The bad terrorist men are coming to get you! Oooga booga booga! Isn't it funny how Republicans have continually intoned they are the only ones able to keep us safe from the scary men, but when the Obama administration actually decides to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five others for their terrorists acts, they turn--to a one--into the biggest WATBs at the thought of these Guantanamo detainees in a super-max prison standing trial through the American court systems. For all their jingoistic "We're #1" exceptionalism, these Republicans have remarkably little faith in our criminal justice system. And who better to represent these little p*ssified pseudo-toughs than Rudy "A Noun, A Verb and 911" Giuliani? He scored a trifecta of appearances, besting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who only will be on two shows. Meanwhile, the Republicans aren't done scaring Americans about health care reform, and you can bet the Pete Hoekstra on Face the Nation, Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press and Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday will be amping up the rhetoric.

ABC's "This Week" - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.; Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Clinton; Education Secretary Arne Duncan; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.; the Rev. Al Sharpton.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Eugene Robinson, Katty Kay, Peggy Noonan, Michael Duffy. Topics: Will Obama Suffer Longterm Damage For Afghanistan and Health Care Delays? Will Sarah Palin's Book Tour Convert Her From Republican Rogue to Frontrunner? Meter Questions: Will President Obama Sign a Health Care Reform Bill This Year? YES: 5
NO: 7; Will Delays Over Afghanistan and Health Care Hurt Obama's Image Longterm? YES: 5 No: 7.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Giuliani; White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H.; Gov. Brian Schweitzer, D-Mont.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Fareed gives you a sneak peak into the HBO film he narrated entitled Terror in Mumbai. Plus, an incisive panel discussion on President Obama's first trip to China and the most important relationship in the world - between Beijing and Washington.

CNN's "Amanpour" - Amira Hass, Ha'aretz "Occupied Lands" correspondent, and Aaron David Miller, former diplomat who served six U.S. Secretaries of State discuss peace prospects in the Middle East.

"Fox News Sunday" - Giuliani; Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

What decade are these people living in, anyway?

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

Yeah, he's a regular humanitarian. Not sure if this guy is up on his history or legal precedents but Loving v. Virginia made this kind of government interference illegal in 1967.

He might think he's not racist, but he sure as hell is being bigoted and needs to step down. As you might expect, the ACLU has picked up this case and will pursue it for the couple.

From The Colbert Report:

The cross has nothing to do with Christianity -- it's just the normal symbol of the resting place of the dead.

Via Raw Story, news that police use of this weapon is even closer - and more portable, so use will be widespread. I was writing about this in 2006. And no, it's more than "burning sensations" - when they did the tests, they banned metal buttons and zippers because they caused burns, and they also banned contact lenses because they could become fused to the eyeballs.

What brave Congress member will introduce legislation to stop this? Bueller? Bueller?

A powerful hand-held weapon being developed by the Pentagon could end up in police hands, says a report in a UK science journal.

The Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate has been developing the Thermal Laser System since 2005, with the purpose of developing a weapon that could disperse crowds or incapacitate individuals by causing them to experience burning sensations in their skin.

According to NewScientist magazine, the weapon has evolved into a rifle-mounted instrument, and there are plans for a hand-held model that could be used by police forces.

News of the possibility that police departments could obtain the burn weapon will likely concern civil-liberties advocates, who have been watching with alarm as the Taser conducted-energy weapon has gone into regular use in police forces across the United States.

Via Teddy Partridge at FDL, the shocking news that military weapons are now being deployed against civilians in the United States, just as many of us predicted:

You think your town hall meeting's law enforcement presence was authoritarian and heavy-handed?

Check this out: San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore deployed (but did not use) military type sonic crowd-control devices at two town hall meetings, one held by GOP Darrell Issa and the other by Democrat Susan Davis. These devices are the same as those used to control crowds of insurgents in the Iraq war theatre and have been linked to ear and brain injury.

Both town halls took place without incident; however the use of the military device concerned San Diegians. The LRAD [Long-Range Acoustic Device] crowd control is primarily used in Iraq to control insurgents and can cause serious and lasting harm to humans.

According to the manufacture, American Technology Corporation, the LRAD provides “military personnel the capability to transition through the rules of engagement to determine a target’s intent and also provides greater assurance that innocent lives on both sides of the device are not lost due to miscommunication.”

[...]“It’s very concerning,” Kevin Keenan, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “ It is fine for the Sheriff’s Department to have new less-than-lethal weapons, but for their interactions with individuals these still-dangerous weapons need to be used only as substitutes for firearms. They can’t be used as just another tool on the tool belt. As we’ve seen with tasers and pepper spray, these types of weapons are being used to subdue people even though they pose the risk of serious physical harm.”

