George W. Bush’s recession is having far reaching consequences – Ben Stein attempts to write with compassion about those caught in the economic downturn:

Everybody’s Business

Deep in Debt, and Now Deep in Worry

By BEN STEIN

Published: January 24, 2009…

Go. Read the whole thing.

A $2.2 million interest only mortgage. A $12,000 monthly payment. $20,000 monthly alimony and child support about to run out.

Okay, stop right there.

In 2004 those who had an income over $200,000 a year voted overwhelmingly, according to exit polls, for dubya over John Kerry. 63% for dubya, 35% for Kerry. There’s a good chance, though not an absolute probability, that Ben Stein’s subject voted for the enabler of her misery.

Other commentary on this story in blogtopia (yes, skippy coined the phrase!):

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Ben Stein Asks Us to Feel Sorry for Wildly Irresponsible People

…Is that story going to elicit one iota of sympathy from anyone? The bimbo woman knew when her meal ticket was due to run out well in advance. And she clearly took zero steps to prepare: no job, no plan to get a job, no downsizing of expenses so she had a buffer when the checks quit coming, merely throwing money at a “shop” that given its lack of earnings, the IRS would see as a hobby rather than a business (note to readers: it isn’t uncommon for wealthy women to have marginally profitable decorating or clothing businesses so they can buy at wholesale and have good conversational fodder). Indeed, given the fact that she kept refinancing her house, she was clearly spending more than what her ex was paying her…

Political Animal

January 25, 2009

By: Hilzoy

Dear Ben Stein…

Ben Stein has a truly unbelievable column in today’s NYT (h/t). You should stop reading this post right now, and after you’ve made sure that you won’t get Diet Coke all over the keyboard once you start laughing, click through and read it…

…And if, on reading a column like this one, your son asks you why you’re focussing on someone who managed to get deep in debt while living in a $2.7 million dollar house and getting $240,000 a year in alimony and child support, and not on people who are poor or middle-class, then you can rest easy and congratulate yourself on a job well done.

Undoing the damage of the last eight years is going to take a lot of work. Somehow, even given the current reality, I don’t think that 63% is going to be predisposed to rolling up their sleeves to do their part. Those looking after their interests in Congress appear to agree:

Obama wants swift action on massive recovery plan

By Jim Kuhnhenn

Associated Press / November 24, 2008

…But there were no plans to balance the tax cuts with an immediate tax increase on the wealthy. During the campaign, Obama said he would pay for increased tax relief by raising taxes on people making more than $250,000.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio urged Obama to make that explicit. “Why wouldn’t we have the president-elect say, ‘I am not going to raise taxes on any American in my first two years in office?'”…

I understand that Versailles has not always been the greatest place to visit in early October.

S’ils n’ont pas de pain, qui’ls mangent de la brioche.

A while back, in one of his many posts here arguing against Slay’s re-election, our good friend ashriver cited the Saint Louis American’s Political Eye as a credible source. When questioned on the reliability of the Political Eye, ashriver defended it as one of reputation. If they consistently passed along unsubstantiated gossip, then the P.E. would get a bad reputation as an untrustworthy source of information. Setting aside that many purveyors of false information and innuendo find their way onto every network and every editorial page in the country, I’ll present an example of why ashriver and others shouldn’t be so quick to accept the word of the Political Eye as the gospel truth.

Ever since Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman surprised the St. Louis political establishment by filing for the St. Louis mayor’s race, Slay’s critics have suspected that Coleman filed at the urging of Slay or his allies. In other words, she is supposedly a stalking horse, a false candidate in the race only to peel off confused voters who couldn’t remember whether they wanted to vote for Denise Coleman or Maida Coleman. Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Maida Coleman, who had been long rumored to be interested in the race, finally announced her intention to run in the last week before the filing deadline, only to opt for an independent run after Denise Coleman’s surprise filing.

Currently, Slay’s critics are casting about for proof that Denise Coleman is a stalking horse, without much success. A couple of weeks ago, the Political Eye’s evidence was that a Slay statement prepared in advance referred to “Ms. Coleman” rather than to “Maida Coleman”. Pretty lame stuff. The latest weak attempt refers to Denise’s website:

“The big red flag for me is that Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman had a professionally done campaign website operating just a few days after she claims she had a revelation to run. It would seem it was worked on before she was inspired and had to cost a couple of thousand dollars. She has apparently filed no Statement of Committee Organization, and one is required 20 days after the first contribution comes in and they reach $500. So who did the site, what did it cost and when was it done? If she claims a friend or relative did it, it would still be considered an in-kind contribution and put her over the $500 mark. It will also have to be reported on her first report,” this person writes.

