B12 Solipsism

When even Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute is calling out Republican bs for the hypocrisy it is…

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

[Click to continue reading Hypocrisy: A Parliamentary Procedure « The Enterprise Blog]

Amazing really, and if you have the stomach, see how often the Republican talking point is repeated in the next few weeks. I’d wager it will be repeated numerous times, even by the so-called “straight” media organizations¹.

1. not Fox News, in other words [↩]

Marc Thiessen, remember him, has leveraged his pro-torture policy positions into quite the secondary career

By publishing a book that clearly and unapologetically defends the Bush torture regime, Marc Thiessen catapulted himself from obscure, low-level Bush speechwriter into regular Washington Post columnist, joining fellow torture defenders Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. Today, Thiessen’s column defends the Liz-Cheney/Kristol smear campaign against DOJ lawyers and says this:

Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information. . . . Some defenders say al-Qaeda lawyers are simply following a great American tradition, in which everyone gets a lawyer and their day in court. Not so, says Andy McCarthy . . . . The habeas lawyers were not doing their constitutional duty to defend unpopular criminal defendants. They were using the federal courts as a tool to undermine our military’s ability to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield in a time of war.

So any lawyer who represents accused Terrorists and argues that the Government is violating constitutional limitations in its Terrorism policies is — all together now — an “al Qaeda lawyer” (even if those detainees were innocent, as most were). Worse, these “al Qaeda lawyers” — which includes large numbers of long-time members of the U.S. military — are “undermining our military’s” efforts to keep us safe.  That sounds like treason to me. It’s great to see the leading newspaper in the nation’s capital serving as the primary amplifying force for this McCarthyite smear campaign.  Does it get any more reckless and repugnant — or primitive and stunted — than that? Does The Post have any standards at all?

[Click to continue reading High standards at The Washington Post - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com]

Umm, rhetorical question, of course.

Frank Rich on the topic of our national memory, and memory hole. Karl Rove and his band of merry thugs are repeatedly attempting to wriggle out of blame for their deeds. Let’s not let them.

The most devastating terrorist attack on American soil did happen during Bush’s term, after the White House repeatedly ignored what the former C.I.A. director, George Tenet, called the “blinking red” alarms before 9/11. It was the Bush defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who lost bin Laden in Tora Bora, not the Obama Justice Department appointees vilified by Keep America Safe. It was Bush and Cheney, with the aid of Rove’s propaganda campaign, who promoted sketchy and often suspect intelligence about Saddam’s imminent “mushroom clouds.” The ensuing Iraq war allowed those who did attack us on 9/11 to regroup in Afghanistan and beyond — and emboldened Iran, an adversary with an actual nuclear program.

The Iran piece of the back story doesn’t end there. As The Times reported last weekend, Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, kept doing business with Tehran through foreign subsidiaries until 2007, even as the Bush administration showered it with $27 billion in federal contracts, including a no-bid contract to restore oil production in Iraq. It was also the Bush administration that courted, lionized and catered to Ahmed Chalabi, the Machiavellian Iraqi who lobbied for the Iraq war, supplied some of the more egregious “intelligence” on Saddam’s W.M.D. used to sell it, and has ever since flaunted his dual loyalty to Iran.

Last month, no less reliable a source than Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior American commander in Iraq, warned that Chalabi was essentially functioning as an open Iranian agent on the eve of Iraq’s election, meeting with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian officials to facilitate Iran’s influence over Iraq after the voting. (Dexter Filkins of The Times reported on Chalabi’s ties to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2006.) As the vote counting began last week, fears grew that he could be the monkey wrench who corrupts the entire process. It’s no surprise that Chalabi, so beloved by Bush that he appeared as an honored guest at the 2004 State of the Union, receives not a single mention in Rove’s memoir.

If we are really to keep America safe, it’s essential we remember exactly which American politicians empowered Iran, Al Qaeda and the Taliban from 2001 to 2008, and why. History will be repeated not only if we forget it, but also if we let it be rewritten by those whose ideological zealotry and boneheaded decisions have made America less safe to this day.

