Torture's Opponent

The best person on TV right now telling the truth about torture is, of all people, Jesse Ventura, former professional wrestler, former governor of Minnesota. Watch him take on torture and the loathesome Sean Hannity:

Impeach Bybee

New ad from moveon.org:

Miss Otis Regrets

An old song by Nat King Cole. I know the version sung by Ella Fitzgerald. I kept thinking of this song today as I read and re-read this unbelievable article that was on the front page of the Washington Post today:

Amid Outcry on Memo, Signer's Private Regret
Friends Say Judge Wasn't Proud of Outcome

"I've heard [Jay S. Bybee] express regret at the contents of the memo," said a fellow legal scholar and longtime friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while offering remarks that might appear as "piling on." "I've heard him express regret that the memo was misused. I've heard him express regret at the lack of context -- of the enormous pressure and the enormous time pressure that he was under. And anyone would have regrets simply because of the notoriety."

Maybe Judge Bybee could express his regret to the family of Alyssa Peterson, the young soldier who killed herself in Iraq in September of 2003 after refusing to torture prisoners.

[I]n the years since the original Bybee memo was made public, his misgivings appeared evident to some in his immediate circle.

"On the primary memo, that legitimated and defined torture, he just felt it got away from him," said the fellow scholar. "What I understand that to mean is, any lawyer, when he or she is writing about something very complicated, very layered, sometimes you can get it all out there and if you're not careful, you end up in a place you never intended to go. I think for someone like Jay, who's a formalist and a textualist, that's a particular danger."

Blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit. You know, I once risked being fired because I refused to file a motion in Superior Court that I felt was unjustified in law. I refused to do that because a) it was unethical, and b) I took an oath as an officer of the court to follow the rules. Apparently Judge Bybee was more interested in getting the federal judgeship he so desired than in upholding his oath to protect and defend the United States Constitution:

Bybee's friends said he never sought the job at the Office of Legal Counsel. The reason he went back to Washington, Guynn said, was to interview with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for a slot that would be opening on the 9th Circuit when a judge retired. The opening was not yet there, however, so Gonzales asked, "Would you be willing to take a position at the OLC first?" Guynn said.

Sign the bullshit memo, allow thousands to be tortured, sully the reputation of America around the world, sell your immortal soul for a federal judgeship. That's Republican cronyism at it's finest. Heckuva job, Jay.

Oh yeah, Miss Otis Regrets. Roger Ailes (the good Roger Ailes) had the same thought, and he wrote some new lyrics. Miss Bybee Regrets

Evil

Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

There’s a word for this: it’s evil.

Paul Krugman

Hillary!

Eff Dick Cheney.

Torture Lawyer Bybee Deserves This Mocking

This MF Jay S. Bybee, torture facilitator and federal judge, must be impeached. Some well-deserved laughs at his expense:

MONSTER

No one should ever be forced to call this monster "Your Honor." He is a man without conscience, morals or principles and should be shunned by all good people. He wrote dry legal memos authorizing the most horrible torture of human beings for another monster, George W. Bush.

Read about the torture memos Monster Bybee wrote here. He shouldn't be on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; he should be in jail.

I Thought The XFL Folded

He Hate Me chosen to give invocation at Obama inauguration.

WTF?

Megachurch minister/thief Rick Warren is a hateful bigot who is anti-stem-cell-research, anti-choice, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-gay marriage, and basically a big dope. He's gone on Fox Noise in the last month to apologize for the Bush torture regime and to proclaim that Jesus was pro-assassination. Basically he is Jerry Falwell in a fat suit. He's Rupert Murdoch's pastor, for crying out loud. He's a hater.

Obama can throw him bones for the rest of his life and that faker isn't going to change one position. Naive and deeply disappointing decision by Obama. It is a gratituous insult to all of Obama's supporters who support gay rights.

I'll turn my back when he speaks.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: November 18, 2008

Tee shirts celebrating the victory of President-elect Barack Obama are offered for sale at a shop on Michigan Avenue November 17, 2008 in Chicago, Illinois. Obama, a long-time resident of Chicago, has set up his presidential transition office in the federal building a few blocks off Michigan Avenue. By Scott Olson/Getty Images.

