Letters to the Editor
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My (sigh) latest to Dianne Feinstein
Dear Senator Feinstein,
Obviously, your strategy for reigning in telecom behavior failed. I did notice that you cast nay votes on the Feingold amendment and on the Dodd amendment. I will remember that.
It appears that having once again (near perfect track record) given the Bush Administration everything they wanted in abusing our civil rights, the next item on the agenda is to take up torture. The bill being brought to the floor by Harry Reid doesn't go nearly far enough, not to mention the fact that it pretends that torture, in the form of waterboarding, extremes of heat and cold, sensory deprivation and overload, stress positions, and sleep deprivation, are not already illegal and have been since the U.S. became party to the Hague Conventions of 1907. We don't need another slap on the wrists of this administration, we need criminal prosecutions with long jail sentences at this point.
Please go to the floor of the Senate and sponsor a sense of the Senate resolution calling on the House of Representatives to institute impeachment hearings to fully investigate, compel documents from, and prosecute to the full extent of the law and of our obligations under international law, all people in the White House and the Intelligence establishment who participated in a systematization and execution of a plan to torture prisoners in U.S. custody.
It is the duty of the Congress under international law, and indeed, the duty of the 145 other nations who signed the Convention Against Torture, and the duty of the 195 nations who signed the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to investigate, prosecute, apprehend, and punish all those who torture. The CATCIDT admits absolutely no extenuating circumstances, the GC declare torture to be a grave breach.
Maybe it was hard for you senators to see your way clear to make big corporations that supposedly keep our phone calls private see punishment for their repeated and criminal acts. But it should be quite easy to prosecute torture. After all, it "shocks the conscience" of all sane human beings.
Does it still shock yours?
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Heffalump Turds
Same old braindead pachyderm, same steaming droppings. You fascisti were so sure you were gonna have Hillary to use as a voodoo doll. No such luck, schmuck.
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ondelette
That's a piercing, powerful letter to Feinstein.
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Um
So, having read comments all day at work about how Obama showed up to vote and Hillary didn't, imagine my surprise in reading on nytimes.com that neither Dem candidate voted. Figuring it was typical crappy Emmessem reporting, I went to senate.gov:
http://tinyurl.com/2fsvpm
...which shows both Clinton and Obama as Not Voting.
Looks like Elephantman's reasoning got to Barry O.
Seriously, can anyone who has been paying closer attention (pow wow?) shed some light on this? Or did I miss it in earlier comments?
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OK
Obama voted Yea on the Feingold amendment:
http://tinyurl.com/34kexz
but skipped the vote on the full Fuck America Act or whatever they called it. Half a point to Barry O, I guess.
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Well, it's almost done.
Sorry if I got a little to theatrical.
I just find myself living in a nightmare world that I wish I could wake from and ind it all was indeed a dream but I wake to visions of gulags and military troops (Gods militia?) on street corners.
Maybe America has been to smug in thinking that it can't happen here. But it is. It also won't stop here. But much more was lost, as some pointed out, back in 2000. This is only the result. My wife says that it's to easy to stay behind my keyboard and not get physically involved. That goes for everyone. Get busy. Get active. Get LOUD! Get going. DO SOMETHING!
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Chris Floyd
As I recall, adnoto also got fed up with Chris Floyd when Chris substituted for Glenn awhile back. -- bystander
Actually, I am a big fan of Chris Floyd. Not that it matters now but, just for clarification's sake, that whole thing with Mr. Floyd is on me. I was waaaayyy off there. That day, for some reason, I just couldn't mentally digest what he was getting at and I completely misread him. I simply dropped the ball and flaked out. It took me awhile to recover the few wits I have left and by then I was too embarrassed and angry at myself to follow up. I did send him a private apology but I received no response from him so I am not sure if he received it or not.
Sneer at ya'll later.
[Space here for Jefferson quote that everyone is ignoring]
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@ mona
@ Arne et al. re: SCOTUS, Scalia and etc.
Not so simple as right = wicked and liberal = wunderbar. See Scalia's dissent on the "left" in Hamdi: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-6696.ZD.html
Yeah, I know. Even a stopped watch is right once a day.
I confined my comments to the subject(s) at hand. I'm just pointing out that his supposed "principled" approach (as opposed to the untethered lawless legislation from the bench that others do) is a pile of crapola ... even if he accidentally lands of the right square occasionally. Others are better in their aim (and more consistent) than him.
Cheers,
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9/11 - the day the Neocons grabbed their opportunity to change everything after a long build up
"Neither Obama nor Clinton voted on final passage."
So much for the great black hope and the great female hope!
True Democrats should do what the Neocons did: plan and implement a takeover of government.
The alternative is to continue having an alternation between a Right-wing president (Democrat) and an Extreme Right-wing president (Republican).
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@ mona redux
There is no consistent libertarian on the High Court.
Ask me if I care..... ;-)
In fact, at the risk of starting a LiberFlame™ /w the likes of B1 and all here, I'd posit there is no such thing as a "cnsistent libertarian" period. Double-;-)
Cheers,
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It will be interesting how (or if) the TV news presents Telecom Amnesty Day
And what the response of the people will be.
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Now I've seen everything
The Bush administration sent a cable to all its foreign stationed diplomats about how to answer questions about the 9/11 military commissions trials. In addition to justifying them as being the same as Nuremburg, they advise people to parry questions about torture and the evidence obtained by it as follows:
The cable refers specifically to this and instructs diplomats to advise foreign governments that the tribunal will not accept evidence obtained through torture and that the defendants can raise objections to any statements they argue they made under coercion. Those decisions will be up to the judge, it says.
But it notes a distinction between torture and "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" that was outlawed by legislation sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, now the leading Republican candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination and a former prisoner of war during Vietnam.The cable informs diplomats that statements made by defendants under such conditions before the passage of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 may be considered by the court.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23132293/
So there you have it folks. As long as it was "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" and done before 2005 it's okay. I suppose it's immaterial that the U.S. assured other countries that "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" was already prohibited in the U.S. Constitution before the U.N. Convention Against Torture. You can almost hear the Dear Leader saying "The U.S. does not torture, it practices cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment instead." Makes ya proud to be an American.
And then again, according to Scalia, torture isn't illegal if it was done to get information and not as punishment. Niño, mind if I get some information from you?
Monsters. The U.S. is being subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.