More on the GOP’s ongoing voter-suppression programs, this time in California. Many SoCal Hispanics got letters telling them it would be illegal for immigrants to vote.

If your victory depends on keeping people from voting, doesn’t that say something about your respect for democracy?

Bush signed the torture-and-no-Habeas bill today. See also the Washington Post:

President Bush this morning proudly signed into law a bill that critics consider one of the most un-American in the nation’s long history. The new law vaguely bans torture — but makes the administration the arbiter of what is torture and what isn’t. It allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant. It suspends the Great Writ of habeas corpus for detainees. It allows coerced testimony at trial. It immunizes retroactively interrogators who may have engaged in torture.

and the ACLU:

The president can now — with the approval of Congress — indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act.

So doomed.

MAD points us to this bit over at the American Prospect, which is really just a pointer to Krugman:

There are two reasons why party control is everything in this election.

The first, lesser reason is the demonstrated ability of Republican Congressional leaders to keep their members in line, even those members who cultivate a reputation as moderates or mavericks. G.O.P. politicians sometimes make a show of independence, as Senator John McCain did in seeming to stand up to President Bush on torture. But in the end, they always give the White House what it wants: after getting a lot of good press for his principled stand, Mr. McCain signed on to a torture bill that in effect gave Mr. Bush a completely free hand.

And if the Republicans retain control of Congress, even if it’s by just one seat in each house, Mr. Bush will retain that free hand. If they lose control of either house, the G.O.P. juggernaut will come to a shuddering halt.

Yet that’s the less important reason this election is all about party control. The really important reason may be summed up in two words: subpoena power…

The current Congress has shown no inclination to investigate the Bush administration. Last year The Boston Globe offered an illuminating comparison: when Bill Clinton was president, the House took 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether Mr. Clinton had used the White House Christmas list to identify possible Democratic donors. But in 2004 and 2005, a House committee took only 12 hours of testimony on the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

The official Heathen position has always been “keep either party from controlling both the White House and Congress,” but even our cynical hearts couldn’t predict how bad it would get once that happened.

“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” — Sinclair Lewis

We are now a nation who openly assert that the government has the right to arrest and detain without charge any person, citizen or not, interesting to the President with no counsel, no recourse, and with no protections from inhumane treatment.

The Bush administration’s May, 2002 lawless detention of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla — on U.S. soil — was, as I recounted in my book, the first incident which really prompted me to begin concluding that things were going terribly awry in our country. The administration declared Padilla an “enemy combatant,” put him in a military prison, and refused to charge him with any crime or even allow him access to a lawyer or anyone else. He stayed in a black hole, kept by his own government, for the next three-a-half-years with no charges of any kind ever asserted against him and with the administration insisting on the right to detain him (and any other American citizen) indefinitely — all based solely on the secret, unchallengeable say-so of the President that he was an “enemy combatant.”

Back in July, Bush tried to smack down a CNN reporter in a press conference who asserted North Korea’s nuclear program was expanding. Keep smirking, Mr. President. Keep smirking.

So, the DPRK may or may not have a real, functional nuke now. Many analysts are now saying that the perceived yield of yesterday’s explosion is far below that which Pyongyang was widely believed to be capable, strongly suggesting a failed test rather than a successful nuclear debut. That hardly matters, though, as their contempt for the international community on this point is now a matter of no dispute.

How’d this happen? It’s pretty obvious that Bush’s “get tough with the Axis of Evil” approach had more than a little to do with Kim Jong Il’s bellicosity since 2000. See Josh Marshall’s analysis:

North Korea’s nuclear program has been a problem for US presidents going back to Reagan, and the conflict between North and South has been a key issue for US presidents going back to Truman. As recently as 1994, the US came far closer to war with North Korea than most Americans realize.

President Clinton eventually concluded a complicated and multipart agreement in which the North Koreans would suspend their production of plutonium in exchange for fuel oil, help building light water nuclear reactors (the kind that don’t help making bombs) and a vague promise of diplomatic normalization.

President Bush came to office believing that Clinton’s policy amounted to appeasement. Force and strength were the way to deal with North Korea, not a mix of force, diplomacy and aide. And with that premise, President Bush went about scuttling the 1994 agreement, using evidence that the North Koreans were pursuing uranium enrichment (another path to the bomb) as the final straw.