We don't just need more Democrats -- we need better Democrats; the Senate Democrats are poised to leave Traitor Joe Lieberman in charge of the Homeland Security Committee. He failed to investigate the Bush Administration's failures in Katrina and Iraq during the past two years, but you can be sure he will be in high dudgeon soon enough for some perceived weakness by Obama. This is just disgusting behavior on the part of Senate Democrats who may as well be wearing "kick me" signs on their backs today.

In other bad news, AP reports that Obama's Justice Department will not prosecute anyone for torture. Again, this is a sign of weakness on Obama's part, and of not knowing his recent history. Democrats failed to prosecute the Iran-Contra criminals in the 1980s; and they formed the nucleus of the PNAC that led us into the disastrous war with Iraq. The torture cabal must be prosecuted and imprisoned so that they can't regroup and take over government again in 15 or 20 years. What Digby said: "when you let Republicans get away with murder, they will do it again."

Bushco is "burrowing" political appointees into civil service jobs -- career jobs -- in federal agencies. They're going to spend the next 63 days laying landmines for the Obama Administration.

Obama has named two attorneys who have fought in favor of Net Neutrality to head his FCC transition team.

Gregory Craig has been named Obama's White House counsel; he "quarterbacked" President Clinton's impeachment team.

The TSA's security theatre of the absurd is completely ineffective. Their own statistics show that less than 1% of people singled out for "behavior detection" were arrested (1,266 arrests of more than 160,000 people searched). As BoingBoing notes, who could have anticipated that a "'behavior detection' system whereby slack-jawed, water-confiscating security officers [are] trained to recognize your 'micro expressions' and single you out on the basis of a twitchy eyelid or a sweaty upper lip" would not work?

Query: Is Lisa Miller, Society Editor of the Newsweek (and OnFaith panelist at the Washington Post), the AntiChrist? Because she wrote a column that will be published in next week's Newsweek asking the same question about Barack Obama. Newsweek, asking if our next President is the AntiChrist. As evidence of bias, I present the fact that Newsweek never asked this question of either George W. Bush or Dickhead Cheney, both of whom could credibly claim to be Satan walking. Seriously, Newsweek: WTF?

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: June 20, 2008

National Geographic: Kiribati Beach House
Photograph by George Steinmetz/CORBIS

A tiny group of Pacific coral islands, the Republic of Kirabati, with a population of less than a hundred thousand, will be submerged under the ocean in 50 to 100 years as a result of rising ocean waters. Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, population 150,000,000 -- One Hundred and Fifty Million Human Beings -- will be completely underwater by the end of this century, according to NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen.

And those estimates may be accelerated, as data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than it did last year. An example of the chaos that this will bring is in Iceland, where two polar bears were shot in the past two weeks when they showed up hundreds of miles from their habitat.

And what are the Bush Administration and their rubber stamps in Congress doing to address global warming? Nothing. No, take that back, less than nothing. Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to cut greenhouse emissions last week. The United States taxpayers are being forced to pay to build permanent bases in Iraq, which are surely to provide security for the oil companies (Exxon, Total, BP and Shell) which have just been awarded no-bid contracts to exploit the Iraqi oil fields. The Oilman-In-Chief sent thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to their deaths for the bottom line of Exxon.

Which of his crimes will Bush pay for? The torture he personally authorized? (though he is now trying to blame it on the soldiers, we know that it was the Bush Administration's official policy, memorialized in legal memos and West Wing meetings.) Maj. General Antonio Taguba writes this week that the Bush Administration committed war crimes, and recommends prosection. The Democratic Sheeple Party is unlikely to do so; we let everyone involved in Iran-Contra go, too.

By failing to prosecute the war criminals who perpetrated Iran-Contra, we populated the Project for a New American Century and all the other right wing "think tanks" with all those unindicted co-conspirators, who spent years conspiring on their next nefarious plan: to get us to attack Iraq. As Digby says: When you let Republicans get away with murder, they will do it again.

Some days reading the news is nihilistic. I'm going to take the weekend off from political blogging & regain my equilibrium.

