Feds involved in security preparations for lower Manhattan's Foley Square courthouse have been quietly ordered to cease all preparations for a 9/11 trial blocks from where the twin towers fell, the Daily News has learned.Obama gains nothing by this. This is a decision that pisses off Obama's political friends and gladdens the hearts of his political enemies. It reinforces the perception that he is a political weathervane.
Senior aides will soon urge President Obama to reverse Attorney General Eric Holder and prosecute the terrorists in a military courtroom, aides confirmed Friday.
Worse, military tribunals have not shown themselves to be a stunning success. There have been scores of successful criminal prosecutions of terrorists since `01, but nothing has come out of the military tribunal system other than incompetence, confusion, and a continuing degradation of respect for the rule of law. Military tribunals have been a fucking disaster ever since those grinning fascists in the Bush Administration first proposed them.
But more to the point here: For the love of (insert name of your dear and fluffy lord here), make a goddammed decision for once, Barry, and stick to it!
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It wasn't even remotely funny the first time that fucking racist email made the rounds:
Thus began an e-mail that Walt Baker, CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association, sent to to a few friends, the president of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau, and several members of the press. It continues by comparing First Lady Michelle Obama to Tarzan's chimpanzee sidekick Cheeta. There are two photos at the bottom — one of Obama with an awkward pursing of her lips and another of a chimp. Unsurprisingly, Baker has already begun apologizing for the outrage created by the e-mail. "I don't care who you are, ... this is funny."
Seriously, how many of these bottom-feeders have to get caught sending out this hateful crap before they figure out that it's (1) not funny and (2) going to get them fired?
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Life inside scientology: physical abuse, psychological torture and billion-year contracts.
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Sinead O'Connor
"A true Christian is someone who, in any given situation, is supposed to ask themselves what would Jesus do, then try to do that. How an organisation which has acted, decade after decade, only to protect its business interests above the interests of children can feel it has the right to dictate to us what Christians should do is beyond belief.
"From the Pope on down, through the Vatican and therefore through the lower echelons, the whole organisation, in my belief, is utterly anti-Christian and evil, as proven by centuries of torture, bloodshed, burnings, terrorism, and coverings-up of 'the worst crime' known to man.
"And if Jesus Christ is to be seen in the vulnerable of this world, then all the church has done is crucify the man over and over and over again. If Christ was here, he would be burning down the Vatican. And I for one would be helping him." - Sinead O'Connor, responding to a request from Ireland's Catholic Church for local parishioners to recompense the church for the massive settlements paid to the victims of pedophile priests.
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Jeffrey has a very important piece this week in Truthout which shows that the use of waterboarding is dangerous to military personnel subjected to it. Indeed, the excuse that since waterboarding is used on American soldiers means it can't be torture is just bunk.
According to the documents that Jeffrey examined, military reports showed that waterboarding is damaging to those who are subjected to it, even when they are being subjected to it as a training exercise. In fact, the reports said that subjects waterboarded to help them learn to resist torture by the hands of an enemy, found that rather than learning how to resist torture, the lesson taught subjects that they too could be broken.
Continue reading "Waterboarding: Yes, it really is torture"
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Last week, E.J. Dionne wrote a column challenging the lies in Hatch's op-ed about reconciliation. Then, Dionne did it right to Hatch's face: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bjFKvhxzjg&feature=player_embedded
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They're liars. The Democrats need to remind the American people, over and over, that the Republicans got us into the entire mess we are in, and that they are liars. Lindsay Graham leading the pack - the following is an outright lie:
GRAHAM: Well, reconciliation will be used to clean up the Senate bill to make House members happy. House members are going to vote for the Senate bill and they hate it. And the Senate and the president saying, OK, we're going to change what you don't like.
And when it comes to the Republicans, you all don't matter anymore. You just need a simple majority. So reconciliation will empower a bill that was very partisan. We've had reconciliation votes, but all of them had received bipartisan support. The least was 12 when we did reconciliation with tax cuts.
Now the truth, from ThinkProgress:
Graham's claim that "the least" amount of Democratic votes a GOP reconciliation bill received "was 12″ is flat out false. As The Wonk Room's Igor Volsky has detailed, during the Bush presidency, the Republican-controlled Senate passed three reconciliation bills with three or less Democratic votes. The 2003 Bush tax cuts were supported by only two Democrats and needed Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote to pass.
The White House and the Democrats in Congress are dealing with skilled liars. They need to start acting like it
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No TARP in Iceland - Iceland votes 'no' to debt deal for collapsed bank. According to results released Sunday, just over 93 percent of voters said "no" in Saturday's ballot. The overwhelming margin reflects Icelanders' simmering anger at bankers and politicians as the island nation struggles to recover from a financial meltdown. Some Icelanders set off fireworks in the center of the capital, Reykjavik, as the referendum results were announced.
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In terms of brainless, election day optimism, only one nation stands head and shoulders above the American people and that's the Iraqi people. After ridiculing the posturing by their own candidates, Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish Iraqis have nonetheless poured out of their houses to vote for 6200 candidates to fill 325 positions in the new Iraqi parliament. Hope and purple fingers are, once again, in the air. "Surely this election will be the one in which we get it right," they convince themselves.
But as a certain blogger once said after the 2005 Iraqi elections in one of his first blog posts, "An election is not a democracy any more than the wedding is the marriage."
Keep reading: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/03/enormous-progress.html
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James Cameron's consolation prize
And there's a reason The Cove won best documentary and why you should watch it if you haven't already done so.
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Newspeakweek
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