Well, a casual glance at Denise’s website showed me the opposite of what that “astute city observer” claims. If it was a “two thousand dollar” website prepared well in advance, it probably would look more like Irene Smith’s website, which is clean and well-designed, rather than cluttered with a couple of typos like Denise’s. I tend to believe Denise’s campaign finance report, which shows that it was begun the day after Denise filed for office. And I tend to believe Denise and some of her closest supporters, who told me more than a month before the filing deadline that Denise was mulling  a run against Slay. Her team cut their teeth in the local organizing effort for Obama, who also inspired Denise to shoot for the seemingly impossible. Perhaps she’s naive, and perhaps she’s a longshot, but she definitely isn’t a stalking horse.

Personally, I’m agnostic on Slay. My own neighborhood has improved over the last eight years, and is finally beginning to perform closer to its potential. It’s safer and more businesses have moved in, and it even retains a diverse mix of people of different races and income levels. I don’t know if Slay can personally take credit, but he hasn’t gotten in the way, either. I also understand that not every neighborhood has had the same results as mine during Slay’s two terms, so I’m open to critiques on what he has done wrong and how someone else might do better.

But what turns me off as a swing voter is this bullshit insider baseball criticism of an idealistic candidate and of Slay. Nobody cares about it except the people who already see Slay as someone behind every problem in the city, and they’re already on your side. Give me something tangible and you might persuade me to take you seriously again.  

How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us Army Field Manual that Tortures

by Valtin at Docudharma, Sat Jan 24, 2009 at 23:12:04 PST

If you wish to repost this essay you can download a .txt file of the html here (right click and save). Permission granted.
Docudharma Tag: petition for a special prosecutor

Originally published at AlterNet

A January 17 New York Times editorial noted that Attorney General designate Eric Holder testified at his nomination hearings that when it came to overhauling the nation’s interrogation rules for both the military and the CIA, the Army Field Manual represented “a good start.” The editorial noted the vagueness of Holder’s statement. Left unsaid was the question, if the AFM is only a “good start,” what comes next?

The Times editorial writer never bothered to mention the fact that three years earlier, a different New York Times article (12/14/2005) introduced a new controversy regarding the rewrite of the Army Field Manual. The rewrite was inspired by a proposal by Senator John McCain to limit U.S. military and CIA interrogation methods to those in the Army Field Manual. (McCain would later allow an exception for the CIA.)

According to the Times article, a new set of classified procedures proposed for the manual was “was pushing the limits on legal interrogation.” Anonymous military sources called the procedures “a back-door effort” to undermine McCain’s efforts at the time to change U.S. abusive interrogation techniques, and stop the torture.

A Forgotten Controversy

Over the next six months or so, a number of articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times described the course of the controversy. By mid-June 2006, the NYT was reporting that, under pressure from unnamed senior generals and members of Congress (including McCain, and Senators Warner and Graham), the Pentagon was rethinking its plan to have a classified annex to the AFM, which would include a different set of interrogation rules for “unlawful combatants,” like the detainees at Guantanamo. Included in the discussion about these classified procedures were, reportedly, members of the State Department and various human rights organizations.

According to an article in the L.A. Times, this latest fight over the classified procedures went back at least to mid-May 2006. The manual itself had been written at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, roughly a year earlier, and then sent to the Pentagon for further evalution. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s right-hand man, Stephen Cambone, was put in charge of its final draft. According the L.A. Times article, members of Congress were “keen to avoid a public fight with the Pentagon.” The announcement that the controversial and still unknown procedures might not be included in the manual was seen as a success by human rights groups.

Yet the proverbial chickens never hatched, and by early September 2006 the new Army Field Manual was finally released. The section on special interrogation procedures for “unlawful combatants” was included as a special appendix (Appendix M), and published in unclassified format. According to a L.A. Times story on September 8, Cambone was crowing that the new Army Field Manual instructions would give interrogators “what they need to do the job.” The article noted:

The new manual includes one restricted technique that will only be used on so-called unlawful combatants – such as Al Qaeda suspects – not traditional prisoners of war.

