Yep, We Did. We Tortured Some Folks.

From CBS News:

The United States tortured al Qaeda detainees captured after the Sept. 11,2001 attacks, President Obama acknowledged Friday, in some of his most expansive comments to date about a controversial set of CIA practices that he banned after taking office.

From the White House Transcript:

I have full confidence in John Brennan. I think he has acknowledged and directly apologized to Senator Feinstein that CIA personnel did not properly handle an investigation as to how certain documents that were not authorized to be released to the Senate staff got somehow into the hands of the Senate staff. And it’s clear from the IG report that some very poor judgment was shown in terms of how that was handled. Keep in mind, though, that John Brennan was the person who called for the IG report, and he’s already stood up a task force to make sure that lessons are learned and mistakes are resolved.

With respect to the larger point of the RDI report itself, even before I came into office I was very clear that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.

I understand why it happened. I think it’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen, and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent, and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. And it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.

But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. And that's what that report reflects. And that's the reason why, after I took office, one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report.

Let's start with Brennan.  What he acknowledged was, in fact, his own dishonesty.  But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.  Let's take a step back.

There's an ongoing dispute in DC about the CIA's Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program.  The Senate Intelligence Committee's written a report that's now circulating behind the locked doors of Official Washington and a summary of it is (supposedly) on its way to being declassified and released:

The White House in the next few days is expected to declassify the long-awaited summary of a U.S. Senate committee study of a CIA program that used "enhanced interrogations" and secret prisons to extract information from captured militants, several officials familiar with the matter said.

Over the last two weeks, former directors and deputy directors of the CIA have been invited by the Obama administration to review a still-secret version of the 600-page Senate Intelligence Committee summary at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Officials familiar with its contents say it concludes that the CIA's use of harsh "enhanced interrogation" methods such as waterboarding, or simulated drowning, on a handful of prisoners, and other stress tactics on a larger set of captured militants, did not produce any significant counter-terrorism breakthroughs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Human rights activists and CIA critics, including some U.S. politicians, have described the CIA's techniques as torture.

The officials said the report also alleges that CIA officials misstated or exaggerated the results of the program by claiming such methods had helped to foil terrorist plots.

So according to those who've seen the report, the CIA tortured and then lied about the effectiveness of that torture.  The point here is that while the Senate was investigating the CIA's torturous RDI program, the Senate Intelligence Committee was actually spied on by the CIA.

Here's what Brennan said early on to Andrea Mitchell of NBC News:

As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. That's just beyond the scope of reason.

And that turns out to be completely and unquestionably false.  From CNN:

CIA Director John Brennan apologized to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday and admitted the agency spied on computers used by its staffers who prepared an investigation of the controversial post 9/11 CIA interrogation and detention program.

So that's how the DCIA and the CIA lied to everybody about the RDI program.

Now that we've established that, what's the bigger issue?

Because no matter how the President frames it, torture is still illegal.  From the United Nations Convention Against Torture, Article I:

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.

And now something from Article II:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

See?  No matter how bad 9/11 was, no matter how scared the people were, there's no justification to torture.  It's simply against the law - international law.

Let me add a footnote.  Torture's illegal according to this more recent law as well.  This was introduced by Senator John McCain as an amendment to a larger appropriations bill.  (It was later signed into law by George W. Bush):

No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

And so on.

Of course, this was in the age of the previous (and oh-so Republican) administration, the age of the Unitary Executive, when a President could sign a bill into law and then claim that it didn't always have to apply to him. From the Boston Globe in 2006:

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

Meaning:

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit.

It's interesting that there wasn't much of a peep then from today's Impeachment crowd.  Back then a (Republican) President was claiming the authority to side step International laws barring war crimes and there's more or less silence from the right wing.  Now a (Democratic) President issues an Executive Order rearranging some parts of the implementation of a law getting more Americans affordable health care and BAM! suddenly there's a constitutional crisis on the (pro-life) Right.

The sad sad part about all this is that the current (Democratic) President is letting the previous (Republican) President get away with war crimes.

I'm just wondering when Fox News will call for Obama's impeachment for the crime of giving Bush's waterboarding a pass.

The Trib, The Washington Times, And The IRS Zombie Story

Don't these guys keep up with the news?

We'll start here at the Tribune-Review:

The Washington Times reports that the Treasury Department has admitted that confidential records of several political candidates and campaign donors were “improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department had declined to prosecute any of the cases.” We've lost count on how many scandals are plaguing the Obama administration. But its fundamental lawlessness grows more stunning by the week. [Bolding in original.]