Remember the guiding policy of the early Bush years: Clinton did it=Bad, Bush=Not whatever Clinton did.

All diplomatic niceties aside, President Bush’s idea was that the North Koreans would respond better to threats than Clinton’s mix of carrots and sticks.

Then in the winter of 2002-3, as the US was preparing to invade Iraq, the North called Bush’s bluff. And the president folded. Abjectly, utterly, even hilariously if the consequences weren’t so grave and vast.

Threats are a potent force if you’re willing to follow through on them. But he wasn’t. The plutonium production plant, which had been shuttered since 1994, got unshuttered. And the bomb that exploded tonight was, if I understand this correctly, almost certainly the product of that plutonium uncorked almost four years ago.

So the President talked a good game, the North Koreans called his bluff and he folded. And since then, for all intents and purposes, and all the atmospherics to the contrary, he and his administration have done essentially nothing.

Of course, Marshall is no fan of the President, so some of you may not find this all that convincing. However, Marshall is by no means alone, and even some Republicans view this development as a significant Bush failure.

From TalkingPointMemo, this excerpt from AP:

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

Basically, this means he gets to decide whether to report on DHS’s law-abiding or -breaking behavior. Or so he asserts in his extraconstitutional signing statement. More via Yahoo.

Fox News tried to help their GOP masters yesterday by repeatedly identifying Foley as a Democrat.

They use children as human shields to prevent reporters from asking awkward Foley questions.

So, Woodward’s new book says Tenet warned Condi about scary intel from AQ in the summer of 2001.

Condi, predictably, insisted this was horseshit.

Too bad White House records make her a liar.

Is there anything these people won’t lie about?

Well done, Cliff Schecter. Some GOP talking head tried to spin the Foley situation as an isolated incident when compared to the Democrats’ corruption problems, which is just the wrong angle, and gets a serious smackdown for her trouble.

We can’t imagine what she was thinking. The whole trope of “the Dems are just as bad!” just won’t hunt when the GOP is losing seats to indictments and jail terms, with more likely to come as the Abramoff and Foley coverup investigations expand.

TPM reports that it turns out Bush has been learning the lessons of Vietnam. He’s just been learning them from Henry “Let’s Bomb Cambodia” Kissinger, a man who thinks the main problem with our Southeast Asian adventurism was that we didn’t stay long enough.

Sweet Lord.

It’s starting to look like the GOP leadership knew about his inappropriate contact with the page nearly a year ago — but did nothing.

By the way, if you want to read what Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said to his underage page in IM, well, go here.

From an editorial today:

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

[…]

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

We are so fucking doomed.

Congressional Republicans are now pushing through a bill that would legitimize Bush’s extralegal wiretapping behavior, more or less gutting the already meager protections of FISA — which Bush ignored anyway, thereby making him a felon many times over.

As the Jackson office says, “Idiots have stolen my country. I have to go puke now. And move to Sweden.” Right there with you, buddy.

Go read. It’s worse than you think.

The Senate just killed an amendment to ensure federal courts could review the legitimacy of individual’s imprisonment on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.

Why do we need an amendment? Because the bill in question is that bad. Not that anyone noticed; it went down on party lines, with even “Maverick” McCain voting against it.

Kerry‘s had something to say about it, too:

We’ve got to tell the truth about what’s happening right now — right now — in our country. We must start treating our moral authority as a national treasure that doesn’t limit our power but magnifies our influence. That seems obvious, but this Administration still doesn’t get it. Still. Right now — today — they are trying to rush a bill through Congress that will fundamentally undermine our moral authority, put our troops at greater risk, and make our country less safe.

Let me be clear about something-something that it seems few people are willing to say. This bill permits torture. It gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. No matter how much well-intended United States Senators would like to believe otherwise, it gives an Administration that lobbied for torture just what it wanted.

The only guarantee we have that these provisions really will prohibit torture is the word of the President. But we have seen in Iraq the consequences of simply accepting the word of this Administration. No, we cannot just accept the word of this Administration that they will not engage in torture given that everything they’ve already done and said on this most basic question has already put our troops at greater risk and undermined the very moral authority needed to win the war on terror.

