"Jesse Ventura should stop smoking whatever he's been smoking. It seriously should be a crime, to be that dumb on TV." Joe Scarborough, angry that Jesse said he'd been waterboarded and it was torture Link
Hey Joe, should it also be a crime to murder an intern in your office,
then get your crooked governor (Jeb) to import a crooked and disgraced coroner from another state to dummy up an autopsy that said she died of natural causes?
Buried Bush Bureaucratic Ideologues Continue to Reward Crooked Corpo's
We've mentioned, more than once I believe, that since Karl Rove used his position to force applicants for Federal jobs throughout the govt to pass far-right litmus tests before they were hired (cf Monica Goodling, Regents, and the DOJ) there was a likelihood that the Bush Bureaucracy was going to go right on doing what Rove would want it to do if he hadn't been driven from office. And they have.
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A US Funded School for Jihadists
Yesterday, I wrote that closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay wouldn't kill us all. US prisons are just as capable of dealing with foreign terrorists as they are of dealing with serial killers, gangbangers, and domestic terrorists like Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh, and the Unabomber. The fear that al Qaeda guys are too dangerous for American prisons is ridiculous.
But I failed to consider what would happen to those we just up and let go. That's where the NYT comes in with a Pentagon report showing that releasing detainees from Gitmo means certain death.
Obama broke the detainees into five categories. He is to be commended for deciding to send some detainees to federal court for a true and legitimate trial. However, he still refused to take the rule of law to its full conclusion. With one category, he isolated to "detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted, yet who pose a clear danger to the American people." He promised "[w]e are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people." Of course, this would mean holding people in violation of domestic and international law — precisely what George Bush did. It is part of the Administration's effort to appear principled by doing an unprincipled thing. The reason that we cannot try these individuals is because they would win. The solution, according to both Bush and Obama, is not to give them a trial.
Story here.
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In his speech yesterday, Obama said:
In the midst of all these challenges, however, my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe. That is the first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning. It is the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night.
Here's the Presidential oath of office, as enumerated in the Constitution:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Nothing about the most important duty being to keep Americans safe. The first duty is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. What's the Constitution have to say about punishing people without a trial? Well, the Fifth Amendment says:
No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
In other words, you get a trial. What about the idea that civilian courts shouldn't have jurisdiction?
Keep reading: http://firedoglake.com/2009/05/21/does-obama-plan-to-give-up-a-little-liberty-to-get-a-little-safety/#more-40166
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Father Ted, they weren't
Grim tales are emerging from an investigation of the Irish Catholic Church. For years, they've been running reform schools which sound more like hellish work camps, where sadistic priests were given free rein. I found it ironic that some of these workhouses were used to make religious paraphernalia, like rosaries, that were sold to the faithful. I wonder how many hail marys have been said on beads assembled by child-slaves who were raped or beaten as a reward? It does add a rather sinister gloss to Catholic prayers.
A quick summary of the findings:
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a history of official cover-ups of pedophiles within the church since the 1930s.
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a pattern of beatings, abuse, and molestation in church-run workhouses.
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molestation and rape were "endemic" at the boys' workhouses.
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ritualized beatings and personal abuse and denigration.
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kids were falsely told that their parents or siblings were dead.
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a continuing insistence on protecting the child molesters in their ranks.
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whistleblowers were accused of being "money-seeking liars".
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the Irish government cut a deal with the Catholic church to cap their losses to lawsuits at $175 million…which is only a tiny part of the full cost.
Many of the perpetrators of abuse are now elderly and in retirement…no doubt in homes that are run with more care and concern than they gave. The institutions are dying out as the priests age, and a good thing, too.
Aborting babies = bad.
Abusing them after they're born = perfectly OK.
Can we stop equating religion and morality now? They never seem to have much to do with one another.
"Pelosi's become toxic. She's hurting the country. She's bad for morale of the CIA. And she's trying to cover her own tracks. She's a partisan person, and she needs to get off of it." Lindsay Graham, trying to remember which side of the torture debate he's on Link
"Pelosi made some outrageous accusations last week where she said that the CIA lied to her and lied systematically over a period of years. That is a very, very serious charge." Rebooblicon Rep Pete Hoekstra Link
Hey Pete, how many soldiers died because of Pelosi's lies? The answer is zero.
So if Pelosi's lies are "very, very serious," how do you characterize the lies from Bush & Cheney that caused the deaths of 4,299 and physically and mentally scarred thousands more?