Ah...those Obama "scandals."  Is there a reason why we haven't heard much about them recently?

Turns out, there is but let's get back to the article Scaife's braintrust references.  Here's the third paragraph:

In a written response to a request by [Senator Chuck] Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, [the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell] George said a review turned up four cases since 2006 in which unidentified government officials took part in “unauthorized access or disclosure of tax records of political donors or candidates,” including one case he described as “willful.” In four additional cases, Mr. George said, allegations of improper access of IRS records were not substantiated by the evidence. [Emphasis added.]

And a paragraph or so later:

The investigation did not name the government officials who obtained the IRS records improperly, nor did it reveal the identities or political parties of the people whose tax records were compromised.

Wait.  Only four cases since 2006 with only one described as "willful" and with no indication as to who or when these cases took place?  So from the report we have no idea whether this is a Bush Administration thing or an Obama Administration thing, right?

And yet to the Scaife's braintrust, it's automatically an Obama scandal.  The Times fills in the myth:

The disclosures deal another blow to the IRS and the Obama administration, which are still grappling with revelations that IRS agents inappropriately targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extraordinarily burdensome scrutiny during President Obama’s first term.

And yet, that's not completely accurate, is it?  From a memo released by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee:

On Thursday, the Committee will hold its second—and Congress’ seventh—hearing on accusations that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeted Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status for partisan political purposes. This investigation was initiated when the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) issued a report on May 14, 2013, finding that the IRS used “inappropriate” criteria to identify Tea Party organizations for review.

For the past eight weeks, Republican politicians, pundits, and commentators have engaged in a sustained and coordinated campaign to accuse the White House and the Obama Administration of using the IRS to target Tea Party groups applying for tax exempt status despite the absence of any evidence to support these accusations.

And:

This memorandum provides the results of the Committee’s investigation to date. It finds that since the Chairman and other Republicans first began accusing the Administration of targeting “the president’s political enemies,” the Committee has identified no evidence whatsoever—documentary, testimonial, or otherwise—to substantiate these claims. Despite an extremely aggressive investigation involving thousands of documents and more than a dozen interviews of IRS employees, the overwhelming evidence before the Committee reveals no political motivation or White House involvement in this process.[Emphases added.]

The evidence that the memo does show goes something like this:

When asked if there was any evidence of targeting the President’s political enemies, a Republican Tax Law Specialist in Washington, D.C. answered: “No, not at all. That’s kind of laughable that people think that. No, not at all. This is purely cases that, unfortunately, Cincinnati didn’t have enough guidance on. That (c)(4) area is a very, very difficult area, and there’s not much guidance. And so the lingering length of time, unfortunately, was just trying to apply the law to the specific facts of each case.”

So tell me again how this is a scandal?

And what of the rest of those "scandals"?  Go read this.

Oh, How Times Have Changed...

From yesterday's Tribune-Review (and let me just say HEY to the good folks at the Tribune-Review who've visited this blog - more than a hundred times since May 1st!):

It doesn't take a member of Mensa to figure out that the government of the United States is not limiting its collection of hundreds of millions of Americans' daily telephone records to those served by Verizon. There can be no doubt that the feds are collecting and analyzing what's known as “metadata” from just about everyone's carrier, have been for many years and will continue to do so. And, on its face, it's supposedly perfectly legal, per the Patriot Act (though an author of the act disputes that).

Funny how when this story broke:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

In May of 2006 - a story accompanied by this picture (included so we know who we're talking about here):

Our friends on the Scaife Braintrust had this to say:

There's lots of heat and woefully little light regarding the news that the National Security Agency has been compiling a "massive database of Americans' phone calls," aided by three of the four-largest telecoms.

The NSA is collecting records of -- not listening to -- tens of millions of telephone calls made domestically. Running the calls through a database, the intent is to look for patterns that might signal terrorist planning activities.

But this is not illegal.

Not only does the recently renewed Patriot Act provide for such activity, there is case law that upholds it as constitutional (ironically in a case involving the media). [Italics in original.]

Indeed when Bush signed that reauthorization in 2006, he issued a signing statement that read (in part):

The executive branch shall construe the provisions of H.R. 3199 that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch, such as sections 106A and 119, in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties.

Yea, the funny thing about section 106A.  The that section of the law reads:

The Inspector General of the Department of Justice shall perform a comprehensive audit of the effectiveness and use, including any improper or illegal use, of the investigative authority provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation under title V of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978...