Oh, and it gets worse. From the LA Times:

BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops “during an armed conflict,” it also allows him to seize anybody who has “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.

Glenn Greenwald has more:

There is a profound and fundamental difference between an Executive engaging in shadowy acts of lawlessness and abuses of power on the one hand, and, on the other, having the American people, through their Congress, endorse, embrace and legalize that behavior out in the open, with barely a peep of real protest. Our laws reflect our values and beliefs. And our laws are about to explicitly codify one of the most dangerous and defining powers of tyranny — one of the very powers this country was founded in order to prevent.

[…]

Thomas Jefferson, in his letter to Thomas Paine, 1789. ME 7:408, Papers 15:269, said: “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” And Patrick Henry warned us well in advance about Government officials who would seek to claim the right to imprison people without a trial:

Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings–give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else! …Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.

Bush will sign this bill without a thought of what he’s doing, which is, in essence, undoing 800 years of legal tradition.

If you voted for any of these GOP weasels, well, fuck you. If you’re a senator opposed to this and didn’t try to mount a filibuster, fuck you, too. And if you don’t care about this law and its implications, well, fuck you twice. We are now officially a nation of shitheads. It’s Rob’s phrase, but we believe it.

Seriously. How long do you think it’ll be before someone politically inconvenient to the current regime is disappeared? An investigative journalist? A pro-choice activist? An environmentalist? It’ll be legal, under this law — Bush can declare someone an “enemy combatant” and keep them wherever he likes. It’s a complete end run around separation of powers, and that’s precisely what this imperial President wanted.

Tbogg explains who Bush has made us:

In America they torture people, including their own, in secret prisons.

The media, of course, missed the entire point of Clinton smacking Wallace around — that being that the historical record makes abundantly clear that his administration did far more in pursuit of Islamic terrorism than Bush would have you believe, or than Bush himself did. This is no surprise.

However, Jon Stewart was paying attention, as was our national treasure Keith Olbermann, who termed his comment “A Textbook Definition of Cowardice.” Crooks and Liars has an easier-to-view video; it’s well worth your time, even if you just read the transcript in the first link. His closure we’ll include here:

The “free pass” has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush.

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.

And there it is, Mr. Bush:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

In our suitcase, we found the midsummer New Yorker we’d misplaced on our last trip (July 10 & 17), which kind of makes up for the lightweight nature of the current issue.

Anyhow, there’s a long rumination about the future of liberal internationalism by George Packer in which he discusses the struggle with jihadism as compared (by others) to the Cold War against expanding communism. The final few paragraphs are well worth your time:

The critical view [of l.i.] is not confined to the pacifist and anti-imperialist left. It can count among its most thoughtful and influential adherents the writer David Rieff, who a decade ago in Bosnia was a leading liberal internationalist himself. The interventions of the past ten years, culminating with Iraq, have turned Rieff into a deep skeptic of power used in the name of human rights — a self-proclaimed realist. Writing recently in The Nation, and amplifying his latest book, “At the Point of a Gun,” he suggested that “when you posit the fundamental benevolence of the liberal universalist order and identify the United States as a guarantor of that order . . . you are stuck with the prospect of a virtually untrammeled use of American power.” In other words, there is a straight and not very long line from the Atlantic Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to Abu Ghraib and Haditha. Like Kurtz, those who begin as humanitarians have a way of ending as barbarians.

Rieff writes with the bitter scorn of an ex-interventionist, and he forces innocent believers to confront the most painful questions about the motives and consequences of their actions. He dislikes, above all, the moral vanity inherent in American exceptionalism — the idea, as the Bush Administration’s crucial 2002 position paper “National Security Strategy of the United States” put it, of “a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests.” For Rieff, there is no union; America is just like any other empire, acting out of selfish concerns, and its moral fantasies make its power only more dangerous. Rieff is in love with disillusionment, and he was resolved the crisis in his own outlook by taking an impossibly pure position. . . For Rieff, the fact that NATO was partly designed to enhance American power means that a benign view of Truman’s foreign policy is childish. Having gazed into the dark heart of liberal internationalism and recoiled, he doesn’t allow the possibility that NATO is both a tool for America to assert its will and an arrangement that has benefitted large numbers of people, most of them non-Americans, for more than half a century.

