Reuters, Sat Apr 18, 2009 2:53pm EDT: "Obama reprieve for CIA illegal: U.N. rapporteur"

President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA interrogators who used waterboarding on terrorism suspects amounts to a breach of international law, the U.N. rapporteur on torture said.

"The United States, like all other states that are part of the U.N. convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court," U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard.

Nowak did not think Obama would go as far as to seek an amnesty law for affected CIA personnel and therefore U.S. courts could still try torture suspects, he said on Saturday.

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Just two days ago on NPR, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart lambasted the Obama Administration for easing restrictions on Cuba and stressed the need to bring an end to the Castro regime. One of the reasons he cited was that, in Cuba, prisoners are still 'tortured in the gulag.'

He wasn't talking about the Guantanamo side of the island but if one believes, as Rep. Diaz-Balart apparently does, institutionalized torture is wrong and torturers should be punished, this sort of house-cleaning needs to start at home.

While I can see how Obama was drawn to the alliteration and biblical poetry of that statement, he's got it wrong.

What this is -- what this needs to be -- is a time for justice.

Justice, apparently, is intended only for the Lynndie Englands among us. But this comes as no surprise from the government that bails out the bankers and punishes the auto workers.

And as much as I'd like to see Obama simply revert to his pre-election position on secrecy, I'd also like to see the forensics on this one. Specifically, who argued for the embrace of Bushite secrecy powers and why was it so convincing?

Is there a consensus that more aggressive action needs to be taken to clean up the comment section? I've been largely avoiding it -- or at least dreading reading it -- after the first 50-60 comments, but haven't taken action because I generally sense that people prefer that, except in the most extreme circumstances, it be left alone.

I think it's reached the point of 'extreme circumstances.' There are people writing in with insight and good information but it's just too tedious to scroll-and-click through the parallel universe that inevitably emerges.

(Not sure what action to take, however.)

In my letter, I referred to the 'post-Carter Administration' gutting of the Community Mental Health Act. That would be the Reagan Administration, no?

The CMHA was a favorite cause of Rosalynn Carter and, in the Carter years, there was a real attempt to get a handle on the rates and effects of untreated mental illness in the community. Much of that work remains unfinished.

The largest psychiatric facility in the US houses over 3000 patients. It's called Riker's Island and it's not a hospital.

The post-Carter-Administration gutting of the Community Mental Health Act and the subsequent closure of state-run psychiatric facilities (which admittedly were in need of reform) have resulted in a steady decline in the number of treatment placements available to psychiatric patients. According to Time magazine (link in sig), the US had 600,000 psychiatric beds fifty years ago but today there's only 40,000 -- for a much larger, more complex population.

The sad truth is, the only way a person is guaranteed psychiatric treatment (or any medical treatment, actually) in the US is if they get arrested.

Just as we need to get the nonviolent offenders out of the incarceration system, we also need to find a better system for treating psychiatric patients. Which means that prison reform will require health care reform.

Kudos to Jim Webb for showing leadership and humanity on the Senate floor.

That about says it all.

Just curious. (And forgive me if I missed something already discussed in another comment -- didn't get through all of 'em.)

The DOJ obviously has 'officials' willing to spread the Obama message but I wonder how those same folks would respond to actual meaningful questioning, which they aren't going to get from Ambinder.

But it's a legit line of questioning (if not necessarily your purview), to call the DOJ to discuss comments attributed to 'DOJ officials' in Ambinder's columns.

And it might break the cycle of anonymous-official ridiculousness.

Nothing else to say, other than reading this gave me much hope.

What really worries me is what everyone is afraid to talk about: that one of these Gitmo releasees could just drive down Sunset Boulevard and get a Map to the Stars' Homes.

That would be the end of freedom as we know it.

but I'm no longer sure who to throw them at.

With the exception of the too-short performance by Gemma Arterton, I don't know how any reviewer manages to find positive words for this film.

The director has no clue how to direct action or how to establish even the most obvious spectacular locations. The film plays as if he edited on an iPod; you want to keep backing away from the screen as everything is just too close up. The story is nonsensical and trivial -- since when does James Bond care if Bolivia has water? -- and another confirmation that these filmmakers didn't understand anything about the Bond series.

But the worst thing about watching Quantum of Solace is that it's just colossally boring and fails to engage on any level.