Torture Verified

This is very illuminating. Greenwald always does an excellent job of making legal issues understandable and compelling:

According to the New York Times and Washington Post, both of which received an advanced copy, Mayer's book reports the following:

• "Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes."
• "A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were 'enemy combatants' subject to indefinite incarceration."
• "[A] top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees' cases . . .

  'There will be no review,' the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. 'The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.'"

• "[T]he [CIA] analyst estimated that a full third of the camp's detainees were there by mistake. When told of those findings, the top military commander at Guantanamo at the time, Major Gen. Michael Dunlavey, not only agreed with the assessment but suggested that an even higher percentage of detentions -- up to half -- were in error. Later, an academic study by Seton Hall University Law School concluded that 55 percent of detainees had never engaged in hostile acts against the United States, and only 8 percent had any association with al-Qaeda."
• [T]he International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were 'categorically' torture, which is illegal under both American and international law".
• "[T]he Red Cross document 'warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.'"

This is what a country becomes when it decides that it will not live under the rule of law, when it communicates to its political leaders that they are free to do whatever they want -- including breaking our laws -- and there will be no consequences. There are two choices and only two choices for every country -- live under the rule of law or live under the rule of men. We've collectively decided that our most powerful political leaders are not bound by our laws -- that when they break the law, there will be no consequences. We've thus become a country which lives under the proverbial "rule of men" -- that is literally true, with no hyperbole needed -- and Mayer's revelations are nothing more than the inevitable by-product of that choice.

That's why this ongoing, well-intentioned debate that Andrew Sullivan is having with himself and his readers over whether "torture is worse than illegal, warrantless eavesdropping" is so misplaced, and it's also why those who are dismissing as "an overblown distraction" the anger generated by last week's Congressional protection of surveillance lawbreakers are so deeply misguided. Things like "torture" and "illegal eavesdropping" can't be compared as though they're separate, competing policies. They are rooted in the same framework of lawlessness. The same rationale that justifies one is what justifies the other. Endorsing one is to endorse all of it.

In fact, none of the scandals of radicalism and criminality which we've learned about over the last seven years -- including the creation of this illegal torture regime -- can be viewed in isolation. They're all by-products of the country that we've become in the post-9/11 era, primarily as a result of our collective decision to exempt our Government leaders from the rule of law; to acquiesce to the manipulative claim that we can only be Safe if we allow our Leaders to be free from consequences when they commit crimes; and to demonize advocates of the rule of law as -- to use Larry Lessig's mindless, reactionary clichés -- shrill, Leftist "hysterics" who need to "get off [their] high horse(s)".

That is the mentality that has allowed the Bush administration to engage in this profound assault on our national character, to violate our laws at will. Our political and media elite have acquiesced to all of this when they weren't cheering it all on. Those who object to it, who argue that these abuses of political power are dangerous in the extreme and that we cannot tolerate deliberate government lawbreaking, are dismissed as shrill Leftist hysterics.

Read the whole thing. It's not too much longer.

Iraq and Leaving

I have long feared that something even stronger than the Lieberman Electoral Strategy will be used against Barack Obama. Joe Lieberman based his "independent" campaign around his heartfelt and very sincere desire to see the troops come home from Iraq. "No one wants to bring the troops home more than I do," was his oft-repeated formulation. Of course, it was never true, but by repeating it enough times it sure ended up sounding true. The people of Connecticut, overwhelmingly against the Iraq War and for bringing home our troops starting immediately, voted into office one of the most dedicated war supporters in the Senate.

In the presidential election it might be even more powerful, since the current President has significant power to bolster the rhetoric. We've always known that the Surge would be temporary, and that as the brigades withdrew we would be treated to victory rhetoric from the President. That's come to pass nicely. The wild card is whether the Bush Administration starts further draw downs before the election. It's my fear that they'll say, "Well, McCain's Surge worked so well that we're going to start drawing down to 100,000 troops" in the month before the election. Once again, there will be a clear choice between "continue the war" and "end the war," but the waters will be muddied by the Administration and by McCain's constant insistence that he "wants to bring the troops home too."

