Month: November 2009

Killer On The Run

by digby

I am not a hunter and as an animal lover I wish that nobody hunted for sport. However, I accept that it is a revered, human ritual and for many Americans a test of manhood and skill.

So, why is it that right wing leaders like to show off their manly kill skills with lame, hunting shortcuts like Dick Cheney’s pre-captured birds and now Tim Pawlenty’s killing on the run:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has taken a drubbing from hunters for not tracking down a deer he shot on opening day of Minnesota’s firearm deer season.

A headline on deerhuntingchat.com calls the possible presidential candidate a “slob hunter” for wounding a deer on Nov. 7 and then leaving for a Republican fundraiser in Iowa before the animal could be found.

One contributor wrote: “What kind of slob hunter goes out opening morning and shoots a deer knowing full well you won’t have time to retrieve it or tend to it? One whose presidential ambitions override his hunting ethics, that’s what kind.”

The-deer-hunting-guide.com says: “A responsible hunter, who is also an ethical hunter, will be prepared to spend hours trailing a wounded deer; even come back the next day if needed. You must make every effort to retrieve a wounded animal. It’s the right ethical thing to do.”

Mark Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association and an organizer of last weekend’s hunt, said Pawlenty and his hunting party did everything they could to find the animal.

After the governor shot the deer at 7 a.m. from more than 200 yards away, he and his brother Dan, an accomplished hunter, went to where they last saw the animal.

Finding blood but no deer, they returned to base camp for breakfast and to consider their next move.

Due in Iowa that night for a fundraiser, Pawlenty left while others took up the search. By dusk they had found nothing and stopped. There has been no sign of the animal since.

I always wondered why John Kerry made such a big deal out of the fact that he always ate what he killed, but I figured it was part of some hunting ethos that would speak to other hunters. Obviously, wounding a deer and then rushing off to a fundraiser is a breach of such ethics, as it should be. It’s horrible to wound an animal and let it suffer. In fact it makes me sick to think about it.

If you are going to play the macho game you really need to play it right. Hunters are very serious about what they do and I’m glad to know that they are serious about not torturing animals. But it sounds like Pawlenty is more of a Dick Cheney type who doesn’t give such ethical concerns a second thought.

I’d think twice about hunting with either of these guys, myself. And I’d certainly think twice about putting someone like him in charge of national security. We know what happens when these people who care nothing for the suffering of others get hold of an imperial torture apparatus.

.

What Glenn Said

by tristero

Greenwald:

This is literally true: the Right’s reaction to yesterday’s announcement — we’re too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country — is the textbook definition of “surrendering to terrorists.” It’s the same fear they’ve been spewing for years. As always, the Right’s tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it’s hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn’t allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country’s 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.

It’s only America’s Right that is too scared of the Terrorists — or which exploits the fears of their followers — to insist that no regular trials can be held and that “the safety and security of the American people” mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it’s the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of “strength” and “courage” to hide what they really are.

This has been another edition of What Glenn Said.

Makes you wonder, why a blogger is first out the gate on this patently obvious response to the craven cowards – sorry, I meant the Republicans. You’d think a top Democrat would have smacked them down immediately. But that would entail a Democratic political leadership that actually felt comfortable about winning elections and leading the country.

Answering some questions:

“But what if the terrorists attack New York again?”

You think they won’t if we don’t hold trials?

Reality-check, people: Whether it is from the rightwing lunatics who consider bin Laden reality-based or the rightwing lunatics who consider Beck, Palin, et al. reality-based – or some other demented nuts who hate Americans – there will be another terrorist attack, and more Americans will die. The only questions are when, where, and whether it could have been prevented. (In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, this country has seen some dreadful terrorist attacks since 9/11: the anthrax mailings, probably an attack on LAX on July 4, 2002, and the assassination of Dr. Tiller, for example )

“But politically, another attack would give Republicans a perfect ‘I told you so’ moment. Why court – literally- such possibilities?”

