Tag Archives: torture

California

Dianne Feinstein attached electrodes to my conscience and then hit the power switch

If torture is something that “shocks the conscience,” and Dianne Feinstein has come out in favor of someone who refuses to make a clear statement about waterboarding being torture, then let’s use that language in our response back to her, and in discussion about what she did.

Dianne Feinstein attached electrodes to my conscience, then she hit the power switch.

Her vote for Mukasey is a vote in support of this administration’s shameful ambiguity about using torture. Dianne Feinstein has embraced this administration’s ongoing debasement of the pride and humanity and moral standings of a nation founded in the rule of law.

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Some Polls

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The chooser:

For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they “strongly disapprove” of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.

Not Alberto Gonzalez:

Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

I’d like to see a poll on whether people think Democrats should save the Constitution or save their powder…

Blog Roundup, Environment, Health Care, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco

November 3, 2007 Blog Roundup and Open Thread

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Today’s Blog Roundup is on the flip. Let me know what I missed in comments, or just use this as an open thread.

To subscribe by email, click
here and do what comes naturally.

Read These

Dianne Feinstein is
Principle-Free or Actively Pro-Torture:  You make the call.
(With Bonus Jane Harman Posts)

Reflections on the SoCal
Fires

Local

Environment

All the Rest

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DiFi Hearts Torture

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Make no mistake, at this point, a vote for Judge Mukasey is a vote for torture.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California say the will support Michael Mukasey’s nomination to be attorney general. Both are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

They did the old Friday-afternoon get-out-of-Dodge news dump on it, too.  Guess DiFi learned a lot on that Air Force One ride with George.

Michael Mukasey has refused to explain whether waterboarding is torture.  Allowing him to be the nation’s highest law enforcement official means sanctioning that opinion at the highest levels.  Worse, Mukasey’s views on executive power – believing that the President has unenumerated powers in wartime – sanction official lawbreaking at the highest levels, and emasculate Congress in their attempts to do anything about it.  DiFi just eliminated her need to show up at the office.

UPDATE: A bit more here.

In announcing her support for Mukasey, Feinstein, D-Calif., said “first and foremost, Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales,” referring to the former attorney general who resigned in September after months of questions about his honesty.

Inspiring!

Wow, the standards of government have gone completely into the toilet.

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Bill Richardson: Vote “No” on Torture and Mukasey

Water-boarding is term that describes strapping an individual to a board, with a towel pulled tightly across his face, and pouring water on him or her to cut off air and simulate drowning. 

When asked directly last week whether he thought waterboarding is constitutional, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey was evasive.  As noted by NPR, Mukasey “danced around the issue of whether waterboarding actually is torture and stopped short of saying that it is.” “If it amounts to torture,” Mukasey said carefully, “then it is not constitutional.”

As stated by Bill Richardson,

Waterboarding is torture, and anyone who is unwilling to identify it as such is not qualified to be the chief legal officer of the United States of America. If I were in the U.S. Senate, I would vote against Mukasey unless he denounces such specific forms of torture.

What about the Democrats in the U.S. Senate and other Democratic Presidential candidates?  Will they oppose Mukasey unless he denounces the use of torture by our government?

John Hutson, former judge advocate general of the Navy said last week after Judge Mukasey’s confirmation hearing , “Waterboarding was devised in the Spanish Inquisition. Next to the rack and thumbscrews, it’s the most iconic example of torture.”

The Bush Administration seems to believe that when anyone else does it, it’s torture, but when the U.S. does it, waterboarding  is acceptable.  Rudy Giuliani holds the same view. 

During his confirmation hearings, when asked about waterboarding, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, wrote:

Michael Mukasey suddenly seemed to morph into his predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales — beginning with a series of openly evasive answers that ultimately led to what appeared to be a lie. At first, he repeatedly stated that he does not support torture, which violates the U.S. Constitution. This is precisely the answer given so often by President Bush like a mantra. The problem is that Bush defines torture to exclude things like water-boarding. It is like saying you do not rob banks, but then defining bank robbery in such a way that it does not include walking in with a gun and demanding money from the cashier.

The senators pushed Mukasey to go beyond the Bush administration mantra. He refused and then said something that made many of us who were listening gasp: “I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” he said.

In an editorial published this week, the Los Angeles Times states:

Michael B. Mukasey, who once seemed headed to confirmation as attorney general by acclamation, may now be facing a narrower and more contentious vote. That’s the price the retired federal judge from New York will have to pay unless he reconsiders some evasive testimony about torture.

. . .As the 10 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee noted in a letter to the nominee, water-boarding “has been the subject of much public discussion.” What isn’t clear is whether the CIA reserves the right to resort to that appalling practice to elicit information, reliable or otherwise, from suspected terrorists.

. . .Mukasey owes the Senate, and the country, an unambiguous commitment to upholding the Geneva Convention’s ban on “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” The question to him is whether Americans — in any service, for any reason — should be allowed to engage in water-boarding. The only acceptable answer is no.