In The News

Kookaburras
Flickr: Powerhouse Museum Collection

Just as the DFHs said, the Bush Administration is building permanent military bases in Iraq. Bush wants to stay in Iraq 4-eva, no matter what platitudes he mouths.

Not only did Bush and Cheney authorize torture, McClatchy reports that the United States hid tortured prisoners from the International Red Cross. Prosecutors will call that "consciousness of guilt" when these murdering psychopaths are finally put on trial for war crimes at the Hague.

You won't hear this on gasbag TV, but polls show Obama leading in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Haven't they been telling us all year that Obama was doomed in Florida because the Dem primary there didn't count? Not. Even pundits who acknowledge Obama's lead see danger up ahead for Obama. Or maybe that song was playing in the background while Jake Tapper was reporting typing.

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson (another groundbreaking white male addition to the white-male-dominated WaPo opinion pages) calls Al Franken "vulgar" in his column today. You heard that right, the man who dressed up the Psychopath-in-Chief in pretty words, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents around the world, that man calls Al Franken vulgar. Atrios knocks Gerson's phony argument out with two photos.

Speaking of the Psychopath-In-Chief, that MF who hasn't ever gone to the funeral of one of the men and women he sent to their deaths by lying us into Iraq, he went to the funeral of Saint Timmeh of Punditry. Some deaths count, and some are shoved under the rug.

How old is John McCain? He's older than carbon dating.

The will.i.am video putting Obama's New Hampshire primary speech to music, "Yes We Can", won an Emmy. (Watch it here)

Today's News

Flickr: Brooklyn Museum
Greek Religion--sculptor, Daniel Chester French

McCain's national security adviser, John Lehman, told the New York Times that he offered to make John McCain a one-star admiral in 1980, but McCain declined. The New York Times put the claim on the front page. Problem? It's probably not true, as McCain never mentioned it before, and the story of his leaving the Navy has been told many times. Hard to check up on McCain's military service, tho, as he has never released his full military records. Read this extensive article by Jeffrey Klein for the details.

The torture regime came from the top of the Bush Administration. We already knew that, but there is proof now.

The senior civilian managing the contract of Halliburton subsidiary KBR in 2004 was fired when he refused to pay bogus billing records for Dick Cheney's favorite special interest. The amount in question that taxpayers ponied up for despite shoddy record-keeping and questionable bills? $1,000,000,000. That's one billion dollars to CheneyFraud. Heckuva job, Dickhead.

Gay marriage is now legal in California as of yesterday. The march of progress continues. It hasn't changed life here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts one iota, except for allowing some of our fellow citizens legal rights, joy and peace of mind. All good things.

Gas prices have sent Prius sales soaring. Even in Billings, Montana, home of the pickup truck. Honda is now making a hydrogen-fuel-cell car. I want one:

The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the noxious fumes believed to induce global warming. It is also two times more energy efficient than a gas-electric hybrid and three times that of a standard gasoline-powered car, the company says.

Honda expects to lease a few dozen cars this year and 200 within three years. In California, a three-year lease will run $600 a month, which includes maintenance and collision coverage.

The Mets fire Willie Randolph in the middle of the night. Disgraceful end to a class act. The Mets are finding that stocking a team with mid-30s free agents may have worked in the steroid era, but now they're just injury prone. Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast sez, hire Ron Darling.

Torture Widespread

wikipedia: A sketch by Thomas V. Curtis, a former Reserve M.P. sergeant, showing how Dilawar was allegedly chained to the ceiling of his cell.

We have been ruled by a monster for 7 1/2 years, and he has encouraged our soldiers to become monsters:

McClatchy: U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases

KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that's used to corral livestock.

The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.

Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.

[]

The brutality at Bagram peaked in December 2002, when U.S. soldiers beat two Afghan detainees, Habibullah and Dilawar, to death as they hung by their wrists.

Dilawar died on Dec. 10, seven days after Habibullah died. He'd been hit in his leg so many times that the tissue was "falling apart" and had "basically been pulpified," said then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the Air Force medical examiner who performed the autopsy on him.