That technique, called “separation,” involves segregating a detainee from other prisoners. Military officials said separation was not the equivalent of solitary confinement and was consistent with Geneva Convention protections.

As for the proposed secrecy surrounding the new techniques, the Pentagon had decided it couldn’t keep them secret forever. Senator Warner was also on record as against any classified annex to the manual.

Not long ago, I wrote about what was included in Appendix M, which purports to introduce the single technique of “separation.” In fact, the Appendix M includes instructions regarding solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and, in combination with other procedures included in the Army Field Manual, amounted to a re-introduction of the psychological torture techniques practiced at Guantanamo, and taught by Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE psychologists and other personnel at the Cuban base and elsewhere.

The rewrite of the Army Field Manual included other seemingly minor changes. It introduced dubious procedures, such as the “False Flag” technique, wherein interrogators could pretend they were from another country. It also redefined the meaning of “Fear Up,” a procedure meant to exploit a prisoner’s existing fears under imprisonment. Now, interrogators could create “new” fears. The AFM rewrite was a masterpiece of subterfuge and double talk, which could only have been issued from the offices of Rumsfeld and Cambone.

One would think this turnaround of the Pentagon’s position regarding a removal of these controversial procedures would have been a matter of some note. But there was no protest from Congress, no mention of the past controversy in the press, and only vague comments at first and then acceptance by human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Only Physicians for Human Rights protested the inclusion of the techniques listed in Appendix M. For the rest… silence.

DoD Rolls Out the New Model

On September 6, 2006, a news briefing was held by the Department of Defense, as part of the unveiling of the new Army Field Manual, in conjunction with the then-new Defense Department Directive for Detainee Programs (DoD Directive 2310.01E). Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson and Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) Lt. Gen. John Kimmons were the DoD presenters.

Much of the belief that the AFM provides an improvement over previous policies of the Department of Defense is likely due to a confusion between the two documents introduced that summer of 2006, the new Detainee Program Directive and the new Army Field Manual.

DoD Directive 2310.10E made a number of changes in regards to detainee operations and management. It made clear that “All persons subject to this Directive shall observe the requirements of the law of war, and shall apply, without regard to a detainee’s legal status, at a minimum the standards articulated in Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949…” The same type of language appears in the text of the Army Field Manual itself.

During the press briefing on September 6, and a different one
the next day for the foreign press, reporters were not so easily fooled.

One unnamed reporter at the DoD briefing challenged Lt. Gen. Kimmons on the “single standard” issue:

   Q General, why was the decision made to keep these categories — the separate categories of detainees? You have traditional prisoners of war and then the unlawful enemy combatants. Why not treat all detainees under U.S. military custody the exact same way?

Kimmons’s answer quickly veered into unacceptable territory, and Stimson had to jump in to clarify, as this excerpt demonstrates (emphasis added):

   GEN. KIMMONS: Well, actually, the distinction is in Geneva through the Geneva Convention, which describes the criteria that prisoner — that lawful combatants, such as enemy prisoners of war — which attributes they possess — wearing a uniform, fighting for a government, bearing your arms openly and so on and so forth. And it’s all spelled out fairly precisely inside Geneva.

   Geneva also makes clear that traditional, unlawful combatants such as in the — 50 years ago, we would have talked about spies and saboteurs, but also now applies to this new category of unlawful — or new type of unlawful combatant, terrorists, al Qaeda, Taliban.

   They clearly don’t meet the criteria for prisoner of war status, lawful combatant status, and so they’re not entitled to the — therefore to the extra protections and privileges which Geneva affords.

But Stimson’s clarification was not very helpful. In fact, if a prisoner is judged not a “lawful combatant”, then he or she immediately becomes covered by Geneva IV, the “Civilian Convention,” which protects anyone “who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever find themselves” held prisoner. According to the International Red Cross Commentary on the Geneva Conventions:

   Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third [POW] Convention, [or] a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention…. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.

Separation and Sensory Deprivation

One questioner took on the topic of the “Separation” technique. Wasn’t it the same as solitary confinement, and wasn’t solitary confinement “banned by Common Article 3 in the affront to human dignity, other provisions? “Are you confident,” a reporter asked, “that separation is permitted under Common Article 3?”

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs responded by denying that separation amounted to solitary confinement, even though the AFM describes the technique as, among other things “physical separation” “limited to 30 days of initial duration.” Extensions for such physical separation must be reviewed and approved the General Officer or Flag Officer who initially approved the original “separation.”

