Oops:

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively "eliminates marriage in Texas," including common-law marriages.

She calls it a "massive mistake" and blames the current attorney general, Republican Greg Abbott, for allowing the language to become part of the Texas Constitution. Radnofsky called on Abbott to acknowledge the wording as an error and consider an apology. She also said that another constitutional amendment may be necessary to reverse the problem.

Obviously, Abbott and supporters are saying that the intention is clear and that Radnofsky is just being "silly." Personally, I think this is great opportunity to challenge the law on behalf of the gay partnerships being discriminated against. If the state of Texas does not want recognize any kind of legal standing between same sex couples to the point that they declare they will not recognize the legal standing of anything like marriage, let them experience the wrath of straight couples who will find insurance companies pouncing on this wording to deny benefits.

November 18, 2009 C-SPAN
Senator Kyl questions Attorney General Holder on trials of alleged 9/11 plotters.

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CNN Oct. 18, 2009. Don Lemon's softball interview with Alberto Gonzales painting him as a "legal trailblazer". After what Gonzo did to the Department of Justice during his term there, the words "legal" and "trailblazer" are hardly what come to mind for me.

Although Lemon does ask Gonzales about the accusations against him, he allows him to claim that "a lot of what happened towards the end, I would say 98 percent was political" and that he's been cleared of any wrong doing.

Having the DOJ give you cover by not going after the higher ups on torture or some right wing extemist Cheney fixer judge dismissing a civil suit is not the same thing as investigations confirming someone's innocence. Everyone from the Congress to the current AG's office has dropped the ball on following through on investigating Gonzales and now the man is on the television claiming they did and cleared him and Don Lemon allows it. Astounding.

LEMON: So right here on this program we're profiling Latinos who overcame obstacles and shattered stereotypes to make history. It's part of our series "Pioneros: Latino Firsts." Tonight, the first Latino to become a U.S. attorney general. Alberto Gonzales. I met up with him in his new role on the campus of Texas Tech University.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON (voice-over): When last we saw Alberto Gonzales, he was wielding the power and influence that come with the title U.S. attorney general. Today he is in a new role on campus at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. A recruiter for minority and underrepresented students, and a visiting professor, teaching a course called Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch.

Gonzales knows all about issues. He was pressured to resign after 2 1/2 years as George W. Bush's attorney general. Dogged by accusations he misused the Patriot Act to uncover private information on U.S. citizens, denied rights to prisoners held in U.S.-run detention camps and then lied to Congress about all of it.

(on camera): Is there something that you want people to know about that experience or what happened? Why you resigned?

ALBERTO GONZALES, FIRST LATINO U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think unfortunately because Washington can be political, a lot of what happened towards the end, I would say 98 percent was political. Quite frankly.

LEMON: Explain that. What do you mean?

GONZALES: Listen, you had members of Congress making allegations that I engage in perjury, criminal wrongdoing. And we now have these investigations that has been confirmed that none of that is true. But I think that for some people, it was an opportunity to perhaps embarrass the president by going after someone they perceived as close to the president.

Even to the end, President Bush fully supported you. How much did that help at all?

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TPM Muckraker has found the next late-night sensation - a birther infomercial entitled "Where Was President Obama Born." It's already received the usual 1:00-in-the-morning airing on at least one local TV station in Texas. The United States Justice Foundation, a Birther front group led by the aptly named Gary Kreep, paid $100 to the CBS affiliate in Lubbock for the privilege of gracing their airwaves. That seems like money well spent for the Birthers for reaching a few thousand eyeballs or so and filling them with wingnut ideology. But that's not the true purpose.

For a $30 contribution, viewers also get a fax sent in their name to the 50 state attorneys general and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that President Obama produce his real birth certificate.

Getting 4 suckers to fork over $30 for nothing covers their whole expense, and looking at the production values, producing the episode didn't cost much more than $100 either. This is pure conservative hucksterism, where a few people make money off of whipping up fears for no real purpose.

And Bill Keller, the host of the birthermercial, is perfectly positioned to be that huckster - he's a fundamentalist preacher:

The program was produced by LivePrayer.com, a Web site affiliated with Bill Keller, a fundamentalist Christian minister who also hosts the infomercial.

Imprisoned in the late 1980s after an insider trading conviction, Keller later committed his life to God, attended Liberty University in Virginia, and founded Bill Keller Ministries, according to his bio. LivePrayer.com was "founded for the sole purpose of having a site on the internet where people can go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for prayer."

This has about as much of a chance at dislodging Barack Obama from office as the Sham-Wow, but both infomercials have the same goal - to get rich off of selling you garbage. Sadly, there are probably enough morons in America to make Gary Kreep and Bill Keller very wealthy men.

Disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has had his evasive testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committe made into a 40 minute concert opera for the Philadephia Fringe Festival, the entire libretto taken from the hearing transcripts.

Also, check out the clever website design for gonzalescantata.com.

If you're in Philly you can watch any of three performances this weekend. INFO

Edit: Rachel did a segment on this last night as well.

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I'm not sure what's more infuriating here, listening to Orrin Hatch pretend he doesn't know full well that what was done to the prisoners in our custody was torture, or John Kerry defending the Obama administration's decision not to go after the ones at the top who ordered it, and then smile and nod politely while Hatch spins.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK. Let me move to another issue that came up earlier this week. The attorney general decided to investigate possible CIA abuses in the prisoner interrogation cases.

And Vice President Cheney this morning has blasted that decision by the attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, how did you do it? What were the keys to keeping the country safe over that period of time?

Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions, threatening, contrary to what the president originally said, they were going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: He called it an outrageous and possibly dangerous act.

KERRY: Well, Dick Cheney has shown through the years, frankly, a disrespect for the Constitution, for sharing of information with Congress, respect for the law, and I'm not surprised that he is upset about this.

The Obama administration has no intention -- I think the president himself has been unbelievably bending in the direction of trying to be careful about what happens to national security, protecting our national security interests, being very sensitive about the CIA's prerogatives and needs and so forth.

And in fact, I think there is a little bit of a tension between the White House itself and the lawyers in the Justice Department as they see the law and as what their obligation is.

And in a sense, that's good. That's appropriate, because it shows that we have an attorney general who is not pursuing a political agenda, but who is doing what he believes the law requires him to do.

And we have an administration, on the other hand, that is balancing some of those other interests.

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Sen. John McCain disagrees with former Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that enhanced interrogation techniques helped keep the country safe. "I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," McCain told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday.

"I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq... I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members," said McCain.

McCain disagreed with Attorney General Holder's decision to probe interrogation techniques that went beyond legal recommendations.

(Suzanne Ito writes for and manages Blog of Rights, the blog of the national ACLU.)

June 26 of this year marked the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, and the anniversary of the United Nations' Convention Against Torture. On that day, the ACLU joined countless other human rights groups in calling for Accountability for Torture. We asked people to send Attorney General Eric Holder the Office of Legal Counsel memos—the actual evidence released through ACLU lawsuits that revealed the fact that high-level Bush administration officials had sanctioned these illegal acts—and urged him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate these crimes.

We were pleased when Newsweek's Daniel Klaidman reported that Holder was indeed considering an investigation. But now a month has passed, we haven't heard much from the Justice Department. So last week, the ACLU renewed its call for accountability by launching a new video, featuring director Oliver Stone, composer Philip Glass, Rosie Perez, and many others reading from the torture memos, and calling for accountability.

The public knows that detainees were tortured during the Bush presidency. From the photos from Abu Ghraib, to congressional reports (PDF), to the torture memos themselves, it's crystal-clear that these abusive interrogation practices were authorized by the highest levels of the Bush administration. Even Dick Cheney couldn't resist a little cheerleading about how effective he thought waterboarding was.

It is a core premise of American democracy that no one—not even the president—is above the law. When we hear Attorney General Holder is considering only investigating those who carried out the torture, not those who authorized the torture in the first place, it sickens us to think how this clashes with the most fundamental American ideals of fairness. Too much evidence of high-level orders exists to limit criminal investigations to "a few bad apples." We cannot compromise the rule of law because we're afraid the outcome might be politically messy, inconvenient or even painful. To not investigate is to tell future presidents and their administrations that they're above the law, and that would render our system of justice meaningless.

So please watch the video, and send it to Attorney General Holder. It's time for a comprehensive investigation of the Bush era torture policies.

I haven't had a chance to read the whole article, but it seems encouraging.

Newsweek:

Mindful of history, Holder is trying to get the balance right. "You have the responsibility of enforcing the nation's laws, and you have to be seen as neutral, detached, and nonpartisan in that effort," Holder says. "But the reality of being A.G. is that I'm also part of the president's team. I want the president to succeed; I campaigned for him. I share his world view and values."

These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

It's the way it should be. The AG should be doing what's right for the country regardless the administration occupying the White House. I hope this wasn't leaked so either it'll get squashed or other important legislation like health care will get dumped on, but we need these atrocities investigated. I've been calling for this for along time now and so has many readers and bloggers on the left as well.

d-day has read the entire article and has much more: Holder Of The Cards

DownWithTyranny!: Right-wing demagoguery. Colin Powell plans to answer his former friends today on Face the Nation

Kiss My Big Blue Butt: Texas pols are fulla horse exhaust

The Public Record: The CIA's history of lying to congress

MediaBloodhound: Funny...