As noted by Professor Turley, there are only two explanations for Mukasey’s evasion:  either Mukasey is the most ill-informed nominee in the history of this republic or, the more likely explanation: Mukasey is lying.

Where do our Senate Democrats and Presidential candidates stand on torture?  That is what the vote on Mukasey has become.

The candidate I’m supporting for President, Bill Richardson, stated on October 19th:

“Waterboarding is torture, and anyone who is unwilling to identify it as such is not qualified to be the chief legal officer of the United States of America. If I were in the U.S. Senate, I would vote against Mukasey unless he denounces such specific forms of torture.

“Torture does not work. Mistreatment backfires and destroys our international leadership, as we saw with Abu Ghraib. Torture also endangers our own troops. The standards we adopt may well be what our own troops are subjected to.

“Anytime one makes a person think he or she is being executed, the very nature of waterboarding, it obviously is a violation of the U.S. Constitution, international law, and basic human decency.

“ABC News has described waterboarding as follows: ‘The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face, and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in, and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.’

“If another nation engaged in waterboarding against American citizens, we would denounce that country and call the practice barbaric, and rightly so.

“We must stand against torture without equivocation, without compromise, and without exception. Torture is a violation of everything we stand for as Americans and as human beings.”

Supporters of Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Dodd, Biden and other the candidates – where does your candidate stand on the confirmation of Mukasey?

Let’s rally together and call on all Democrats in the Senate to vote “no” on torture and Mukasey.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Harman Speaks to Westside Progressives in Los Angeles

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My post about Jane Harman’s remarks at a town hall meeting yesterday about the secret “torture memos” revealed this week by the New York Times is up at Think Progress, submitted through their Blog Fellows Program, which I can’t recommend enough.  Let me contextualize those remarks a bit more, and add some of the other interesting things Rep. Harman had to say.

I asked the question to Harman about the secret memos.  Earlier this week, the White House claimed that all relevant members of Congress had been fully briefed on the classified program sanctioning harsh interrogation techniques by the CIA.  At the time of the memos, Harman was a member of the “Gang Of Eight” routinely briefed on intelligence matters.  Harman was shaking her head as I asked the question if she was fully briefed, chuckling almost in disbelief.  Her answer:

We were not fully briefed. We were told about operational details but not these memos. Jay Rockefeller said the same thing, and I associate myself with his remarks. And we want to see these memos.

over…

Harman is now the third member of the Gang of Eight, joining Jay Rockefeller and Nancy Pelosi, to reject the White House’s claim that they were fully briefed about these memos.  The Administration is lying, again, and it is now incumbent upon Congress to make every effort to obtain those memos and to enshrine into law a full repudiation of the arguments therein described.  The follow-up question I wanted to ask Rep. Harman, but could not, was how she would go about pressuring the White House to get those documents.  Obviously the vehicle for this is through the confirmation of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey.  Considering that these memos came out of the Justice Department, there should simply be no movement on his confirmation without an exchange of the memos.

Let me add some additional information about the town hall.  I wrote in my Think Progress post this tidbit:

Harman later revealed that she was speaking with an unidentified Republican in her office, who told her that if President Bush were to attack Iran, then even he would vote for impeachment.

You have to understand the environment of this town hall meeting.  The audience included the hardcore progressives that made up the core of the Marcy Winograd primary challenge to Harman in 2006; in fact, Winograd was on a panel right before Harman’s arrival.  These people were SCREAMING for impeachment; the first two questions were about this issue.  And Harman could do nothing but reiterate that Nancy Pelosi, not her, had taken impeachment off the table.  She went on to describe her no votes against the Clinton impeachment and how MoveOn.org was born out of the impeachment debate (odd of her to approvingly cite MoveOn, considering she voted to condemn their remarks in the “General Betrayus” ad).  But when she brought up Iran, she said “this little anecdote should make you smile,” and mentioned the above exchange.

Here are some of the other notable tidbits in Harman’s meeting.

• She recommended Jack Goldsmith’s “The Terror Presidency” as the best source for understanding how the Bush Administration attempted to expand executive power through neutering the Office of Legal Counsel.  She had the book with her.

• She reiterated that “intelligence was politicized again” on the FISA bill, referring to the fake terror attack hyped by the White House designed to get wavering Democrats to sanction warrantless surveillance.  It was a cold-blooded tactic, and it should be heavily publicized.  I thanked Rep. Harman for speaking out on this, and I hope that she’ll continue as well as encourage other members to corroborate her allegations.  Harman said she is working to change the new FISA bill, which will “probably be introduced this week.”  The goals are that any surveillance must be done through the FISA court, with a warrant, and with minimization protocols if a US national is involved.

• Harman spoke about her legislation to close Guantanamo, restore habeas corpus, and end the use of national security letters outside their initial purpose.  She spoke glowingly about the vote this week to put Blackwater contractors under the auspices of US law, and thanked both Rep. Waxman and Rick Jacobs, who produced Iraq for Sale, with their efforts to get the word out about Blackwater’s numerous abuses and how they fell into the “legal black hole” regarding their activities.

