and tell them that the Star Ledger banned a blogger there for posting one (previously widely published) Abu Ghraib torture photo?

Shouldn't the Ledger be held accountabl for that 'journalistic" standard?

Repeat: what good is litigation to force disclosure if the MSM is self censoring?

If nothing else (i.e. no legal cause of action exists), certainly fuel for the ACLU campaign, no?

After all, only some sort of a pig would consider warfare to be out of range of justice, since that opens the door for any kind of military violence at all, for any pretense whatsoeevr, against anyone.

It was (and is) an illegal war, based upon entirely false pretenses. Any prisoners taken in such a war seem to me to have been illegally taken as well, and holding them indefinitely without any charges is the excremental icing on the cake.

Our troops, reading Miranda-Rights to enemy combatants and terrorists is absurd. For several reasons it creates greater risk for our soldiers.

I can tell you third hand as a few remaining veterans knew first hand, that for the first several days into D-day, and during battles all through the European front, there were times when the call was, "take no prisoners".

Given the ridiculous and unprecedented way POTUS and his crew and people like you think war is an extension of the U.S. Department of Justice , I would hope that in the best interest of winning these wars, taking prisoners will be minimized.

This is quite possibly the way things will go. Just as every soldier who might be captured knows his best option for a quick and relatively painless death at the hands of El Quada is to fight to the death, so might they keep strongly in mind that a safer and more effective battle tactic would be unmerciful killing of the enemy. I don’t know… what do you think?… Ironic?

Earlier and after reading a Politico.com report on the House-Senate conference committee on the war supplemental, I said the House Dems had caved on Lieberman-Graham. This isn't exactly correct. The House Dems stood firm ensuring that Lieberman-Graham wasn't attached to this bill. In order to secure passage of it, Obama promised everyone he would NOT allow these photos to be released. The Dems in the Senate and Republicans were insisting on these assurances as were many other Dems in the House.

It appears from what I have read that Obama has several options now: 1. Appeal the decision from the appellate court to the USSC attempting to get a reversal which isn't very likely to be the outcome and probably why he supported Lieberman's amendment in the first place. 2. Issue an Executive Order retroactively attempting to modify how the Executive branch will treat these photos in an attempt to block their release 3. Classifying these photos retroactively so they can't be seen by anyone. 4. Working with Congress to modify FOIA retroactively to try and prevent the release of these photos, which I doubt they would do if there wasn't enough support for Lieberman-Graham or 5. Some combination of the above.

For example he may want to appeal now and see what the USSC decides before resorting to other options. But if the USSC rules against him it would make it much harder politically to resort to other options. If he tries any of the retroactive options no doubt the ACLU would have a good case and another claim to make against the government. But if Obama's main goal it to buy more time, he should achieve this now. It's seems to me only a question of how much time he will get.

What truly is sickening is Obama clearly is willing to obstruct justice to prevent the release of these photos at any cost and regardless of the damage it will do to our democracy. As Glenn often says which is absolutely true, if Bush were doing the same, every Dem would be screaming mad.

RJ Crane

"Its truly awesome how inter connected this marvellous world we live in actually is, isn't it?"

-- LondonLad

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Yep. It's, "Garbage in, garbage out." Or it that, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust"?

Ah, same old, same old. C'est la vie.

Every progressive should vote for Nader next time, as they should've the last few times. You only live once (in your present incarnation, at least).

Yes. It's clear that you don't give a fuck about results, or anything other than parading what even you must see is an embarrassingly cartoonish self-image of adnoto as the courageous truth-teller. Jesus.

None of the people you've namechecked here: King, Gandhi, Zinn, any of them - ever used insults and look-at-me false bravado. They patiently critiqued, explained, and offered a positive vision of the future.

Yank cranks to your heart's content. I'm losing any concern I once had that any of the lurkers will mistake you for a genuine radical.

The Independent counsel statute was allowed to expire basically after it had been so abused by Ken Starr with this witch hunt against Bill CLinton. So Congress would have to approve and pass another statute like that one. As for appointing a Special Prosecutor all this would take is for AG Holder to decide to do this and appoint one but I wouldn't hold my breathe waiting for that to happen any time soon. Why? Because it should be apparent to anyone posting on this blog that the Obama Administration is doing almost everything it can - even threatening to block the release of those torture photos by Executive order - to impede and obstruct the investigations of past war crimes committed by the Bush administration with plenty of help from fellow Dems who didn't exercise proper oversight at the time or even agreed with some of these policies.

I don't think enough people realize yet the dysfunction of our government wherein we could witness the Senate Dems en masse supporting the Lieberman-Graham amendment to weaken one of the key pillars the Democratic party has stood for over the past 40 years- the Freedom of Information Act. If they are behaving this badly because that's what Obama is telling them to do or because they are afraid of Cheney and other neocons labeling them as weak in fighting terrorism, doesn't really matter to me since both are equally obnoxious reasons. The reasons they give for blocking the release of these photos are so absurdly ridiculous on their face it should insult us all that they would even try and offer them. It should tell us what they must think of us too.

RJ Crane