The real strategic goal of the war supporters appears to be nothing more than staying in Iraq. Lieberman perhaps wanted American troops between Israel and Iran to help protect Jewish lands. President Bush might want to stay in Iraq because his advisers told him it would remake the Middle East and bring freedom for millions. Many people, however, want to stay in Iraq so that we can have 150,000 US troops over the second largest deposit of oil in the world. Serious (Republican) people like Alan Greenspan and James Baker have said securing access to oil is the real strategic objective of the war. Of course, anyone suggesting such a thing before the war was regarded as a left-wing nut, smearing our President and our troops. It was called treason.

We were told by the President (who knew it was untrue) that Iraq was an imminent threat to our security, and we had to invade to deal with it. When we learned that it was untrue we were told that leaving would be a threat to our security because violence was high. With violence being low, we were told that leaving would be a threat to our security. Now we're told that even Obama's plan, which has us leaving by 2011, is a threat to our security! Eight years is not enough.

It really begins to look like the plan for Iraq all along was just not to leave.

Obama's Abortion Problem?

Really? This is your latest attack, Hannity? You're now claiming that Obama's flip-flopping on reproductive rights? This is weak sauce, man.

Obama said what Democrats have been saying for over a decade - that we oppose late term abortion, and that we would support laws against it if there was a strict exemption for taking into account the life of the mother. This health exemption is seen as gray by the right, though, and they worry that a mother will cry: "but I don't want to have this baby! It's causing me mental anguish and that affects my health! I am exempt from the prohibition!" Obama just explains that that doesn't cut it. There is a strong record of Obama using personal responsibility rhetoric, and that's all this represents. After all, you can hardly claim that a 3rd trimester pregnancy snuck up on you! You have a responsibility, as a woman, to make your choice before that viability threshold is crossed. It is only your own fault if you choose to wait until the last minute.

Strang: Based on emails we received, another issue of deep importance to our readers is a candidate’s stance on abortion. We largely know your platform, but there seems to be some real confusion about your position on third-trimester and partial-birth abortions. Can you clarify your stance for us?

Obama: I absolutely can, so please don’t believe the emails. I have repeatedly said that I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don’t think that “mental distress” qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions.

The other email rumor that’s been floating around is that somehow I’m unwilling to see doctors offer life-saving care to children who were born as a result of an induced abortion. That’s just false. There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the “Born Alive” bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill. The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn’t think it was going to pass constitutional muster.

Ever since that time, emails have been sent out suggesting that, somehow, I would be in favor of letting an infant die in a hospital because of this particular vote. That’s not a fair characterization, and that’s not an honest characterization. It defies common sense to think that a hospital wouldn't provide life-saving treatment to an infant that was alive and had a chance of survival.

Imminently reasonable, don't you think?

What a ridiculous charge of flip-floppery. And yet, once again, we're subjected to a deluge of stories uncritically repeating the McCain line.

McCain Abandons Global Warming

Larry Kudlow has noticed something in McCain's Economic Plan:

I went back last evening and carefully read [John McCain's] 15-page policy pamphlet called "Jobs for America." Here's what I found: There is no mention of cap-and-trade. None. Nada.

....So I picked up the phone and dialed a senior McCain official to make sure these old eyes hadn't missed it. Sure enough, on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac's two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely — even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read.

First McCain forgot about the Cap in his Cap-and-Trade program, and now the program is just gone entirely. As of now has no plan to address Global Warming, becoming like Bush in one more way.

Some Maverick. Poor McCain 2000. He's so far gone.

Obama's NotFlops

The Corner, putting together a list of Obama's Notflops:

How about taking a position on terrorist wiretapping that is the opposite of a position he articulated (and voted on) earlier? Or saying he agreed with the Supreme Court striking down a gun law he had earlier said he thought was constitutional? Or saying one thing about trade now and another during the primaries? Or “refining” (the term his own campaign chose to use) his view on Iraq to bring it closer into line with McCain’s?

