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A former inmate is suing the Nevada Department of Correction because she says she was forced to wear shackles while in labor.

Valerie Nabors told KTNV that officials at the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in North Las Vegas violated state law when they put her in shackles while she was being transported to University Medical Center to give birth.

"They go by their own rules, they do their own thing and the reason why, is because they always get away with it," she explained.

Nabors said that prison guards ignored the advice of an emergency medical technician who cautioned them not to bind her ankles with the shackles.

"She [an ambulance EMT] explained to him, you can't do this because I still have to check her and he just said 'oh well' and proceeded to put the leg shackles on and went back into the facility," the former inmate recalled.

Nabors is being represented by American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada attorney Staci Pratt.

"When you shackle a woman at her ankles, making it difficult for medical personnel to check her, you're sending a message that our primary obligation in society is not taking care of women, but to punish them needlessly and I think it's cruel and sadistic," Pratt said.

"This is not a time when a woman is thinking about escape. This is not a time when a woman is thinking about injuring anyone. This is a time when a woman is trying to get through the process of child birth with dignity and with respect for her health and the health of her child."

After giving birth the shackles were again placed on Nabors, who was serving a 12 to 30 month sentence for stealing about $250 in casino chips.

"I understand that I did break the law, I understand that," she admitted. "But that doesn't mean I should get treated unfairly. Women have babies everyday and there's certain procedures for that."

Nabors's lawsuit also alleges that prison officials confiscated her prescribed breast pump after being returned to the facility.

"My hope is that Valerie's strength and courage will be a vehicle for making sure this does not happen to any other women in Nevada or anywhere else in the United States," Pratt said.

For anyone that missed this Thursday, The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi went on location in Florida to speak to former Navy vet, Luis Lebron, who refused to be drug tested as part of the state's new requirement for all welfare recipients to submit to the tests in order to collect their benefits.

As usual, we've got the comedians doing a better job of showing how utterly wasteful and hypocritical the new law is, with Mandvi turning the tables on both State Rep. Scott Plakon and Gov. Rick Scott, by attempting unsuccessfully to get both of them to submit to the same tests they're demanding from those living in poverty in their state.

Mandvi also hit Plakon for the fact that their program is actually costing the state more money than it saves. Once again, it's score one for The Daily Show and the writers over at Comedy Central who are doing their jobs as the court jesters making a mockery of these politicians, who sadly don't get the same scorn or scrutiny from the talking heads and pundits on the corporate "news" channels.

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Fox's Megyn Kelly brought on the Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer and the ACLU's Mark Sawyer to discuss the crowds at the recent GOP debates where people there were cheering for the number of executions Gov. Rick Perry carried out in the state of Texas, and for Ron Paul's position that somehow churches and charitable organizations could manage to take care of someone who is sick and doesn't have insurance, with a few in the crowd being so crass as to yell “Let him die” when asked Wolf Blitzer's hypothetical on who pays when someone finds themselves in that situation.

Naturally, Kremer said she was very offended by the cheering for allowing an uninsured person to just be allowed to die and said this about those that yelled out at the debate:

KREMER: Well Megyn, first of all I'd say that the people that yelled that out were not “tea party” activists. They were hecklers. You know, we do not, the “tea party” movement does not focus on the social issues whatsoever. And when you're talking about, you know, capital punishment and then the question that Wolf Blitzer asked, you're talking about two different aspects there. And we just don't go there. Focusing on these issues is not going to turn the economy around. It's not going to pay down our debt and deficit, put people back to work, and that's not what we're focused on. I have in the last couple of days tried to find out who yelled that out, because I want to know. It wasn't fair to the rest of the people from the audience. And I can tell you when it happened we all turned around to look and identify who it was, because we were appalled at that behavior. It was absolutely unacceptable.

Okay, fair enough that no one knows for sure who the people were who yelled out the “Let him die” statement. That said, Kremer doesn't actually know whether this was some self-described “tea party” activist or not, does she? I don't think it actually matters all that much though because her group which is nothing but a bunch of AstroTurf-ers looking out for the interests of big business and the insurance companies among others may not be crass enough to say out loud that their political position is to just let the uninsured pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and if they were not fortunate enough to have insurance, they're probably going to die, the end result if the same. When this woman and her ilk get on board for single-payer and quit looking out for the interests of their corporate masters, I'll believe that any of them have a charitable bone in their body. Until then, she should be considered nothing more than a spokesperson for the Koch brothers, big pharma, the insurance companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and any of the rest of them that are sponsoring her so-called "movement."

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Apparently Rep. Steve King, R-Nutsville, doesn't think the Department of Justice has any lawyers capable of drawing up their own legal briefs and of course in the wingnuts like King's world, if the brief agrees with anything in the ACLU's lawsuit against Arizona's immigration law SB 1070, the evil commie "leftist" organizations suing Arizona are really the ones running the DOJ.

