June 2008

Commenting on a really, really stupid question from Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, Anonymous Liberal points out:

First, of course Bin Laden would get habeas rights if he were held at Guantanamo. Since when do rights vary based on your name? But more importantly, why should anyone find it troubling that Osama would have such a right? If he sought to petition a court, it would result in the easiest and most predictable judicial decision ever. Habeas corpus just means that you have the opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of your detention. The evidence against Bin Laden is overwhelming. He would have the right to challenge his detention, but he would lose, quickly and decisively.

But beyond that obvious point, there’s a deeper ignorance at work here. Embedded in Hayes question is the bizarre and completely unamerican notion that your legal rights should somehow depend on how “bad” a person you are. The more serious the crimes for which you stand accused, the less rights you should have under the law. But that’s quite obviously not how any system of rights is supposed to operate. Hayes’ question is like asking whether a serial killer has the right to counsel or the right to a jury trial. Of course he does. The whole point of due process is to determine whether someone is guilty. It’s the punishment that is supposed to vary depending on the seriousness of the crime, not the process.

It’s pathetic that someone with even moderate intelligence would ask a question like that or think that it was in any way insightful.

Of course, asking insightful questions isn’t what the press and the wingnuts want. It could be argued that they don’t even know how to ask insightful questions. The point of such questions is to get folks scared or angry or both — ‘cause when you are scared or angry or both, the critical reasoning faculties tned to shut down.

You don’t want an electorate that actually thinks, do you?

(hat tip: Carpetbagger Report)

McClatchy: Documents confirm U.S. hid detainees from Red Cross

The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.

“We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques,” Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who’s since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to “break” detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. “True, but officially it is not happening,” she is quoted as having said.

A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

The behavior of the United States government with regard to its prisoners overseas is now virtually indistinguishable from that of any tinpot banana republic you might care to name.

(hat tip: Think Progress)

When President George W. Bush announced the surge on January 10, 2007, he listed several specific goals to be accomplished. One of them was to be a new Iraqi law:

And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation’s political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws…

So, how’s that working out?

Iraq law on Baathists not being implemented

When the Iraqi parliament passed a law in January aimed at rehiring former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, U.S. President George W. Bush praised it as a step towards national reconciliation.

The Accountability and Justice Law replaced the deBaathification Law, under which tens of thousands of former Baathists, mostly Sunni Arabs, were purged from government and security posts following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

But five months later, implementation of the law is bogged down by infighting between politicians, and the committee once tasked with hunting out Baathists in government has found itself in the odd position of overseeing the process of rehiring them or offering them state pensions.

The government has still not appointed a seven-member panel to replace the deBaathification Committee, whose enthusiastic purge of Baathists from government posts prompted minority Sunni Arabs to accuse them of conducting a witch-hunt.

The warpimps consistently ignore the fact that the goals of the surge was not simply to reduce terrorist attacks in Iraq. A more peaceful Iraq was supposed to lead to political reconciliation, but this has not happened. The “surge” is a failure. The blind, monomaniacal insistence that military force is the solution serves the best interests of neither the United States nor Iraq.

A new direction is desperately needed, and an honest and open national discussion of proposals such as the “Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq” should begin at once. Of course, honest and open discussion is exactly what the warpimps will not — indeed, cannot — allow to happen…

(hat tip: Juan Cole)

Grist has published an invaluable guide to debunking the myths and deceptions of climate change denialists. The extensive collection of counter-arguments is categorized by stages of denial, scientific topics, types of argument, and levels of sophistication. Definitely worth a bookmark.

(hat tip: Boing Boing)

On sale at the recent Texas Republican convention:

Nothing I could say could be more effective in demonstrating what these people actually are.

(hat tip: Think Progress)

UPDATE 06/18/08 11:07 AM EDT: David Neiwert points out that the whole GOP presidential campaign this year can pretty much be summed up as “Boogadah boogadah brown people!”

It should come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that there is little in this world that brings me as much joy as exposing wingnut bullshit for what it is. Happily, there’s no shortage of such offal — and Cao the Lizard Bitch is a prolific producer of excrement.

Have a look at the latest spew from this purveyor of dreck:
 

The lizard bitch expands on this fantasy at its own blog. It claims that Obama is not a US citizen by dint of his father having been a non-citizen and his mother (allegedly) not having been a citizen long enough.

It’s clear from a reading of the relevant statutes that the rules being referred to by the lizard bitch and its kin apply solely to persons born outside the US. We are told by the lizard bitch that “none of that matters”. The facts never do matter to that sort of imbecile.

Lizard bitch Cao never met a smear it wouldn’t repeat:

Kenyan-Born Obama?

…I knew there were reasons why he wouldn’t “release” his birth certificate, although…isn’t a birth certificate public information?

Aren’t you supposed to be American-born to qualify for presidential office in the US?

Yes… and Obama was born an American. His birth certificate shows he was born in Hawaii.

Cao and its wingnut ilk bottom-feed in the smear trough because they simply aren’t bright enough to discuss the issues that face us in this election. It’s as simple as that. The lizard bitch will be jumping into every far-right cesspool it can find for the next five months.

UPDATE 06/12/08 6:18 PM: The lizard bitch changes her tune — inconvenient facts never stopped it before, why should they now? It now claims that “Barack Obama is not legally a U.S. Natural-born citizen according to the law on the books at the time of his birth…”.

Of course, it cannot cite this supposed “law”.

:: snort ::   :: chuckle ::   :: GUFFAW ::

From the AP:

High Court: Gitmo detainees have rights in court

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

The justices, in a 5-4 ruling Thursday, handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some of whom have been held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison, classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Wingnut heads asplode in 3… 2… 1…

Good on the Supremes. What the whackaloon righties do not understand — what they are intellectually and morally incapable of understanding — is that a system that suspends the rights of some is perfectly capable of suspending the rights of all. The Supreme Court has struck a mighty blow today for the rights of all Americans.

UPDATE 06/12/08 11:28 AM EDT: Read the full decision [PDF].

Once again, we find a member of the oh-so-morally-superior far right encouraging criminal activity:

A doctor in California has been arrested because he took a tire iron out of his car and went to greet the inconsiderate moron who cut in front of him and everyone else waiting to get gas. The coward who pulled in locked his car up and called the police and they arrested the doctor instead of the real criminal. It is not bad enough that gasoline costs a lot of money and that sometimes the lines to get gas get long but having someone pull in front of you is basically the last straw. The doctor should have offered the driver the chance to get back in line. If he refused the doctor should have smashed up the car and the guy inside… The driver should have been dragged from his car and strapped to the hood. Then they could move it out of the way and into the hot sun. After while his manners would improve and he could be cut loose.

Like so many of his kind, Big Dog is incapable of understanding why assault is wrong, and in fact advocates for the commission of a crime. The extremist fringe of the far right is full of such folks, none of whom have the moral intelligence of a tapeworm.

BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions:

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

The BBC’s Panorama programme has used US and Iraqi government sources to research how much some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.

While Presdient George W Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted.

To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq.

…

In the run-up to the invasion, one of the most senior officials in charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth $7bn that was given to Halliburton, a Texan company which used to be run by Dick Cheney before he became vice-president.

Unusually only Halliburton got to bid – and won.

Remember, kids, you have to go to a foreign news source to find out about this. The allegedly “left-leaning media” in this country won’t touch the story.

And the rightwing wackos who scream bloody murder about each and every miniscule expenditure for social programs in the US don’t give a flying fuck about this money, either.