And the signing statement just said, "...yea, but only if we think so."

Funny how a change of party in the White House can color (such an interesting pun in this context, huh?) the braintrust's whole outlook on the NSA data-mining.

And for the record, I am not a fan of the NSA data-mining, the Patriot Act or any of the other distasteful (at the very least) anti-terror projects started by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration.

But Obama let Bush get away with war crimes - so what's a little harmless data-mining between friends?

Could Not Have Put It Better Myself

Jon Stewart:

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Highlights:

At 2:00 in, Jon Stewart says:

You may be wondering why for Benghazi, Congress has held nine full hearings - including one closed hearing.  Why Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen issued a full accountability report chastising the State Department for their systemic failures and why Benghazi has generally emerged as a rallying cry for the President's opponents when during the Bush Administration there were fifty-four attacks on diplomatic targets that killed thirteen Americans, yet garnered only three hearings on embassy security total and zero outrage on Fox.

At 3:26 in Representative Peter King describes how big a scandal Benghazi is says:

If you add Watergate and IranContra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you're gonna get in the zone of what Benghazi is.

To which Jon Stewart replied:

Holy sh*t! [taking notes] Watergate plus IranContra times...[note taking ends]  So you're saying that the incident, whereby the order of the President of the United States, people broke into the Democratic headquarters to bug it to gain strategic advantage in a presidential election then cover that up by trying to use the power of the presidency to squash the Justice Department and then added that to the Reagan Administrations secret deal to illegally sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages and money that could then be funneled to Central American right wing death squads, end parentheses, times ten.

Yeppers, that's what they're saying.

However, by the time we get to 1:10 in to the second section of this video:

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The wingnut media is balancing this on "If that indeed was the case..."

Following a long line of "If..." statements from Fox pundits, at 2:00 in, Stewart reacts with:

YES!  If dingleberries were diamonds, I could open a Kay Jewelers in my pants!"

Thus illustrating the emptiness of their whole argument.

He ends the segment with this at 3:50:

If what you're saying is true (and it's an important question). If what you're saying is true: if the President let Amercians die for political reasons then by god, bring us the evidence and we will grab the pitchforks and torches along with you.  But remember, that game goes both ways.  Let me try:  In 2011, the State Department requested funding for worldwide security protection and upgrade.  Money that could have perhaps gone to protect Benghazi.  The Republicans, like Darrell Issa who's heading up this committee, voted to cut that funding.  Maybe because of political reasons in an election year to make the President look weak.  Thus sacrificing Americans for political gains.  Did that happen?

One last quote taken out of context to prove this point:

If that's the case, John, then that's outrageous.

And it is.

More On Bush's Torture

I know I said I'd be off for a while, but this is important.

From Wired.com:

A top adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the Bush administration that its use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation techniques like waterboarding were “a felony war crime.”

What’s more, newly obtained documents reveal that State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Bush team in 2006 that using the controversial interrogation techniques were “prohibited” under U.S. law — “even if there is a compelling state interest asserted to justify them.”

Zelikow argued that the Geneva conventions applied to al-Qaida — a position neither the Justice Department nor the White House shared at the time. That made waterboarding and the like a violation of the War Crimes statute and a “felony,” Zelikow tells Danger Room. Asked explicitly if he believed the use of those interrogation techniques were a war crime, Zelikow replied, “Yes.”

There's more from Salon.com:

In February of 2006, Philip Zelikow, counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, authored a memo opposing the Bush administration’s torture practices (though he employed the infamous obfuscation of “enhanced interrogation techniques”). The White House tried to collect and destroy all copies of the memo, but one survived in the State Department’s bowels and was declassified yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive.

As Zelikow wrote in 2009:

At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives.

So someone in Condoleezza Rice's State Department circulated a memo said what the CIA was doing (waterboarding) is a war crime and what did the Bush Administration subsequently do it?

Destroy all the copies of the memo, of course.

And Obama shredded the Constitution.  Obama's policies are the end of freedom in America.

Prosecute the torture.

Jack Kelly Sunday

It's Sunday and thus Jack Kelly's got another column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

This week, he's distorting the Administration's energy policy.  Of course, he's not even that original when he does it.  Take a look at his P-K4:

Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Steven Chu, now the energy secretary, said in a 2008 interview with the Wall Street Journal.

A gallon of regular costs more than $8 there. The Oil Price Information Service thinks the average price here will rise to $4.25 a gallon by the end of April. That would exceed the record of $4.11, set in July 2008.

