Remember how the too-clever-by-half GOP types at the White House were using offsite email accounts for most of their communication to shield them from government oversight?

Well, the first fun bit was that since they weren’t official White House email accounts, they weren’t subject to Executive Privilege protection. But that’s okay, apparently, because — shocker! — it turns out the emails have been lost, presumably in some weird twist of fate, not unlike the 18 minute gap in the Watergate tapes. More here.

Via Josh, we find this from Glenn Greenwald:

Two of the three leading Republican candidates for President either embrace or are open to embracing the idea that the President can imprison Americans without any review, based solely on the unchecked decree of the President. And, of course, that is nothing new, since the current Republican President not only believes he has that power but has exercised it against U.S. citizens and legal residents in the U.S. — including those arrested not on the “battlefield,” but on American soil.

What kind of American isn’t just instinctively repulsed by the notion that the President has the power to imprison Americans with no charges? And what does it say about the current state of our political culture that one of the two political parties has all but adopted as a plank in its platform a view of presidential powers and the federal government that is — literally — the exact opposite of what this country is?

So, whomever set up John “Whore” McCain’s MySpace broke some rules, and as a consequence they got owned. N.B. that this isn’t a hack in the normal sense of the word, but it IS funny as all hell.

From WaPo:

With his go-it-alone approach on Iraq, President Bush is flouting Congress and the public, so angering lawmakers that some consider impeachment an option over his war policy, a senator from Bush’s own party said Sunday.

So, it turns out Gonzo really was involved in the purge, thanks to some recently disclosed emails from that mysterious 18-day gap the Justice Dept. tried to get away with. Here’s the summary, in a nutshell, from Josh:

No surprise there, really. But keep this in mind. Everything the Justice Department has said that later turned out to be false was almost certainly known by the White House to be false, at the time the false statements were made, to the media, and most importantly, to Congress.

Let that sink in.

The title is from Patrick Henry. The context is a Metafilter discussion of this necessarily anonymous WaPo editorial about the surreal experience of receiving a National Security Letter from the FBI. Said letter demanded personal data about the editorial writer’s clients, and contained a gag provision prohibiting him from discussing any aspect of the request. And, of course, said letter was issued by the FBI with no Judicial oversight whatsoever, checks and balances be damned:

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case — including the mere fact that I received an NSL — from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I’ve now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point — a point we passed long ago — the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government’s use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

As discussed previously, the careful analysis of our Resident Anglican:

Yep, personally, it is easy to call bullshit on the actions of the AC. It is even easier if you disagree with them, as I do. However, I think that the overriding mind set with regard to cash distribution will remain Mr. Radtke’s response: “We certainly are in partnership with people who disagree with us, and that’s just fine. We give out our money based on the need, and not on the basis of some theological discussion.”

Of course, there is some pie-in-the-sky hopefulness to that. Politics is involved and will be forever. Property debates rage on right now over who owns churches and accounts that were previously associated with parishes that have withdrawn from ECUSA over the gay ordination issue. These issues will be in court for a long time. And, there are groups like Ekklesia who, while funding some of the same sort of mission programs ECUSA funds, blames ECUSA for trying to buy off its critics even while Ekklesia is spending more money on creating more critics as opposed to more poverty elimination. Makes the church look like the beltway. That is unfortunate.

It is enough to make you sick, really. Especially since it is likely that ECUSA will bend on the issue of gay ordination. I think the new Presiding Bishop has already mentioned that. Not sure. I don’t like that too much either. But, progress is slow when you’re trying to convince the world to end their prejudice. In order to keep working on that, ECUSA can’t afford an actual split from the AC lest they find themselves a “fringe” group with no weight to throw around. (Ed: isn’t ECUSA’s weight their cash?)

I guess the bottom line is that I find the waters are much more hopeful for change in the ECUSA camp than anywhere else. That said, the ECUSA camp has plenty of hurdles to cross itself. And, most of those hurdles are in this country. The tide is not overwhelmingly in support of the Very Rev. Gene Robinson, yet. So, we continue to work here and we continue dialogue there. Hopefully progress is being made, in spite of the politics of it all.

Heathen: We’ve got your experts.

