Good news, bad news, from the U.S. Supreme Court in the tortured (pun intended) case of Saleh Al-Marri: the Court declined review of the case as moot, but vacated the loathsome Fourth Circuit case that held, as a matter of law, that the United States is a dictatorship. [You will recall that Al-Marri, a legal resident, has been detained for years in the brig in Charleston in isolation condition without charge as “an enemy combatant”.] What’s that TD… an American court held that the US of A is a dictatorship? Well, yes: the Fourth Circuit in Richmond held that there...

This blog devotes many of its column inches to discussing the collapse of our nation’s moral authority and the ongoing collapse of its adherence to its own laws… we do occasionally take a break to discuss… its economic collapse. And so today… Joe Nocera gives us this column in the Grey Lady walking us through the AIG fiasco, noting the various ways in which the denizens of world’s largest insurance company American International Group, or AIG, gamed the system and gamed its own sterling AAA credit rating via regulatory loopholes and everything else it could think of in order to...

In the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the court handed the Bush Obama Administration a set-back in its assertion of state-secrets privileges to try to stymie a suit brought by an Oregon-based Islamic charity over illegal wire-tapping of it. The Obama Administration asked for a stay to further consider its privilege assertion, but after its recent backsliding into imperial mode in the Binyam Mohammed torture case against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen, it appears that the Ninth Circuit was having no more of it from the the Bush Obama Administration. Admittedly, much of the case still presents an uphill climb for...

Reuters reports that a lawyer for Guantanamo detainees contends that day-to-day abuse of prisoners (beatings, force-feedings and the like) has actually increased since President Obama took office. Sayeth Reuters: Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike. The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions at Guantanamo, but had concluded...

The President addressed a joint session of Congress and gave his remarks concerning the budget he will be presenting shortly. Not sure what to think of this one; it seemed disjointed, especially from a rhetorical master like President Obama. This could be the nature of the current crisis. Still, it might have been more “confidence building” if more specifics ($__billion to re-build roads, $___ billion to ensure that schools are adequately funded, etc.) made there way in there (there were some specifics, like $15 billion a year in energy research)… but the stimulus bill was one of the biggest progressive...

After seven years of some of the most horrifying torture I have ever heard of (besides the usual beating, sleep deprivation, starvation and so forth, Binyam was treated to years in cold dark rooms while his “interrogations’ included repeatedly slicing open his penis in a Moroccan dungeon) at the behest of the United States government (or at other times, committed by the CIA or American military torturers interrogators…) British resident/Ethiopian national Binyam Mohamed has finally been released from Guantanamo Bay and is now home in Britain. Binyam had issued a statement calling the treatment he received “Medieval”. That’s…. pretty euphemistic...

To TD Mom… who turns an amazingly youthful three-score and ten today…

It’s not particularly hard to draw one’s own conclusions re: the kerfuffle surrounding one little iddy biddy editorial cartoon in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. I mean, sure, it appears to simultaneously (1) depict the first Black President of the United States as a monkey (2) who has just been executed by the police… and it has the adorable caption “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” I suppose, thirty days after the inauguration of our nation’s first Black President, that this particular cartoon appearing in an arch-right-wing paper might be interpreted to mean something...

Recent TD interview subject Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project hits it out of the park with his own interview of former GTMO prison guard Army Specialist Brandon Neely. In the interview, Neely describes the sundry experiences of a prison guard in the very early days of Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, including his observation of (and occasional participation in) the various abuses heaped upon the hapless prisoners, observations of disrespect of the Koran and the detainees’ religious practices, a number of acts of kindness, and an amazing catalogue of the experiences of a young, inadequately trained soldier placed by...

We start with new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele telling Glenn Beck that there is just no reason for anyone to trust anything that the Republican Party now says. Then, we’ll throw in Sen. Arlen Specter (R as in Running for Reelection – PA) and his observation that Republicans like the stimulus package just fine (after all, it has hundreds of billions of irresponsible tax cuts, and the most-actually- stimulative parts were surgically removed)… it’s just that they don’t want their own fingerprints on it. This, at least, is consistent with the final passage of the bill in which...