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.What part of 'against the law' does he still not understand?
Former President George W. Bush says if he had it to do over, he would still waterboard the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Waterboarding is a simulated drowning technique that the Obama administration considers torture. Bush acknowledged Wednesday that the U.S. used the harsh interrogation technique on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and said he would "do it again to save lives."
Bush made the comment while speaking to the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Mich.
Of course no one would have expected this guy to be saying anything different at this time. In the early years of his administration, Cheney Bush conveniently got John Yoo and other flunkies in the Justice Department to scribble a memo declaring torture legal and they still hang on to that bit of legal fraud as justification for torture enhanced interrogation. As for the "it saves lives" argument, evidence and reports from CIA interrogators say otherwise.
Conclusion? The guy who spoke at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids this week is either ignorant or a liar. Probably both. Whichever it is, he and his buddy, Cheney, broke the law.
He said the catastrophic Gulf oil spill shows the country must move toward clean energy by embracing energy efficiency, tapping natural gas and nuclear power and eliminating tax breaks for big oil.
No, not the one that opened up in Guatemala...the one SCOTUS opened up with this absolute bullshit ruling.
Miranda no longer applies unless you specifically tell the police up front that you are enforcing it for yourself. Which I guarantee they will promptly ignore while they attempt to interrogate your ass into an admission of guilt.
This decision is so blindingly stupid that SCOTUS ruled that the guy in question waived his Miranda rights by REMAINING SILENT. Let me just repeat that...he somehow waived his Miranda rights by failing to enunciate to the police that he was invoking them!
Yes, he was guilty and yes they trapped him into an admission. But this ruling bodes ill for the rest of us in ways that should be readily apparent.
The state will still recognize your rights under Miranda but it is no longer incumbent upon them to make sure that they are granted. You, not the state, will now be responsible for enforcing your civil rights under law.
I'm sure every police officer in America will kindly help you out with a friendly reminder. Not.
In that light, why have the law at all any more? Might as well just say the hell with it and repeal it completely. If the state is no longer responsible for enforcement then it isn't even a law anymore, now is it? They just moved Miranda from the required reading list to the suggested section. Holy fucking shit.
This is a sinkhole of massive proportions and just one more example of the systematic erosion of our rights by the Federal government.
Pop quiz: name one totalitarian police state that DIDN'T get the ball rolling by stripping it's citizenry of previously held rights.
Day by day I recognize this country as the America I grew up in less and less.
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This should make things interesting:
Turkish investigators concluded Thursday that one of the nine people killed in an Israeli commando raid on a flotilla of ships heading for Gaza this week was an American citizen of Turkish descent, according to a senior government official.
If nothing else, it should be fun and entertaining to watch an American Vice-President provide a full-throated defense of Israel's absolute right to kill Americans. And then watching the bobbleheads in the media agree.
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The Drone Wars
This issue is not going to go away, nor should it:
A senior United Nations official said on Wednesday that the growing use of armed drones by the United States to kill terrorism suspects was undermining global constraints on the use of military force. He warned that the American example would lead to a chaotic world as the new weapons technology inevitably spread.In a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the official, Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen, outside the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The report — the most extensive effort by the United Nations to grapple with the legal implications of armed drones — also proposed a summit meeting of "key military powers" to clarify legal limits on such killings.
In an interview, Mr. Alston said the United States appeared to think that it was "facing a unique threat from transnational terrorist networks" that justified its effort to put forward legal justifications that would make the rules "as flexible as possible."
But that example, he said, could quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out "competing drone attacks" outside their borders against people "labeled as terrorists by one group or another."
Basically, the United States has decided that it has an absolute right to impose the death sentence on anyone they suspect of being a terrorist, and anyone who happens to be near the alleged suspect. Or anyone who is mistaken for someone we suspect to be a terrorist. Or anyone near someone we have mistaken for someone we suspect to be a terrorist. Wired magazine had a piece a couple months back after Noah Schachtman spent some time in Pakistan, and basically, there simply appears to be no rules before firing away.