The AC is the global body of Anglican/Episcopal folks; they’re at odds with the more liberal Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) over the ordination of homosexual priests and bishops, and the support of gay unions. There’s been lots of talk of a sectarian split over this, even, with the ECUSA going one way, and the AC going the other; it happens all the time in matters of faith, if you take the long view.

Except there’s a wrinkle. Nobody’s really saying it out loud, but it looks an awful lot like the AC wants the ECUSA to kowtow to its prejudices where gays are concerned, but really doesn’t want them to stop contributing to the global AC fund. The ECUSA contributes about a third of global AC money, apparently. From the NYT article:

American resentment at their role as the Communion’s deep pockets emerged last year when the Episcopal Church’s executive council was asked to increase its contribution to the Anglican Consultative Council, the Communion’s central coordinating body, by 10 percent each year for the next three years from $661,000 in 2007.

At the council’s last meeting, in England in 2005, the Episcopal Church’s representatives were asked to look on as observers, and not participate in decision making — a measure promoted by some conservative primates.

Mrs. Larom, the Episcopal Church’s director of Anglican relations, said some members of the executive council bristled at the budget request, saying, ” ‘Why should we give money when we’re not at the table?’ “

Something tells us the golden rule is about to come into play, and not the one that Jesus taught.

The only reason to refuse to testify on the record and under oath is if you want to be free to lie your ass off.

Read this and this and this, all of which make abundantly clear that Clinton did NOT fire USAs for political reasons, as Bush has now been shown to have done.

From Radley Balko:

Right now, I’m reading Dan Baum’s masterful history of the drug war Smoke and Mirrors for the third time. I can’t recommend it enough.

What becomes abundantly clear from Baum’s reporting: Everything, everything about the prohibition of marijuana is and has always been political. It basically boils down to Richard Nixon needing a wedge issue and a hammer with which to beat the dirty hippie anti-war protesters over the head. With just a bit of research, even hardened drug warriors in Nixon’s own administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s quickly realized marijuana was basically harmless.

From that, we have descended to a point where the government has determined it’s better that sick, crippled, suffering people (a) die, and (b) die in pain, than to give those dirty hippies the smallest of victories, even 35 years later.

Word.

Here’s a few extra facts the media seems unwilling to make clear:

• Clearing out USAs during a term is pretty much unprecedented, though (as we’ve said before) the 4-year-term usually means new Presidents get to pick their own as part of their new Administration. Saying “Clinton fired them all!” in this context, as a defense of the current gang, makes as much sense as complaining that Bush fired Clinton’s cabinet.
• Prior to PATRIOT, these appointees were subject to Congressional approval. After PATRIOT, they’re not. This creates a situation wherein Bush could replace his Congressionally-approved USAs with those who would not pass such scrutiny.
• Moving to clean out politically troublesome prosecutors smacks of a total disregard for the rule of law.
• Making such a move previously would have opened the door for Congressional oversight, since any replacement would have to be made with their approval. This is known as “checks and balances,” and you may recall somewhat hazily from your junior-high civics course.
• Post-PATRIOT, the executive branch is free to load the USA ranks with political functionaries presumably free to pursue prosecutions only of troublesome Democrats, as opposed to grotesquely corrupt Republicans like Duke Cunningham. As noted before, this purge-and-replace campaign has far more in common with the Saturday Night Massacre than anything else.
• Lying to Congress about why these USAs were dismissed is a big no-no.

Bush loyalists are attempting to use Clinton’s removal of the Bush-appointed USAs in 1993 as an example of similar behavior, but it just ain’t so. All presidents replace the USAs when they take office; they’re appointed to 4-year terms, so that’s not at all surprising.

The wacky part here is the idea of FIRING them in the middle of a term. Bush appointed these attorneys in the first place. And, curiously enough, several were involved in high-profile prosecutions of GOP lawmakers (e.g., Duke Cunningham) that were making waves for the Administration and the GOP in general. This is far more like the Saturday Night Massacre than the routine changing-of-the-guards that accompanies the shift from one administration to the next.

See more here and here. Oh, and here’s another bit on how Bush’s dismissal of a USA resulted in the halt of an investigation into . . . Jack Abramoff. Whups!

That is, you should, unless you already know the difference between Sunni and Shia.

The summary: Islam’s Whittenberg Door moment came when Muhammad died; the issue was not faith vs. works but instead one of sucession.