Kimmons’ reply was even more disingenuous:

We have always segregated enemy combatants on the battlefield at the point of capture and beyond, to keep them silent, segregate the officers from the enlisted, the men from the women, and so forth. That’s traditional; it goes back to World War II and beyond.

So, is “separation” a matter of segregating prisoners, or what? In the Army Field Manual itself, one gets that same kind of double talk. At first it is presented thus:

The purpose of separation is to deny the detainee the opportunity to communicate with other detainees in order to keep him from learning counter-resistance techniques or gathering new information to support a cover story; decreasing the detainee’s resistance to interrogation.

This description sounds a lot like segregation for security purposes, although there is that phrase “decreasing the detainee’s resistance.” A page or so later, however, we find the following (emphasis added):

The use of separation should not be confused with the detainee-handling techniques approved in Appendix D [Guide for Handling Detainees]. Specifically, the use of segregation during prisoner handling (Search, Silence, Segregate, Speed, Safeguard, and Tag [5 S’s and a T]) should not be confused with the use of separation as a restricted interrogation technique.

Furthermore, we learn that “separation” requires an interrogation plan, and medical and legal review, as well, of course, as “physical separation.” If this is not solitary confinement for the purposes of breaking a prisoner down for interrogation, then the English language has lost all purpose in explaining things.

Another line of questioning took on the AFM’s contention that it banned sensory deprivation. The entire exchange at the September 6 hearing is worth reproducing here. It represents, among other things, the most thorough line of inquiry I have seen by any reporter in quite some time. The following quote contains added emphases.

    Q General, as an expert in interrogations, do you believe that sensory deprivation was abusive, or did it ever prove to be helpful in interrogation?

   GEN. KIMMONS: Sensory deprivation is abusive and it’s prohibited in this Field Manual, and it’s absolutely counterproductive, in my understanding of what we have used productively. Sensory deprivation, just to be clear — and we define it in the Field Manual, but basically, it comes down to the almost complete deprivation of all sensory stimuli, light, noise, and so forth, and to the point where it can have an adverse mental, psychological effect on a — disorienting effect on a detainee.

   Q So could there be deprivation of light alone for extended periods of time, as opposed to complete sensory deprivation?

   GEN. KIMMONS: I think the total loss of an external stimulus, such as deprivation of light, would not fit what we have described here as — for example, if you’re hinting about separation, separation does not involve the darkness or lack of that type of sensory stimulation.

   Q That wasn’t the question, though. Would sensory — would the deprivation of light alone be permitted under the current manual, as opposed — because you described sensory deprivation as total deprivation —

   GEN. KIMMONS: That’s correction.

   Q — of all senses. So deprivation of light alone for extended periods would be permitted?

   GEN. KIMMONS: I don’t think the Field Manual explicitly addresses it.

   It does not make it prohibited. And it would have to be weighed in the context of the overall environment. If it was at nighttime during sleep hours, then it would make personal sense to turn the lights off.

   Q You know what I’m talking about. I’m trying to get at — because you said specifically total sensory deprivation — so deprivation of any one sense might be permitted. Like light, for example. They could be kept in the dark for extended periods of time beyond the usual nighttime hours.

This is really too specific and challenging for the DoD briefers, and they turn on their double-talk machine:

   MR. STIMSON: Jim, questions like this are good questions to ask. And what’s important to remember is that interrogation plans are put together for a reason so that not just one person can decide what he or she wants to do and then run off and do it. They’re vetted. It’s laid
out how they’re vetted. General Kimmons could go into that in exhaustive detail. Typically, there would be a JAG, as I understand it, General Kimmons —

   GEN. KIMMONS: That’s correct.

   MR. STIMSON: — that would have to review that. It goes up through various chains of command. And so, you know, types of questions like this would have to be asked and then vetted through that process.

Burying the Story

With all the hard questioning by the press, you’d think the issues would have been aired in the media in the days and weeks following the introduction of the Army Field Manual. As should be evident by now, that’s not what happened.

Here’s how the L.A. Times covered it (9/6/06), getting the story exactly backwards (emphasis added):

   Bowing to critics of its tough interrogation policies, the Pentagon is issuing a new Army field manual that provides Geneva Convention protections for all detainees and eliminates a secret list of interrogation tactics.