[Click to continue reading Frank Rich - The New Rove-Cheney Assault on Reality - NYTimes.com]

Tar and feather is too good a solution for the Rove-Cheney thugs.

Obvious to most observers, the current Senate rule is obstructing the business of the people¹ and needs to be changed.

Barry Friedman and Andrew Martin have a suggestion:

During the 1960s, the Senate was frozen by lengthy filibusters over civil rights legislation. When, in the mid-’70s, that tactic once again threatened to bring the Senate to a standstill, Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who was the majority whip, invented a dual-track system. This change in practice allowed the majority leader — with the unanimous consent of the Senate or the approval of the minority leader — to set aside whatever was being debated on the Senate floor and move immediately to another item on the agenda.

The result of tracking? No more marathon debate sessions that shut down the Senate. While one bill is being “filibustered,” business can continue on others.

Today a “filibuster” consists of merely telling the leadership that 41 senators won’t vote for a bill. Worse, any single senator can put a “hold” on anything, indefinitely, for any reason. Not only has it become easier to “filibuster,” but tracking means there are far fewer consequences when the minority party or even one willful member of Congress does so, because the Senate can carry on with other things.

[Click to continue reading Op-Ed Contributors - A One-Track Senate - NYTimes.com]

Harry Reid could end this ridiculous practice this afternoon if he wanted to.

Because dual-tracking is a Senate practice, not a formal rule, the majority leader, Harry Reid, could end tracking at any time. By doing so, the Democrats would transform the filibuster and recover their opportunity to govern effectively.

And the reason the Democratic Senators have not taken this step already is? I have no idea why not, what’s the downside? If changing the rules makes Harry Reid quake in his boots, perhaps he can try it out for a few months, with the option to bring back the dual-track rules…

The new-school filibuster would preserve minority rights in the Senate, while imposing significant costs on obstructionist members, changing the calculus that causes today’s logjam. Stuck on the Senate floor, filibustering senators couldn’t meet with lobbyists or attend campaign fund-raising events; they couldn’t do much of anything, really, until their filibuster ended.

1. or whoever the Senators purport to being representatives for. Lobbyists? Chamber of Commerce? Special interest groups? Whatever [↩]

Paul Krugman laughs at Rep. Paul Ryan’s Social Security Privatization shenanigans:

So, for a few weeks Rep. Paul Ryan was the toast of the punditocracy; his Roadmap was hailed as the serious Republican response to America’s fiscal problems. But it turns out, predictably, to have been a Potemkin plan: it wouldn’t balance the budget, even after two generations. What it would do is massively redistribute income upward, raising taxes and slashing benefits for most Americans, while providing huge tax breaks for the top 0.1 percent of the population.

Naturally, Ryan’s response to these revelations has been a hissy fit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — which has always, in my experience, been impeccably honest and careful in its work — does the point by point rebuttal.

But I’d like to follow up on small but revealing point: Ryan’s claim that diverting a substantial share of payroll taxes receipts into individual accounts does not constitute partial privatization of Social Security

[Click to continue reading Saving Ryan’s Privatization - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com]

But it does mean privatizing Social Security, just that particular phrase does not poll well, so the Republicans are careful not to use the phrase, and complain vigorously whenever the truth is pointed out.

Some idiot¹ is proposing that Ronald Reagan’s smirking visage replace Ulysses Grant’s face, currently on the fifty dollar bill². Isn’t it enough of a travesty that the criminal Ronnie Reagan has an airport named after him? No Reagan, no George Bush³, enough said.

As president, Grant was determined to achieve national reconciliation, but on the terms of the victorious North, not the defeated Confederates. He fought hard and successfully for ratification of the 15th Amendment, banning disenfranchisement on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. When recalcitrant Southern whites fought back under the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, murdering and terrorizing blacks and their political supporters, Grant secured legislation that empowered him to unleash federal force. By 1872, the Klan was effectively dead.

