The LA Times reports that the Obama Administration has decided to retain “extraordinary rendition” amidst the CIA’s officially sanctioned bag of dirty tricks; the practice is simply a euphemism for “kidnapping”. As the piece notes, some human rights groups are less concerned with this “policy option” in the hands of an Obama Administration more committed to the rule of law than its predecessor, but certainly, the program has been problematic, and led to horrific treatment by those kidnapped and handed to the custody of foreign dungeon keepers. (For more background on the subject, I refer you to my interviews with...

February is just loaded with great stuff… from the day we celebrate the births of our 1st and 16th Presidents, to Groundhog Day, to Blogroll Amnesty Day (February 3rd), the only holiday in blogtopia for blogtopia (yiksctt, skippy, etc.). We in blog-world, even those of us who have been “blogging” since one week after 11 Sept. 2001 before the term “blog” or “web log” was even in wide parlance, all too often fall into the solipsism of thinking that what we do is terribly much more than a self-indulgent hobby. This is such an occasion. Prior to the first “blogroll...

That stands for “what would Steve Gilliard do?” Our old friend, the late Steve Gilliard was a one of a kind; mild-mannered and soft-spoken in person, while his on-line version told truth to power, kept it real, and took no prisoners. Julia provided this moving tribute to Steve on the occasion of the election of our first Black President, something that, to put it bluntly, Steve just deserved to live long enough to see, but sadly, didn’t get to. The occasion of the selection of Michael Steele as the new Chairman of the Republican National Committee makes me get all...

It’s really hard to characterize the kind of greeting that The President must have gotten from the (all-White) House Republican Caucus, whom he addressed the other day to try to garner some– some…any at all– Republican support for his massive ecnomic stimulus package, and so he listened politely, proposed removing some family planning expenditures and hearing them out on more tax cuts (for the super-rich)… and, unsuprisingly, if you ask me… he got reaction similar to that received by Sheriff Bart. More specifically, the over $800 billion stimulus package passed the House with 11 Democrats voting against it and not...

The Grey Lady gives us this profile in snapshot of the Obama Administration’s next Bush-created War-on-Terror detention headache, the nearly 600 men now being held beyond law at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. (Some background is available in my interview with Tina Foster of the International Justice Network, who is quoted in the Times piece). The Times article does something fascinating– it repeats Bush progaganda that everyone at Bagram was “captured on the battlefield”… and then notes that Ms. Foster has four clients, all of whom were moved there from outside of Afghanistan, but doesn’t seem to highlight the obvious...

I cannot emphasize that strongly enough: we MUST hold The President’s feet to the fire with respect to what he has made one of the signal aims of his Administration, to wit, the closure of Guantanamo Bay and related illegal facilities. So, although it comes as no surprise to anyone that, as WaPo reports, the Government’s files re the allegations against Guantanamo detainees are in disarray (hat tip to Candace), we simply cannot stand by and allow one of the possible permutations raised in the article, that the Obama Administration may attempt to blame its precedessor for delays in doing...

It seems The President (yes!) has signed an executive order directing the closure of GTMO and all CIA prisons whereever they may be within a year. The devil may be in the details… but for the moment, this is good.

Exxon Mobil will have to pay its professional U.F.O. observersHolocaust deniers global warming skeptics a wee-bit more cold hard cash to get them to insist that the world isn’t getting un-colder… particuarly as new evidence of temperature/climate observations in Antarctica, held out by said professional skeptics as “evidence” that their paid positions were somehow justified by actual data… shows, in fact, that Antarctica is warming (because of human activity) just like the rest of the planet. Again, human activity has certainly been exacerbating this problem for a long, long time, and certainly, it is unreasonable to suggest that the entire...

Although no explicit mention of Guantanamo was made in President Obama’s most excellent inauguration address, it does seem that The President (!) is putting his money where his mouth is, as in his very first 24 hours in office, he has directed prosecutors at GTMO to move to stay all prosecutions for 120 days, while the new Obama Administration ascertains how it wishes to proceed from here. [And National Palestine Radio (NPR)! reports that a GTMO judge has granted that request, seconds ago, just before 0900.] I have my own thoughts, of course, on what to do with the GTMO...

It’s finally January 20, 2009; while we’re all excited as hell to have Barack Obama, our first African American (and TD’s first college classmate) to be inaugurated as President… even more exciting is the cessation of pain… pain in the form of the Bush Administration, coming to an end in a little over three hours. Interestingly, like Darth Vader before him, it seems the President has little to offer for his minions; at least so far, those pardons for torture for such denizens as Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet, etc…. just ain’t coming. To quote a character from (IIRC) Unforgiven, “Day Ain’t...