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POPSGovt blocks payment of Gitmo defense attorneys "government argues is required under U.S. law because the beneficiaries of the lawyers' services are foreign terrorists" - of course, these being "fair" trials, we wouldn't assume they were "terrorists," before their conviction, now would we? Justice means nothing in this political theater.
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POPSLike I said, we won't need SCOTUS no mo'!
If one more "R" gets on SCOTUS we can all say TOOTLES to civil liberties & HELLO to Fascism. A statement from an everyday Alarmist? No its serious! The court now in lockstep with the "R" ideology which protects the wealthy and gives a nose-thumb at those who need help. The kind of social order they wish to spread across our land, is not democracy. Not with, cruel punishment for those who can't pay their way out of a guilt accusation. Not with, melt down of habeas corpus. Not with, stripping a woman of her right to choose what's best for her body & circumstances. Not with, laws, claiming Voter Id's before one can vote. Not with, reducing punitive damages to large corp. who will become more reckless not having to face large losses to their beloved capital. Not with, dismantling gun-control laws putting all at risk of being murdered by the disgruntled, the disturbed who should never possess lethal weapons. Remember 1 or 2 more "R" justices and you can kiss your, you-know-what bye-bye:-(
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POPS"My Guantanamo Diary" All About Naive
And this is how Mahvish Rukhsana Kahn,assesses every one of her clients. She accepts without question detainee stories of widespread torture, brutal interrogation, commonplace Quran desecration and illegal confinement. But she never bothers to reference al Qaeda's "Manchester Manual," that instructs its members to allege torture and abuse as part of their defense against Western legal systems. Besides her sympathies for the "innocent" Afghans, Kahn grew openly contemptuous of the American military men and women serving there. She describes mocking a posted "Soldier's Creed" to a guard and how she had to learn "the military's sneaky speak" - her description of terms commonly used in the detention process. She refers to one female guard repeatedly as "Rodent Face," and repeats one detainee's story about how he found the guards "androgynous" and that "we can find no sign of manhood in this army." If she was bothered by these attitudes, she doesn't mention it.
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POPSBush: those who disagree with him "slander America" How very, very cheap - taking those who disagree with HIM and labeling them slanderers of AMERICA. He attempts to manipulate people who want to be patriotic into sitting down, shutting up, and asking no questions about his abuse of power, so he can do whatever he wants with their money.
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POPSBush breaks from the past? 
On the domestic front, Bush broadly expanded federal spending on education, signed campaign finance reform and orchestrated a huge expansion of health-care entitlements with his prescription drug benefit. Whatever the merits of those policies, it’s unlikely historians will see them as a radical, right-wing break from the Clinton years. much as Obama’s own foreign policy advisors have for a while — that his foreign policy promises will not survive contact with post-election reality. Already, Obama is changing his tune from his old, irresponsibly heated rhetoric about “immediate” withdrawal to talking about the need for policies that would adapt to the improving conditions in Iraq. Given Obama’s ideological leanings and inexperience, there’s clearly plenty of potential for him to make costly mistakes. But odds are he, too, would come to realize that America needs to win the war on terror and succeed in Iraq. Hence the greatest irony. A successful Obama presidency would have the u
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POPSChina Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo Swell, just swell, borrowing techniques from communist dictatorships. Well done! Plus: "In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners." Brilliant!
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POPSMcCain vs. Obama On National Security
that espouses the destruction of the State of Israel as its fondest wish and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions." He also rejects "unconditional dialogues" with Iran. Obama has delivered messages on Iran that were more mixed. But that only makes diplomacy more important. If we must use military force, we are more likely to succeed, and will have far greater support at home and abroad, if we have exhausted our diplomatic efforts." In the same speech, however, Obama promised: "aggressive, principled diplomacy without self-defeating preconditions....Obama missed a vote on a controversial amendment offered by Sen. Jon Kyl and Lieberman that proposed labeling Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization . Obama called the amendment a repeat of the mistakes that led to war in Iraq; however, he had cosponsored an earlier bill declaring the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization
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POPSMoral Depravity in the Highest Places
After 7 1/2 years of George W. Bush, much of the media and political establishment — which have never shown much interest in holding Bush to account — now appear anxious to simply move on. They seem determined to leave unexamined the full cruelty and mendacity of the Bush administration, with its unlawful wars and blatant violations of the Geneva Conventions. Moving on is a great idea - once there’s been some accountability, with a full public recognition of wrongdoing, and a commitment to bring about change. Otherwise, nothing will have been learned. The comments of Yoo, who authored top-level internal memos justifying torture and virtually unlimited presidential power, suggest a moral depravity in very high places. That depravity led to the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib and at other U.S. prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and “black sites” around the world. The dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, Lawrence Velvel, argues that Bush and top administration offi
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POPSLike we needed more evidence that the Bush presidency talks crap... I don't know whether I'm more horrified that the comparison to "The Hunting of the Snark" is apt or that our government is keeping these folks at Guantanamo for fear of mistreatment back home. Maybe they're afraid that the water used for water-boarding won't be from a Brita pitcher. We suck.