For Grant, Reconstruction always remained of paramount importance, and he remained steadfast, even when members of his own party turned their backs on the former slaves. After white supremacists slaughtered blacks and Republicans in Louisiana in 1873 and attempted a coup the following year, Grant took swift and forceful action to restore order and legitimate government. With the political tide running heavily against him, Grant still managed to see through to enactment the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited discrimination according to race in all public accommodations.

Grant did not confine his reformism to expanding and protecting the rights of the freed slaves. Disgusted at the inhumanity of the nation’s Indian policies, he called for “the proper treatment of the original occupants of this land,” and directed efforts to provide federal aid for food, clothing and schooling for the Indians as well as protection from violence. He also took strong and principled stands in favor of education reform and the separation of church and state.

[Click to continue reading Sean Wilentz- Who’s Buried in the History Books? - NYTimes.com]

Compared to Reagan, I chose Grant.

Born to humble circumstances, Grant endured personal setbacks and terrible poverty to become the indispensable general of the Union Army. Although not himself an abolitionist, he recognized from the very start that the Civil War would cause, as he wrote, “the doom of slavery.” Above all, he despised the Southern secessionists as traitors who would destroy democratic republican government, of which, Lincoln said in his first inaugural, there was no “better or equal hope in the world.”

Reagan on the other hand, was responsible, directly or indirectly, for massive deficit spending, increasing military budgets, Iran-Contra, the Savings and Loan debacle, Antonin Scalia, escalating the Drug War, demonizing liberals, demonizing gays, demonizing the poor, and a thousand more crimes against man and state.

Grant undoubtedly had flaws, but nobody who voted for or against him is still alive. Why throw him in the dustbin of history?

1. a Congressman, but I repeat myself [↩]
2. not pictured above, duh [↩]
3. either one, but especially the second edition [↩]

Virginia Thomas has proudly lent her name to the anti-patriotic, anti-American, anti-progressive Tea Party movement.

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the “tea party” movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

“I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you,” she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama’s “hard-left agenda.”

But Thomas is no ordinary activist.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative “core principles,” she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources — including corporations — as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

[From Justice's wife launches 'tea party' group - latimes.com]

I cannot recall a similar public declaration of intent from the spouse of any Supreme Court Justice in our nation’s history. Can you? The equivalent would be if the wife of Justice Thurgood Marshall joined the John Birchers, or William Rehnquist’s wife started a local chapter of Sandinista National Liberation Front, or Justice John Marshall’s wife decided to hold a Friends of French Liberty soirée in her salon. None of these other things happened, but rules are always different for Rovian Republicans, aren’t they?

Under judicial rules, judges must curb political activity, but a spouse is free to engage.

Really, this could be grounds for impeachment – Clarence Thomas is no friend to liberty, no friend to America, no friend to the Constitution if you want to get down to it. Justice Thomas has often skirted close to the edge of impropriety, and doesn’t believe in the concept of conflict of interest, or recusal. Recusal wasn’t mentioned in the 4,543 words¹ comprising the Constitution of the United States after all, so why would a strict constitutionalist like Justice Thomas believe in it?

Virginia Thomas has long been a passionate voice for conservative views. She has worked for former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas and for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with strong ties to the GOP.

In 2000, while at the Heritage Foundation, she was recruiting staff for a possible George W. Bush administration as her husband was hearing the case that would decide the election. When journalists reported her work, Thomas said she saw no conflict of interest and that she rarely discussed court matters with her husband.

and of course, the rules of political engagement have recently changed:

As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Liberty Central can raise unlimited amounts of corporate money and largely avoid disclosing its donors.

Because of a recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the group may also spend corporate money freely to advocate for or against candidates for office.

Justice Thomas was part of the 5-4 majority in that case.

1. including signatures, which is a stupid way to count, if you ask me [↩]

The Christian Taliban, that is.