"Thin gruel," as Andrew Sullivan - former republican blogger - says. Let's take them one by one.

• FISA: the conference bill was significantly different than the original Senate version. Importantly, it restored Constitutional Rule to our nation's eavesdropping practices - protecting the rights of Americans against warrantless search. He didn't want the good to be the enemy of the perfect over civil Telecom Immunity.
  
• Gun Rights: He has always said that he supported an individual right to bear arms - the most important question answered by the court. He supported the DC ban, but that is not necessarily inconsistent with the individual right since it wasn't a universal ban. The court decided it was unconstitutional, so he agreed, because the central question was one of rights.
  
• Trade: Saying that he'll unilaterally opt-out of NAFTA, then later saying that he would use the threat of an opt-out as negotiating leverage is not a change.
  
• Iraq: Not even remotely a flip-flop. It's a notflop.
  

Why not have an election based on reality for once, instead of manufactured distractions from the Republican Party?

Unified Theory of Forgetfulness?

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has been looking for a Grand Unified Theory of McCain's Crumbiness.

McCain doesn't understand his own policies. Hilzoy said it perfectly:

There's a pattern to this. McCain seems to have a few ideas about economics. Spending is out of control, and if we just restrain it, things will be OK. (Moreover, none of the spending he proposes -- e.g., the spending required to add 200,000 troops to the armed forces -- actually counts.) People should have the right to put their own tax money into their own Social Security accounts. Cutting taxes raises revenue. And that seems to be about it.

Since he doesn't actually understand what he's talking about, he periodically says something ill-advised -- that he supports privatizing Social Security, that he'll balance the budget in four years, and so forth. Then his advisors walk him back -- as they have already done with his promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term, and as I expect they'll do shortly on Social Security.

But it's not just on economics that this happens. Recall his advisors taking back his promise to kick Russia out of the G-8, the way he has needed to be corrected about whether Iran is training al Qaeda, or whether al Qaeda is Shi'a, or how many troops we have in Iraq, and so forth. And remember that he doesn't seem to know what a cap and trade system is, despite having co-sponsored cap and trade legislation in Congress, and having a cap and trade system as a central part of his energy policy.

He has a few ideas lodged in his head, without anything like the background he'd need in order to question or assess them, and without any discernible interest in learning more. He doesn't keep basic, basic facts straight, or know really elementary aspects of his own policies.

I never thought I'd end up covering John McCain like this. I expected, after eight years of Bush, to be able to argue about genuine philosophical and policy differences, rather than going on about the most basic matters of competence. But McCain's performance so far is just frightening. We've had eight years of a clueless President who governs on the basis of his gut plus a few stray ideas that wafted in on the breeze and somehow stuck. We do not need four more.

That's a scary thought.

McCain Forgetful about Balanced Budget?

Early in the morning McCain says he'll balance budget in four years, largely with the magic of "winning" in Iraq.

Then, six hours later, his senior economic advisor says it's eight years, not four:

"The senator has always pledged to balance the budget by the end of his second term."

Thereby making it appear that he hadn't fliped and flopped back and forth on the timeline. Which is it? Who knows! That's Strategic Ambiguity at its best! No one can get angry at you for breaking your word, because you never gave a clear word on the subject. Brilliant.

Either that, or McCain knew that it was supposed to be eight years, and forgot on the way to the podium.

White House Lies about Censoring EPA

The White House had said it had no part in the content of a "controversial" EPA report regarding Global Warming.

It turns out that Cheney's office was heavily involved in censoring the conclusions of the report.

What a surprise.

Coverage of Obama on Iraqa

I am so ticked off about the coverage of this Iraq Not-Flop. Seriously. I'm as angry as I was while I watched the Swift Boat Vets get fawning press coverage by the "liberal media" as they lied about John Kerry's combat commendations.