Whether or not there’s a trial, an unambiguous and spectacular attack like 9/11 won’t stop Republicans from immediately demanding Obama’s resignation. And I mean immediately, as in, “Obama must go now, he failed to keep us safe. Oh, right, I suppose that terrorist attack thingy was not fun for some people. But there’s a silver lining to every cloud ’cause now we really have a perfect opportunity to get rid of that commie/nazi you-know-what-I’m-talking-about-wink-wink-but-it’s-not-racism-that’s-unfair.”

Inappropriate

by digby

I don’t “love” any politicians, but I have really come to feel a sincere affection for this guy:

h/t to JW
.

To Gain And Maintain Control

by digby

One shouldn’t second guess authorities. After all, this is America:

Officer Bo Peters is the taser training officer on the Grand Rapids Community College police force.

He’s watched the video of a Lansing police officer firing a taser into a 43-year old man in handcuffs causing the prisoner to fall face first onto the concrete pavement.

“I’m not going to even try to guess what was going through his head at the time,” he says.

Officer Peters isn’t second guessing the actions of the Lansing police officer who fired the taser or his two-week suspension by the Lansing police chief. But he says just because an individual is in handcuffs, doesn’t mean the taser shouldn’t be utilized.

“You are using the taser to gain and maintain control,” says Officer Peters. “If they still pose a threat to themselves and others, the use of the taser could still be appropriate.”

On August 16, 2009 Lansing police were called to end a verbal argument between 43-year-old Rocky Allred and his ex-girlfriend. After escorting Allred out of the woman’s home, the situation escalated because the officer didn’t want the man to get behind the wheel. There was an angry exchange and Allred was arrested. He was tasered while standing in handcuffs surrounded by three officers.

The handcuffed man fell to the ground and broke his jaw, a tooth, and received a cut that needed eight stitches to close.

The officer made a mistake because modern torture techniques require that you not leave any marks or break anything. That would be excessive force. Shooting people full of electricity only causes horrible pain and temporary loss of motor funtion and that’s fine.

h/t to glp

.

Good Conscience

by digby

When’s the last time a person was willing to lose his or her seat in order to keep a women’s right to choose from being restricted much less advancing it.

This man did it a long time ago:

Saturday, December 5, 1992

Former Assemblyman George M. Michaels, who cast the deciding vote to liberalize New York’s abortion law in 1970, thereby ending his political career, died on Thursday at his home in Auburn, N.Y. He was 80 years old.

He died after a long illness, according to the Brew Funeral Home in Auburn.

A Democrat, Mr. Michaels represented a largely rural, mostly conservative and heavily Roman Catholic constituency in the Finger Lakes region of west-central New York.

That put him in a difficult position on the abortion issue. An 1832 state law forbade abortion except “when necessary to save a life.” In the 1960’s, legislation was introduced to make New York’s law the most liberal in the nation, allowing abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy if a woman and her doctor agreed to it. The proposal became the most dramatic, contentious and emotional issue before the 1970 Legislature.

A groundswell for change in abortion laws, which dated to the 19th century, had been building in the country. In 1965, Colorado became the first state to lessen the restrictions on abortion. A Reversal of Conscience

Mr. Michaels personally favored a woman’s right to choose but had voted against the proposed law twice at the behest of the Cayuga County Democratic Committee. He did so at the beginning of April 1970 when the bill went down to a narrow defeat.

But on April 9, he realized that the measure was doomed without his support. He rose to take the microphone, his hands trembling. “I realize, Mr. Speaker, that I am terminating my political career, but I cannot in good conscience sit here and allow my vote to be the one that defeats this bill,” he declared. “I ask that my vote be changed from ‘no’ to ‘yes.’ “

His tearful reversal provided the 76th vote needed for passage. The State Senate quickly added its approval and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller signed the bill into law. “I found myself caught up in something bigger than I am,” Mr. Michaels said about his agonizing decision. “I’m just a small country lawyer.”

Mr. Michaels sought a sixth term that year, but piqued county leaders denied him renomination and he lost the June primary in a four-way race.