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

[Click to continue reading Texas Conservatives Win Vote on Textbook Standards - NYTimes.com]

For all of the charms of Texas¹, the power of the Christian Taliban over Texas politics is certainly in my top five reasons for moving away. There are just too many of these anti-21st century, anti-intellectual, anti-free thinking radicals in positions of authority. The Texas Board of Education is an elected position, and the Texas Board of Education believes in a 6,000 year old Earth, hence the majority of voters in Texas also believe² that humans rode around on dinosaurs. Scary, scary people.

George W. Bush was an honorary member, at the least, but the current Governor of Texas is a founding member of the Texas Flat Earth Party of the Christian Taliban. And Governor Good Hair is about to be elected for a third term. The will of the people indeed, just not people I wish to affiliate with.

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”³

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

…

Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

I wouldn’t be sad if Texas actually did secede, as long as there is a bullet train that goes to Austin so I can visit family.

1. and there are quite a few [↩]
2. or don’t care [↩]
3. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [↩]

Another crazy Obama smear circulating the frothosphere¹.

After Robert Montgomery wrote in an ESPNOutdoors.com column that the federal government had a strategy in the works that “could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters,” it was only a matter of time before the conservative media took the bait — hook, line, and sinker. Easily made puns aside, the story was tailor-made for “conservative journalism.” After all, Montgomery had no evidence for his claims.

Another week, another wild, right-wing-media-driven conspiracy theory centered on the Obama administration.

Conservative blogs led the charge in advancing the dubious story, posting their own spin under headlines like “Obama: The Will Of The People Be Damned – I’LL Decide Who Can Go Fishing” in the case of RedState.com and “Obama’s war on fishing?!?!?!” from the queen of right-wing blogging and bellyaching, Michelle Malkin. It mattered little that the story was complete bunk — unsupported by a shred of proof.

It wasn’t long before Fox News’ Glenn Beck, a regular purveyor of ridiculous Obama-centric conspiracy theories, took up the yarn. In classic Beck fashion, the crew-cut host told his audience, “I told you a year ago this would happen. I’m not some prophet by any stretch of the imaginations. … People are losing their rights. Who’s more important: the fish or you?”

Beck aside, no smear of the Obama White House would be complete without an assist from Rush Limbaugh, the granddaddy of the conservative media. On back-to-back shows, El Rushbo laid it on thick, one day saying that “fishing is about to become a privilege controlled by Barack Obama,” and the next, speaking as if he were Obama: “[Y]ou can’t touch me. … I can stop you from going fishing wherever you want. … I can do whatever I want to do.”

In perhaps the strangest turn of events surrounding the story, FoxNews.com ended up debunking Fox News, with the conservative outlet’s reporter Joshua Rhett Miller writing that government documents didn’t contain “language pertaining to a potential ban on recreational fishing, as some reports had previously asserted.” Of course, some of those “reports” included the Fox Nation website, Fox Business Network, and the previously mentioned Beck.

Ultimately, an ESPNOutdoors.com editor acknowledged “errors” in the handling of the piece and its lack of “balance,” but you can expect this one, like so many others, to end up in some chain email from your Fox News-loving uncle in the coming weeks.

[Click to continue reading Gone fishin': Right-wing media hook another dubious Obama conspiracy theory | Media Matters for America]

Laughable if it wasn’t so serious a topic, and such a perfect illustration of how facts are silly things to the Republican right.

1. I just made this word up – I think – referring to the frothing-at-the-mouth conservative sector of the country. The Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh brigade, in all of their paranoid glory [↩]

As Ezra Klein points out, the sausage making of legislation is not that interesting nor memorable to most of the country. Results are much more important than process.

Here are some things that happened on the night the GOP pushed the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit through the House of Representatives:

A 15-minute vote was scheduled, and at the end of 15 minutes, the Democrats had won. The Republican leadership froze the clock for three hours while they desperately whipped defectors. This had never been done before. The closest was a 15-minute extension in 1987 that then-congressman Dick Cheney called “the most arrogant, heavy-handed abuse of power I’ve ever seen in the 10 years that I’ve been here.”