The more “orthodox” view, held by Sunnis — who comprise by far the largest chunk of Muslims worldwide — is that Abu Bakr, a relative and early convert, is the rightful heir to the Prophet. This was a big deal politically as well as spiritually. Muhammad had a close relationship with Bakr, and frequently asked him to lead prayers in his absence, and furthermore was selected by a large group of Muslims upon the Prophet’s death (at Medina, in 632), which gives credence to this view. About ninety percent of Muslims are Sunni.

There were, of course, those who refused to accept Bakr, and who instead supported Ali ibn Abi Talib, also a relative of the Prophet (and also his son-in-law). Complicating matters is that Ali did eventually become Caliph (the 4th), but this doesn’t seem to mollify the Shia. To them, he’s the first Imam, as opposed to the last of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs (as he is to Sunnis). Shia have a significant majority only in Iran and Iraq.

The divide was sufficiently far back that oral tradition has produced different traditions and spiritual laws as well as titles; Ayatollah is a Shia role, for example (apparently).

All this matters for lots of reasons, but one big damn deal to take note of is the fact that the Taliban and Osama are fundamentalist Sunnis, not Shia.

From the WaPo:

The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.

Via Josh Marshall:

As has happened so many times in the last six years, the maximal version of this story — which seemed logical six weeks ago but which I couldn’t get myself to believe — turns out to be true. Indeed, it’s worse. We now know that Gonzales, McNulty and Moschella each lied to Congress. We know that the purge was a plan that began at the White House — and it was overseen by two of President Bush’s closest lieutenants in Washington — Miers and Gonzales. Sampson is the second resignation. There will certainly be more.

Jesus Fuck, Pelosi, grow some Goddamn balls.

The Feds have been abusing the hell out of the PATRIOT act. Who’s surprised?

The people we trust to protect us deserve MORE scrutiny and oversight than regular citizens, not less.

Go read this, and see if there’s any other possible explanation. Bush is the most verbally and publically “Christian” president we’ve had in a long while (though reasonable people may differ on the authenticity of his faith), but he seems to have completely forgotten some key tenets of his supposed favorite philosopher.

The kicker quote is at the end. Don’t miss it.

Just a bit more on how badly Bush has botched perhaps the second biggest problem facing his presidency when he took office in 2001: North Korea.

That whole “let’s fire a bunch of qualified US Attorneys and appoint stooges who will do what we want” plan isn’t looking so good now, is it?

We reproduce in whole here an editorial from the March 4 NYT covering their “must do” list for the new Congress. Actually, it’s more like a “must un-do” list, since the focus is repairing the damage brought by years of Republican thuggery:

The Bush administration’s assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. A few lawmakers are offering bills intended to do just that, but they are only a start. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.

Today we’re offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain; Senator McCain lent his moral authority to improving one part of the bill and thus obscured its many other problems.

Our list starts with three fundamental tasks:

Restore Habeas Corpus

One of the new act’s most indecent provisions denies anyone Mr. Bush labels an “illegal enemy combatant” the ancient right to challenge his imprisonment in court. The arguments for doing this were specious. Habeas corpus is nothing remotely like a get-out-of-jail-free card for terrorists, as supporters would have you believe. It is a way to sort out those justly detained from those unjustly detained. It will not “clog the courts,” as Senator Graham claims. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has a worthy bill that would restore habeas corpus. It is essential to bringing integrity to the detention system and reviving the United States’ credibility.

Stop Illegal Spying

Mr. Bush’s program of intercepting Americans’ international calls and e-mail messages without a warrant has not ceased. The agreement announced recently — under which a secret court supposedly gave its blessing to the program — did nothing to restore judicial process or ensure that Americans’ rights are preserved. Congress needs to pass a measure, like one proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, to force Mr. Bush to obey the law that requires warrants for electronic surveillance.

Ban Torture, Really

The provisions in the Military Commissions Act that Senator McCain trumpeted as a ban on torture are hardly that. It is still largely up to the president to decide what constitutes torture and abuse for the purpose of prosecuting anyone who breaks the rules. This amounts to rewriting the Geneva Conventions and puts every American soldier at far greater risk if captured. It allows the president to decide in secret what kinds of treatment he will permit at the Central Intelligence Agency’s prisons. The law absolves American intelligence agents and their bosses of any acts of torture and abuse they have already committed.