I guess that would be considered to be foolishly self-sacrificing in these days of “common ground” and looking for an easy way out. It’s just a bargaining chip for more important issues about which Real Americans feel strongly. But there was a time when it was a matter of conscience and people thought such things were worth paying a political price for.

h/t to bill

Fixing Faultlines

by digby

Max Blumenthal, who closely follows the religious right, has written a must read article on the Palin phenomenon. Despite the fact that polls show she is incredibly unpopular among mainstream Americans and reviled by conservative intellectuals, her hold on the base of the GOP appears to be growing. Blumenthal explains why that is:

The answer lies beyond the realm of polls and punditry in the political psychology of the movement that animates and, to a great degree, controls, the Republican grassroots — a uniquely evangelical subculture defined by the personal crises of its believers and their perceived persecution at the hands of cosmopolitan elites.

By emphasizing her own crises and her victimization by the “liberal media,” Palin has established an invisible, indissoluble bond with adherents of that subculture — so visceral it transcends any rational political analysis. As a result, her career has become a vehicle through which the right-wing evangelical movement feels it can express its deepest identity in opposition both to secular society and to its representatives in the Obama White House. Palin is perceived by its leaders — and followers — not as another cynical politician or even as a self-promoting celebrity, but as a kind of magical helper, the God-fearing glamour girl who parachuted into their backwater towns to lift them from the drudgery of everyday life, assuring them that they represented the “Real America.”

These are the bitter enders who stuck with Junior all the way to the end, even though many of them have probably abandoned him now. She seamlessly took his place in their hearts and minds as the True Believer who would smite the liberal terrorists (are there any other kind?) and cut their taxes for Jesus.

Which brings me to this fascinating article in The Atlantic by Hannah Rosin, which I think opens up the path for mainstreaming the Palin effect, if not with her (which I agree is highly unlikely) but with someone who can properly synthesize this idea into something that the Republican establishment can use for their own purposes:

America’s churches always reflect shifts in the broader culture, and Casa del Padre is no exception. The message that Jesus blesses believers with riches first showed up in the postwar years, at a time when Americans began to believe that greater comfort could be accessible to everyone, not just the landed class. But it really took off during the boom years of the 1990s, and has continued to spread ever since. This stitched-together, homegrown theology, known as the prosperity gospel, is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of intensity. In Garay’s church, God is the “Owner of All the Silver and Gold,” and with enough faith, any believer can access the inheritance. Money is not the dull stuff of hourly wages and bank-account statements, but a magical substance that comes as a gift from above. Even in these hard times, it is discouraged, in such churches, to fall into despair about the things you cannot afford. “Instead of saying ‘I’m poor,’ say ‘I’m rich,’” Garay’s wife, Hazael, told me one day. “The word of God will manifest itself in reality.”

Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed; rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in America’s middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to wealth.

In his book Something for Nothing, Jackson Lears describes two starkly different manifestations of the American dream, each intertwined with religious faith. The traditional Protestant hero is a self-made man. He is disciplined and hardworking, and believes that his “success comes through careful cultivation of (implicitly Protestant) virtues in cooperation with a Providential plan.” The hero of the second American narrative is a kind of gambling man—a “speculative confidence man,” Lears calls him, who prefers “risky ventures in real estate,” and a more “fluid, mobile democracy.” The self-made man imagines a coherent universe where earthly rewards match merits. The confidence man lives in a culture of chance, with “grace as a kind of spiritual luck, a free gift from God.” The Gilded Age launched the myth of the self-made man, as the Rockefellers and other powerful men in the pews connected their wealth to their own virtue. In these boom-and-crash years, the more reckless alter ego dominates. In his book, Lears quotes a reverend named Jeffrey Black, who sounds remarkably like Garay: “The whole hope of a human being is that somehow, in spite of the things I’ve done wrong, there will be an episode when grace and fate shower down on me and an unearned blessing will come to me—that I’ll be the one.”

Rosin’s argument is that this was a cause of the housing bubble and the subsequent meltdown and she’s pretty convincing. But I think it could also end up being the conservative movement’s salvation if people’s lives don’t materially improve fairly soon.

