FLORIDA: Horses got supplement
by Chicago Tribune
Authorities claimed at the time of the arrests that police had disrupted 'a very big terrorist plot'WEST PALM BEACH -- Twenty-one prized polo horses that mysteriously died before one of the sport's top championships in South Florida were given a supplement that likely caused their deaths, the leader of the Venezuelan-owned team told an Argentine newspaper. |
Impeach Jay Bybee
by John Nichols
Feingold on Torture Judge: "Grounds for Impeachment"Torture memo author Jay Bybee, who outlined procedures for inflicting cruel and unusual punishments on prisoners in U.S. custody, should of course be impeached and removed from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals bench. |
Senate Panel: Military Agency Had Hand in Developing CIA Interrogation Methods
by Julian E. Barnes
Report also says experts helped create legal justification for abusive techniquesWASHINGTON - A U.S. military agency that trains troops to resist and survive torture offered critical help in developing harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA, according to a Senate committee report to be released Wednesday. |
OK: Who waterboarded Obama?
by Douh Thompson
President Barak Obama changed his tune Wednesday, softening his "no prosecution, no way" stance on investigation and prosecution of members of the administration of former President George W. Bush who sanctioned torture of prisoners.Obama caved to pressure from members of his own party who want blood -- lots of blood -- from the rotting corpse of the so-called Bush legacy. |
Obama To Bring Cheney On To Re-election Team
by Steve Young
Saying that there’s no better campaign strategy than to have one of the crankiest characters ever to run the country telling the world he doesn’t agree with your policies, the Obama reelection committee is considering the addition of former vice president Dick Cheney to head their 2012 campaign. |
The Mighty Debt-Purge of 2009
by Mike Whitney
The Fed's $12.8 trillion of monetary stimulus has triggered a six week-long surge in the stock market. Think of it as Bernanke's Bear Market Rally, a torrent of capital gushing from every rusty pipe in the financial system. The Fed's so-called "lending facilities" have gone far beyond their original purpose which was to backstop a broken system. Now they're leaking liquidity into the equities markets and sending stocks soaring while the "real" economy sinks to the bottom of the fish tank. That's how the Fed does business these days; plenty of tasty crepes for the Wall Street kingpins and table-scraps for the lumpen masses. |
Pirates of the Somali Main
by Eric Margolis
On 8 April, a gang of Somali teenagers with more nerve than brains challenged the might of the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet by kidnapping and holding for ransom the captain of the American container vessel, `Maersk Alabama.'The pirates were shot dead in a rescue operation by US Navy Seals. This veteran war correspondent suspects the official Pentagon version of the rescue has obscured many of the more interesting details of this successful mission. |
Obama: Beyond Savior or Trickster
by Norman Solomon
As President Obama enters his fourth month in office, two tendencies among progressive-minded Americans seem most hazardous to the political health of the country. The gist of one approach is that Obama can't do anything seriously wrong; the other is that he can't do anything seriously right. |
Police investigating death of Freddie Mac official
by Alan Zibel and Matthew Barakat
VIENNA, VA. -- The chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage giants at the heart of the nation's financial meltdown, was found dead in his basement early Wednesday morning in what police said was an apparent suicide. David Kellermann, 41, apparently hanged himself in his suburban Washington home, said a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation. He asked not to be identified because the investigation was ongoing. |
To Tweet or Not to Tweet
by Maureen Dowd
SAN FRANCISCO — Alfred Hitchcock would have loved the Twitter headquarters here. Birds gathering everywhere, painted on the wall in flocks, perched on the coffee table, stitched on pillows and framed on the wall with a thought bubble asking employees to please tidy up after themselves. |
Senator: OPR report will be ‘devastating’ to torture memo authors
by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Several members of the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel worked on memos authorizing torture, but particular attention has been focused on Jay Bybee, who is now a federal judge with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Since the release of the memos, calls have been coming from all quarters for his impeachment. |
Timothy Flanigan: The torture memo lawyer no one is mentioning
by Muriel Kane
The torture memos recently released by the Obama administration have focused interest on three of their authors: John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury. However, there's another lawyer involved in the creation of the torture memos whose name hasn't yet come into the discussion -- Timothy Flanigan. |
RFK Jr. Blasts Obama as 'Indentured Servant' to Coal Industry
by Brian Ross and Joseph Rhee
"Clean coal is a dirty lie," says environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls President Barack Obama and other politicians who commit taxpayer money to develop it "indentured servants" of the coal industry.Despite a series of expensive false starts and failures, President Obama proposed $3.4 billion in stimulus legislation to fund continued research on "clean coal" projects. |
Fidel Castro: Obama 'misinterpreted' Raul's words
by Will Weissert
HAVANA -- Fidel Castro says President Barack Obama "misinterpreted" his brother Raul's remarks regarding the United States and bristled at the suggestion that Cuba should free political prisoners or cut taxes on dollars people send to the island.Raul Castro touched off a whirlwind of speculation last week that the U.S. and Cuba could be headed toward a thaw after nearly a half-century of chilly relations. The speculation began when the Cuban president said leaders would be willing to sit down with their U.S. counterparts and discuss "everything, everything, everything," including human rights, freedom of the press and expression, and political prisoners. |
The GOP's Civil Liberties Hypocrisy
by Nat Parry
Just as Republicans have refashioned themselves as fiscal conservatives in the age of Obama, apparently forgetting that they allowed a budget surplus to be transformed into a record deficit while George W. Bush was President, they now seem to be taking up the cause of civil liberties – at least as far as right-wing groups are concerned. |
Bye Bye Bybee
by Marty Kaplan
It will be the playwrights and screenwriters, not the journalists and historians, who will some day get the torture story right. It will be the poets and novelists, not the philosophers and clergy, who will take us to the heart of that darkness. It will be the artists and satirists, not the law and the lawyers, who will eventually haul this decade to the bar of justice. |
The White House Press Corps is the Problem
by Eric Boehlert
Writing in the WashPost, Ana Marie Cox suggests the White House press beat oughta be ditched, or at least drastically reconfigured by news orgs, because WH reporters rarely break news. Instead, they sit around and wait to repeat doled out WH info.Facing a paucity of real news, reporters turn to trivia, claims Cox: |
Of Black Holes and Radio Silence
by Elizabeth de la Vega
A former prosecutor examines the special prosecutor debate.There is no doubt that sometime in 2002 - if not before - Bush administration officials and their lawyers began orchestrating a torture campaign, which they calculatedly attempted to justify through specious legal memos. They continued to abuse prisoners, and to conceal that mistreatment from Congress and the public, through at least 2008. In all of this conduct, they have committed grave crimes for which they must be held accountable. I believe this to be a national imperative of the highest order. I have pored over every available book and report about torture, disturbing as they are, and I have read the lurid facts and twisted legal reasoning laid out in the Office of Legal Counsel torture memos just released by the White House. I am increasingly outraged by the day, disgusted by years of inaction, and impatient for results. Consequently, I would like nothing more than to join with so many friends and associates whom I respect in calling for immediate appointment of a special prosecutor. |
America High, 91210
by Stephen Pizzo
Remember high school? I sure do. For most, well-adjusted, average teens, high school was an emotional Gitmo. Four years of waterboarding, without the board, or the water. Instead we were doused with peer pressure and slammed against the false walls of equally false "popularity." |