American power, currently reviled around the world, is an inescapable fact, and when it allows itself to be harnessed to the wishes and interests of other nations, especially democratic ones, it can be a constructive force and win wider acceptance. As the German journalists Josef Joffe writes in his new book “Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America” (Norton; $24.95), “If the United States is an empire, it is a liberal one — a power that seeks not to grab but to co-opt.” This is not a narcissistic fantasy but an accurate description by a European who, unburdened by the torments of exceptionalism as few American writers of any persuasion are, can say matter-of-factly to his American friends, You have made your problems worse, you have acted recklessly and selfishly, but don’t overdo the self-criticism. Other countries naturally resent your power, but most still prefer it to the alternative. The world can’t afford these wild mood swings.

One of the greatest challenges of the new few years will be to rescue democracy, human rights, and national security from the company these words have recently kept. A clear-eyed understanding of our predicament begins with the recognition that American interests and values do not always rhyme; imagining that they do makes it more likely that in the end we’ll compromise both. [Emph. added] How can the U.S. fight jihadism without supporting dictatorships? Regime change by force has proved disastrous; elections have brought to power Islamists whose commitment to democracy is doubtful; ongoing blank checks written to Saudi princes, Pakistani generals, and a decaying dynasty in Cairo are bound to bankrupt sender and receiver alike. It’s ahrd to imagine a waning of the jihadist threat that doesn’t involve some kind of liberalization in the Muslim world, either because Islamism comes to be reformed from within or because it comes to be rejected by subject populations. (Iran, several decades ahead of the Arab countries, is where this struggle can be seen in sharpest relief.) A serious American policy towards Islamism will do well what the Bush Administration has done badly or not at all, and without triumphalist speeches: modest, informed, persistent support for reformers, without grand promises of regime change; concerted efforts at reconstruction and counter-insurgency that bring to bear the full range of government agencies as well as alliances and international institutions. Since these tasks will fall to the United States one way or another, we should learn to do them better rather than vow never to try again. large ideas drawn from historical analogies can help as guiding frameworks, but the glamorous certainties they seem to offer are illusions; we still have to think for ourselves.

The idiot son of Mike Wallace tried to ambush former President Clinton on Fox, with predictable results. Transcript, Video.

Wallace asserted they’d asked the same leading questions of Bush Administration figures, but, well, turns out he’s a lying little bitch.

Clinton was by no means perfect — no matter what else he did, for example, he’ll always be remembered for Lewinsky and his poorly considered pardons — but it sure would be nice to have somebody in public life with the ability to fight back against right-wing, neocon bullshit like this.

Update: The Rude Pundit points out an excellent bit we missed:

But let’s not let one quote pass without notice. When Wallace, armless, desperately turning his head to wipe the blood off his mouth, asked Clinton about promoting democracy in the Muslim world, the former President said, “Democracy is about way more than majority rule. Democracy is about minority rights, individual rights, restraints on power.”

Now that’s an undercut to the gut of the Bush administration.

Word.

“Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat” (Local copy)

MediaMatters dismantles Bill O’Reilly’s newest opus, “Culture Warrior.” The summary? He’s a damned liar, a fool or both.

This is just a small sampling of O’Reilly’s falsehoods, distortions, and misrepresentations. Although he has a habit of accusing people of being “cowards” when they decline to appear on The O’Reilly Factor, he refuses to have most of “the S-Ps” on his show — where they might answer some of his charges — because “it is hard to imagine a more loathsome group.” This refusal extends to Media Matters: Despite the fact that he has attacked us on the air numerous times (and in the book calls us “vile”), not only does he refuse to allow a representative from our organization to appear on his show to respond, he has never been able to cite a single instance — not one — in which we have said something about him that wasn’t true.

Not that this is a surprise; the formerly principled Arizona republican — who is sitting in Barry Goldwater’s seat, no less — has his nose so far up GWB’s ass he can tell what he’s having for lunch. As a consequence, his supposed resistance to allowing the Bush administration to detain and torture suspects with no legal recourse or grounds has evaporated like, well, a kidnapped Canadian sent to Syria.