If there’s a path to patching over the differences between the intellectual elite, the Big Money Boyz and the base after the Bush debacle, this offers some promise if handled deftly. The populist message doesn’t come from a class basis, but a religious one and it offers not a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work, but riches on earth and a heavenly reward. Powerful stuff.
Failure, redemption,riches, heaven. Sounds like just what the witchdoctor ordered.

.

“That’s So Bubble”

by digby

On CNNs “Money” program today, I learned from the experts that spending is like, so out of fashion:

KIERNAN: So my beef this week has been with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart announced after this stampede where a guy got killed on Long Island last year, they said that what they were going to do was put a number of steps in place to prevent these sorts of incidents, and their solution was, well, we’ll just open the stores on Thanksgiving and then we won’t have the rush at 5:00 a.m. I know they had to do something about the dangerous situation, but can’t we just have a day off? One day all year where the retail pie doesn’t get cut up in any way and everybody just gets to spend the day with their family.

ROMANS: I’m totally with you. I think the last couple of years if anything that we’ve learned is that the whole big crazy rush for a flat screen is just — that’s so bubble. That’s so 2003. Isn’t it nuts? To be thinking that and to hear the retailers talking about these are going to be the sales, we’ll be open up 24 hours, all night long. Wait a minute, folks, we are drowning in debt. We are all drowning in debt.

LEEB: The last thing you want to over encourage is the spending just like you’re saying. That’s what got us into this trouble. That’s why we’re still in trouble. We have way too much debt, and making us spend money — incentivizing us to spend money on Thanksgiving, I totally agree with you.

KIERNAN: Wal-Mart is not the first to do this.

ROMANS: That’s right.

KIERNAN: But Wal-Mart sets an example. I think it’s unfortunate that they’re expanding their Thanksgiving opening, not just the 24- hour super centers, but every store.

ROMANS: I agree. All right

I agree that the stampedes on Friday mornings are ridiculous. Except isn’t it the news networks that always camp out at the malls on the morning after Thanksgiving ready to pronounce doom on the all important Christmas shopping season. Will they eschew this silly ritual this year since every good recessionista knows that shopping is so 2003, or will they just start broadcasting from WalMart on Thanksgiving day instead?

Oh, and I wonder if Walmart workers get premium pay for working the holiday like most union workers do? I’d guess not.

.

Paging Dr Doom

by digby

Dr. Nouriel Roubini was right about the bubble. Let’s hope he’s not right about this:

Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession.

Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession.

So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.

There’s really just one hope for our leaders to turn things around: a bold prescription that increases the fiscal stimulus with another round of labor-intensive, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, helps fiscally strapped state and local governments and provides a temporary tax credit to the private sector to hire more workers. Helping the unemployed just by extending unemployment benefits is necessary not sufficient; it leads to persistent unemployment rather than job creation.

The long-term picture for workers and families is even worse than current job loss numbers alone would suggest.

[…]

The weakness in labor markets and the sharp fall in labor income ensure a weak recovery of private consumption and an anemic recovery of the economy, and increases the risk of a double dip recession.

As a result of these terribly weak labor markets, we can expect weak recovery of consumption and economic growth; larger budget deficits; greater delinquencies in residential and commercial real estate and greater fall in home and commercial real estate prices; greater losses for banks and financial institutions on residential and commercial real estate mortgages, and in credit cards, auto loans and student loans and thus a greater rate of failures of banks; and greater protectionist pressures.

The damage will be extensive and severe unless bold policy action is undertaken now.

He prescribes another strong stimulus package. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to inexplicably start a deficit reduction program instead.

Here are Wolf Blitzer and Peter Orszag yesterday, “explaining” why this is necessary:

BLITZER: Trillion dollar-plus deficits as far as the eye can see? That’s going to cause enormous long-term damage to average folks. Explain why you’re so concerned about these enormous deficits.

Ok, Let’s stop right there. How is this going to cause enormous long-term damage to average folks? Well, he never actually tells us, but we know it just must be true.