A gallon of regular cost just $1.85 the day before President Barack Obama was inaugurated. If the price were to double again during a second Obama term, Mr. Chu's goal could be achieved.

Politico has already dealt with Chu's 2008 remark and it's political use by republicans:

President Barack Obama’s Energy secretary unwittingly created a durable GOP talking point in September 2008 when he talked to The Wall Street Journal about the benefits of having gasoline prices rise over 15 years to encourage energy efficiency.

“Somehow,” Chu said, “we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

Chu, a Nobel-winning physicist and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was not yet a member of the not-yet-in-existence Obama administration. But Republican politicians and conservative pundits have seized on his words as evidence that the White House is deliberately driving gasoline prices higher — ensuring that Chu’s remarks are the energy policy sound bite that will not die. [emphasis added.]

Then there's this from the same Politico piece:

The popularity of Chu’s now-infamous quotation tends to track the rise and fall of gas prices: It enjoyed a huge surge of attention last spring and summer before largely vanishing from view in the fall, leading up to this month’s renaissance, according to the LexisNexis database.

Never mind that some energy experts say Chu had it exactly right, and that higher fuel prices would encourage consumers to buy more efficient vehicles, discourage suburban sprawl, make renewables more competitive and reduce U.S. reliance on imported oil. Not even Chu’s department is making that argument these days.

"As he has consistently said, Secretary Chu understands how much high global oil prices can affect families at the gas pump,” DOE spokeswoman Jen Stutsman said Tuesday. She said long-term relief will come from strategies like the administration’s drive for higher fuel-efficiency standards in vehicles, which will slash oil consumption and “save families $1.7 trillion at the pump.”

As with most anything Jack writes, once you discover the context of the facts/quotations he's using in whatever assertion he's trying to make, the argument he's constructed out of those facts becomes less and less valid.  For example, the "doubling of gas prices" argument.

What Jack (and a host of other conservatives) leave out is why the price of gas was $1.83 at the time of the Obama Inauguration.

Anyone remember the Bush recession?  The economy that Obama inherited was trashed and oil and gas prices took a tumble.  How much of a tumble?  Take a look at this chart from the Federal Reserve in St Louis (h/t to Mediamatters):

Oh, the stuff Jack leaves out!  Which brings us to Jack's next omission:

Sen. Obama expressed little concern when the price of gas was approaching the current record high.

"I would have preferred a more gradual adjustment," he told CNBC in a June 2008 interview. "But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment ... then I think we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy."

I want you to reread those last two paragraphs.  Obama expressed little concern, Jack writes and adds one ellipsis to mark the one place he omitted text.

Now let's take a look at that interview.  The transcript is from CNBC:

[JOHN] HARWOOD: So could these high prices help us?

Sen. OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now.[emphasis added]

I bolded and italicized the text Jack didn't feel you needed to see.  I'd think that omitting the part where Obama says the high prices are a "shock" and "not a good thing" in order to assert that he "expressed little concern" is enough to hoist Jack Kelly to the Breitbart levels of quotational dishonesty.

I'll ask it yet again, isn't anyone at the P-G peeking over Jack's shoulder when he does things like this?  Such a manipulation kinda, y'know, completely discredits whatever follows.

I've emailed David Schribman Shribman about Jack's dishonesty but so far have yet to receive any sort of response.

UPDATE: Apologies for misspelling David Shribman's name (see DRoddy's comment below). I should have been more careful - especially in a Jack Kelly blog post

Another Trib Blurb, Another Bit Of Disinformation

From today's Thursday Wrap:

The New York Times says the Obama administration will "dispatch Cabinet officials" and "senior advisers at the White House" to urge campaign donors to support Priorities USA Action, the Democrats' top "super PAC." So, why isn't the Federal Election Commission investigating the administration for clearly violating the Hatch Act and laws against campaigns coordinating efforts with "independent" political action committees?

As with everything else dripping off of the Trib's editorial page, once you dig into the story, you'll see that Scaife's braintrust either doesn't do its homework or it doesn't expect you to.

Obama Admin: Immunity for Torturers, Prosecution for Torture Whistleblowers

As I've written elsewhere, my profoundest disappointment with the Obama Administration revolves around its refusal to prosecute the war crimes of the Bush Administration.

Two days after his inauguration, the President signed Executive Order 13491 - ordering the US back into compliance with US and International Law regarding the use of torture - and that's a good thing, of course.

Torture is bad.  Torture is illegal.  The torture should be prosecuted.

