones is a national hero for his work on green jobs. He's known as an expert on energy policy, on economic policy. He's somebody who made a mistake, who acknowledged that he made a mistake a long time ago, and he was tossed out by this White House.

And I think what we can learn from what happened is what this White House values and what this White House doesn't value. The White House stuck by Tim Geithner as Tim Geithner was involved, the treasury secretary, in a tax scandal. He's accepted gifts from the banking industry. The White House stood by him.

The White House has stood by other people, like Ben Bernanke, who has really been at the heart of our economic problems. And they're basically putting Van Jones out to pasture because of something Van Jones said was a mistake.

And I think what's going on here is that the White House is listening to the white right wing's political terrorists, people like Glenn Beck, people like conservative activists who have targeted Van Jones because Van Jones is an African-American with a progressive movement background working on behalf of social justice.

That's something, unfortunately, that is apparently, according to the right wing, not allowed in this country.

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In his new book, Tom Ridge will say that members of the Bush administration pressured him to raise the terror alert level for political reasons. A former Bush White House communication director has resorted to name calling to refute the charge.

"During the 2004 presidential campaign we were having a very political discussion about terrorism," said Nicolle Wallace. "But that is quite different from what [Tom Ridge] very, I think in a very wussy way alleges."

Wallace appeared as a panel member on "Fox News Sunday."

Maybe this sinking feeling in my gut would go away if anyone in the Obama administration bothered to explain the specifics of why they believe indefinite detention is necessary. How can you be so sure someone is too dangerous to release, and yet not have enough evidence to prosecute them?

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January deadline.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House was already trying to build support.

"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should be prosecuted or released.

Big Tent Democrat and Glenn Greenwald reactions here.

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On Monday night, Glenn Beck completely ignored the murder of Dr. George Tiller on his hourlong program, despite it being the nation's top story. Apparently he -- like his heroine, Sarah Palin -- doesn't see abortion-clinic violence as terrorism. And goodness no, Bill O'Reilly had no hand in this!

No big deal, people. Move along, move along.

But then last night, Beck went on Bill O'Reilly's program to back up O'Reilly's claim that the tragic murder of a military recruiter in Arkansas by a Muslim man angry about the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan could just as easily be blamed on the liberal media, NBC in particular.

Beck read on air the letter he wrote to NBC's Jeffrey Immelt:

Instead of focusing on attacking Bill O'Reilly, your journalists should focus on getting their facts right. If I applied the reasoning of your networks to their natural end, we'd all live in a world where someone couldn't express their opinion against infidelity -- because by your standard, you'd blame that person for every husband who killed his cheating wife. The government couldn't alert a family whenever a pedophile moved into their neighborhood, because by your network's standard, they'd be responsible for someone attacking that offender. Your network couldn't say that global warming was a danger to the earth, because by your network standard, you'd be responsible every time ELF burned down a housing development or a car dealership.

This is, of course, pure obfuscation. Outside of the pedophile example, Beck is describing discussions of policy and issues as causing various acts of violence. But that causal connection is tenuous at best.

On the other hand, there is a very clear causal connection between the overt demonization of people and violence that occurs against them. Bill O'Reilly held an individual up for extreme demonization, describing him not merely as someone he opposed but as a "baby killer" and "mass murderer". This kind of demonization in particular is guaranteed to produce violence, because of course the chief means of stopping a wanton killer is the use of deadly force, and O'Reilly in fact openly suggested that such force might be applied to Dr. Tiller.

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Jonathan Alter says that Dick Cheney is setting a trap for the Obama administration and is laying the ground work for him to give them an "I told you so" on their torture policies in case the United States is hit again by a terrorist attack. He and Keith talk about just how crass that is and whether it would even work given that the political environment in this country has changed since the aftermath of 9-11.

In the mean time, Bill O'Reilly was busy laying that trap during his Talking Points Memo in the very same hour. So sorry Jonathan. Cheney's minions are not waiting until the United States is attacked to get Cheney's talking points out there. They're carrying water for Dick Cheney right now. If the Democrats are going to combat this, they need to do it now.

TalkLeft: Rosen recants on Sotomayor, Turley takes up his standard, but who will represent white males on the court?

The Pump Handle: The Climate Bill is less than ideal, but the best we're gonna get right now

The Big Picture: The back story to "Bailout Nation" (h/t swimgirl)

TPMMuckraker: A sketchy DOD report does not attempt to establish the original status of the detainees it claims "reengaged" in terrorism, and does not consider the possibility that some of the 540 men released from Gitmo just might have been radicalized during their imprisonment.

American Street: Death rattle of the cult of Intelligence?

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Scoop44, Alien Truth, Politics In Color, Michigan Liberal

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Oy. Only on FoxNews.

EASTON: Well, I thought this whole -- the two speeches this week were just a high-pitched -- unfortunate high-pitched partisan duel between the two of them.

I know the press focused a lot on -- and has focused a lot on Dick Cheney and his provocative comments that the administration is keeping us less safe. And frankly, I think Cheney should give this president some credit on things like his very difficult decision to not to release the photos of alleged detainee abuse, for example, his flip on military tribunals.

But if you look at the Obama speech, that was equally partisan, and there wasn’t a lot of focus on that. I mean, he talked about this mess that he had inherited. He talked about the administration sort of fitting facts for an ideological agenda.

