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POPSIranian Court To Review U.S. Journalist, Roxana Saberi's Conviction Although Jamshidi did not announce a specific date, Reza Saberi said he thinks the hearing will be May 12. "We hope for a lenient verdict," he said. According to Saberi's family, she was briefly taken to a hospital Monday after a 15-day hunger strike. "She probably had fainted," her father said. Another group of lawyers, headed by Ebadi, tried five times to contact Saberi in prison so she could sign papers allowing them to defend her during the appeal. But they never received permission from prison authorities to meet with her. "It's clear they are afraid that we will make details of the charges public," said one of the lawyers, Abdolfattah Soltani. "There must be serious irregularities in her file."
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POPSA Health Benefits Law Formed The Basis For The 'Torture Memo'
Jack Goldsmith, who succeeded Bybee at OLC, said that Yoo, a former OLC attorney who now teaches at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., arrived at that definition by relying on statute written in 2000 related to health benefits. "That statute defined an ‘emergency medical condition’ that warranted certain health benefits as a condition ‘manifesting itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity (including severe pain)’ such that the absence of immediate medical care might reasonably be thought to result in death, organ failure, or impairment of bodily function," Goldsmith wrote in his book, The Terror Presidency. "The health benefits statute's use of ‘severe pain’ had no relationship whatsoever to the torture statute. And even if it did, the health benefit statute did not define ‘severe pain.’ Rather it used the term ‘severe pain’ as a sign of an emergency medical condition that, if not treated, might cause organ failure and the like.... OLC’s clumsily definitional arbitrage
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POPSMichele Bachmann:Is Swine Flu A Coincidence? ( A Democrat Is President) http://www.thestar.com/living/article/625225 "Human outbreaks of swine flu – an illness caused by types of viruses that are typically endemic to pigs (hence the name) – can occur, but are typically rare. The last time there was major public concern over swine flu in the United States was in 1976, when a soldier at Fort Dix died and millions of Americans were immunized as a precaution." http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20090428_U_S___concerned__as_swine_flu_rages.html Check the source for some more Bachmann claims that are proved false...again.
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POPSHate-Mongering Conservative Commentators Use Swine Flu To Promote Racism! "What happens if there's a rash of deaths in Mexico... and if you're a family in Mexico and people are dying and Americans are not, why wouldn't you flood this border?" announces Glenn Beck. These loud mouths are also trying to convince their audiences that Islamic terrorists have somehow been able to do what has eluded scientists elsewhere in the world — concoct a deadly new flu virus — and then introduce it into the Mexican population. "What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans....then spread a rumor there there are construction jobs here, and there they come," blathers Boortz. the first American cases of swine flu have turned up in New York City students who recently returned from a trip to Cancun, Mexico — they brought it with them. They're the human mules! American tourists returning from Mexico are at this point virtually all the other culprits spreading the new flu! The fact that this new flu is just an excuse to spread racism becom
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POPSLimabaugh To Specter:Take McCain & His Daughter With You "This is a sad day for the GOP," Michael Smerconish, a longtime conservative radio host in Philadelphia, told the Huffington Post. "He is what the party needed to be. They need to cultivate more Specters instead of deriding him as a RINO .... The fact that Michael Steele is deriding him for his left wing record is just the same type of bullshit of playing to the base." Pointing to a Washington Post poll that showed only 21 percent of voters identify themselves as Republicans, Smerconish concluded: "I think the number is down to 20 percent." Meanwhile Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate, told the Huffington Post Tuesday that Specter's abandonment of the GOP is "devastating," both "personally and I think for the party."
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POPSPresident Obama "Furious" Over Plane Incident When President Obama was told about the incident, he was "furious," a White House official says. Caldera was called into a meeting with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina. "It didn't sound like a fun meeting," the White House official says.
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POPSGov Perry Asks For Antiviral Medications From CDC World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan says the outbreak involves "an animal strain of the H1N1 virus, and it has pandemic potential." The CDC says two flu drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem effective against the new strain. Drug-maker Roche says the company is prepared to quickly deploy its drug stockpile if requested. As many as 68 people may have died of swine flu in Mexico, although the strain has been confirmed in just 20 of the deaths. More than a thousand others are sick. Mexico City is suspending all public events for 10 days as officials try to contain the outbreak.
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POPSN.Y. Gay Marriage Back In The Game It's a shame that it's come down to this. America is taking sides and it doesn't seem fair that some folks have to fight for the same rights we are given. Why should anyone be afraid of two people they don't know wanting to be together.
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POPSPirate Hostage Slams Rush Limbaugh "You gotta get with us or against us here, Rush," Murphy said. "The president did the right thing...It's a war.... It's about good versus evil. And what you said is evil. It's hate speech. I won't tolerate it."
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POPSRonald Reagan On Prosecuting Torture My italics. Reagan was admant about prosecuting torture, but also prosecuting inhuman treatment that some might claim was not full-on torture. Now go read National Review or The Weekly Standard. And look what has happened to conservatism in America.
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POPSOlbermann Offers Hannity $1000/Second To Be Waterboarded Sean "waterboarding isn't torture" Hannity can now prove his claims. He can prove it to all of us. He's been saying loud and clear that waterboarding is not torture. I can hear a little fear in his voice on this clip when he's asked if he'll do it.
