Maddow: Rachel and Isikoff discuss Panetta confession in closed session and threatened veto of Dem bill by Obama (see sig)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/

More of same on Countdown.

House Dems vs. the CIA

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/31807746#31807746

CIA deceived Congress

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#31807841

While the Greenwald Hypothetical Cultists can dance around screaming he should "release them" if he can't give them a trial, there isn't one politician in either party that would actually do this.

Is your retort here mere political realism (as you see it), or do you actually think it's justifiable to lock people up forever without ever giving them a trial?

If you could, please... try and avoid in your response comparing it to "collateral damage" or people not paying their parking tickets, etc. Lifetime imprisonment without trial is, across the political spectrum, regarded an extremely grave violation of fundamental human rights. If you're going to advocate it, your case should be strong and clear.

Merely calling your interlocutors names simply won't do.

I included in my list in yesterday's thread, has just posted something new...

Read Bob Cesca on why a public option probably won't be nearly as expensive as the CBO estimates, since of course, none of the Republicans or Blue Dogs will sign up for it, and those that have something similar now will likely switch to one of those all-American policies instead.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/if-you-dont-want-the-publ_b_228324.html

In a comment to an Oxdown Diary on the Shepherd/NPR controversy by ImperialFlow, commenter wigwam had this to say:

One additional, pedantic point. Per the UN Convention Against Torture, which is a Senate-ratified treaty and thus “supreme law of the land” by Article VI:

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Emphasis mine.

So, uhm, Ms. Shepherd, the motive doesn't matter. If we are torturing to extract information it is still torture and still illegal.

Does that meant it is still torture, even if we're only trying to get straight answers out of the legacy media... including, but not limited to, national pandering radio?

The arguments made in this article and other articles by Glen are to the point and brilliant. However, there is another side to the whole story. The Vietnam War, as we now know and many knew around that time, was also built upon lies after lies. There were no Gitmos and the enemy combatant detainees in that war but there were plenty of minor and bigger Mai Lai type incidents. The Republican admin that took over after the Johnson admin continued the war. Neither the Nixon Admin nor the Ford Admin brought any cases against anyone in the Johnson admin for the bald face lies about the progress of the war and obviously the invented reason of the invasion.

There were many in the Johnson admin that deserved punishment, there were many in the intelligence and the defense set up during the Johnson Admin, that should have been punished but barring a few hand slaps and a few years of detention to lower level staffers, no big fish was ever brought to justice.

The Obama admin practically has no choice in this matter. It will have to protect the previous admin not just because a democrat admin was protected by the Republicans in past but we don’t know what might happen in the future and this admin might also need the same protection from the next admin which might be a Republican admin.

The only way this I-scratch-your-back-and-you-scratch-mine would end, would be the public pressure and I think people like Glen are doing an incredible job here by keeping the story alive. This will keep the Obama Admin under pressure and at some point in future these efforts might bear fruit.

The Obama admin would be in a major conflict with the security establishment of the country which just a few months ago, was in complete agreement with the Bush Admin. The Obama admin and the democrats are not prepared to fight that battle.

In the meantime, I seriously doubt that the Obama admin will budge more than what it has already over the illegal detentions, gitmo prisoners, and many other issues that are in the courts.

Don't hate the players, hate the game. If black voters are going to be hesitant to take any guff about Obama, its largely going to be because of the indifference white voters have shown to the US's shameful track record on equality before the law for centuries.

This is where, unfortunately, constitutionalists and legalists constantly trip up. They can't fathom why so many Americans are ambivalent or even antagonistic toward the Constitution and the Rule of Law. For whatever reason, they can't see how any American could regard the Constitution and the Rule of Law as a weapon that's been used consistently against them, not as a bulwark of freedom and justice.

They figure if only these poor benighted people could be educated to understand and appreciate the wonder of our Founders and their genius in originating the self-governing constitutional republic and the rule of law that we have today... or at least should have... or might... if we apply enough pressure to our representatives... or send enough money to various causes... or... something...

But these poor benighted people ARE educated by bitter experience, and they DO understand just what the Rule of Law means if you're not of the right color or the right class or you don't live in the right neighborhood, or don't associate with the right people and on and on and on.

They understand that the Constitution and the Rule of Law as currently conceived have turned this nation into a prison for millions, more millions than anywhere else in the world bar none. And that entire generations of black and brown men have been criminalized and marginalized by the actions of the Rule of Law; that historically, the Constitution and the Rule of Law was cited to justify chattel slavery, ethnic cleansing and genocide, state sanctioned murder, forced impoverishment, denial of basic rights of citizens and on and on.

Constitutionalists and Rule of Law advocates may not deny that that's the case, but they tend to insist that things are all better now, it just took a long time, that's all.

But we're still a prison nation, and more and more the concept of "law" is becoming a sad, sick joke, the Constitution a quaint historical artefact. Things are far from "all better."