Why can’t this president give the previous president credit for keeping us safe for seven years? And by the way, we know from the C- SPAN interview that he’s in touch with President Bush. They’ve actually talked since he’s been in office.

But I think it would carry this White House a long way past the problems that Ceci talks about and get the support of somebody like McCain, Senator McCain, or Senator Lindsey Graham , who also supported closing Gitmo and also had concerns about enhanced interrogation techniques.

I think it would buy him a lot of credit or a lot of good will on the other side of the aisle and with centrist Democrats if he gave this -- he gave the Bush administration some credit.

Actually, I think considering the mess that Obama was left (something that is indisputable) and the grief he's been getting, not only from Cheney but the rest of the Party of No, he's been remarkably reticent on blaming the Bush administration for anything.

But I tell you what, Nina, we'll give the Bush administration credit for keeping us safe in the last seven years (although residents in the Gulf Coast might quibble) IF you and your entire FoxNews bobblehead crew admit that they quite stubbornly and fatally did NOT keep us safe for that first year despite warnings that Bin Laden was determined to strike and that we lost 3,100 Americans because of that blindness.

Deal?

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Will Rogers famously said that he wasn't a part of an organized group, he was a Democrat. Sadly, when it comes to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), that's even more true. I understand that Nelson is a conservative Democrat and comes from a historically conservative state, but there's no excuse for his abject stupidity in discussing Guantanamo and how to deal with the detainees there.

What's so odd about Nelson's NIMBY attitude is that he himself points out the flaws in his logic: we have and are successfully housing some really dangerous men (including both foreign and domestic terrorists, like Moussaoui and Eric Rudolph) in prisons on American soil without incident. Nelson just doesn't want them here.

Well, Sen. Nelson, I'd prefer that we have a country that wasn't full of criminals and people who wish us harm too. But unfortunately, that isn't reality. I live within 30 miles of San Quentin prison and Bay Area residents (for as liberal and hippy as our reputation is) do not seem to be all that concerned about our collective safety. The fear that these people will be on American soil so that we deal with them as befitting our justice system forgets that they will also be under heavy lock and guard as well.

And then in another annoyingly wrong nod to bipartisanship, Nelson lends credit to the Republican meme of Jack Bauer/the-ends-justify-the-means issue of keeping American safe is somehow the moral equivalent of respecting the rule of law:

WALLACE: Senator Nelson, who’s right about the balance between, on the one hand, keeping the country safe and, on the other hand, living up to our values?

NELSON: Well, they probably both are in some -- to one degree or another. I don’t think anybody wants to see this country attacked again. And I think it’s also a question about whether or not it is held against us because these tactics have been used.

But look, the president, when he was running, said that we’re going to stop waterboarding. John McCain has said it’s torture. I think what we have to do is understand that this decision apparently was decided last -- last November.

But what we need to do is make sure that the intelligence information that’s gathered is accurate, that we do everything within our power to get good intelligence, and it may or may not consist of coming from enhanced techniques.

Oh holy FSM. I'm so tired of this dishonesty. NOTHING of value came from torture, and to suggest that it might is accepting the Republican framing of this issue. Nelson should be ashamed of his ignorance. If we had to torture three people over 30 days more than 200 times looking for some way to connect Iraq to 9/11 (unsuccessfully, too), then how can anyone with the least bit of common sense much less intelligence think that it kept us safe? Does Nelson actually think that the 108 detainees killed via "enhanced interrogation techniques" have actually deterred terrorism?

Think about it, Sen. Nelson, before you spout off on television again, hurting your party and the President's stance: If your son, brother, cousin or friend (even if he had jihadist tendencies--something we have not yet proven) was killed in the name of the American "War on Terror", would you be inclined to be sympathetic to the American cause, or would you too seek revenge for the US's dehumanizing treatment?

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Apparently subjecting all of us to her father in their ginned up "dueling debates" coverage nonsense on MSNBC wasn't enough for them. They just had to bring in Darth Junior to give us another dose of fear mongering and attacks on the President's speech.

I can't wait for the usual comments about how this means the opposite of how it appears, Obama's extended super brilliant chess game, etc.:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.

In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Judge Bates ruled last week that the three — each of whom says he was seized outside of Afghanistan — could challenge their detention in court.

Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network, which is representing the detainees, condemned the decision in a statement.

“Though he has made many promises regarding the need for our country to rejoin the world community of nations, by filing this appeal, President Obama has taken on the defense of one of the Bush administration’s unlawful policies founded on nothing more than the idea that might makes right,” she said.

There's something about the annual Conservative Political Action Committee's annual convention that just draws out the ugly eliminationists. Every year it's someone -- usually Ann Coulter -- wishing aloud that someone would just blow away or lock up liberals and minorities en masse. This year it's John Bolton:

He [Obama] said during the campaign that Iran was a tiny threat. Tiny depending on how many nuclear weapons they ultimately are able to deliver on target. Tiny compared to the Soviet Union, but is the loss of one American city — pick one at random: Chicago — is that a tiny threat?

As Think Progress notes:

The audience erupted in cheers and laughter at the idea of Obama’s home city being obliterated.

It's nice to see they've expanded their targets. When right-wingers wish aloud for terrorists to obliterate an American city, it's usually San Francisco.