The “compromise” arrived at by the Senate and White House basically allows the executive branch to do as it pleases and disregard Geneva more or less at will. Habeas corpus won’t even enter into it because — you guessed it — Bush’s folks will still get to decide when that applies. We’re now the first nation on earth to legally authorize violations of the Geneva convention. Congratulations.

Coverage and analysis at Eschaton, Digby, This Modern World and American Prospect. In particular, from the latter:

There is nothing in this bill that President Thumbscrews can’t ignore. There is nothing in this bill that reins in his feckless and dangerous reinterpretation of the powers of his office. There is nothing in this bill that requires him to take it — or its congressional authors — seriously. Two weeks ago, John Yoo set down in The New York Times the precise philosophical basis on which the administration will sign this bill and then ignore it. The president will decide what a “lesser breach” of the Geneva Conventions is? How can anyone over the age of five give this president that power?

Also, from the Washington Post, quoted at Whisky Bar (go read his contrasting quote, too):

The bad news is that Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation.

Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes.

Cite

If you think this is a good idea, just imagine what would happen if you or someone you love ended up on the wrong side of these provisions. It does happen. That’s why we have due process, and why we have a real court system. Bush & co. seem content to dismantle all that in the name of Fightin’ Terra, but those who support him would do well to recall that governments rarely give back power once the people have ceded it. Even if you think this is a good idea now, we can guarantee we’ll see these provisions applied in ways you won’t be so happy about within a very few years.

House Republicans passed a bill yesterday that would require voters show photo ID in Federal elections despite objections from Democrats (and despite the fact that a court in Georgia has dismissed such a law as unconstitutional). Leaving aside the “papers please” implications and the fact that it amounts to a poll tax (government photo IDs aren’t free), it imposes another hurdle on a demographic traditionally outside the GOP tent.

It’s hard to escape the notion that a party seemingly bent on preserving a low-turnout electorate must not, at its core, hold truly democratic values. The GOP opposes efforts like Motor Voter, even, precisely because they make it easier for more people to vote.

Food for thought. (Via MeFi.)

We do. From our 2003 entry:

Maher Arar is a Syrian-born Canadian. Returning to Canada from vacation in Tunis last September, he flew from there to Zurich to New York, intending to continue on to Montreal. US officials detained him in New York, refused his requests for an attorney, would not tell him what charges or allegations resulted in his arrest, and eventually deported him — to SYRIA, where they knew he would be tortured or killed. He was held for over a year in total — ten months in Syria — before finally being released on October 5, thanks to the efforts of his wife and Canadian authorities.

A Canadian government commission officially exonerated Arar today, 3 years later. He was arrested and sent to Syria to be tortured with no due process, no trial, no jury, no judge, no charge, no nothing. He was essentially abducted and sent to Syria by our government despite the fact that he’s not a US citizen, does not live here, and did nothing wrong. The Canadians gave the U.S. people bad intel, and based on this intel people acting in our name had him tortured. He had no chance to avoid it.

From the NYT story:

Mr. Arar, speaking at a news conference, praised the findings. “Today Justice O’Connor has cleared my name and restored my reputation,” he said. “I call on the government of Canada to accept the findings of this report and hold these people responsible.”

His lawyer, Marlys Edwardh, said the report affirmed that Mr. Arar, who has been unemployed since his return to Canada, was deported and tortured because of “a breathtakingly incompetent investigation.”

[…]

However, the commission found that the designation [on a “terrorist lookout list”] should have only been applied to people who are members or associates of terrorist networks. Neither the police nor customs had any such evidence of that concerning Mr. Arar or his wife, an economist.

[…]

Evidence presented to the commission, said Paul J. J. Cavalluzzo, its lead counsel, showed that the F.B.I. continued to keep its Canadian counterparts in the dark even while an American jet was carrying Mr. Arar to Jordan. The panel found that American officials “believed — quite correctly — that, if informed, the Canadians would have serious concerns about the plan to remove Mr. Arar to Syria.”