Many of the tasks facing Congress involve the way the United States takes prisoners, and how it treats them. There are two sets of prisons in the war on terror. The military runs one set in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The other is even more shadowy, run by the C.I.A. at secret places.

Close the C.I.A. Prisons

When the Military Commissions Act passed, Mr. Bush triumphantly announced that he now had the power to keep the secret prisons open. He cast this as a great victory for national security. It was a defeat for America’s image around the world. The prisons should be closed.

Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’

The United States has to come clean on all of the “ghost prisoners” it has in the secret camps. Holding prisoners without any accounting violates human rights norms. Human Rights Watch says it has identified nearly 40 men and women who have disappeared into secret American-run prisons.

Ban Extraordinary Rendition

This is the odious practice of abducting foreign citizens and secretly flying them to countries where everyone knows they will be tortured. It is already illegal to send a prisoner to a country if there is reason to believe he will be tortured. The administration’s claim that it got “diplomatic assurances” that prisoners would not be abused is laughable.

A bill by Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, would require the executive branch to list countries known to abuse and torture prisoners. No prisoner could be sent to any of them unless the secretary of state certified that the country’s government no longer abused its prisoners or offered a way to verify that a prisoner will not be mistreated. It says “diplomatic assurances” are not sufficient.

Congress needs to completely overhaul the military prisons for terrorist suspects, starting with the way prisoners are classified. Shortly after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared all members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to be “illegal enemy combatants” not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions or American justice. Over time, the designation was applied to anyone the administration chose, including some United States citizens and the entire detainee population of Gitmo.

To address this mess, the government must:

Tighten the Definition of Combatant

“Illegal enemy combatant” is assigned a dangerously broad definition in the Military Commissions Act. It allows Mr. Bush — or for that matter anyone he chooses to designate to do the job — to apply this label to virtually any foreigner anywhere, including those living legally in the United States.

Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

When the administration began taking prisoners in Afghanistan, it did not much bother to screen them. Hundreds of innocent men were sent to Gitmo, where far too many remain to this day. The vast majority will never even be brought before tribunals and still face indefinite detention without charges.

Under legal pressure, Mr. Bush created “combatant status review tribunals,” but they are a mockery of any civilized legal proceeding. They take place thousands of miles from the point of capture, and often years later. Evidence obtained by coercion and torture is permitted. The inmates do not get to challenge this evidence. They usually do not see it.

The Bush administration uses the hoary “fog of war” dodge to justify the failure to screen prisoners, saying it is not practical to do that on the battlefield. That’s nonsense. It did not happen in Afghanistan, and often in Iraq, because Mr. Bush decided just to ship the prisoners off to Gitmo.

Prisoners designated as illegal combatants are subject to trial rules out of the Red Queen’s playbook. The administration refuses to allow lawyers access to 14 terrorism suspects transferred in September from C.I.A. prisons to Guantanamo. It says that if they had a lawyer, they might say that they were tortured or abused at the C.I.A. prisons, and anything that happened at those prisons is secret.

At first, Mr. Bush provided no system of trial at the Guantanamo camp. Then he invented his own military tribunals, which were rightly overturned by the Supreme Court. Congress then passed the Military Commissions Act, which did not fix the problem. Some tasks now for Congress:

Ban Tainted Evidence

The Military Commissions Act and the regulations drawn up by the Pentagon to put it into action, are far too permissive on evidence obtained through physical abuse or coercion. This evidence is unreliable. The method of obtaining it is an affront.

Ban Secret Evidence

Under the Pentagon’s new rules for military tribunals, judges are allowed to keep evidence secret from a prisoner’s lawyer if the government persuades the judge it is classified. The information that may be withheld can include interrogation methods, which would make it hard, if not impossible, to prove torture or abuse.

Better Define ‘Classified Evidence’

The military commission rules define this sort of secret evidence as “any information or material that has been determined by the United States government pursuant to statute, executive order or regulation to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.” This is too broad, even if a president can be trusted to exercise the power fairly and carefully. Mr. Bush has shown he cannot be trusted to do that.