Which is why every couple of weeks you hear about another drone attack that allegedly killed Al Qaeda's #3, and then a few weeks later we learn that no, that was actually a wedding party we vaporized. Whoops! Mistakes were made! There will be a full investigation! Hearts and minds!
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You know, we all want to "do something!" to alleviate the suffering of the gulf and all it's residents and inhabitants...but James Cameron might actually be able to. The Academy Award winning director is a pioneer in submersibles and robotics, having developed the technologies used in most of his films himself. The morons at BP should have at least listened to what he had to say, rather than dismissing him out of hand. Oh - wait - he's a tree-hugging-leftie. Never mind.
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Today, the Christian Broadcasting Network published a story about Nikki Haley, the frontrunner to become South Carolina's GOP gubernatorial nominee, saying that she "recently changed the language on her website to reflect a more Christian tone." The story said that although Haley has "gone out of her way to make sure people know she is a Christian," she was raised in the Sikh faith and placed more emphasis on that tradition when she ran for the state legislature in 2004. This evening in an interview with Pub Politics, state Sen. Jake Knotts (R-SC) — who is supporting a different candidate — slammed Haley by using a racial slur:
We already got one raghead in the White House, we don't need a raghead in the governor's mansion.
The South Carolina Republican Party has issued a statement condemning Knott's remarks, saying, "Senator Knotts should apologize for his inappropriate comments, so that we can put this unfortunate incident behind us and focus on issues important to moving our state forward."
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We call this "Karmic Justice" The oil companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico disaster are worth a hell of a lot less than they were before blowout happened. BP alone has lost $73 billion - that's billion, with a "b" - in the six weeks since.
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Oral Snatch, whose religion is hating teh gay, says, "Gays and lesbians don't pay tithing, their religion is politics."
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Petunia Pig, er, Gretchen Carlson, the uncooked pork of chat show hosts, from the comedy morning show, Fox & Friends, has a major scoop and wins the morning: She noticed that President Carebear was wearing pants and a shirt when he visited the Gulf Coast; specifically, he was wearing fancy pants.
This sort of insight is what sets the professionals apart from bloggers.
(Media Matters)
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Oh, man. This is totally great. That dad has blackmail material to last a lifetime now.
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The Fuckery of the Obama Administration; BP Edition
Coast Guard officials told ABC News that BP refused to allow them to release the more startling images, arguing they were proprietary. But at the time, the agency was doing little to convey to the world what the images were showing. Coast Guard Admiral Mary Landry was sticking with estimates, calculated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which put the spill's size at about 5,000 barrels a day for several weeks. Coast Guard officials said they were focused on the response, and advised the public not to worry about just how much oil was pouring into the water.At this point, Dick Cheney is probably raising a glass of his favorite vintage of "Blood of Virgin Girls" and toasting the Obama Administration for continuing his policy of being one with the oil industry.
After all, the government has basically given BP the ability to control the police and to try to keep reporters and photographers away from oil-soaked beaches and animals.
It's time this fuckery ends. If we had wanted an administration that was in bed with the oil industry, we would have elected Grandpa McCain and Bible Spice. The people that the Obama Administration is looking out for are not the people who voted for him, who would ever vote for him or who would give him a lot of money. I know that I gave Chimpy a lot of grief for always pandering to his base and most of the time I'm glad that Obama seems to see himself as president of the country rather than, as Chimpy did, president of only his political supporters, but jeez! Obama does need to have a care of those of us that brung him.
He needs to have a thought for those of us who are not part of the oil industry and who voted and gave money and worked to put him where he is now; the same people who are appalled at the cavalier attitude towards safety that British Petroleum has made part of its corporate culture. Jon Stewart pointed out the other night that if Exxon were to have a safety record that was seventy times worse than it is now, BP would still be ten times as worse as Exxon.
I don't know why President Obama has been so willing to hook up with BP on this. Somebody needs to go into the Oval Office and give him a dope slap.
Wake the fuck up, Barry. Those guys are not your friends and they never will be.
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