If the McCain campaign says it, it must be true, and it dominates the discourse for the week. It is infuriating.

Michelle Obama Loves America JUST like McCain

McCain hates Youtube.



From his own mouth: McCain didn't love America until he was a POW. So don't talk to me about Mrs. Obama not being "really proud" of her country until now.

"We're Winning in Iraq"

We've been hearing a lot lately that we are now "winning in Iraq," because the McCain campaign has declared it to be true. When asked for specifics, McCain supporters primarily say that "Violence is down." This is true. Instead of 4 deadly car bombings in Baghdad a week, there's closer to 2.

They also say that political reconciliation is going gangbusters. But what about that? Specifically, what reconciliation has there been? Answer: there's been some progress on provincial elections, but there are still issues to be resolved that have stalled the election. Significantly, there's been no agreement on Oil Revenue Sharing. There still isn't satisfactory electricity of water - even to the capital! Reconstruction projects remain as stalled as they ever have been. And most grievously, there still hasn't been that run-through of the constitution that the Sunnis were promised so that they would vote for the damned thing! Don't those things seem important?

As for the successes we've had, those are largely credited to our policy of paying our enemies not to fight us. That is known as arming your short-term friends, something that has come back to bite us before (see Iraq, Afghanistan). And you don't have to believe me on this, my favorite non-partisan research group, the GAO, said so.

This "We are Winning" garbage is the old Bush-party line! They've been telling us the same thing for years now! In fact, I could have said the same exact thing last summer. "We're making progress, and getting closer to being able to pull out, but it's not there yet." Well I say 4000+ dead and 2 trillion dollars and 7 years is enough of a commitment for America. Our combat troops have done their jobs with honor, and it's time to bring them home. It's time to start spending our treasure in our own country to get off Oil. Either that, or we can spend another 4 years being told that we're just 6-9 months from "turning the corner."

Also, by the way, violence is always down in the summer. It's hot as hell. You can't go jihading in the oven, gringo.

Craps vs Poker for President?

Interestingly, both of our Presidential candidates are gamblers. One plays small-stakes poker, while the other plays craps for thousands of dollars at a time. One is a game where skill matters, the other is a game where you are always at a disadvantage, at the whims of dumb random luck. Which would you rather have as President?

The casino craps player is a social animal, a thrill seeker who wants not just to win but to win with a crowd. Unlike cards or a roulette wheel, well-thrown dice reward most everyone on the rail, yielding a collective yawp that drowns out the slots. It is a game for showmen, Hollywood stars and basketball legends with girls on their arms. It is also a favorite pastime of the presumptive Republican nominee for President, John McCain.

The backroom poker player, on the other hand, is more cautious and self-absorbed. Card games may be social, but they are played in solitude. No need for drama. The quiet card counter is king, and only a novice banks on luck. In this game, a good bluff trumps blind faith, and the studied observer beats the showman. So it is fitting that the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, raked in so many pots in his late-night games with political friends. […]

...

In the past decade, he has played on Mississippi riverboats, on Indian land, in Caribbean craps pits and along the length of the Las Vegas Strip. Back in 2005 he joined a group of journalists at a magazine-industry conference in Puerto Rico, offering betting strategy on request. “Enjoying craps opens up a window on a central thread constant in John’s life,” says John Weaver, McCain’s former chief strategist, who followed him to many a casino. “Taking a chance, playing against the odds.” Aides say McCain tends to play for a few thousand dollars at a time and avoids taking markers, or loans, from the casinos, which he has helped regulate in Congress. “He never, ever plays on the house,” says Mark Salter, a McCain adviser. The goal, say several people familiar with his habit, is never financial. He loves the thrill of winning and the camaraderie at the table.

Only recently have McCain’s aides urged him to pull back from the pastime. In the heat of the G.O.P. primary fight last spring, he announced on a visit to the Vegas Strip that he was going to the casino floor. When his aides stopped him, fearing a public relations disaster, McCain suggested that they ask the casino to take a craps table to a private room, a high-roller privilege McCain had indulged in before. His aides, with alarm bells ringing, refused again, according to two accounts of the discussion.