Tom DeLay bribed Rep. Nick Smith to vote for the legislation, using the political future of Smith’s son for leverage. DeLay was later reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee.

The leadership told Rep. Jim DeMint that they would cut off funding for his Senate race in South Carolina if he didn’t vote for the bill.

The chief actuary of Medicare, Rick Foster, had scored the legislation as costing more than $500 billion. The Bush administration suppressed his report, in a move the Government Accounting Office later judged “illegal.”

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, a “no” vote, spent the night “hiding on the Democratic side of the floor, crouching down to avoid eye contact with the Republican search team.”

Rep. Butch Otter, who provided one of the final votes after hours of arm-twisting from the Republican leadership, said, “I thought there was a chance I would get sick on the floor.”

Remember all this? Probably not. There wasn’t much reporting on it at the time. It wasn’t a major controversy, despite resulting in multiple official investigations.

[Click to continue reading Ezra Klein - Lessons from the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit vote ]

Bottom line, Democrats currently have a majority in both House and Senate, so they should use this majority to pass health care reform. By 2012, hardly anyone will care how the bill got passed, just that it became law¹.

1. or it didn’t. The Democratic leadership has shown, time and time again, they lack the ruthlessness of the Republican leaders [↩]

Joe Conason wonders why partisan witch hunts, a rhetorical question I’m sure

The House Ethics Committee is far from concluding its investigation of Rep. Charles Rangel, despite his resignation from the Ways and Means chairmanship, as the Republicans will no doubt remind everyone repeatedly in the months ahead.

Near the top of the ethics docket, they are sure to mention, are allegations concerning the Harlem congressman’s fundraising for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York, a $30 million project at his alma mater. Rangel has acknowledged using his congressional stationery to solicit funds for the center, a violation of House rules. But he has denied more serious charges — based on an investigative report in the New York Times — that he may have exchanged legislative favors for corporate donations to the center.

When ranting on about Rangel, however, what the Republicans surely won’t mention is that he’s not alone in questionable fundraising for a vanity academic institution that bears his name. Leaders on both sides of Capitol Hill have done likewise for years — notably including the odious Trent Lott — but the most troubling example is none other than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who now holds Lott’s former post. If the term “Senate Ethics Committee” weren’t an oxymoron, he would be enduring an intense investigation, too.

[Click to continue reading Why probe Charlie Rangel -- but not Mitch McConnell? - Joe Conason - Salon.com]

Actually both of these seemingly corrupt politicians should be probed, preferably by alien invaders

Wonder how the torture apologists will spin this case? Two American citizens were tortured after bringing forth allegations of bribery. Whistleblowers should be feted, not treated as enemy combatants. Hope Rummy has to defend his actions in open court, and soon.

Two Americans claim they were tortured by US officials after making bribery allegations

A federal judge in Chicago ruled on Friday that a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, brought by two Americans who had worked for an Iraqi contractor, can be allowed to proceed.

In his ruling (PDF), US District Judge Wayne R. Andersen said the plaintiffs had provided enough concrete evidence of torture to allow the suit to go forward. The judge dismissed Rumsfeld’s arguments that his position near the top of the executive branch immunized him from lawsuits involving the authorization of torture

According to court documents, Nathan Ertel and Donald Vance went to Iraq in 2005 to work for an Iraqi contractor, Shield Group Security. Once there, they say they witnessed SGS employees handing money over to “Iraqi sheikhs.” After they notified two FBI agents in Baghdad and one in Chicago of what they say, they say their employer cut off their access pass to Baghdad’s Green Zone and were struck in the city’s dangerous “Red Zone.”