Mr. Arar arrived in Syria on Oct. 9, 2002, and was imprisoned there until Oct. 5, 2003. [Dates differ based on presumably more up-to-date info – Ed.] It took Canadian officials, however, until Oct. 21 to locate him in Syria. The commission concludes that Syrian officials at first denied knowing Mr. Arar’s whereabouts to hide the fact that he was being tortured. It says that, among other things, he was beaten with a shredded electrical cable until he was disoriented.

American officials have not discussed the case publicly. But in an interview last year, a former official said on condition of anonymity that the decision to send Mr. Arar to Syria had been based chiefly on the desire to get more information about him and the threat he might pose. The official said Canada did not intend to hold him if he returned home.

This is why it’s not about “torturing terrorists” or “imprisoning bad guys” — it’s about preserving due process. It’s about making sure that innocent people aren’t imprisoned, and it’s about continuing to the the U.S.A., and not becoming a tin-pot dictatorship in the name of preserving the freedoms we’ve denies people like Arar.

Prof. Felton has released a security analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS machine showing it can be compromised in as little as one minute. Here’s Prof. Felton demonstrating the hack on Fox (of all places). Also, it turns out that the cabinet on these things can be opened with a standard minibar key, which makes it pretty clear how serious Diebold is about security.

Diebold, of course, is once again blowing off researcher concerns, insisting there’s no problem with the machines.

The Douchebag of Liberty himself, Bob Novak, insists he’s never seen Jon Stewart’s show, but still feels free to call him a “self righteous comedian taking on airs of grandeur.”

Rrrrrrriiiiiiight, Douchebag.

Atrios points us to a new book describing how absurd and incompetent the CPA was in immediate postinvasion Iraq; the primary qualification was party affiliation, not area of expertise. We’re adding the book to our to-read list post haste.

The FCC ordered a taxpayer-funded study suggesting greater media ownership consolidation would be damaging to local news coverage destroyed in 2004. It surfaced recently as part of Kevin Martin’s confirmation hearings; someone forwarded a copy of Sen. Boxer, who is now demanding that the FCC address the report and its coverup.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

This is rich. The Senate committee has passed Arlen Specter’s bill on to the Senate. Said bill addresses the illegal wiretapping this Administration is so fond of by redefining it as “not surveillance,” presumably operating on the theory that we’re all morons. It also manages to completely gut FISA, the law that Bush is continuing to violate as we speak. More here and here.

The second night of ABC’s 9/11 fan fiction included falsified scenes bolstering Bush, whereas the first night’s segment’s major falsehoods came at the expense of the prior administration.

This is propaganda, pure and simple.

That’s pretty much the case:

George W. Bush’s speech on September 6 amounted to a public confession to criminal violations of the 1996 War Crimes Act. He implicitly admitted authorizing disappearances, extrajudicial imprisonment, torture, transporting prisoners between countries and denying the International Committee of the Red Cross access to prisoners.

These are all serious violations of the Geneva Conventions. The War Crimes Act makes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and all violations of Common Article 3 punishable by fines, imprisonment or, if death results to the victim, the death penalty.

But, just to be safe, Bush is trying to cover his ass. Guilty much, George?

At the same time, Bush asked Congress to amend the War Crimes Act in order to retroactively protect him and other U.S. officials from prosecution for these crimes, and from civil lawsuits arising from them. He justified this on the basis that “our military and intelligence personnel involved in capturing and questioning terrorists could now be at risk of prosecution under the War Crimes Act . . . ,” and insisted that “passing this legislation ought to be the top priority” for Congress between now and the election in November.

His profession of concern for military and intelligence personnel was utterly misleading. Military personnel charged with war crimes have always been, and continue to be, prosecuted under the Universal Code of Military Justice rather than the War Crimes Act; and the likelihood of CIA interrogators being identified and prosecuted under the act is remote — they are protected by the secrecy that surrounds all CIA operations.

The only real beneficiaries of such amendments to the War Crimes Act would be Bush himself and other civilian officials who have assisted him in these crimes — Rumsfeld, Cheney, Gonzales, Rice, Cambone, Tenet, Goss, Negroponte and an unfortunately long list of their deputies and advisors.

Where is the outrage?

Check it out.