   The manual, set for release today, also reverses an earlier decision to maintain two interrogation standards – one for traditional prisoners of war and another for “unlawful combatants” captured during a conflict but not affiliated with a nation’s military force.

There is no mention of Appendix M or any controversy over techniques. Jumana Musa, an “advocacy director for Amnesty International, is quoted as noting, “”If the new field manual embraces the Geneva Convention, it is an important return to the rule of law.'”

The 9/7/06 article in the Washington Post was, if anything, even more laudatory of the new AFM:

   Pentagon officials yesterday repudiated the harsh interrogation tactics adopted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, specifically forbidding U.S. troops from using forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and waterboarding to elicit information from detainees captured in ongoing wars.

   The Defense Department simultaneously embraced international humane treatment standards for all detainees in U.S. military custody, the first time there has been a uniform standard for both enemy prisoners of war and the so-called unlawful combatants linked to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.

The article falsely claims the AFM bans manipulation of sleep patterns. Regarding any controversy, the article explains:

   Three expanded techniques — good cop, bad cop; pretending to be an official from another country; and detention in a separate cell from others — are allowed but require approval from senior officers. Officials originally considered keeping those three techniques classified but decided to make them public for the sake of full transparency.

The Post article also briefly mentions the generally positive response of human rights groups:

   “This is the Pentagon coming full circle,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “This is very strong guidance.”

As for the human rights organizations, Amnesty International later essentially signed off on the AFM. In an article from the Winter 2007 issue of Amnesty International Magazine, Jumana Musa, quoted in the L.A. Times article above, had this to say about the new AFM:

   AIUSA also worked with U.S. representatives and senators to introduce legislation to create a single, transparent standard for interrogations and to limit the CIA to approved interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual.

In a telephone interview for this article, Mr. Malinowski said he supported using the Army Field Manual as a replacement for the CIA “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and described the question of abuse in Appendix M as not entirely clear. The language in Appendix M was “ambiguous,” and open to criticism due to a “lack of clarity.” He maintained, however, that using the current Army Field Manual as a model was merely a beginning, and that a new overhaul of interrogation techniques was on the agenda.

A call made to Amnesty International’s press contact regarding this issue, and an e-mail sent to Jumana Musa, were both unreturned.

Conclusion

Two conclusions can be drawn from the above examination of the “selling” of the Army Field Manual to the American public in the late summer of 2006 and beyond. One is that reporters on the beat were very aware of the origins and implications of the issues surrounding Geneva and the AFM, and the controversies surrounding the use of isolation and other techniques under the rubric of “Separation.” The extremely muted or non-existent discussion in the mainstream press of these issues after the AFM was introduced means that a decision to suppress these issues was made at an editorial level, and were not the result of laziness or dilatory reporting on behalf of reporters.

Secondly, the role of some human rights organizations in promoting the new Army Field Manual — in particular, the actions of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — are curious, to say the least. Press reports and the interview with Malinowski show that inclusion of certain human rights organizations in the vetting of the AFM started at the very beginning. We may not be able to find out what went on in the editorial offices of the nation’s top newspapers, but we should know more about the discussions within the human rights organizations on how they advised, or were fooled, by talks with Bush administration and Pentagon personnel.

Meanwhile, other human rights organizations, such as the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights, have criticized the language and techniques described in Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, and called for rescission of the offending text. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in May 2007, Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR, and retired Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, MD, former Commanding General of the Southeast Regional U.S. Army Medical Command, wrote:

The new Army Field Manual on human intelligence gathering… explicitly prohibits several SERE-based techniques, yet Appendix M of the manual explicitly permits what amounts to isolation, along with sleep and sensory deprivation. The manual is silent on a number of other SERE-based methods, creating ambiguity and doubt over their place in interrogation doctrine….

   PHR, therefore, respectfully urges you to take the following actions:

   1. Fully implement the OIG’s recommendation to “preclude the use of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape physical and psychological coercion techniques” in all interrogations. (Id, pp. 29-30.) This includes rescission of Appendix M of the new Army Field Manual and specific prohibition, by name, of each of the known SERE-based methods and their equivalents.

It seems likely that the Army Field Manual, whether by executive order (most likely) or by legislation, will become the new “single standard” for U.S. interrogation. Press reports hint that the Obama administration may yet allow a loophole for CIA interrogators. I don’t know how that will sit with the many military lawyers and officers who have been instrumental in opposing Bush/Rumsfeld’s torture policies from the beginning. I’m th
inking of people like Alberto Mora and Antonio Taguba, or the new nominee for DoD General Counsel, Jeh Charles Johnson, who apparently intends to seriously change the policies set by his predecessor, Jim Haynes.