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POPSOn Suing The Enemy “It bears repeating that our opinion does not address the content of the law that governs petitioners’ detention. That is a matter yet to be determined.” Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who is nothing if not plain-spoken, was his usual clear and precise self on this occasion, “The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” And not just Americans, if Mr. Justice Scalia proves as prescient as he is plain. Already prisoners at Guantanamo who have had to be released have returned to attacking American troops and/or civilian targets, and had to be recaptured. Having again entered the maw of the American judicial system, who knows if they will ever face justice? That question, too, remains Yet To Be Determined.
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POPSThe Club Gitmo Experience Thirty-one flavors of crazy down in Washington today. The lengths people will go to to enable those who'd gladly slit their throats.
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POPSWe Won't Need The Expense Of A Supreme Court If McCain wins in November, we won't need a Supreme Court any longer. When he throws in a few more conservative ideologues to further unbalance this court, we will all know their rulings on EVERYTHING even before they cast their vote. It's almost that way now except for the conservative Kennedy who in his declining years of life has turned into a philosopher, that is a person who seeks truth by thinking! But he is the exception, not the rule. The other justices vote along the lines of WHATEVER THE HELL THEIR KING TELLS THEM TO VOTE. Now is this fair to the people in a democracy... HELL NO! Believe me, not only will progressives suffer many conservatives will suffer too! Left or Right we all feel the pain of injustice!
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POPSSome Iraqi News Not Reported By "The Media" Meanwhile Bill Roggio reports that a released Gitmo detainee is back to the front and is responsible for attacks inside Iraq : The detainee, Abdullah Salih al Ajmi, drove a armored truck packed with explosives into a Iraqi army base and detonated it, killing 13 Iraqi army soldiers and wounding 42. http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/06/released_guantanamo.php Just the tip of the iceberg I’m afraid after our courts release a large chunk of these guys. Al Qaeda in Iraq, through its puppet organization the Islamic State of Iraq, released its latest propaganda video on June 23. The video contains a montage of attacks throughout Iraq, and features two Kuwaiti al Qaeda operatives who conducted strikes in Mosul. One of the operatives was released from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Islamic State of Iraq used footage taken at Combat Outpost Inman by this reporter in Mosul in March of this year.
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POPSDEATHS: THE VERY REAL EFFECT OF Boumediene v Bush Try to find a reference to the case name/style in an AP story (I cannot remember when a story on a USSC decision did not carry the case name/style.): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080612/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_guantanamo or http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/12/america/gitmoruling.php
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POPSScalia’s Claim That Released Gitmo Prisoners Have Killed Americans Is An ‘Urban Legend’ All you have to do in America is tell people a lie, let it sink in and then apologize later. So many people will continue to believe and spread the lie that the damage has already been done and no amount of apologizing will undo it. This is why many still believe Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, why so many middle-Americans still believe Obama is a Muslim; the list could go on and on. This particular lie serves the purpose of adding weight to the habeas corpus arguments raging in congress (did I say arguments, I meant lip service). The more people that believe the lie, the easier it is to steamroll over the constitution. As a bright young man named Chuck D once said "Don't believe the hype!"
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POPSMichael Savage Wants to "Hang" JAG Officers This utter bullshit because it's officers like Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, "a self-described born-again Christian and conservative who has 'never voted for a Democrat'" who have the courage to challenge these kangaroo courts "designed to get criminal convictions" with "no real evidence," or the the fact that military prosecutors "launder evidence derived from torture." I suppose Savage also wants Lt. Cmdr. Charles D. Swift hanged. As the NYT reports, Swift helped "take the case of Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, to the Supreme Court. The ruling in 2006 invalidated the Bush administration's first military commission system." Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley needs execution too, I suppose, for defending a "British resident accused of plotting with al-Qaida to bomb apartment buildings in the United States." Marine Corps Maj. Michael D. Mori defended Australian David Hicks an accused al-Qaeda trainee.
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