But the Obama administration isn't prosecuting the torturers.

Instead:

The Justice Department on Monday charged a former Central Intelligence Agency officer with disclosing classified information to journalists about the capture and brutal interrogation of a suspected member of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah — adding another chapter to the Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks.

In a criminal complaint filed on Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation accused John Kiriakou, the former C.I.A. officer, of disclosing the identity of a C.I.A. analyst who worked on a 2002 operation that located and interrogated Abu Zubaydah. The journalists included a New York Times reporter, it alleged.

“Safeguarding classified information, including the identities of C.I.A. officers involved in sensitive operations, is critical to keeping our intelligence officers safe and protecting our national security,” said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., in a statement.

Now, don't get me wrong. Leaking the name of a CIA operative is a very serious charge - one that should be investigated and, if necessary prosecuted.

Although I doubt my Bush Administration admiring friends would agree completely with that last bit (cough Valerie Plame cough).

But letting the CIA (current or retired) torturers go unpunished while prosecuting a retired CIA officer for bringing the story to the public?

How does that mesh with claiming the "moral high ground" for reiterating that torture is illegal?

It simply doesn't.

Fact-Checking The Trib's Editorial Cartoon

First, the cartoon:

And now the Trib editorial that echos its message:

Solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last week left taxpayers on the hook for more than half-a-billion dollars in federal loan guarantees and put 1,100 out of work. And it's the latest case study in the predictable failure of Obamanomics -- a "green" beneficiary of crony capitalism, unviable even when subsidized by a government trying to pick winners.

Yea...about those loan guarantees. You could guess from the braintrust's editorial that Solyndra sent an email to Van Jones in the White House who then personally rubber stamped a $500 million loan guarantee to help out some Obama campaign contributors.

The facts (those stupid stubborn things) shall we say complicate this right wing meme.

The program under which Solyndra got the loan guarantee was section 1703 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Solyndra applied for the loan guarantees in December of 2006. In 2007, the Department of Energy deemed Solyndra eligible to move forward in the loan guarantee process.

Tell me again who ran the show in DC from 2005 to 2007?

So tell me how this is all about "Obamanomics"?

Now...About That Bus

Yet another constructed scandal by the rightwing press. It's even made it into an editorial cartoon at the Tribune-Review:


Ha. Funny.

Mediamatters has a whole page of criticisms from the Sean Hannity and other wing nuts - "It's a waste of tax payer money!" they charge. "It's MADE IN CANADA!" the cartoonist asterixes.

But there are two of them. Did you know that? Probably did.

But did you also know that:

The vehicle was commissioned by the Secret Service, which has always hired buses for election campaigns and retrofitted them to provide suitable protection for presidents and rival party nominees.

But the Service decided to commission its own vehicles, reasoning that the initial total outlay of 2.2 million dollars for two buses would soon pay for itself over a projected 10-year lifespan.

Because:

In the past, those tours were a big headache for the service. The process started with a commercial tour bus and a renovation process that put the old TV show Pimp My Ride to shame.

"It was extremely expensive to lease one of these buses and then put in proper armoring, proper communications equipment," says former Secret Service Director Ralph Basham, who's now with Command Consulting Group. "And then at the end of the contract you had to restore these buses back to their original state."

Oh! So they're for presidential elections (among other things)! So once the Republican candidate is set, he/she will get one of the buses for the campaign!

You didn't see that in the cartoon, did you?

And where did these two buses come from? Canada, right? Not exactly:

The government bought the two coaches for $2.2 million from retailer Hemphill Brothers Coach, based in Tennessee. It installed custom interior upgrades into the Prevost shell, which accounted for about half the cost.

And would it surprise you to learn that the Hemphill Brothers (Joel and Trent) are campaign donors - to Republican candidates?

• Joel Hemphill in 2006 $7,100 to Republican candidates
• Joel Hemphill in 2004 $2,000 to Bush Cheney
• Trent Hemphill in 2010 $3,000 to Republican candidates
• Trent Hemphill in 2006 $3,100 to Republican candidates
• Trent Hemphill in 2004 $4,000 to Bush/Cheney

So if the coaches were constructed in Canada (and it looks as though they were), then we have a company in Red State Tennessee owned by two Republican campaign donating brothers that outsources work to foreign employees.

And pointing out where the buses were made is a criticism of the Obama Administration?

Funny what the Trib (and the rest of the right wing media) leave out, huh?