But the lawsuit claims things got really bad once they were “rescued” from the Red Zone by US authorities. Instead of being treated as witnesses to potential crimes, the two plaintiffs say they were told they could be classified as “enemy combatants”

[Click to continue reading Judge allows lawsuit against Rumsfeld over torture of US citizens | Raw Story]

Judge Wayne Anderson describes the details (click here for PDF version of MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER):

Plaintiffs allege that they then were taken by United States forces to the United States Embassy. Plaintiffs allege that military personnel seized all of their personal property, including their laptop computers, cellular phones, and cameras. At the Embassy, plaintiffs claim they were separated and then questioned by an FBI agent and two other persons from United States Air Force Intelligence. Plaintiffs contend that they disclosed all their knowledge of the SGS transactions and directed the officials to their laptops in which most of the information had been documented. Plaintiffs also assert that they informed the officials of their contacts with Agent Carlisle in Chicago and Agents Nagel and Treadwell in Iraq. Following these interviews, plaintiffs claim they were escorted to a trailer to sleep for two to three hours.

Next, plaintiffs claim they were awakened by several armed guards who placed them under arrest and then handcuffed and blindfolded them and pushed them into a humvee. Plaintiffs contend that they were labeled as “security internees” affiliated with SGS, some of whose members were suspected of supplying weapons to insurgents. According to plaintiffs, that information alone was sufficient, under the policies enacted by Rumsfeld and others, for the indefinite, incommunicado detention of plaintiffs without due process or access to an attorney. Plaintiffs claim to have been taken to Camp Prosperity, a United States military compound in Baghdad. There they allege they were placed in a cage, strip searched, and fingerprinted. Plaintiffs assert that they were taken to separate cells and held in solitary confinement 24 hours per day.

After approximately two days, plaintiffs claim they were shackled, blindfolded, and placed in separate humvees which took them to Camp Cropper. Again, plaintiffs allege they were strip searched and placed in solitary confinement. During this detention, plaintiffs contend that they were interrogated repeatedly by military personnel who refused to identify themselves and used physically and mentally coercive tactics during questioning. All requests for an attorney allegedly were denied.

Despicable behavior, rule of law, my ass. Just because some official asserts a suspect is an enemy combatant, does not make it so, and even enemy combatants still deserve consideration under the Geneva Convention and so forth.

Judge Anderson concludes:

In ruling that the lawsuit can go forward, Judge Andersen said the decision “represents a recognition that federal officials may not strip citizens of well settled constitutional protections against mistreatment simply because they are located in a tumultuous foreign setting.”

[via GapersBlock]

“One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko” (Mike Royko)

Factoid I did not know, Mike Royko, one of the famed Billy Goat denizens, coined the long-lasting epithet for Jerry Brown.

For the uninitiated, ‘Governor Moonbeam’ became Mr. Brown’s intractable sobriquet, dating back to his days as governor between 1975 and 1983, when his state led the nation in pretty much everything — its economy, environmental awareness and, yes, class-A eccentrics.

The nickname was coined by Mike Royko, the famed Chicago columnist, who in 1976 said that Mr. Brown appeared to be attracting “the moonbeam vote,” which in Chicago political parlance meant young, idealistic and nontraditional.

The term had a nice California feel, and Mr. Royko eventually began applying it when he wrote about the Golden State’s young, idealistic and nontraditional chief executive. He found endless amusement — and sometimes outright agita — in California’s oddities, calling the state “the world’s largest outdoor mental asylum.”

“If it babbles and its eyeballs are glazed,” he noted in April 1979, “it probably comes from California.”

[Click to continue reading How Jerry Brown Became ‘Governor Moonbeam’ - NYTimes.com]

Of course, Mike Royko eventually came to be a Moonbeam supporter, and hated that the nickname stuck:

All of which made Mr. Royko’s epiphany even more striking. It came in 1980, at the Democratic National Convention, where Mr. Royko said that the best speech had come from — you guessed it — Governor Moonbeam.