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The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer does a great job here and explains what needs to happen in regard to torture prosecutions:

Jaffer: I disagree with former Vice-President Dick Cheney about the investigation. I think the problem with the investigation is, it's not the existence of the investigation but the scope of the investigation. The problem with it is that it's focused right now at least on interrogators who exceeded their authority. And I don't have any problem with prosecuting and investigating interrogators who exceeded their authority.

But any fair investigation has to be broad enough to encompass not just those interrogators but also the senior officials who authorized torture and the lawyers who facilitated torture. And among the senior officials, who I think are most responsible for putting this torture program into place is former Vice-President Cheney. And so I don't think it's a big surprise, certainly not a big surprise to me that former Vice-President Cheney is opposed to any investigations.

So what do we get in response in this segment. Author Joseph Finder repeating the right wing talking point I aleady addressed in this post, and Jamie Rubin saying we should white wash the whole thing and "decriminalize the whole process". Yeah, that will get these guys to come clean about what happened. All the facts will come out if we give them immunity from criminal prosecutions. Riiiggghhhttt.

(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.

cab drollery: Dysfunctional or highly effective

They gave us a republic: Blue Dogs get smacked down

Blog of Rights: The House finally acted to address the huge disparity between the sentencing for crack and powder cocaine

Crackpot Press: Texas Governor Rick Perry says his state doesn't want nationalized health care.  Idiotic, but good for the rest of us

SPLCenter: When an organization that monitors the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups and other white supremacists, goes after Lou Dobbs and his enablers at CNN, it matters.

democracyarsenal: Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch

While I was away for almost two weeks, the ACLU and many of my blogger pals took to their keyboards and wrote about the many brutal deaths that occurred at the hands of people engaging in torture for the US. The torture issue is horrifying and the longer we get away from the Bush years, the more information the ACLU is able to gather. These documents are, in a word, vile.

The ACLU writes:

Tortured to Death

Today, several prominent bloggers are writing about detainees who died in U.S. custody, using documents released through the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. We’re not talking suicide, or death by "natural causes." No, this is death as a result of torture and abuse while in custody. This effort comes on the eve of the release — we hope — of the CIA Inspector General’s report on waterboarding. (You might’ve heard last Friday that the release was delayed.)

At Salon, Glenn Greenwald writes:

The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody — at least. While some of those deaths were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that’s one reason we’ve always considered those tactics to be "torture" when used by others — because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions — that we Look to the Future, not the Past — are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder.

Marcy Wheeler focuses on the case of detainee 04-309:

Now I’m no doctor–and I definitely can’t make sense of the cardiac findings. But it sounds like "stress positions," "sleep deprivation," "walling," and "water dousing" are all leading candidates to have caused the death of 04-309.

Drational at Daily Kos zeroes in on one detainee, known as Habibullah, and the circumstances of his death.

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As more information comes out on the illegal torture program carried out by the Bush administration, the more hollow Dick Cheney and his daughter's rhetoric becomes. Rachel sat down with the ACLU's Ben Wizner to discuss the recently released detainee statements which showed we got wrong information from torture. The ACLU has more on the case here. Rachel summed it up better than I ever could with this statement:

They can no longer brag about torturing Abu Zubaydah. Now, it appears they can no longer brag about torturing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed either. But not only was it illegal, but it was also ill-advised, self-destructive, counterproductive.

Sadly, I don't think it will get Liz Cheney off my television screen. She and her father have little use for allowing something like a few facts to interfere with their lying.

Maddow: But we begin tonight with some breaking news about the Bush administration‘s self-titled “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which are increasingly widely known as torture. Tonight, thanks to an ACLU lawsuit, we have obtained less redacted CIA transcripts released from the tribunals at Guantanamo. These are the parts of the transcripts in which prisoners explained how they had been treated since being in U.S. custody.

In addition to revealing some new details of what was done to the prisoners, this newly-revealed testimony refutes one of the Bush administration‘s still-used justifications for their torture program.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: Once in our custody, KSM was questioned by the CIA using these procedures. And he soon provided information that helped us stop another planned attack on the United States.

RICHARD CHENEY, FMR. U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: The information we‘ve collected from the detainees, from people like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, has probably been some of the most valuable intelligence we‘ve had in the last five years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: The claim from the Bush administration has been that by torturing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, they got actionable intelligence that saved American lives. Well, in these new less redacted transcripts, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed describes a very different scenario. During his 2007 hearing at Guantanamo, in very broken English he says, quote, “I make up stories, just location, Osama bin Laden, where is he? I don‘t know. Then he torture me. Then I said, ‘Yes, he‘s in this area.‘”

In other words, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed says he lied when he was tortured. “I make up stories.” He says he‘s giving up bad information. He gave up wrong information while being tortured.

