... that Holder is not very familiar with the Geneva Convention(s):

under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

This unfamiliarity seems to be shared by CronenBurgerMeister:

Prisoners of war under Geneva may not be interrogated at all, beyond name rank and serial number.

This is simply not the case. There is no limit to the amount of information that can be elicited from prisoners of war; the limits are on the methods you can use to elicit information. Name, rank, and serial number is the the only information that a prisoner is required to supply. The prisoner can supply any additional information that he or she chooses to divulge. The applicable section is:

Third Geneva Convention (1949)

Art 17. Every prisoner of war, when questioned on the subject, is bound to give only his surname, first names and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or serial number, or failing this, equivalent information.

...

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

...

The questioning of prisoners of war shall be carried out in a language which they understand.

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68

These are the rules that apply to the interrogation of prisoners of war according to the Geneva Convention(s). There is no limitation on the amount or kind of information that a prisoner can give, only on what the prisoner is required to give. There is no limitation on the kind of information that can be asked for, only on the means of asking and on the reactions to a refusal to answer.

If Holder was lamenting the fact that you can't torture prisoners of war, that is a non-starter because you can't torture anyone (not legally, not in any country that is a participant in the CAT).

Can't the Republican Party simply be determined to be a criminal organization as was done with the SS and the Gestapo at the Nuremberg tribunals?

And you won't even give me a link to the Progressive Manifesto?

Here's one:

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm

Pay attention to the first two paragraphs. The rest is mostly just a catalog of some fairly unprogressive acts and policies. Just negative definitions of progressivism, if you will (h/t Dick "who once shot a 78-year-old man in the face with a shotgun" Cheney)

Here's another:

http://un.org/Overview/rights.html

A careful perusal of this manifesto will give a good overview of why some states consider the United Nations to be a hostile forum and incredibly biased against nations that practice oppression, genocide, and ethnic cleansing.

The invasion of Afghanistan was controversial?

Only to those who know history. It is a simple fact that anyone who ever conquered Afghanistan fairly quickly wished that they hadn't. Afghanistan is a graveyard where superpowers go to die.

What's "GBT" stand for, anyway?

GThrasher, world-famous black activist.

Hi, Trasher — glad to see you changed your handle since the last time you got tossed off. You can change your name, but you can't change your style. Something about leopards and spots or Ethiopians and skin. Jeremiah 13:23 applies.

I think they have to translate his [the Pope's] stuff from german, so his posts take a bit longer.

It is truly ugly over there.
— casual_observer

As someone noted earlier (Jebbie, I think), they seem to have stopped accepting new posts. Perhaps the basket only takes 100 posts. Anyway, they have a representative sample of reaction. By my count it's 100-0 against.

Did anybody else notice that William Timberman was one of the commenters at the DSCC blog?
— Morally_Bankrupt

Yes. The only thing that really surprises me is that there hasn't been a message from the Pope saying how pissed off he is.

“The 33 new Members of Congress coming to Washington to swell our side of the aisle are pragmatic, not dogmatic,” Hoyer is to say. “They were elected on promises of bipartisanship and fiscal discipline. They were elected, quite simply, to solve problems, not further politicize Washington.”

Does anyone wonder why, if the new members of congress were elected on the promise of giving the Republicans everything they want, people didn't just vote for Republicans in the first place? Did anyone actually campaign by saying we're going to do the same things the Republicans do but we're just not as good at it?

I sure hope Accountability Now has its sights on Steny Hoyer.

The only problem is that what the Republicans call "bipartisanship" the rest of the world calls "date rape".

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/congress/34667644.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7EaDiaMDCiUZ

Here's an idea: Since no one can deny Lieberman anything, and since everyone kicks Harry Reid around like last year's soccer ball, why not make Lieberman Senate Majority Leader? He's got the seniority for it and that way the Senate would never get anything accomplished (well, they don't now, but at least with Lieberman in charge there wouldn't be any suspense about it). Lieberman would just say we're going to pass this and we're not going to pass that and that would be the end of it.

Or, is it, It takes a "thief" to catch a "thief."
— bystander

If he appoints Bill Ayers head of Homeland Security we'll know for sure.