“I have to admit I gave him that unhappy label,” Mr. Royko wrote. “Because the more I see of Brown, the more I am convinced that he has been the only Democrat in this year’s politics who understands what this country will be up against.”

Too funny. More Democrats like Rep. Alan Grayson please…

Rep. Grayson Has Huge Lead in Republican Primary

No, that’s not a typo. According to a poll of registered Republicans last week, Congressman Alan Grayson has an enormous lead in the Republican primary for Florida Congressional District 8 (FL-8).

Of course, Grayson is a Democrat. Yet Grayson is far and away the leading choice among registered Republicans in FL-8. In fact, he has almost twice as much support among Republicans as all his Republican opponents combined.

In the poll, Grayson won the support of 27.8% of registered Republicans. None of Grayson’s 13 opponents scored higher than 3.7%. Their combined performance was only 14.5%. The remaining 57.7% of registered Republicans were undecided.

30.1% of registered Republican women support Grayson. And Grayson has the support of 25.5% of registered Republican men.

Grayson also has an enormous lead in name recognition. 76.9% of Republicans know Grayson; none of his opponents scored higher than 15.1%. 81.4% of Republican men know Grayson, and 72.4% of Republican women know him.

Grayson received high marks from Republicans for his Constitution initiative. Over half of all Republicans said that they were more likely to vote for Grayson because he passed a resolution urging high schools to teach the Constitution, and he had distributed tens of thousands of copies of the Constitution throughout the district.

Interestingly, Grayson is more popular among Republicans than Republican Governor Charlie Crist is. 42% of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of Crist, far more than those who have an unfavorable opinion of Grayson [...]

The poll was conducted on Feb. 26th. There were 324 respondents, all registered Republicans in FL-8. The margin of error was 5%. The poll was conducted by Middleton Market Research.

[Click to continue reading Daily Kos: FL-08: Grayson leads, er, Republican primary]

Republicans predictably are sputtering with indignation, but impotent to change facts.

Criminals and thugs. That is the description future historians will often use to describe members of the Bush Administration.

An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday.

David Farrington, a State Department security agent in the American Embassy at the time of the shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, told prosecutors that some of his colleagues were handling evidence in a way they hoped would help the Blackwater guards avoid punishment for a crime that drew headlines and raised tensions between American and Iraqi officials.

[Click to continue reading Interference Seen in Blackwater Inquiry - NYTimes.com]

and if you don’t have the mental stamina to click the link¹

“Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Revised and Updated]” (Jeremy Scahill)

In a closed-door hearing, they also contended that they had evidence that, in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, there had been a concerted effort to make the case go away, both by Blackwater and by at least some embassy officials.

In fact, prosecutors were told that the embassy had never conducted any significant investigation of any of the numerous shooting episodes in Iraq involving Blackwater before the Nisour Square case, according to the documents.

In his October testimony, Mr. Kohl described how the Justice Department had “serious concerns” about obstruction of justice in the case. He also said prosecutors briefed Kenneth Wainstein, then an assistant attorney general, on evidence of obstruction by Blackwater management.

Mr. Kohl disclosed that prosecutors had discovered that five Blackwater guards who were on the convoy involved in the Nisour Square shootings reported to Blackwater management what they had seen. One guard, he said, described it as “murder in cold blood.” Mr. Kohl said that Blackwater management never reported these statements by the guards to the State Department.

He said that prosecutors informed senior Justice Department officials as early as 2007 that they were investigating whether Blackwater managers “manipulated” the official statements made by the guards to the State Department.

But he testified that prosecutors also had evidence of embassy officials thwarting the inquiry. In addition to the testimony of Mr. Farrington, Mr. Kohl said that United States military officials had told prosecutors that they witnessed State Department investigators “badgering” Iraqi witnesses

and I’d add, scum, to the description of Bushies cited above. Rule of Law, hah. Murderers for hire. Hessians were at least conscripted soldiers, not necessarily believers in the Divine Mission of their masters.

1. really, you should [↩]