Respect the Right to Counsel

Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration allowed the government to listen to conversations and intercept mail between some prisoners and their lawyers. This had the effect of suspending their right to effective legal representation. Since then, the administration has been unceasingly hostile to any lawyers who defend detainees. The right to legal counsel does not exist to coddle serial terrorists or snarl legal proceedings. It exists to protect innocent people from illegal imprisonment.

Beyond all these huge tasks, Congress should halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny — 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number. It should also reverse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act by encouraging agencies to reject requests for documents whenever possible. Congress should curtail F.B.I. spying on nonviolent antiwar groups and revisit parts of the Patriot Act that allow this practice.

The United States should apologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents.

Oh yes, and it is time to close the Guantanamo camp. It is a despicable symbol of the abuses committed by this administration (with Congress’s complicity) in the name of fighting terrorism.

From I am not a state secret, an op-ed in the LATimes by Khaled El-Masri, who was kidnapped by the CIA in 2003:

ON NEW YEAR’S EVE in 2003, I was seized at the border of Serbia and Macedonia by Macedonian police who mistakenly believed that I was traveling on a false German passport. I was detained incommunicado for more than three weeks. Then I was handed over to the American Central Intelligence Agency and was stripped, severely beaten, shackled, dressed in a diaper, injected with drugs, chained to the floor of a plane and flown to Afghanistan, where I was imprisoned in a foul dungeon for more than four months.

Long after the American government realized that I was an entirely innocent man, I was blindfolded, put back on a plane, flown to Europe and left on a hilltop in Albania — without any explanation or apology for the nightmare that I had endured.

My story is well known. It has been described in literally hundreds of newspaper articles and television news programs — many of them relying on sources within the U.S. government. It has been the subject of numerous investigations and reports by intergovernmental bodies, including the European Parliament. Most recently, prosecutors in my own country of Germany are pursuing indictments against 13 CIA agents and contractors for their role in my kidnapping, abuse and detention. Although I never could have imagined it, and certainly never wished it, I have become the public face of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program.

Why, then, does the American government insist that my ordeal is a state secret? This is something beyond my comprehension. In December 2005, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, I sued former CIA Director George Tenet along with other CIA agents and contractors for their roles in my kidnapping, mistreatment and arbitrary detention. Above all, what I want from the lawsuit is a public acknowledgment from the U.S. government that I was innocent, a mistaken victim of its rendition program, and an apology for what I was forced to endure. Without this vindication, it has been impossible for me to return to a normal life.

The U.S. government does not deny that I was wrongfully kidnapped. Instead, it has argued in court that my case must be dismissed because any litigation of my claims will expose state secrets and jeopardize American security, even though President Bush has told the world about the CIA’s detention program, and even though my allegations have been corroborated by eyewitnesses and other evidence. To my amazement and dismay, last May, a federal district court judge agreed with the government and threw out my case. And then Friday, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. It seems that the only place in the world where my case cannot be discussed is in a U.S. courtroom.

There is, of course, more. Hit the link for the whole piece.

Appeals will, of course, follow, but it’s nice to see someone associated with this absurdly corrupt administration called to account.

“North Korea has nuclear weapons today because George W. Bush is a stupid, stupid man.”

More.

Pandagon explains how to talk to a Libertarian. It’s fucking brilliant:

But there are some Libertarians who remain unswayed by such ugly facts. Whether through persistent ignorance or sociopathy or a mixture of the two, they hold as an article of near-religious faith that they derive no benefit from the modern regulatory apparatus that they could not duplicate on their own with the homebrew FDA they have in their garage. Or even worse, they manifestly hold the welfare of others as far less important than their own profit and comfort. … In a cutthroat economic free-for-all, with the mass of people on the bottom and a handful of ruthless Machiavellian princes at the top, each one of these goobers thinks it’s inevitable that he (gender specificity deliberate) will inevitably become one of the princes.**

And the footnote:

** This is, of course, known as the Renaissance Faire Fallacy.

Then, introducing her first tactic for Libertarian cranial discombobulation, she drops this gem:

Most American Libertarians have precious little grasp of the history of their political philosophy. They seem to think that the Libertarian school of thought sprang fully formed like Athena from Ayn Rand’s beetled brow, with Robert Heinlein as attending midwife.

Beautiful. Go read the whole thing.