Ephemera Etcetera: Not funny.  Glenn Beck's "comedy special"

Scott Horton: A federal judge has written a scorching letter to Attorney General Eric Holder itemizing gross misconduct by federal prosecutors involved in the Siegelman case and demanding that the Justice Department open a full investigation into the matter.

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It wasn't just Karl Rove and the Bush White House crew that was freaking yesterday over President Obama's statement yesterday leaving the door open for prosecutions of the architects of Bush's torture regime -- indicating he'd leave the decision up to the Attorney General. (There was also growing speculation that AG Eric Holder might appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the matter.)

No, it seemed the entire Village was in an uproar. Especially over at Fox, where the dismay was universal. Especially funny on Fox's All Star Panel yesterday afternoon was Morton Kondracke, the Faux Designated Liberal, who blamed it all on MoveOn.org and the liberal bloggers.

Oh, and NBC and the New York Times, too.

Wait. Can we blame it on the French somehow too, while we're at it?

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Karl was positively freaking out yesterday afternoon over the prospect that some of his ex-colleagues at the White House might wind up being prosecuted -- or held responsible publicly -- for helping George W. Bush install a torture regime during his tenure, after President Obama's statement earlier in the day indicating he'd leave the decision up to the Attorney General.

Rove, appearing on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, was particularly frantic -- and when Rove gets frantic, he gets nasty:

Rove: Sure, as long as they've released the limits to which America will go to extract this information, let's share the information that was extracted, and saved America from further attacks. We know, for example -- it's already a part of the public record -- that the interrogation of these high-value targets kept them from being able to attack Los Angeles by flying airplanes into the Liberty tower, the tallest building in Los Angeles, which was one of their plans.

But look, let's step back for a minute. What the Obama administration has done in the last several days is very dangerous. What they've essentially said is, If we have policy disagreements with our predecessors, what we're going to do is we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run colonels in mirrored sunglasses. And what we're going to do is prosecute, systematically, the previous administration, or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences.

Is that what we've come to in this country? That if we have a change in administration from one party to another, that we then use the tools of the government to go systematically after the policy disagreements that we have with the previous administration? Now that may be fine in some little Latin American country that's run by, you know, the latest junta. It may be the way that they do things in Chicago. But that's not the way we do things here in America.

Hmmmm. Last I looked, Chicago was here in America.

But more to the point: Karl's sounding like someone who's already looking over his shoulder at congressional subpoenas.

And even more to the point: Sorry, Karl, but working for the White House is not a Get Out of Jail Free card. If you broke the law -- and particularly if you and your pals are war criminals according to American law for having not merely permitted but avidly constructed a torture regime -- the appropriate justice needs meting out.

Of course, we keep hearing about how Torture Saved Us From Terrorists -- notably the overhyped and debunked "Los Angeles Tower plot."

Funny thing about that -- back in 2006, it was Wiretapping Saved Us From Terrorists.

Yes, the same overhyped "plot."

Rove will have to do better than that if he wants to stay ahead of those rapidly gaining footsteps.

President Obama said he's still for the "assault weapons" ban, but he knows it will be difficult to get passed. Well, duh? I know the freak-show teabaggers will get armed if you make this a priority, but some things that are difficult must be acted upon.

Listen, I want him to get universal health care first and foremost, but he has a chance to move the ball forward here. He should tread carefully, because every police officer is a bit nervous right now, but don't wimp out altogether.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President, as well. President Obama, as a candidate for your office, you said that you wanted to see the assault ban weapon -- the ban on assault weapons reinstated. Your attorney general has spoken in favor of this. Mexican officials have also spoken in favor of it. But we haven't heard you say that since you took office. Do you plan to keep your promise? And if not, how do you explain that to the American people?

And, President Calderón -- I'm sorry, if I may -- would you like to see this ban reinstated? And have you raised that today with President Obama? Thank you.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, we did discuss this extensively in our meetings. I have not backed off at all from my belief that the gun -- the assault weapons ban made sense.

And I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the 2nd Amendment rights in our Constitution, the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners who want to keep their families safe to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we now know, here in Mexico, are helping to fuel extraordinary violence -- violence in our own country, as well.

Now, having said that, I think none of us are under any illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy. And so, what we've focused on is how we can improve our enforcement of existing laws, because even under current law, trafficking illegal firearms, sending them across a border, is illegal. That's something that we can stop.

And so our focus is to work with Secretary Napolitano, Atty. Gen. Holder, our entire Homeland Security team, ATF, border security, everybody who is involved in this, to coordinate with our counterparts in Mexico to significantly ramp up our enforcement of existing laws.

February 03, 2009 CNN

February 03, 2009 C-SPAN
Vice President Joe Biden administered the oath of office as attorney general to Eric Holder. The ceremony was held in the Attorney General’s Conference Room in the Department of Justice. See more CSPANJunkie videos here.