After he carried on about how terrible Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, John Morton, President Obama, Michael Posner, amd Mexican President Felipe Calderon all were for voicing their opposition to the new law, repeating the tired talking point that none of them have read it, King had this to say about some Chinese immigrants who haven't yet been deported:

King: I'll go even further. Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of State, he said he brought it up early and often to the Chinese that we had a problem with a law in Arizona that could bring about racial profiling. These are the people that... we've got 40,000 Chinese in the United States that have been adjudicated for deportation... the Chinese won't take them back. And we're sending them some 550 year old bones from paleo, ah... paleo vertebrates that, so they can keep their artifacts straight. We need to send them the 40,000 Chinese that they won't take. Deport them as well as the bones, Mr. Speaker.

Nice. Should we just box them up with the bones, Steve King? What a jerk. Then we get to this wingnut hackery.

King: And I'll make this further prediction now Mr. Speaker. That is that the announcement came out today that the Justice Department under Eric Holder, it now has a legal brief that recommends that they bring suit against Arizona. Here's my prediction. ACLU has written that legal brief for the Justice Department... that a-political, nonpolitical Justice Department has a brief that one day we'll get our hands on, a draft brief... release the draft is what needs to happen from the Attorney General, but in that draft we'll find the ACLU that's already sued Arizona with a 98 page case, there's the document that they're using to put their brief together in the Justice Department. The President gave the order to the Attorney General to look into Arizona's law and a Justice Department under Attorney General Holder looked at the lawsuit that's been brought by the ACLU and MALDEF and other organizations that are hard core left wing including SEIU and they have lifted the language right out of that lawsuit and that will be the draft Mr. Speaker.

That's my prediction and I put my marker down. When we get our hands on the draft from the Attorney General's office I will take that draft and I will take the language and I will highlight the language right out of the ACLU's lawsuit and I'll show you how the Justice Department lifted that language out of the lawsuit of the ACLU and MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Foundation and put it right into their draft advisory and the federal government will be conducting and carrying out the order of the President in a nonpolitical office, supposedly according to Holder's testimony at the direction of the ACLU and MALDEF and La Raza and the other organizations, the SEIU and many others that are hard core leftist organizations in this country. If we're going to have the rule of law it's got to be impartial, it's got to be objective, it's got to be Constitutional, it's got to be statutory and it's got to be consistent with case law. Arizona's law is all of those things but this Justice Department's unjustified attacks on Arizona is anything but.

It's a conspiracy... oh my! The leftists are telling the White House and the DOJ what to do. Don't I wish. If that were the case we'd have the Bush administration prosecuted for war crimes, Rove would be in jail for the AG scandal and his part in putting Don Siegelman in prison and that's just the start of the list. As usual there's no amount of race-baiting this wingnut won't use for political advantage.

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April 01, 2010 FOX News

Heather: In one of the few sane segments you're ever going to find on the Glenn Beck Show, Naomi Wolf talks to Beck fill-in Napolitano about where we're headed if we don't have more cases like this one.

Judge: Warrantless Wiretaps Were Illegal:

The National Security Agency's program to spy on Americans without warrants was illegal, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker (PDF) was a win for civil libertarians, and a major victory for the plaintiffs in this case, Al-Haramain, an Islamic charity that was wiretapped, along with its lawyers, in 2004.

Groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have tried out numerous legal strategies in a years-long effort to challenge the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. The Al-Haramain case represents the first time that plaintiffs who claim they were wiretapped have been able to get around the so-called "state secrets" clause, which acts as a sort of "get-out-of-court-free" card for the government in many national security cases. Al-Haramain's win could be temporary, though: the Obama administration will almost certainly appeal the decision. (Update: Marcy Wheeler disagrees.) Read on...

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Jesus these two are about as dumb as a box of rocks. From Media Matters who I borrowed the title from here -- Bernie Goldberg: What if the DOJ hired "lawyers who had gone out of their way to defend members" of KKK?. Apparently Goldberg has never heard of the ACLU who defends everyone, even the likes of Rush Limbaugh or the concept of innocent before proven guilty. Bill-O and Goldberg do their best job of playing concern trolls for Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol here.

O’Reilly: So we wanted to know why the Attorney General hired these people and who the people were. Apparently the New York Times objects to those questions. Was there anything that I missed in this?

Goldberg: No. They don’t only object, they think it’s a smear. So let’s use the New York Times’ own logic. Let’s use their logic. They say we shouldn’t question the values of these lawyers who volunteered their time to defend the alleged terrorists. Okay that’s fine. Let’s say a right wing President and Attorney General hired lawyers to work in the Civil Rights Division, lawyers who had gone out of their way to defend members of the Klu Klux Klan. I think every decent person in the country would say why in the world would you hire those people? And they’d also say do those people have a philosophy or a point of view that might affect policy in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department? But you’re not allowed to ask….

O’Reilly: That’s a very, very good analogy. That’s an excellent analogy.

Uh...no it's not Bill. You know what's really ironic about watching these two have this idiotic conversation is that the Bush administration actually did put anti-civil rights zealots in charge of the Civil Rights Division. I don't think anyone would have been complaining if the only thing those men did was take a case where they defended someone who was in the KKK. They did their best to make sure that the poor and minorities in this country could not vote. Something I'm sure would not keep either O'Reilly or Goldberg up at night.

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.

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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.

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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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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.