“He clearly knows that this is on the borderline of what is acceptable for him to be doing,” says a Republican who has watched McCain play. “And he just sort of revels in it.”

So, even though he knew it was a border-line unacceptable behavior, he needed to play anyway. When he was blocked by staff once, he suggested playing in private and was blocked again. What is that they say about drinking in private, again?

From the New Yorker, we learn that McCain sometimes plays craps for 14 hours straight!

The moment the car stopped at McCain’s hotel in downtown New Orleans, he set out at his usual fast clip for Harrah’s, across the street. McCain is an avid gambler. Wes Gullett, a close friend who worked for McCain for years, told me that they used to play craps in Las Vegas in fourteen-hour stints, standing at the tables from 10 a.m. to midnight. "Craps is addictive," McCain remarked, and he headed for the fifteen-dollar-minimum-bet tables. At the most obvious level, the game is incredibly simple -- players rotate turns throwing the dice, and you either win or lose depending on what number comes up. But McCain’s betting formula makes it much more complicated. "Uh-oh!" he cried, as a player accidentally threw the dice off the table. "This is a very, very superstitious game," he said. When his turn came to throw the dice, he picked them up and blew on them first. He had placed chips on the number 5, so (envisioning a combination of 2 and 3) he called, "Michael Jordan! Michael Jordan!"

If you're playing for 14 hours, it is not just for fun.

Finally, The Telegraph chimes in with some analysis:

"You're always at a disadvantage at craps," said Mr Bloch. "It's a problem, if you have a leader who believes they can beat the odds. You don't want him shooting dice with the economy." Mr Holden added: "We poker players don't call poker gambling. It is a game of skill. Craps is an absurd game of luck. You may have thrilling short term wins but only madmen play craps."

I know which one I would rather have acting as my President.

McCain Admits being Tainted by Money

This is a good one, again from McCain 2000:



McCain:

I believe there have been times where I have probably been influenced because the big donor had - buys access to my office, and we know that access is influence. And honestly, that taints us all. It taints me.

And yet he breaks his own Campaign Finance law. And yet he continues to take money from PACs, and special interests. And yet he gives the ultimate access to lobbyists by having them run his campaign.

McCain at His Best

This is their guy? Really?



Really?

At least the new Rove-protege-filled Campaign did a decent job in preparation for this event, with significantly better scenery than the infamous lime and mayonnaise backdrop of his previous speech. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't seem that they can swap the candidate out so easily.

Obama's NotFlop on Iraq

On Friday, Obama held a press conference in which he said he would bring our troops home from Iraq in 16 months, and that he would listen to the commanders on the ground for specifics of how to accomplish that. Unfortunately for him, he used a new word: "refine."

The McCain campaign pounced, saying that Obama had adopted McCain's position that we must not leave until we have "won" in Iraq. "Winnning in Iraq" has no operational definition, of course, beyond the goal of keeping our troops there indefinately to "project power."

The press ate up the McCain statement, repeating it as fact, which caused Obama to call a 2nd press conference:

Let me be as clear as I can be. I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war — responsibly, deliberately, but decisively. And I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one to two brigades a month, and again, that pace translates into having our combat troops out in 16 months' time.

So you tell me, does that sound like he's willing to stay in Iraq 100 years if that's what it takes?

How can our press be so bad at their jobs? Obama has always said that "we would be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in," and that means consulting with the generals in charge of operations on how best to accomplish that, since no President can dictate logistics. But now that the McCain campaign has lied about this being a changed position, the press is dutifully repeating the lie. Unbelievable.

How can the Republicans be so good at winning elections, but so bad at running the country after they win the election? (answer: they govern for the top 1% only, and do it very well.)

McCain's Flips - Partial List

There is an expansive post on McCain's flip-flops at The Carpetbagger Report. I've only quoted the flips he's engaged in since he won the nomination! It goes on for many more pages, since most of his flipping occurred in order to get him the Republicans nomination. If only we had McCain-2000 running, I could be much less concerned about Obama's election.