Torture News - Good, Bad and Ugly

From last Thursday:

The Justice Department inquiry into CIA interrogations of terrorist detainees has led to a full criminal investigation into the deaths of two people while they were in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday.

The attorney general said that he accepted the recommendation of a federal prosecutor, John Durham, who since August 2009 has conducted an inquiry into CIA interrogation practices during the Bush administration. Holder said Durham looked at the treatment of 101 detainees in U.S. custody since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and concluded that only these two deaths warranted criminal investigation. Holder said Durham found some of the 101 had never been held by the CIA.

And more from the Washington Post:

The Justice Department did not say which cases are being investigated, but U.S. officials said they are the death of an Afghan, Gul Rahman, in 2002 at a prison known as the Salt Pit in Afghanistan, and that of an Iraqi, Manadel al-Jamadi, who was questioned by three CIA officers at Abu Ghraib in 2003.

In the case involving the Salt Pit, known as a “black site” because the U.S. government did not officially acknowledge its existence, a CIA officer allegedly ordered Afghan guards in November 2002 to strip Rahman and chain him to the concrete floor of his cell. Temperatures plunged overnight, and Rahman froze to death. Hypothermia was listed as the cause of death and Rahman was buried in an unmarked grave.

Jamadi, the Iraqi, was captured on Nov. 4, 2003, by a Navy SEAL team hunting a terrorist cell thought to be responsible for a bombing in Baghdad. After initial interrogation efforts, he was transferred into CIA custody and was taken to Abu Ghraib. There he was hooded, placed in an orange jumpsuit and shackled to window bars in a shower room, where he died.

Jamadi’s body was put on ice to preserve it for autopsy. U.S. soldiers posed for photographs with the body — including some in which they gave the thumbs-up sign — provoking international outrage when news organizations showed the images.

The "Good" is that there are now criminal investigations into the torture related deaths that occurred during, at with the OK of, the Bush Administration.

The "Bad" is that this narrowing of an investigation leaves out a whole mess o' torture:

“It is difficult to understand the prosecutor’s conclusion that only those two deaths warrant further investigation,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “For a period of several years, and with the approval of the Bush administration’s most senior officials, the CIA operated an interrogation program that subjected prisoners to unimaginable cruelty and violated both international and domestic law. The narrow investigation that Attorney General Holder announced today is not proportionate to the scale and scope of the wrongdoing.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA created a network of secret prisons around the world to confine “high-value” al-Qaeda operatives. The detainees were subjected to what the agency called “enhanced interrogation techniques” — escalating forms of duress that began with slaps to the face and ended, in three cases, with prolonged bouts of waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

Among those held by the CIA were leading al-Qaeda figures, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was waterboarded 183 times after his capture in March 2003.

Let's all say it together, children: Torture is illegal. Approving the use of torture is illegal. Both happened during the Bush Administration, though he tried to cover his tracks by having his office of legal counsel declare it not-torture.

The Good, Bad and Ugly can be summed up in this from the Post:

The Obama administration closed the CIA prisons and barred the use of the enhanced techniques. The Justice Department said it would not prosecute any CIA personnel who acted in good faith and followed the guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel.

As I pointed out in this recent Jack Kelly blog post, none of that actually flies. None of it gets the Bush Administration off the hook - and none of that gets the Obama Administration off the hook either.

From the Conventions Against Torture (signed into US Law in 1996), Article 1:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "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.

And Article 2:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

And:

An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

So which is worse? Committing a war crime (as the Bush Administration obviously did) or letting the war criminals get away with their crimes (as the Obama Administration is obviously doing)?

As a patriotic American, the day after celebrating our nation's independence, I hang my head in a quiet itching disgust.

A very unlame duck

Via Talking Points Memo:

Senate Passes... Everything

Today in the Senate, they passed (by unanimous consent) the defense authorization bill that Republicans held up over objections to repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell just two short weeks ago; they passed by a voice vote the 9/11 First Responders Health bill that had been the subject of so much drama and debate; and they passed by a 71-26 vote the START nuclear treaty with Russia despite Republican objections to that as well.

And now, for good measure, they are currently voting to confirm Mary Helen Murguia to be a judge in the Ninth Circuit.

The Braintrust Omits Facts To Smear Obama

Yea, I know - Quelle Surprise!

From today's Op-Ed page at The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The Obama administration's astoundingly counterproductive practice of releasing captured enemies is no way to fight a war.

A new report to Congress from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says 150 of 598 Guantanamo Bay detainees released as of October are "re-engaging in terrorist or insurgent activities" or suspected of doing so, according to The Washington Times. And of those 150, 83 remain at large.