Update: Looks like Nancy Pelosi is right and Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Joe Scarborough, the entire on-air staff at Faux Noise, and everyone else who's been smearing her for the last week are wrong.
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Dick & Rummy:
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When President Obama signed the bill on Wednesday creating a 10-member Pecora-style commission with subpoena power to investigate the financial crisis, he also issued a signing statement limiting the administration's duty to comply with its requests. http://firedoglake.com/2009/05/21/obama-issues-signing-statement-can-withhold-information-from-pecora-commission/
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The fat lady ain't singing yet. NY Times:
The Treasury Department has decided to bail out GMAC, the former financing arm of General Motors, with $7.5 billion, according to people familiar with the discussions, which would bring its total federal assistance to more than $12 billion.
Meanwhile, GM, who has received tens of billions will be heading into bankruptcy next week according to the Washington Post.
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The oh-so-fair Gallup has come up with a new poll:
Do you approve or disapprove of how each of the following has handled the matter of interrogation techniques used against terrorism suspects?
- Barack Obama
- The CIA
- Democrats in Congress
- Republicans in Congress
- Nancy Pelosi
Absent from the list of choices:
- Dick Cheney, the architect and main apologist of the torture program who used it to find an excuse for war
- James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the contractors who had no experience in interrogation, but nevertheless made big money off of torturing prisoners
- John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury, who wrote crazy legal opinions to pre-authorize torture
- The torturer who said he used more water than legally permitted because that made the whole process "more poignant and convincing"
- Alberto Gonzales, who was giving daily, meticulous approvals for torture even before it had been declared "legal"
And then we also have the traditional media being good little soldiers by covering Dick's speech yesterday and reporting breathlessly that Dick Cheney said we must be afraid. Dick Cheney said terrorists were going to get us. It's a pretty neat trick. The Bush/Cheney administration radicalizes a new generation of terrorists through actions like torture and unnecessary wars. Then, when the blowback comes, they'll try to blame it on someone else – specifically, on the people trying to clean up their mess. It's like dousing a house with gasoline, and then blaming the cleanup crew when someone comes along with a match trying the burn the thing down.
Of course if Dick Cheney had put as much time into thinking about protecting the nation at this time eight years ago, he and his hapless president might have prevented the worst terrorist attack in our history. But, many in the media forget that Bush and Cheney failed to protect us. And, a lot of them forget Bush and Cheney lied to them about so many issues. Lied right to their faces. And they reported it all as truth.
Update: McClatchey documents the lies and ommissions in Cheney's speech: http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090521/pl_mcclatchy/3237981
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Some of you may remember a few weeks back, notorious fake cowboy, Gov. Goodhair of Texas was grandstanding with stimulus money being offered by our socialist magic negro overlord and re-education camp counselor, the Carebear, saying that he would not take the money.
He took the money.
And he's using the money to re-hab the Texas Governor's Mansion.
While Gov. Rick Perry is criticizing Washington bailouts, state lawmakers are planning to use $11 million in federal stimulus money to help rebuild the badly burned Texas Governor's Mansion.
Approximately $10 million in state tax money will also be spent on a renovation, which is expected to cost about $20 million, officials said Thursday. A House-Senate committee agreed on the expenditures late Wednesday night.
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48 tons
I hope you didn't buy any 10-lb. boxes of burgers for this weekend.
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Dog-torturer and magic underwear-wearer Willard Romney on Obama's speech:
"He struggles to explain how he is keeping faith with the liberal advocates who promoted his campaign but in doing so, he breaks faith with the interests of the American people. When it comes to protecting the nation, we have a conflicted president. And his address today was more tortured than the enhanced interrogation techniques he decries."
Obama "said that the last thing he thinks about when he goes to sleep at night is keeping America safe. That's a big difference with Vice President Cheney — when it came to protecting Americans, he never went to sleep," Romney concluded.
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Paging gun enthusiasts!
Once this diddly gets passed on to the Texas House and the secessionist state president Rick Perry, college students and employees will be allowed to carry their concealed handguns on campus.
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Good news for people with wireless routers, cordless phones, remote car-door openers, baby monitors or cellphones in your house:
The FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.
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An ex-soldier convicted of raping and killing an Iraqi teen and murdering her family was spared the death penalty Thursday after jurors couldn't agree on a punishment for the brutal crime. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/21/steven-green-spared-death_n_206538.html
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