And that puts a much different torque on the folks, prominently members of the Cheney family, who are still using the supposed utility of what we learned by torturing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in their public defense of the torture program.

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(The Eternal Feeding Frenzy)

"I think that certainly there is an effort on the part of those in power to control what the press has to say about them."

- Brit Hume - February 22, 1973.

Oh, how times have changed. During several weeks in early 1973, the Senate staged hearings under the banner "Peoples Right To Be Informed". The question whether or not confidential sources were subject to subpoena was raised, certainly in light of Watergate, whose hearings would begin only a few months later. Senator Sam Ervin was Chairman and testifying during this session was none other than Brit Hume and Joel M. Gora of the ACLU. Hume was an investigative reporter working for print media at the time, and during the course of questioning was asked if the government was applying undo pressure on the media in presenting positive spin. Hume's response, as well as referring to it as propaganda, was rather interesting considering where he has gone in recent years.

And maybe how far the mighty have fallen. Or is there a checkbook involved in all this?

Gora and Hume's testimony as it was broadcast on February 22, 1973 - the morning session.

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Peter King is back at it again trashing the ACLU. This time he blames the ACLU for the delay in the release of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. If that nasty ACLU had not brought all those lawsuits forward we'd have already wrapped up those kangaroo court military tribunals.

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Heather: Matthews brings in torture apologist David Rivkin to debate the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer on whether the U.S. should release the photos depicting torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course the CIA is arguing against the release of the documents. Their disclosure would mean that someone at the CIA (or those that gave the orders to torture) is either going to be held criminally liable or at the very least get sued in civil court. The only danger here that Rivkin is crying about is that someone will be held accountable for their actions.

I just want to know when Rivkin is going to let Jesse Ventura waterboard him? Hannity wouldn't do it. I have no doubt Rivkin wouldn't either but he sure loves telling everyone how harmless waterboarding is at every opportunity.

The media rolls this guy out every time they need someone to defend the indefensible. Listening to him and the Cheney's defending torture is becoming something akin to fingers down a chalk board of late.

Why is it that, on the issues that count (Iraq, torture, FISA, secrecy), this administration is so much like the previous one? It really makes me wonder:

The Obama administration objected yesterday to the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons, arguing to a federal judge that doing so would endanger national security and benefit al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts.

In an affidavit, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta defended the classification of records describing the contents of the 92 videotapes, their destruction by the CIA in 2005 and what he called "sensitive operational information" about the interrogations.

The forced disclosure of such material to the American Civil Liberties Union "could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security by informing our enemies of what we knew about them, and when, and in some instances, how we obtained the intelligence we possessed," Panetta argued.

Although Panetta's statement is in keeping with his previous opposition to the disclosure of other information about the CIA's interrogation policies and practices during George W. Bush's presidency, it represents a new assertion by the Obama administration that the CIA should be allowed to keep such information secret. Bush's critics have long hoped that disclosure would pinpoint responsibility for actions they contend were abusive or illegal.

Last month, President Obama said he would seek to bar the release of photographs being sought by other nonprofit groups that depict abusive interrogations at military prisons during the Bush administration.

Panetta argued that none of the 65 CIA documents immediately at issue, which the ACLU has sought for several years in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, should be released. He asked U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to draw a legal distinction between the administration's release in April of Justice Department memos authorizing the harsh interrogations and the CIA's desire to keep classified its own documents detailing the specific handling of detainees at its secret facilities overseas.

He said that while the Justice Department memos discussed harsh interrogation "in the abstract," the CIA information was "of a qualitatively different nature" because it described the interrogation techniques "as applied in actual operations."

Glenn Greenwald on Obama's support for the new Graham-Lieberman Secrecy Act:

It was one thing when President Obama reversed himself last month by announcing that he would appeal the Second Circuit's ruling that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compelled disclosure of various photographs of detainee abuse sought by the ACLU. Agree or disagree with Obama's decision, at least the basic legal framework of transparency was being respected, since Obama's actions amounted to nothing more than a request that the Supreme Court review whether the mandates of FOIA actually required disclosure in this case. But now -- obviously anticipating that the Government is likely to lose in court again (.pdf) -- Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts, and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself.

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.

Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn't even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.

That this exact scenario is now happening in the U.S. is all the more remarkable given that the President who is demanding these new suppression powers is the same one who repeatedly vowed "to make his administration the most open and transparent in history." After noting the tentative steps Obama has taken to increase transparency, the generally pro-Obama Washington Post Editorial Page today observed: "what makes the administration's support for the photographic records act so regrettable" is that "Mr. Obama runs the risk of taking two steps back in his quest for more open government."