And:

Catch-and-release consequences are deadly. Victory in the war on terror is less likely. Future terrorism is more likely. If this administration doesn't stop putting politics ahead of war's grim realities, it risks ending up with terror victims' blood on its hands.

That's some pretty serious stuff, right?

The Obama Administration/blood on its hands/released Gitmo detainees re-engaging in terrorism.

Now let's take a look at the report the Braintrust cited (what, you didn't think I'd wouldn't find it?). Here it is.

The part the Braintrust uses:

As of 1 October 2010, 598 detainees have been transferred out of Department of Defense (DoD) custody at the U.S. Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO) detention facility. The Intelligence Community assesses that 81 (13.5 percent) are confirmed and 69 (11.5 percent) are suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities after transfer. Of the 150 former GTMO detainees assessed as confirmed or suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities, the Intelligence Community assesses that 13 are dead, 54 are in custody, and 83 remain at large.

And now the part the Braintrust omits (btw, it's the very next paragraph):

On 22 January 2009, the President signed Executive Order 13492, calling for a comprehensive interagency review of the status of all individuals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay. Every decision to transfer a detainee to a foreign country under this review was made after a full assessment of intelligence and threat information. Since the implementation of Executive Order 13492 and under the enhanced interagency review process, 66 of the 598 detainees noted above have been transferred. Of those 66 individuals transferred since January 2009, 2 are confirmed and 3 are suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities. [Emphasis added.]

Wait wait wait!

So there've been only 66 detainees released from Gitmo since January, 2009? That must mean that the remaining 532 were released by the Bush Administration.

Now the fun part - let's run some numbers!

Overall, there've been 598 detainees released with 150 of them confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terror activities. That's about 25% (150/598=0.250836).

Since January 22, 2009, there've been 66 detainees released with 5 of them confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terror activities. That's about 7.6% (5/66=.075758).

So before January 22, 2009, that means there were 532 detainees released (598-66=532) with 145 (150-5=145) of them confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terror activities. That's about 27% (145/532=0.272556).

Whose blood on whose hands? The rate of "re-engagement" during the Bush Administration was about 3.5 times higher than it is during the Obama Administration.

Yet again the braintrust over at Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review omits key facts to smear the Obama Administration.

Yea, I know. Quelle surprise!

Oh Come ON!!

From MotherJones:

In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.

The previous month, a Spanish human rights group called the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had requested that Spain's National Court indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. The human rights group contended that Spain had a duty to open an investigation under the nation's "universal jurisdiction" law, which permits its legal system to prosecute overseas human rights crimes involving Spanish citizens and residents. Five Guantanamo detainees, the group maintained, fit that criteria.

Here's the cable.

The depth of my disappointment knows no limit. Same with my disgust.

What Krugman Said

Krugman is it completely right:

The roots of current Democratic despond go all the way back to the way Mr. Obama ran for president. Again and again, he defined America’s problem as one of process, not substance — we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems. And he promised to transcend those partisan divisions.

This promise of transcendence may have been good general election politics, although even that is questionable: people forget how close the presidential race was at the beginning of September 2008, how worried Democrats were until Sarah Palin and Lehman Brothers pushed them over the hump. But the real question was whether Mr. Obama could change his tune when he ran into the partisan firestorm everyone who remembered the 1990s knew was coming. He could do uplift — but could he fight?

So far the answer has been no.

Krugman posits that it's Obama's habit of "negotiating with himself" before negotiating with Congress that's the culprit.

Here's the thing: given the animosity the Right has for the president, given how their leaders have stated publicly that they want to shut down every administration proposal, how DO you negotiate with a party that wants to kill your agenda.

Let them kill half of it?

Krugman's right. Obama should fight, he should be fighting and he should have fought more.

Compromise, Civility??

Huffingtonpost has some analysis:

Barely an hour after President Barack Obama invited congressional Republicans to post-election talks to work together on major issues, the Senate's GOP leader had a blunt message: His party's main goal is denying Obama re-election.

In a sign that combat and the 2012 elections rather than compromise could mark the next two years, Sen. Mitch McConnell on Thursday called for Senate votes to repeal or erode Obama's signature health care law, to cut spending and to shrink government.

"The only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won't veto any of these things," McConnell said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The Senate Republican leader's confrontational tone was in sharp contrast to the posture Obama took Wednesday in the face of a new GOP-controlled House and Republican gains in the Senate. Obama followed up Thursday morning by inviting Republican and Democratic congressional leaders for talks on Nov. 18 and challenging his own Cabinet to make Washington work better.

