Although I signed the petition, I would be in opposition to Congress' influence over normal, or traditional, monetary policy operations as "captured" as I understand Congress to be.

This leads to the obvious question, "How do we keep what we perceive as improper behavior due to secrecy and personal connections at the Fed from happening while not compromising their independence from the political system?"

It would seem that one might do that by going back and looking at what they have done, and examining which undue influences caused them to do that. There seem to be two: 1) The pervasiveness of employees at the Fed who seem to come from a very small number of financial institutions in a "revolving door" manner (the issue of undue influence of Goldman-Sachs), and, 2) The undue influence of the Fed itself, through current members and alumni, over the economics discipline, leading to a uniformity of thought on how to approach or ignore growing problems in the macroeconomic system (the editorial board problem, the get a job with the fed or get a new career problem, the grants problem in economics departments, the pervasiveness of neoclassical economics in the face of its obvious failures).

So is it possible that it isn't really an audit of the Fed's lending books that is needed for the desired transparency, but rather an audit of their hiring practices, full disclosure of the connections of their personnel, moving regulation back into the government, and independence of funding sources for economics departments and economists?

What may be wrong with the discussion is that the desired transparency and the transparency sought in the bill might not be the same thing. Unless the bill promotes finding those social connections which are leading to bad Fed decisions, it isn't addressing the problem most people have with the Fed.

That does not seem unlikely given the perceptions of economics we see on display. For instance, who benefits by long term slow inflation? The lender (rich bankers) or the debtor (poor borrowers)? And yet we see cutting generational timeframe inflation being proposed as a "populist" idea.

It's actually not much of a laughing matter. A previous lawyer had tried to have her declared incompetent for similar behavior. She herself doesn't believe she will get a fair trial, believes they want to kill her, and therefore that any money spent defending her would be better spent on the poor.

And she is strip and cavity searched every time she leaves or enters her cell, which the judge "ordered" stopped, but only by ordering the prison to see if they could "find a way" to avoid it, so it continues.

Her lawyers want to go to Afghanistan to depose witnesses there, because the Afghan police story was very different from that of the FBI, namely that she approached the Americans unarmed but unrestrained, and they panicked and fired on her. That fits with the injuries, after all, were she struggling with someone over a rifle, it's hard to see how someone could fire two shots with a pistol and hit her twice in the frontal torso.

She passed out from loss of blood, and was operated on at Bagram, after which she was put on a four point restraint bed in a room lit 24/7 with cameras to recover. The FBI began interrogating her less than 24 hours after the operation, and continued interrogating her every day until she arrived in New York. During the entire interrogation, and during the subsequent month and a half in New York and Texas, she was unable to find out what they'd done with her son, who was arrested with her (and at 11 years old spent time in prison in Afghanistan).

The reason why she feels she has no reason left to live has something to do with that interrogation.

Many people believe, and she herself asserts, that she was taken prisoner in 2003 with all three of her children (two are now missing) and transferred to American custody. She resurfaced in 2008 only about 2 weeks after people had questioned whether or not she was being held in Bagram in conditions that violate the Geneva Conventions, and tortured as "Prisoner 650". The U.S. military initially stated that there had never been any female prisoners at Bagram, then about faced and confirmed a female prisoner, confirmed her number was 650, but said she was not Aafia Siddiqui.

Her own assertions of torture include extremely long solitary confinement and threats and photographs of harm to her children. Others have asserted rape but she herself has not, although she has implied she was treated harshly at some points. She has also said that her mind is no longer all there, specifically that she has become "senile" due to their treatment. A lot of her behavior is consistent with that, but the government asserts that she is malingering. The judge refused to rule either way on the malingering allegation, but ruled that regardless of her mental deficits, she is competent to stand trial. That trial is scheduled for January.

Petra Bartosiewicz has a good write up of the case, in which almost no one seems to be totally honest.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/11/0082719

But my personal feeling is that the FBI story of her arrest is total bunk, and Bartosiewicz feels the same. And her children are still missing, the government of Pakistan is supposed to be pressing for information on them, and is pressing for her release and repatriation.

Despite repeated requests for an opinion on her case (from me and no doubt others, as well as people bringing it up any time they are visiting FDL) the ACLU has said absolutely nothing about her case that I can find.

Anybody who thinks anyone will get a fair trial in SDNY on terror charges should take a good long look at her case. Likewise anybody who believes the FBI are the "good guys" when it comes to interrogation of people captured on the supposed battlefield in Afghanistan.