* McCain strongly opposes a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.
* McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
* McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)

Wait, I’m not done with the last two weeks yet….

* McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.
* McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.
* He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
* McCain said he would “not impose a litmus test on any nominee.” He used to promise the opposite.

And these come after these other reversals from April and May:

* McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.
* McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain supported moving “towards normalization of relations” with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite.
* He argued the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.
* He wanted political support from radical televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Now he doesn’t.
* McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.

Go read the whole thing. These are real flip-flops, as opposed to Obama's.

NSA Program Ruled Illegal - Again!

Once again, a Bush-appointed judge has smacked down the utterly ridiculous legal theory that the inherent Article 2 Powers of the President gave President Bush the authority to violate federal criminal law.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the “exclusive” means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law.

...

“Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence activities to be conducted,” the judge wrote. “Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.”

There is no defense left for the Bush Administration. The AUMF didn't give them authority. The Article 2 Powers didn't give them the authority. Instead, they knowingly engaged in massive lawbreaking, arrogating unto themselves the power of the Legislature by breaking the law, and the power of the Judiciary by judging a target's validity themselves.

James Madison, easily one of the most conservative of the Founding Fathers, defined Tyranny thusly:

the combination of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial power in one man or
office.

In order to defend the Constitution and reaffirm the principles of limited government they say they hold dear, the Republicans must move forcefully to impeach George W. Bush. Hell, it might even save them some seats in Congress!

Boortz call notes - Habeas/Impeachment

Again, I got almost all of this on the air:

Neal started the call by saying the people mentioning Habeas bore him, so I led off with Churchill's quote:

Why Habeas is important: The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison
without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him
the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation
of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

(That made him feel foolish right from the beginning. How nice for me.)

My question is a thought experiment about a President Obama, and what a libertarian minded person should do about it. Assume Obama wins, and argues at some point that he has the right to detain any US citizen, indefinitely, without charge, and does so for what he says are Nat Security reasons. I've gotta problem with that, and I assume you do too, right?

Right, that's a constitutional crisis. Well, what should be done about it? ... is impeachment the remedy for that constitutional crisis? (of course, he wouldn't allow himself to commit when he knew I was going to turn it against Bush.)

Reference Al Marri when he wants specifics.

When he quibbles over US Resident/US Citizen rights: Supreme Court has always found that anyone in the US Territorial Jurisdiction has constitutional rights.

BUT I don't need that, since the judge in the case wasn't an idiot. He asked:

"What you assert is the power of the military to seize a person in the United States, including an American citizen, on suspicion of being an enemy combatant?" Judge William B. Traxler asked.

"Yes, your honor," Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre replied.

Now that's not liberal fever swamp stuff, Neal! That's Bush's lawyers saying he has the powers of a King. Now I am a libertarian Democrat, and I don't want ANY president having that power! We have a few months Neal in which to fix this. YOU could do it Neal, if you made the full throated case. If you had Bruce Fein on, Reagan's Dept Attorney General, he'd convince you, and you could convince your millions. If the Republicans pushed for this, they might actually retain power!

Torture Policy Origins - the Communists

The Genesis of our torture policies:

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

We knew that these tactics produced false confessions, and yet we used them to collect "important intelligence." These specific techniques were used by the Koreans to obtain false confessions from Americans which were then used for propaganda purposes - why shouldn't we do the same?

Of course, we knew what we were doing. Our policy was to use torture to make prisoners say exactly what we wanted them to, so we could use those false confessions to push whatever narrative the Bush Administration needed at the moment.

Once again, no European vacations allowed for senior members of the Bush team.

McCain Forgets His Opposition to GI Bill

McCain has forgotten that a couple of weeks ago he was opposing the GI Bill.



Tack it onto his list of forgetfulnesses.