Orszag half heartedly tries to pull the discussion to the present, but doesn’t really succeed:

ORSZAG: Well, we first have to explain that right now the deficit is actually ironically helping the economy. The tax relief and additional spending helps to bolster demand when the economy is very weak.

The problem is at some point, whether it’s in 2011 or 2012 or 2013, the situation starts to reverse and at that point deficits crowd out private investment and become a harm. We need to get ahead of that problem and that’s the line we’re trying to walk in the budget that we’re putting together for next February.

BLITZER: Because so much of US taxpayer dollars already is being spent simply to finance, to pay the interest on those loans we’re getting, on the t-bills we’re selling to China or Saudi Arabia or other countries that are helping to finance this budget deficit.

ORSZAG: That’s correct although we need to remember, we’re in an exceptional time right now. Total borrowing has imploded. Private borrowing has collapsed. In fact, the treasury department is the last borrower left standing. For right now, long-term interest rates are very low. We need to get ahead of the problem because as private borrowing starts to pick up, that situation’s going to change.

We need to get ahead of the problem even as unemployment continues to go up and there is very little sign that the economy is recovering. And by “getting ahead” of the deficit problem, we’ll very likely make the current problem worse, not to mention hamstringing the administration’s ability to react. Excellent.

BLITZER: How worried are you that some of these foreign creditors of ours are going to lose confidence in the dollar and they’re going to, for example, start buying gold as a hedge, India, for example, has recently done that, and that the value of the dollar will go down as a result?

ORSZAG: Well, I’m going to leave comments about the dollar to our treasury secretary. But again, if you look at the interest rate on our long-term government bonds, right now the ten-year bond is — has a yield, an interest rate, of under 4 percent. It’s very low and that’s because we’re in such an exceptional period. That is going to change at some point, and we need to act before that happens.

Again, we are anticipating problems instead of dealing with the catastrophe that facing us right now.

BLITZER: One way of dealing with these budget deficits is to raise taxes. Is that right?

ORSZAG: Well, a deficit reflects an imbalance between spending and revenue. So narrowing it requires acting on one, the other or both.

BLITZER: So when does that go into effect? The president said repeatedly during the campaign he wants to increase taxes for those making more than $250,000 a year. When will that go into effect?

ORSZAG: Well, under the budget that we put out this year, that would go into effect at the beginning of 2011. Again, above $250,000. So for a very small share of American taxpayers.

BLITZER: We got a question on Twitter. From someone who asked us this question. Mac1014. He says, when in our history has raising taxes produced private sector jobs?

ORSZAG: Well, I think what we need to remember is that budget deficits can impede economic activity. If you look back during the 1990s, for example, in 1993, there was a very significant effort to reduce the budget deficit including through some revenue increases. The result was a very robust period of economic growth throughout the 1990s. And as we look past this immediate crisis and look to the future, we need to put the nation back on a sounder fiscal course, again, to build a stable economic foundation.

BLITZER: And when you say revenue, what was the phrase you used? Revenue enhancers?

ORSZAG: Revenue increases.

BLITZER: You mean tax increases, right?

ORSZAG: That would be another way of putting it.

BLITZER: I just want to make a fine point on that.

Of course you do

BLITZER: Here are some numbers from our recent CNN/opinion research corporation poll.

Do you approve of how President Obama is handling unemployment? He’s proposed a jobs summit next month or jobs forum he’s calling it. 47 percent say they now approve of how he’s handling it, but in March it was 64 . Jobs, jobs, jobs. Here’s the question. You got this forum coming up next month in December. What’s taking so long? It’s because the jobs have been a critical issue all these 10 months that he’s been in office.

ORSZAG: Well, I think what we’re seeing is the jobs market is still unacceptably weak. It’s still too high, but what’s happened is at least we’ve gotten some economic growth going again. In fact, if you went back a year, November 2008, and anyone told you that real GDP growth in the third quarter of this year was going to be 3.5 percent, I think they would have been quite surprised. So we’re getting some economic growth, but that needs to now translate into job growth. And we’re focused on that process.