Had Dilawar lived, Rouse said in sworn testimony, "I believe the injury to the legs are so extensive that it would have required amputation."

In The News

Library of Congress/Flickr: Palmer, Alfred T.,, photographer.
Electric phosphate smelting furnace used to make elemental phosphorus in a TVA chemical plant in the vicinity of Muscle Shoals, Alabama
1942 June

This was done in your name: The United States illegally used white phosphorus and chemical weapons in Fallujah in 2004; now babies are being born with birth defects.

Many of the supposed "terrorists" tortured by the Bush Administration at Guantanamo were actually innocent. Again, this was done in your name. Chilling.

The Taliban -- remember them? -- attacked a prison in Kandahar, Afgahanistan from within and without, and 1100 prisoners escaped. The resurgence of the Taliban is another complete failure for the Bush Administration.

John McCain has a former Texas gubernatorial candidate organizing a $300,000 fundraiser -- a guy who joked rape is like the weather, when it is inevitable you should just lie back and enjoy it, in 1990. At first, McCain announced the fundraiser was cancelled. But there was money for the taking, so they're rescheduling it, with all the same donors -- except now the rape joker is not invited. Just his money and his moneyed friends. Any Hillary Clinton supporter who votes for McCain is a fool.

John McCain doesn't use a computer. Who doesn't use a computer anymore? My 80-year-old friend is on her third. McCain: Too old, too out of touch with modern life.

The odious Rudy Giuliani is back. He's trying to retire his campaign debt -- by selling his appearances at fundraisers to other Republicans. Hey Rudy -- there's no "I" in "Team". But it was always about Rudy.

Read this article on the Bush/Rove response to Katrina. You want to cry, but you have to laugh -- bitterly -- at this:

[Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco] gave Bush a two-page letter detailing everything the state needed to cope with the disaster -- troops, buses, supplies, money, and more. It would not be until several days later, when Blanco's aides released the letter to the press and got frantic phone calls from Rove's aide Maggie Grant, that it became clear that Bush had taken the letter Blanco had personally handed to him -- and lost it.

President Dumber-Than-A-Box-of-Hammers Lost. The. Letter. Heckuva job, Bushie.

Go Read

Good news story of the day: the Supreme Court ruled that The Great Writ, the writ of habeas corpus, applies to the Guantanamo Bay prisoners: The Rule of Law Prevailed The prisoners are entitled to challenge their detention in federal court; the Bushies have failed in their attempt to create an extrajudicial SuperMax prison for the world. But it was only a 5-4 decision; our democracy rests on the weary shoulders of 88-year-old Justice John Paul Stephens. Elect Obama, save the Court.

To understand why this is so offensive, you must know that in contemporary jargon, "baby mama" means unwed mother: Fox News calls Michelle Obama "Obama's baby mama"

36-year-old right-wing nutjob Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal keeps getting invited to McCain's house for ribs as a VP candidate. Perhaps he's banished a few spirits while he's there? After all, he's an exorcist! Is Bobby Jindal -- Who May Be On McCain's Veep Shortlist -- An Exorcist?

We all know the corporate media is bought and paid for. And then we see the concrete evidence. David Broder, the supposed "dean of the Washington press corps" is selling his own corpse to speak at coporate events. If they're lucky, he then features their issue in a column. Presstitute. David Broder’s Moonlighting: Post columnist benefits from corporate speaking deals

Blogger is Bloggered Today

flickr: Smithsonian
Most of the time I can't get on my own blog! Here are some good links/arguments/reads, hope they publish:

Bushco has been using ships to hide prisoners and break human rights laws. Maybe Bush can title his autobiography "Outsourcing Torture for Democracy". And he won't even get the contradiction in terms.

Who killed the salmon? Republicans killed the salmon.

John McCain's endorsed/renounced pastor from H E Double Hockey Sticks inspired this headline: Pastor Hagee: The Antichrist Is Gay, "Partially Jewish, As Was Adolph Hitler" (Paging Joe Lieberman!) There's a lot of hating rolled into that one headline.