As someone who was directly involved in almost every event depicted in the fictionalized docudrama, “The Path to 9-11,” I believe it is an egregious distortion that does a deep disservice both to history and to those in both the Clinton and Bush administrations who are depicted.

Sadly, ABC’s Entertainment Division hired a production company and screen writer who were apparently unqualified to deal with this historically important subject matter. That error appears to have been compounded by the failure of some of the docudrama’s consultants to insure that the account was accurate. Some of the most outrageous scenes were removed after a recent senior level review. What remains, however, is not the true story as told by the 9-11 Commission.

“Time for Us to Go,” 7 articles by prominent conservatives on why the GOP deserves to be shown the door come election day.

Media Matters discusses one of the more egregious fabrications of ABC’s 9/11 fan fiction.

Keith weighs in on the Anniversary, and holds nothing back. Watch or read the whole thing.

Pro-torture, Imperial-presidency fan and one-time administration attorney John Yoo is apparently opposed to separation of powers.

Atrios points us to this excerpt from Al Franken’s book. Al’s a leftie, but everything in this summary is verifiable as far as I can tell. The bullet points:

• The Clinton administration was becoming more and more convinced that AQ and OBL were going to be a big problem, so they created a far-reaching plan for their destruction. This plan was completed after the election, but before GWB’s inaugural.

• Rather than hand Bush a fait accompli war, they instead passed on the plan.

• The outgoing Clinton people put together multiple briefings for the incoming Bush people, including some comprehensive discussions of terror, OBL, and AQ. Said Sandy Berger, “I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.”

• Impressed by his antiterror knowledge and bona fides, the Bush administration asked key counterterror bulldog Richard Clarke to stay on. Still, the impression the outgoing Clinton people had seems to have been that the Bush people thought they were obsessed with terrorism, and didn’t take the warnings seriously.

It gets worse. Of course, you knew that already.

Omnibus Morning Post:

• ABC may be backing off and has stated they’ll make some changes to the 9/11 movie to remove some of the “inaccuracies” (i.e. “lies”). It remains to be seen how much they can actually polish this turd, though. We expect it’ll still amount to GOP propaganda.

• The Senate has, at long last, passed the pork database bill. This, at least, is good news.

• Some attorneys and prominent GOP leaders are a bit upset about Bush’s proposal to try detainees in “tribunals” without allowing the accused to see the evidence against them. The unspoken bit in this move by Bush is that he’s obliquely admitted that he’s maintained secret CIA prisons to avoid US laws and jurisdiction. That’s illegal, and there ought to be repurcussions.

• Bush’s bill attempting to retroactively legalize his warrantless wiretapping has stalled in the Senate due to insufficient support.

We don’t usually cotton to the jokers over at Vanity Fair, but this little stunt may cause us to re-evaluate our stance.

Scholastic has dropped its planned teaching aides for the 9/11 “docudrama” and replaced them with materials stressing critical thinking and media literacy.

9/11 commission member Richard Ben-Veniste slams ABC over their falsehood-filled docudrama; there’s video.

Also, Kos has more on how far Disney is in bed with RoveCo. There’s an ongoing pattern of ABC kowtowing to right-wing interests and ignoring progressive concerns. Once again: What Liberal Media?

They’re assuring the right-wing blogosphere that the film will run as-is, and that “the message of the Clinton administration failures remains fully intact.” They’ve also refused to allow those maligned by the film — President Clinton, Madeleine Albright, etc. — to see advance copies of the work despite their clear willingness to share it with any right-winger with a domain name (or Oxy addiction).

Oh, and it gets worse. MediaMatters notes that the ABC-sponsored teaching materials accompanying this box of tripe falsely suggest that Iraq had WMD, and link Iraq to 9/11. Yeah, you read that right: ABC is lying to schoolkids about actual history.

Via ThinkProgress:

Last night on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, Roger Cressey — a top counterterrorism official to Bush II and Clinton — blasted ABC’s docudrama “The Path to 9/11.” Cressy said “it’s amazing . . . how much they’ve gotten wrong. They got the small stuff wrong” and “then they got the big stuff wrong.” He added that a scene where the Clinton administration passes on a surefire opportunity to take out bin Laden is “something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It’s factually wrong. And that’s shameful.” (emph. added.)