Have you been following that story about a Georgia state rep (Ben Bridges) who has been promulgating the idea that Darwin and Copernicus are both wrong, and that spreading their theories is the work of a shadowy Jewish cabal? Here’s a sample:

The Earth is not rotating, nor is it going around the sun. The universe is not one ten-trillionth the size we are told. Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as “science.” The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie.

Said legislator gets these ideas from his campaign manager, who is married to the King Hell nutcase, one Marshall Hall (see FixedEarth.com). Other state-level pols got Bridges’ memo supporting Hall’s kookery, and some sent it on to other colleagues. People appear to have been taking him seriously, at least until someone pointed out what a raving nutbird looney he is; however, Bridges’ memo is clearly the product of Hall, so it raises the question of just exactly what he’s doing sending out unvetted correspondence that is so transparently looney and, by the way, anti-Semetic.

Anyway, it’s a mess, and we wanted to point it out. As for additional analysis, we rely on the inimitable Fred Clark, who is on the case and doing a better job than we have time for this week.

Conan O’Brien’s Meet the Press for Idiots should NOT be missed.

The court of appeals has sided with Bush in refusing to strike down a law denying Federal courts the ability to review the cases of Gitmo detainees.

Twice before the United States Supreme Court has ruled that federal courts may consider habeas corpus petitions by the Guantanamo Bay detainees. In response to those decisions, Congress has twice rewritten the law in an attempt to limit the avenues of appeal by the detainees.

The most recent revision to the law, at issue in today’s decision, was signed by President Bush last October. It eliminated the jurisdiction of federal courts over habeas challenges by any non-citizens held as enemy combatants, and set up a military review for the prisoners at Guantanamo, with limited right of appeal to the federal courts afterwards.

We’ll see what the Supremes say. Surely it’s impossible that the Administration has figured out an end run around the Constitution that’s as simple as holding people in Cuba.

We’re pretty sure this doesn’t qualify:

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While we love that he typically keeps his knives out for braindead Republicans, we think this one will be funny to just about everybody.

How Faith and Science differ when it comes to understanding the Universe, as expressed in easy-to-understand flow charts.

Now, can we please get those creationist goons out of our schools now?

GOP: Gleefully votes to eliminate habeas corpus.

Dems: Upon regaining control of Congress, introduce bill to restore said.

Now Congress just wants to monitor EVERYTHING on the Internet — all emails, IM, web traffic, the whole schmeel.

Can anyone else figure out why this is a terrible, terrible idea?

Tenent warned Rice 2 months before 9/11. There’d been a drastic uptick in al-Qaeda communications, and it was clear something was up. This warning, like those before it, was largely ignored.

Also note the context in which the Post runs this:

Editor’s Note: How much effort the Bush administration made in going after Osama bin Laden before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, became an issue last week after former president Bill Clinton accused President Bush’s “neocons” and other Republicans of ignoring bin Laden until the attacks. Rice responded in an interview that “what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years.”

The Rice claim doesn’t even pass the giggle test.

But it turns out he’s got no balls. They’ve issued an apology.

Confused? Here’s the deal: The Edwards campaign hired two fairly prominent liberal bloggers to run their campaign blog: Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon) and Melissa McEwen (of Shakespeare’s Sister). Both bloggers have been unwavering in their support for, among other things, reproductive rights, and have occasionally — horrors! — used salty language in their postings. Furthermore, they’ve not been shy about pointing out how fundamentally antiwoman restrictive reproductive rights positions are, and that necessarily includes those of the church of Rome.

Disagreeing, even vigorously, with Catholic doctrine does not make one an “anti-catholic bigot,” except in the eyes of the wingnuts.

As if on cue, comes now ubercatholic bigot Bill Donohue, who loves to spew hate and bile about homosexuals and other groups whenever possible, who’s very unhappy that a candidate he’ll never vote for has hired people who don’t like his politics; in fact, his statement demands that Edwards fire the women.

Quickly following that, the right wing noise machine geared up to maumau anything Marcotte or McEwen might have said. We here at Heathen were hoping very much that Edwards would just tell these jackasses to get stuffed, but instead he’s rolled over and issued a namby-pamby pseudo-apology, though in his defense he kept the women on staff.