Vanity Fair publishes a concern troll piece by Dee Dee Myers' husband Todd Purdum, questioning what Bill Clinton has been doing when out of office. (I'm not going to link it, it's on Vanity Fair's site.) If the corporate media EVER does a story about George H.W. Bush, The Carlyle Group and the dictators and thugs he has cozied up to, I'll eat my hat.

Coming Attractions: Booman Tribune tells us that one of the rabid-to-point-of-lunacy Clinton blogs is promoting a video that will bring down the Obama campaign; apparently it's all based on the difference between questions asking "Why'd he"" and claiming that those questions ask, "Whitey?" This will be on Fox/Faux News, Drudge, Politico and rest of the corporate media presently.

From the WaPo, President Head Cheerleader, according to General Ricardo Sanchez, gave this confused pep talk after the death of four contractors in Fallujah in 2004:

"Kick ass!" he quotes the president as saying. "If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal."

"There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

He may as well have added, "I am stupid", but I'm sure the listeners got that point as well.

Steve Gilliard died a year ago today. Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast offers a tribute, and collects links from other bloggers remembering Steve. The News Blog was the first blog I read every day, and I miss Steve's powerful voice.

Now I'm Bitter

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., eyes her shot of Crown Royal with Bronko's owner Nick Tarailo, right, as she stops at the bar during a campaign stop at Bronko's restaurant in Crown Point, Ind., on Saturday, April 12, 2008.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

I'd like to write an omnibus post about the total ridiculousness of the other candidates reaction to, and the media's running gleefully with, Obama's "bitter" comment, but I'm too busy. (Work going into the electric kiln tomorrow! Whoo-hoo!) So here's an unresearched, unlinked post. Just my opinion.

The triviality of it all, the very same week that we learn that Smirky McConstitutionFucker PERSONALLY ENDORSED TORTURE, the press spends the entire weekend calling Barack Obama an out-of-touch elitist. Barack Obama, child of a single mother. Obama, who went to Harvard -- because he earned a scholarship. And then spurned hundreds of offers to work for corporate law firms, to work as a community organizer. Real elitist.

Multi-millionaire John McCain, owner of eight houses, son of an admiral, dumped his first wife to marry a multi-millionaire heiress twenty-five years his junior, he calls Obama an out-of-touch elitist. Multi-millionaire Hillary Clinton, who together with her husband earned $109 million in their seven short years out of the White House, graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School, has lived either in the White House or a tony suburb of New York City since 1992, she calls Barack Obama an elitist.

It's all bullshit! He wasn't insulting anyone, and they know it, and the media knows it. And Hillary Clinton, who is supposed to be a Democrat, attacks Obama like he's just admitted he authorized the United States military to start torturing prisoners. Oh, that's wrong. She attacks Obama like he's her real opponent, not John McSame, the Republicans and George W. Clusterfuck. Hillary, keep your eyes on the prize. It's not about defeating Obama. It's about beating McCain and taking back the White House in November. Shooting the other Democrat in the race is not helping.

Annie Oakley Clinton then claimed that her father taught her to shoot when she was a little girl (my mother said, my father showed me how to shoot when I was a little girl, but he didn't give me the gun. It was too big. It would have knocked me over.) And she'd gone duck hunting. Funny, I don't remember her ever mentioning that before. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure she was a big opponent of guns when she ran for Senate in 2000.

I looked her father up on wikipedia. The house where he supposedly taught her to shoot? It was a vacation house they owned on a lake in Pennsylvania, and Hillary spent her summers at the summer house. Real working class, summers at the second house.

Then she got photographed in a bar in Indiana throwing back a shot and a beer on Saturday night. What next? A campaign appearance with Clint Eastwood where they both drawl "Go ahead, make my day" and she shoots a paper cutout of Obama? Then goes out for a beer and a shot with McCain where they both laugh about having passed the commander-in-chief threshold? You may have guessed that I'm pretty sick of Hillary Clinton's shtick. Drop out now, Hillary, I would write in the sky over her events. If you can't say anything nice about the Democrat, don't say anything.