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POPSPentagon To Release Photos Of Detainee Abuse Next Month This shows that the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not aberrational but was systemic and widespread," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney involved with the 2004 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that led to the promise to release the photographs. "This will underscore calls for accountability for that abuse."
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POPSSarah Palin: Another Ethics Complaint Filed b) The recent partisan trip to Indiana by the Governor was purely to benefit personal interests, had no benefit for the State of Alaska and was in direct conflict with her official duties. c) The Governor left the State to participate in these events during the most critical end-of-session Legislative activities, at a time where the legislators themselves are not permitted to leave. Let’s see…(counting and running out of fingers)…that makes an even dozen ethics complaints. What should we call this one? Where’s Sarah Gate?
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POPSScientists Discover An Earth-Sized Planet Possibly With An Ocean Scientists also discovered that the orbit of planet Gliese 581 d, which was found in 2007, was located within the "habitable zone" — a region around a sun-like star that would allow water to be liquid on the planet's surface, Mayor said. He spoke at a news conference Tuesday at the University of Hertfordshire during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science. Gliese 581 d is probably too large to be made only of rocky material, fellow astronomer and team member Stephane Udry said, adding it was possible the planet had a "large and deep" ocean. "It is the first serious 'water-world' candidate," Udry said.
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POPSObama Open To Prosecuting Bush Administration Officials:Torture Interrogations The president had said earlier that he didn't want to see prosecutions of the CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, so long as they acted within parameters spelled out by government superiors who held that such practices were legal at the time. But the administration's stance on Bush administration lawyers who actually wrote the memos approving these tactics has been less clear and Obama declined to make it so. "There are a host of very complicated issues involved," Obama said.
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POPSIran Sentences American Journalist: 8 YEARS The Fargo, North Dakota native had been living in Iran for six years and had worked as a freelance reporter for several news organizations including National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp.
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POPSSanta Monica Tea Party Shame on them. Did you see the Mexicans holding the signs? Their employers paid them to hold the f-ing signs. They can't even protest something themselves?
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POPSWaterboarded 183 Times In One Month: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed So: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you'd need 18 applications in a day. Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you've waterboarded 90 times--still just half of what they did to KSM. The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM. That doesn't sound very effective to me.
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POPSRush Limbaugh Lies: McCain Says He Provided Intell While Being Torture (Not True) Elsewhere in his memoir, McCain recalled providing false information to his captors on multiple occasions in order to “suspend the abuse.” Further, McCain explained in a 2005 Newsweek column that he believed torture would yield little actionable intelligence. “In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — whether it is true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering,” McCain wrote. McCain was right. As the Washington Post reported last month, the torture of Abu Zubaida — who was once thought to be a high-level AQI operative — did not foil “a single significant plot” and provided the CIA with a number of “false leads.” “We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms,” one former intelligence official told the Post. Further, “most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was
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POPSJoe Scarborough Mocks Torture He is so condescending in manner yet truly knows nothing. He just doesn't have a clear view of what's going on. With all the researchers he has at hand, he comes up with this dribble? He and Glenn Beck need to have a good cry together.
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POPSRush Limbaugh's 10 Most Intelligent Remarks/s 7. “We are a growing country and everybody needs energy! We're not going to stay the United States if we start reducing energy usage. Conservation is not the answer.” 8. To a black caller: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” 9. On torture at Abu Ghraib: “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation. And we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people—you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some team off?” 10. “Screw the world. Do you really think we ought to govern ourselves based on what the world thinks of us?”
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POPSTwo Brothers Eat 3rd Brother After Murdering Him "We decided to eat him. I did not want to go back behind bars so we cut off his head and buried it and cut up the body parts and kept them in a refrigerator," Timur told police. "We have been cooking and eating his meat for six months," he added.
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POPSTea Party Gets Soggy What else could go wrong? Another protest that was planned for the Treasury Department was also scrapped due to permit issues. Doh! But at least they remembered the tea, right?"
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POPSJoe Scarborough Claims Obama Is Targeting Veterans What if Dick Cheney decided that he was going to target liberals? … Can you imagine what certain newspapers and cable news shows would do if George Bush and Dick Cheney decided to target democratic loyalists, and say that they may be a terror threat? Of course, DHS already wrote a report on “left-wing extremists,” completed earlier this year. “This is the job of DHS, to assess what is happening in this country, with regard to homegrown terrorism, and determine whether it’s an actual threat or not, and that’s what these assessments do. This is nothing unusual,” a DHS official told Fox News. More importantly, the report did not target “conservatives” or “Republican loyalists.” Indeed, it’s odd that conservatives like Scarborough would willingly group themselves and Republicans in with “rightwing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements” — the actual focus of the DHS report. Scarborough is not alone in this lumping, however; yesterday, Michell
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POPSJim Cramer Says Jon Stewart Tried To Humiliate Him : It seems questionable that Stewart, whose show is so reliant on video clips, would promise not to use any, or that Cramer, even if he received such a promise, would be so unprepared to defend himself against videos that are circulating widely on the Internet. He also reverts to calling Stewart just a comedian, which is one of the remarks that got him into trouble in the first place.
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POPSMichael Steele's Attack On President Obama The RNC letter noted that Mr. Obama while in Europe had said the United States has displayed "arrogance" at times in its foreign policy. But Mr. Steele said it was that it was the former senator from Illinois who was "arrogant". Michael Steele defines, "arrogance".
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