Even so, the whole tone of the thing is capitulatory — and it’s capitulatory towards an openly bigoted hatemonger like Donohue. The far-right Catholic League wins this encounter, but is still whining that Edwards didn’t fire the two, so at least they’re not actually happy. (They continue to insist that the bloggers are anti-catholic bigots, but it’s been clear to all who’ve read their words that their positions are not anything of the sort; it’s just more noise from the wingnuts.)

It’s going to be a long, long campaign season.

This week, VP Cheney’s lesbian daughter famously pronounced her decision to have a child of her own off limits in terms of political discussions, which is utter horseshit. Dan Savage says it better than we could:

Nice try, Mary.

Yes, it’s a baby, not a prop. My kid isn’t a prop either, but that never stopped right-wingers from attacking me and my boyfriend over our decision to become parents. The fitness of same-sex couples to parent is very much part of the political debate thanks to the GOP and the Christian bigots that make up its lunatic “base.” You’re a Republican, Mary, you worked on both of your father’s campaigns, and you kept your mouth clamped shut while Karl Rove and George Bush ran around the country attacking gay people, gay parents, and our children in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. It’s a little late to declare the private choices of gays and lesbians unfit for public debate, Mary.

And so long as your party insists on making the fitness of homosexuals to marry or parent — or, hell, exist — a subject of public debate, Mary, your decision to become a parent is germane and very much fit for public discussion and debate. The GOP’s selective embrace of some pregnant dykes — only knocked-up lesbians with powerful connections will be treated with respect — is a disconnect that demands answers. From you, from your father, from your venomous mother, from the idiot president you helped elect. Is that fair? Maybe not. Want to blame someone? Go look in the mirror — and then come out swinging, Mary — for yourself, your partner, and your child.

Maybe Brother Heathen ought to get promoted to his own blog; here’s what he had to say about Charles Stimson in comments, below:

He should be disbarred. Alarmist on my part? I don’t think so. I worked by ass off to be admitted to a pretty exclusive group of professionals. A group who, ostensibly, purport to swear to uphold the rights of their clients within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws of their respective jurisdictions.

Making a comment like Mr. Stimson did is analogous to impeaching a criminal defendant’s counsel in front of a jury for stooping to represent the defendant. It is like asking a witness if they would lie on the stand when you have no basis to believe that they are, in fact, lying. For all the shit lawyers get, the one thing we do to deserve it is admit people like Mr. Stimson. He is a disgrace to an honorable profession. A profession that is fundamentally based on giving each party equal and responsible representation and letting the law figure out who is “correct.”

Mr. Stimson has shown that he values propaganda more than justice, fury more than honesty and prejudice more than liberty. He is a disgrace to the bar, the Justice Department and the Executive Branch (which is saying a lot considering the current resident of the White House). He should be disbarred. Draconian? Perhaps. But he has made is bed. And it is a disgraceful place to sleep.

Goddamn right, Brother. Well said.

We are absolutely SHOCKED by this, but it’s awesome:

Today, the Lone Star State’s Governor Rick Perry signed an executive order to require all girls entering sixth grade to be vaccinated against HPV, according to the Associated Press. Perry, a conservative republican opposed to abortion and stem cell research, avoided the battle such an aim would incite in the Legislature by issuing the order himself. Despite the fact that we can now successfully vaccinate against HPV — the most common cause of cervical cancer, which kills 4,000 women yearly — many conservatives are up in arms over the implications of inoculating young girls against a sexually transmitted disease. To do so would undercut messages about safe sex; possibly encouraging sexual activity, they argue.

This line of reasoning is so loony, so unabashedly callous, it’s amazing to hear it so widely parroted. It essentially deems naughty girls who do not heed parental warnings about the dangers of unsafe sex as expendable — either to a HPV, a disease we can prevent, or, in the worst cases, cervical cancer. “The HPV vaccine provides us with an incredible opportunity to effectively target and prevent cervical cancer,” Perry said. “If there are diseases in our society that are going to cost us large amounts of money, it just makes good economic sense, not to mention the health and well-being of these individuals to have those vaccines available.”

More at the local fishwrapper.

Charles Timson, the Defense Department jackass who tried to organize a boycott of the law firms providing pro bono representation to the Gitmo detainees has resigned.

Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, asshole.

Many have said this of presidents in the past, but in the US today, it’s a matter of public record:

LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.

