And so it continues… the heroic Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld of the Army Reserve [seventh GTMO prosecutor to resign!] submitted an affidavit in federal court challenging proceedings against GTMO detainee Mohammed Jawad, in which Vandeveld asserts that the evidence against GTMO kangaroo court military commission defendants is in a state of complete chaos. Videotapes of confessions are missing, written confessions for illiterate men are written in languages the men don’t speak (let alone read!), and of course, many of the statements were made under coercion, or outright torture, often at the hands of the Afghans or others who turned them...

First, we’ll start with this news from Candace, to wit, the United States Supreme Court, just as it accepted (though ultimately denied) an original habeas corpus petition on behalf of her client Abdul al-Ghizzawi, now has ordered the government to respond to Candace’s petition for certiorari review, a petition to which Candace was kind enough to let me make some suggestions. The current petition seeks the Supreme Court’s intervention to compel the Government to turn over al-Ghizzawi’s medical records so that an independent medical evaluation may be made, a request that the Bush Administration has vehemently resisted (and the lower...

Jacob Weisberg gives us a Slate piece that tries to ask the meta-question not so much about how catastrophic Bush’s mistakes in office were… but about how the mistakes were made. As Weisberg notes, right now, it’s virtually impossible to name so much as a single area in which Bush left things better than he found them, capped with the triple threat of disasters looming: a bogged down war in Iraq, a world-wide so-called “war on terror” that has debased our standing in the world and yet still managed not to capture one guy, and fiscal mismanagement of a scale...

Regardless of what else happens anywhere else on Earth, even in the same generalized region of the Middle East (where no less a figure than the former Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi, that great savior of American military-imposed democracy as the man first installed before Nouri al-Maliki was eventually tapped, termed Bush and his policy toward Iraq complete failures)… little ever seems to change viz the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Currently, Israel has just commenced a ground offensive into Gaza, after a week of aerial bombardments. The results will inevitably be significant casualties to Hamas and to Gazan civilians, and there will almost...

I should probably just leave it at that, and say, welcome to 2009. I should probably not mention a pair of great FDL pieces (one by Jane Hamsher and one by bmaz on Empty Wheel’s line), both discussing the wonderful conundrum that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has placed the worthless slugs known as the Senate Democratic Caucus in, by forcing them to block Roald Burris, former comptroller and attorney general of Illinois, a universally respected 71 year old man (did I mention he’s a Black man?) from taking an office to which he was lawfully appointed because they have decided...

While the main arc of civilization goes on as it has for millenia (i.e. the powerful White men may do what they like with complete impugnity, but God help anyone else if they dare engage in similar conduct… or hell, if they do anything at all), one must still look back on 2008 and acknowledge just what an amazing year it has been. Obviously, the fact is, in 220 years of our Constitutional system, no man who was (1) a graduate of Columbia College or (2) not born in the lower 48 or (3) not White had ever been elected...

Andy continues his interview with Stephen Abraham, here.

In the staid op-ed section of the Grey Lady, Krugman laments the counter-stimulative tendencies coming from what he terms “50 Herbert Hoovers,” to wit, state governors (more specifically, state governments) that, amidst collapsing revenues in the current financial crisis, will respond at the precise moment that more state and local spending is needed by instead cutting such spending, thereby exacerbating downward pressure on the economy. He’s right, of course, but the issue becomes two-fold: what immediate steps can be taken to ease the current financial crisis, and what reforms can be imposed to ensure a better system. For the latter,...

Is there any way to reconcile the various strands of (miserable) news out there? A maniac divorced a grand total of one week decides to go on a murder suicide rampage in Southern California, dressed as Santa Claus. American officials are urging both sides to behave calmly, as evidently, both nuclear armed South Asian powers, India and Pakistan, appear to be engaging in troop movements toward each other. And this… only a year after Benazir “Pinky” Bhutto was killed . Amidst other miserable economic news, after soft holiday sales, retailers expect even softer post-holiday sales. We won’t even discuss the...

And we’ll belay the customary Festivus airing of grievances to say… “I’m Rick WARREN, bitches.” And to all, a good Festivus.