They’ve got video. If you haven’t already, go tell ABC what you think of this crap.

TruthOut has a couple pieces in their archives noting Clinton’s actual antiterror steps. The Right loves to assert he didn’t do anything, or didn’t do enough, when it came to bin Laden, but the facts disagree.

Starting in 1995, Clinton took actions against terrorism that were unprecedented in American history. He poured billions and billions of dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community. He poured billions more into the protection of critical infrastructure. He ordered massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack. He order a reorganization of the intelligence community itself, ramming through reforms and new procedures to address the demonstrable threat. Within the National Security Council, “threat meetings” were held three times a week to assess looming conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure. In 1996, Clinton delivered a major address to the United Nations on the matter of international terrorism, calling it “The enemy of our generation.”

From here

Also, from a rundown of specific steps taken by the Clinton administration:

Roger Cressy, National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism in the period 1999-2001, responded to these allegations in an article for the Washington Times in 2003. “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda,” wrote Cressy. “As President Bush well knows, bin Laden was and remains very good at staying hidden. The current administration faces many of the same challenges. Confusing the American people with misinformation and distortions will not generate the support we need to come together as a nation and defeat our terrorist enemies.”

Measures taken by the Clinton administration to thwart international terrorism and bin Laden’s network were historic, unprecedented and, sadly, not followed up on. Consider the steps offered by Clinton’s 1996 omnibus anti-terror legislation, the pricetag for which stood at $1.097 billion.

Now, could he have done more? Sure. Probably so. But the idea that he did nothing, or acted contrary to our interests, or was somehow derelict in his duty on this point is pure fantasy.

Strong beer, but spot on, again, as he is wont to be. This week Bush joined his Defense secretary in linking those who would question his policies with those who failed to corral the Nazis prior to World War II. This absurd and cynical ploy included an attempt to poison the very notion of “media” for his listeners — or, at least, those feebleminded enough to fall for it.

Crooks and Liars has both the video and the transcript of Olbermann’s response. I urge you to at least read what he has to say.

He begins:

It is to our deep national shame — and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret — that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies — or even question their effectiveness or execution — to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 — without ever actually saying so — the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”

Make no mistake here — the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word — “media” — the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Turns out, they’re planning on making it look even more like a documentary by running it without commercials, and Scholastic is even providing a teacher’s study guide to accompany the film so that schoolchildren can discuss this pack of lies in the classroom as though it were a definitive historical account. Gotta start that indoctrination early!

Seriously, this thing is fucked. Richard Clarke — who knows a thing or two about terrorism, bin Laden, and what’s actually been done — points out what bullshit is in this film. Scenes like that are clear fabrications (the refutation is in the public record!) designed to lay the blame for this not at Bush’s administration — which pointedly ignored a daily briefing called “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within US” — but instead at the Right’s favorite whipping boy, Bill Clinton. This, of course, despite the briefing the Bush folks got from Clinton’s antiterror squad (including Clarke) as well as Clinton’s own strikes against Bin Laden during his administration (for which he was lambasted by the Right, natch). We quote:

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

ABC, obviously feeling the heat, is seriously stonewalling the folks raising questions about this piece of tripe. In response, Firedog Lake has a list of questions they’d like answers to, though we’re sure ABC will remain silent. We do wonder, however, whether this clearly political film will trigger any sort of equal time claims.

ThinkProgress has a page up to help you tell ABC what you think about their blatantly political film, and the harm it can do to our sadly undereducated nation. Use it.

ABC plans to run a “docudrama” about the run-up to 9/11 that exonerates the current administration (despite their utterly failure to take seriously the warnings of the outgoing staff as well as the briefings received months prior to the event) and lays the blame wholly at Clinton’s feet (despite the strikes he ordered, dismissed by the GOP at the time as “Wag the Dog politics”). Needless to say, we’re sure this will contribute to the absolutely astounding level of ignorance of the American people.

Olbermann takes Rumsfeld to the woodshed on Rumsfeld’s recent suggestion that those who question the Administration’s behavior are somehow confused, immoral, or disloyal. As always, eloquent and spot fucking on.