BLITZER: How worried are you that the trillion-dollar-plus price tag for health care reform will convince some moderate democrats, for example, in the senate not to support it?

ORSZAG: Well, I think what we’re seeing, again, in the Senate legislation, you have a deficit-reducing package that not only reduces the deficit over the first decade of its existence —

BLITZER: I’m talking about the house package.

ORSZAG: Well, again, in the house bill, there’s also — it also does reduce the deficit over the first decade. It reduces the deficit thereafter, too, and includes some important reforms to how health care is practiced in the United States. As the debate shifts to the Senate, I think you’re going to see, again, attention focused on those cost containment provisions which are solid.

BLITZER: Peter Orszag is the White House budget director. Good luck.

Good luck is right.

This is what comes of never challenging conservative economic orthodoxy. Total economic gibberish. The government needs to spend money because nobody is lending but it also has to stop spending because it is in debt. And there ‘s something about India buying gold and the value of the dollar and some stuff about China and raising taxes. Meanwhile, unemployment is through the roof and health care is either going to raise the deficit or lower it.

Do you feel informed by that exchange? No wonder people say “the deficit” is the cause of all our economic woes. It might as well be for all anyone knows from watching that.

People seem to assume that the administration is reacting to the stunning new political landscape which has deficit reduction as a top priority among uninformed Americans who voted in Virginia two weeks ago but since they have been talking about this since before the inauguration, it’s clear that it’s always been part of their agenda. Whether they are actually part of the shock doctrine crowd or whether they think it’s politically necessary is unknown. But if it’s the latter, they wouldn’t have to do this if they and the rest of the Democratic party had spent even a moment educating the public about what’s really happened to this economy instead of lazily riding on the back of the laissez-faire, free trading, multi-national, anti-welfare state plutocrats who are using this situation to engineer an austerity program that may end up screwing people harder than they ever imagined being screwed.

But deficit hysteria is out there and nobody is working it harder than the gasbags like Wolf Blitzer whose presentation of the problem is designed to make deficit reduction the answer to our economic woes.

For what might actually work, here’s Ian Welsh, who agrees with Roubinion the need for another stimulus. Unfortunately, all this blather about the urgent need to “get ahead” of deficits makes that nearly impossible. Heckuva job.

h/t to bb
.

Roundtable

by digby

Good Lord. Apparently Bob Woodward is going to do another of his “inside the room” books about Obama and Afghanistan:

This morning on the Roundtable, legendary investigative journalist Bob Woodward provided his unique insight into the complexity of President Obama’s decision-making process on Afghanistan.

Woodward said he’s working on a book on topic and revealed that the President has no fewer than 32 issues on the table that need answers before he can decide how to go forward on Afghanistan.

I don’t know what his point of view is on this, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it will become the official record and after his performance during the Bush years, it’s clear that’s not necessarily a good thing. His first Bush hagiography was extremely destructive and gave Bush power, particularly among the villagers, that extended far beyond what he would have had if the book hadn’t been written.

Woodward is a village institution and if people simply saw him that way it would be ok. But he’s actually taken quite seriously even though he clearly operates under a set of rules (see: Libby, Scooter) that serves certain factions within the political establishment. He’s part of the process not simply reporting it and you cannot trust him.

.

What’s Got Them Really Scared

by tristero

Warning! Link to Fox News::

The Obama administration, in deciding to try alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in a New York courtroom, has said it is setting its sights on convictions, but some critics say a civilian trial — instead of a military tribunal — could end up targeting the Bush administration and its anti-terror policies.

One of those five defendants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has been at the center of the debate over those Bush-era polices, in particular the harsh interrogation techniques used on Mohammed and others in an effort to obtain information on Al Qaeda and any additional attacks.

“The government is going to try to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed on trial. Defense lawyers will try and put the government on trial,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News.

If only.

But the possibility is what’s got the rufftuffcreampuffs on the right quaking in their booties, that American law will actually shine a light on the murderous, torturing, incompetent, insanely frightened, paranoid, corrupt, and completely out of control Bush/Cheney regime.

It is going to be quite an ugly fight, once these trials start.