Look at who's being compromising and who's being civil. As it had been for two years.

And look where it's got the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile:

[Tom Donohue, President and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce] intends to spend his new political capital by reconfiguring the country's economic policies the same way that large corporations have always wanted to: by cutting taxes, slashing regulation, forging trade deals with foreign countries, and reducing the deficit.

He'd like to start by chipping away at the President's legislative achievements such as health-care and financial reform, which must still be implemented at the regulatory level. In short, the battles between the chamber and the White House are far from over. "Oh, hell no," Donohue laughs. "They are in the second inning."

How does Obama compromise with a party that wants nothing more (and nothing less) than to see him out of office in January, 2013? A party where 4 out of 10 think he's Constitutionally ineligible to be President in the first place?

They're not gonna compromise, Mr President. You may want to live according to Luke 6:27-31, but they're treating you according to Psalm 109.8.

Statement from Joe Sestak on the White House Counsel's Report

Via email from the Sestak campaign:

Statement from Joe Sestak on White House Counsel's Report
MEDIA, PA - U.S. Senate candidate Congressman Joe Sestak released the following statement today:

"Last summer, I received a phone call from President Clinton. During the course of the conversation, he expressed concern over my prospects if I were to enter the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and the value of having me stay in the House of Representatives because of my military background. He said that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had spoken with him about my being on a Presidential Board while remaining in the House of Representatives. I said no. I told President Clinton that my only consideration in getting into the Senate race or not was whether it was the right thing to do for Pennsylvania working families and not any offer. The former President said he knew I'd say that, and the conversation moved on to other subjects.

"There are many important challenges facing Pennsylvania and the rest of the country. I intend to remain focused on those issues and continue my fight on behalf of working families."

Looks like Sestak and the White House are on the same page on this (at long last).

White House Preparing for Specter Loss

Via The Hill:

CBS's Bob Schieffer says the White House is preparing for an Arlen Specter loss in Pennsylvania tomorrow.

"I have been told on background and so forth that the White House is preparing for a Specter loss here, and the White House doesn't want to be associated with that," Schieffer told a local CBS affiliate. (Video on the top right).

Anti Choice Group Opposes Attempts to Block Premium Increases

Via the NYT:

The National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion rights, on Monday criticized President Obama’s proposal to give the federal government new authority to review and potentially block premium increases by private health insurers.

Mr. Obama included the proposal in his version of a comprehensive health care overhaul unveiled by the White House on Monday. Officials said it would protect consumers from unjustified rate hikes, particularly in cases where state regulators fail or refuse to act.

In its statement, the National Right to Life Committee said that the president’s proposal “limits rights of Americans of all ages to use their own money to save their own lives.”

Burke Balch, the director of the National Right to Life Committee’s Powell Center of Ethics, likened the president’s plan to imposing a limit on the cost of restaurant meals.

“It is as though a government, concerned about the high cost of restaurant food, imposed a price limit of $5 per meal, and then asserted that for those who like their restaurant food, nothing will force them to change their eating habits,” the statement said. “The reality, of course, is that restaurants would be unable to afford to offer meals at prices below the cost of their ingredients. Consequently, about all restaurant-goers would be able to get would be fast food.”

Via Digby:

Yes, indeed. We must do everything possible to protect individual liberty and freedom of choice. No systems should ever be put in place by the government which could possibly result in people's options being restricted. Welll ... unless you happen to be a woman, in which case government bureaucrats are morally required to pass laws which force you to undergo pregnancy and childbirth regardless of your wishes in the matter.

But, that one teensy, unimportant impediment to our libertarian paradise excepted, we should thank the Good Lord that these defenders of freedom are here ensure that the government never interferes with the price structure of a Big Mac or forces an insurance company to settle for something less than a 50% profit margin. Don't tread on me, bitchuz.

Via me: Not to mention that the restaurant analogy is just plain stupid. For it to make sense, the Obama Administration would have to be attempting to control what doctors/hospitals could charge, not what insurers could charge. Besides, if these idiots don't want their insurance to be cheaper, they can simply pay out-of-pocket for everything and pay the very highest rate which apparently would make them all happy little clams. See? Choice it's a beautiful thing...
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Rahm Emanuel apologises for calling liberals "retarded"

World Class Douchebag
Note: He apologized to Tim Shriver, Chairman and CEO of the Special Olympics -- not to liberals.
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