So, I said I wouldn't link, but this addendum to a Glenn "Glenzilla" Greenwald post pretty well summed up my opinion of the media's role in the whole debacle. (Go buy his new book, Great American Hypocrites.)

[On weekend television] there was virtually no discussion, at least on any of the news shows to which I was exposed, of the obviously consequential revelations of the President's direct involvement in the creation of America's torture regime. Instead, the vast bulk of attention was paid to depicting Barack Obama as an effete, elitist, deceptive enemy of the Regular Guy -- exactly the way that every national Democratic politician in recent memory has inevitably been depicted (including Hillary Clinton, particularly when the media and the Right thought last year that she would be the nominee).

Our elections are dominated by the same tired personality script, trotted out over and over and over. Democrats and liberals -- no matter how poor their upbringing, no matter how self-made they are, no matter how egalitarian their policies -- are the freakish, out-of-touch elitists who despise the values of the Regular Americans. Right-wing leaders -- no matter how extravagantly rich they are by virtue of other people's money, no matter how insulated their lives are, no matter how indifferent their policies are to the vast rich/poor gap -- are the normal, salt-of-the-earth Regular Folk. These petty, cliched storylines drown out every meaningful consideration and dictate our election outcomes, and they are deployed automatically.

It doesn't matter what the candidates actually say or do. The establishment press just waits for the right episode and then reflexively and eagerly fills in the gaps in the shallow script -- the script with which they are intimately familiar and which serves as their only framework for talking about and understanding political disputes.

Go Directly to the Dock at the Hague

ABC reports that war criminals Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet and John Ashcroft discussed and approved of specific methods of torturing prisoners during meetings in the White House situation room. And though the reporters do not mention him, I have no doubt that the Master of Disaster himself, the psychopath-in-chief George W. Clusterfuck was right in there with them, gleefully discussing violating the most fundamental of human rights, the right not to be tortured.

Under the rules of their own religions, they will certainly go to hell. Before, that, I hope most sincerely that they are taken to the Hague in shackles and paraded in front of the world as the monstrosities that they are. I think the fact that each of these church-going hypocrites approved of torture proves that there is no God, for if there was a God, surely she would have struck each of them down by now.

ABCNews: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'
Detailed Discussions Were Held About Techniques to Use on al Qaeda Suspects

ABC cited a top official as saying that Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Reuters: Top Bush aides approved interrogation tactics: report

"Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding," ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

"Justice" Department Torture Memo Released

WaPo: Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators
Justice Dept. Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes

The Justice Department's horrifying torture memo, stripped to its bare essentials, argues that the ends justify the means. If the Bush administration is fighting terrorists (so much scarier than Nazis, so to hell with those pantywaist Geneva Conventions) it has the right to do so by all means necessary, laws and treaties be damned. Torture is justified as "self-defense":

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a "national and international version of the right to self-defense," Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations -- that it must "shock the conscience" -- that the Bush administration advocated for years.

"Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification," Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.

The former Army judge advocate general says the Justice Department was claiming it was above the law:

Thomas J. Romig, who was then the Army's judge advocate general, said yesterday after reading the memo that it appears to argue there are no rules in a time of war, a concept Romig found "downright offensive."

The authors of this memo have written themselves a one-way ticket to hell. Incredibly, John Yoo, the primary author, is employed by the state of California as a professor of law at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkley. He's teaching two constitutional law courses this spring. What is he teaching these students? That the constitution is akin to a roll of toilet paper, which can be flushed down the toilet whenever it's expedient?

Hey, I can do a service to his students. I'll outline the course so they don't have to:

Laws, schmaws.

Write that, and you pass.

Music to Drive You Crazy

Mother Jones: The Torture Playlist

NEWS: Music has been used in American military prisons and on bases to induce sleep deprivation, "prolong capture shock," disorient detainees during interrogations—and also drown out screams. Based on a leaked interrogation log, news reports, and the accounts of soldiers and detainees, here are some of the songs that guards and interrogators chose.

I actually like three of the songs:

Don MacLean, American Pie

Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A.

David Gray, Babylon

You can listen to all 20 songs at the Mother Jones link. For all young parents, yes, the Barney theme song made the list.