But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.

The ruling was the result of a suit, in which [James Bamford, the author, is] one of the plaintiffs, brought against the National Security Agency by the American Civil Liberties Union. It was a response to revelations by this newspaper in December 2005 that the agency had been monitoring the phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans for more than four years without first obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Let’s compare:

• CLINTON lied about a blow job in an investigation of an ancient land deal in Arkansas on which he lost money: IMPEACHED

• BUSH admitted on national television that he was wantonly committing hundreds if not thousands of felonies by ignoring FISA, not to mention starting a trillion-dollar war with a country essentially unrelated to Islamic terrorism: UNIMPEACHED

Molly Ivins, 1944 – 2007. She was only 62.

Molly said this recently:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

One of her editors said:

Goodbye, Molly I.

Molly Ivins is gone, and her words will never grace these pages again — for this, we will mourn. But Molly wasn’t the type of woman who would want us to grieve. More likely, she’d say something like, “Hang in there, keep fightin’ for freedom, raise more hell, and don’t forget to laugh, too.”

If there was one thing Molly wanted us to understand, it’s that the world of politics is absurd. Since we can’t cry, we might as well laugh. And in case we ever forgot, Molly would remind us, several times a week, in her own unique style.

Goddamn right.

We figure it’s got something to do with his ever-dwindling approval ratings and the fact that Congress is actually holding hearings, but it’s good that this is getting out. Politicians have no business influencing scientific findings.

He’s holding the administration’s feet to the fire for an explicit answer to the question “Do you think you can go to war with Iran without Congressional permission?” Rice, et. al., have tried hard to avoid answering this question, but he won’t let it drop.

God bless that man.

He’s increasing his direct control over regulatory agencies, basically hamstringing them in what Henry Waxman calls “great news for special interests.”

Seriously, how much more could this guy SUCK?

Canadian citizen Maher Arar — the poster boy, if you will, for extraordinary rendition — will be compensated by his government to the tune of $10.5 MM (CN) for its role in his year-long ordeal. Arar was arrested at JFK en route from Tunisia to his home in Canada in 2002; after 11 days, the US officials sent him to Syria, where he was frequently beaten and kept in solitary confinement for the better part of a year before being released.

This is better than nothing, but the real problem is that the true architects of his torture and imprisonment are the US, who still refuse to remove him from their watch lists despite his having been cleared by a 2-year inquiry, and despite the fact that the only reason he was on US watch lists in the first place is because of the original Canadian error.

Here he is insisting there’s no such thing as a Constitutional right to habeas corpus:

This is really beyond the pale. From the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel:

“While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear (such as free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to assemble peacefully) also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative. It boggles the mind the lengths this administration will go to to systematically erode the rights and privileges we have all counted on and held up as the granite pillars of our society since our nation was founded.”

(Quoted at Slashdot)

Honestly, this sort of absurd statement ought to be grounds for his removal and, frankly, disbarrment.

Via BoingBoing, this quote from Sir Ken Macdonald, British director of public prosecutions:

It is critical that we understand that this new form of terrorism carries another more subtle, perhaps equally pernicious, risk. Because it might encourage a fear-driven and inappropriate response. By that I mean it can tempt us to abandon our values.

London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war.

We wouldn’t get far in promoting a civilising culture of respect for rights amongst and between citizens if we set about undermining fair trials in the simple pursuit of greater numbers of inevitably less safe convictions. On the contrary, it is obvious that the process of winning convictions ought to be in keeping with a consensual rule of law and not detached from it. Otherwise we sacrifice fundamental values critical to the maintenance of the rule of law — upon which everything else depends.

They’re making shit up about Barack Obama. Fortunately, CNN remembered it used to be a NEWS organization and more or less obliterated the “story” promulgated by the Moonie Times (Washington Times and Insight Magazine) organization and Fox News. (The Moonie mag Insight is still insisting their unsourced story stands despite CNN’s actual investigative coverage, and they end up looking pretty stupid because of it.)

Even better: Obama himself isn’t taking this lying down.

In a post on coercion and hearsay, he concludes:

Either we are a global leader in fairness and human rights, or we’re not. Under our current administration, I fear that we are not.

And not in a good way: his approval rating stands at 28 percent.