In any case, the full history and controversy behind torture and U.S. interrogation policy deserves a full airing. What happened, for instance, between June and September 2006, allowing for Pentagon acceptance of the Appendix M abusive procedures? When it comes to the implementation of a host of torture and cruel, inhumane interrogation techniques by the U.S. government, both an investigation and prosecutions are needed.

It will be a challenge for our society to bring out the full story, while also bringing to justice those individuals who broke both domestic law and international treaty. We will need both investigations and prosecutions in order settle scores with the past, to understand where we stand now, and what we need to change to move forward.

Also posted at Invictus

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder must appoint a Special Prosecutor to conduct a formal investigation without political considerations and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.

On Thursday January 22, 2009 President Barack Obama issued one of the first Executive Orders of his presidency, ordering the establishment of a Special Interagency Task Force to be composed of the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense as co-chairs, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other federal employees as determined by the co-chairs.

The Task Force will…

…develop policies for the detention, trial, transfer, release, or other disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations that are consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice, I hereby order as follows:

  Section 1. Special Interagency Task Force on Detainee Disposition.

  (a) Establishment of Special Interagency Task Force. There shall be established a Special Task Force on Detainee Disposition (Special Task Force) to identify lawful options for the disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.

[snip]

(e) Mission. The mission of the Special Task Force shall be to conduct a comprehensive review of the lawful options available to the Federal Government with respect to the apprehension, detention, trial, transfer, release, or other disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations, and to identify such options as are consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.

Both Attorney General Eric Holder, and Obama in another Executive Order on January 22, 2009, have indicated that the Army Field Manual, which as Valtin explains and Patriot Daily has also written so well about, codifies coercive psychological torture under the name of “Restricted Interrogation Technique – Separation” in Appendix M.  will be the Obama administrations baseline guide for detainee interrogation policies, taking us back to pre-Bush days on the question of torture but in no way ending the practice.

This morning Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, talks with The Real News, comments on Obama’s executive orders, loopholes, and says Obama must still take up the prosecution of Bush/Cheney for war crimes, specifically torture of detainees…

http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/qeGKuSrhQfc&feature=channel_page&fs=1&hl=en&showsearch=0

Real News: January 24, 2009 – 10 minutes 23 seconds

Obama’s orders on Guantanamo and torture

We need a Special Prosecutor to conduct a formal investigation without political considerations and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.

Torture is torture. No matter who orders it or how it is “justified”.

Brett Penrose on the “buzz” in Jefferson City:

Our previous coverage:

Today’s Republican Floor Leader co-owns plane with Lobbyist story is [RBH]

A Plane, a Business, a Representative, and a Lobbyist

A Plane, a Business, a Representative, and a Lobbyist, part 2

A Plane, a Business, a Representative, and a Lobbyist, part 3

SurveyUSA released a 600 sample poll of “adults” on January 22nd taken in Missouri from January 20th through the 21st. The margin of error is 3.9%. The poll was sponsored by KCTV in Kansas City.

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as President?

All

65% – approve

21% – disapprove

14% – not sure

Democrats [43% of sample]

89% – approve

5% – disapprove

5% – not sure

republicans [26% of sample]

37% – approve

42% – disapprove

21% – not sure

Independents [26% of sample]

53% – approve

27% – disapprove

20% – not sure

If we go by the proportion in the party affiliation subsample it would seem that the republican brand in Missouri is not doing so well. The republican “deadenders” account for slightly under 12% of the entire sample (46% of the 26% who are republican).

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as President?

Male [48% of sample]

64% – approve

23% – disapprove

13% – not sure

Female [52% of sample]

67% – approve

18% – disapprove

15% – not sure

There doesn’t appear to be much of a gender gap.

Obama has net approval across all regions of the state, with the strongest numbers in St.Louis, Kansas City, and the Southwest (!).

It’ll be interesting to see how these numbers move (or don’t) over time.

We are not worthy.

Matt Taibbi eviscerates one of the pundits who deserves it most in “Someone Take Away Thomas Friedman’s Computer Before He Types Another Sentence”:

When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.

Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America’s ability to fall for absolutely anything — just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts — along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-‘stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism…

It gets better. Go. Read the whole thing.

This is our world. A “serious” pundit can be wrong about almost everything, but he’ll still be a favorite of the inside the beltway cocktail weenie circuit, he’ll still have the “serious” writing gig, he’ll still be on the cable news channel panels of “serious and learned” villagers, and he’ll still get the lucrative book contracts. Though I figure in six months the influx of material into the remainder bin at the local chain bookstore might allow me to get some cheap insulation for my garage.

He’s been wrong about almost everything and he’s an enthusiastic cheerleader for the conventional wisdom which got us in to this mess (from 2003):  

America. You can be wrong all the time and an idiot and still make millions. That about sums up where our nation finds itself right now.

It’s their world, we just live in it.

Is new House Speaker, Republican Ron Richard, less partisan than Rod Jetton? Hell, yeah. A raging bull would probably be less partisan than Jetton. Less devious, for starters.

Take the “special committee” issue, for example. The difference between standing committees and special committees is that standing committees work on issues that need attention every year, whereas special committees deal with one-time topics. Usually, a House Speaker appoints one or two special committees per session. For example, a special committee was formed in 2005 when the school funding formula had to be decided.

And the rules specify that the Speaker appoints all the members to a special committee. Standing committees are different: each party decides which of its own members will serve on them. When it came to creating special committees, Jetton was a sailor on a drunken spree. He had 26, almost all of them converted from standing committees. Those moves allowed him to shuffle Democrats off of any committees where he thought they might prove inconvenient.  

Ron Richard has reduced those 26 to 8. Much better, don’t you know. But even so, six of those used to be standing committees. Democrats tried to get those six changed back, to no avail. But Richard did allow Minority Leader Paul LeVota to choose his own appointments to the special committees, subject to Richard’s approval. And in “subject to his approval” lay the rub. He ousted Democratic members off five of what used to be standing committees and substituted other Dems.

For example, one low profile committee regulates professional registration. It deals with licensure for doctors, lawyers, anybody that needs to be licensed. Big deal, you might say. But actually it is, because the members get to know a lot of professional people around the state and that makes it easier for them to raise campaign money. Jason Kander and Vicki Englund, both freshman legislators who are on the House Democratic Campaign Committee, were blocked from the professional licensing and registration committee. They were replaced by Democrats Charlie Norr and Michael Spreng, who is term limited out in 2010. Finish Richard’s line of reasoning for yourself, then: Kander and Englund will work to raise money for House Democrats, therefore ….

Richard also knocked LeVota’s choice off The Special Standing Committee on Emerging Issues in Agriculture (read: Committee on CAFOs). Tom Shively, who opposes CAFOs, was replaced with Rachel Bringer, who supports them.

The Special Standing Committee on Workforce Development and Workplace Safety (formerly the Labor Committee) lost its union Democrat, Mike Frame, in favor of Democrat Terry Swinger from Caruthersville. Not exactly a hotbed of union sentiment, Caruthersville.

Richard took T.D. El-Amin, from the city of St. Louis, off the Special Standing Committee on Urban Issues and replaced him with Vicki Englund from South St. Louis County.

And finally, Jeanette Mott Oxford, of St. Louis City, was removed from the Children and Families Committee. Oxford has twenty years experience addressing childhood poverty and public health issues. She is being replaced by Belinda Harris, who doesn’t want to be on the committee, because it’s not her area of interest and her plate is full already. In fact none of the other Democrats on the committee have served there before, so institutional memory will be sacrificed.

Oxford is appealing that decision. We’ll see. But let me just ask, what is the point of keeping someone with experience and interest in children’s issues off that committee?

Look, Ron Richard and Charlie Shields got bent out of shape–like the press–about Nixon banning cell phones in his office.

Richard told reporters he doesn’t like Nixon’s rule but will respect it — for now.

“But I didn’t stage a walkout like the press” was going to do [when asked to leave their cell phones outside], Richard said. “I’ll stand by this. I’ll work with anybody until I can’t work anymore, and then I can be a pretty bad actor. But I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m still pretty open-minded.”

Could we have a little perspective here? Speaker Richard, if you’re going to profess your interest in bipartisanship, then quit already with the power plays on special committees that shouldn’t be special. Or if you won’t go that far, at least ease up on the tough talk over cell phones. It’s a non-issue.