• She recommended the Seymour Hersh article about developments with respect to Iran, and said that she has invited him to speak to the Congress.  Harman was adamant in saying that “targeted sanctions are working” with Iran, and that the government should “stop the saber rattling” that could lead us to another catastrophic war.

• She trumpeted her contribution to the House energy bill, a measure to retire the incandescent light bulb by 2012.

• On trade, she made a disappointing statement.  Despite voting against NAFTA and CAFTA and claiming that she was proven right on those votes, she said that some trade deals are admissable with proper labor and environmental standards as well as trade adjustment assistance, and referring to the current Peruvian Free Trade Agreement that will come up for vote in a couple weeks, she said that “It was approved by Charlie Rangel.”  Uh-oh.  We know that this bill, crafted in the dead of night to appease corporate interests, does not go nearly far enough to ensure labor and environmental standards, and would be nothing more than NAFTA-light.

• Someone asked Rep. Harman about the Walt-Mearshimer book “The Israel Lobby” and AIPAC’s support for endless war, including war with Iran.  Harman, who has been linked in the past to lobbies like AIPAC, said “I’m not a member of AIPAC… I support a two-state solution where Palestine can thrive economically with borders that are defensible to Israel.”  She pretty much dodged the question.

• On the still-unresolved EPA waiver that would allow California to make their own rules on tailpipe emissions that contribute to global warming, Harman said that she signed on to a letter protesting the slow-rolling from the EPA and the Department of Transportation, and she added that Gov. Schwarzenegger should work harder to get DoT to “back off” (they’ve been accused of lobbying lawmakers to pressure the EPA to block the California law).

• Finally, Harman asked for education activists to call her office and tell her about the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.  While she said that Rep. Miller has claimed to her it has been improved, she said “I am prepared to oppose it” if the changes are not satisfactory.

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Just Weights And Measures

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(Cross posted on my site, Daily Kos and Open Left. – promoted by David Dayen)

Yesterday I managed to get myself to services for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  The familiar rituals and rites of Judaism can be comforting but often lapse into rote recitation.  But yesterday, the rabbi’s sermon woke me up and put a new spin on the moral code that underpins all humanity, which is at the heart of not only Jewish teaching, but the foundational premises of our country, principles we are rapidly losing over the course of the Bush Presidency.

The rabbi talked about a little-remarked-upon section of the Old Testament.  Leviticus is filled with a laundry list of commandments and guidelines for life in Biblical times.  One section focuses on “just weights and measures.”

35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. 36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.

An ephah is a unit of dry measure, roughly equivalent to about 23 liters.  The way that business was conducted in this time was that every shopkeeper would have their own ephah, and their own stone, and would parcel out portions of products based on how they filled the ephah or balanced against the stone.  It was stressed in the Old Testament that you have ONE ephah, and that it be clean and untainted, so that the measure was the same everywhere anyone traveled.  What was commanded was that you never substitute “ephah v’ephah”: having one measure for some people, and a different measure for others.

The rabbi made a strong statement paralleling this commandment for just measures with our present policies on immigration.  “You deal with the person in front of you, and you have mercy on them and deal with them and provide for them and care for them as you would anyone else.”  This is not a political accomodation but a moral imperative; to do any different would be to put our thumb on the scale.  And then the rabbi paused, and said, “I should stop there but I won’t.  For I must not be silent about torture.”  This is also a violation of “ephah v’ephah.”  He said that locking up suspects indefinitely and coercing their confessions through prohibited tactics is a sin against God, an “abomination,” as the Old Testament calls it, and one that was held in the highest seriousness to Hebrew scholars.  “We know a lot about that other thing called abomination,” he said, a clear reference to the oft-used line by conservative Christians that homosexuality is an “abomination.”  Unlike sexuality, using separate ephahs for separate people CANNOT be rectified through penance.  It is as serious a sin as there is in Judaism.  And this is perhaps because it gets at the very heart of the measure of a man.  If we cannot treat others the same, no matter what the circumstances, we have no basis to call ourselves moral human beings.

The United States has their own “ephah,” called the Constitution.  We cannot profess to follow the rule of law while breaking it whenever convenient.  We not only damage our credibility, but we do violence to the ancient concept of just weights and measures.  For six and a half long years we have seen an Administration throw morality out the window while claiming to have the word of God on their side.  They have eliminated the Great Writ of habeas corpus, they have spied on their fellow citizens without warrants, they have incarcerated terror suspects at Guantanamo and secret prisons indefinitely and without charges, they have nullified federal statutes through the questionably legal means of signing statements, and more.  And we cannot stand idly by while they use one ephah for their friends and allies, and another ephah for anyone they deem a threat, be it militarily or politically.  We must stand up for just measures.

This week, the ACLU of Southern California, in partnership with Calitics, is launching The Campaign for Our Constitution.  It is an aggressive effort to restore our Constitution and our civil liberties and reverse the extreme policies of the Bush Administration that have made us less safe and called into question just what freedom we’re supposed to be fighting for abroad.  Bloggers, constitutional scholars and activists are joining together in the fight to recapture basic constitutional values.  There are going to be a lot of action items you can take in the future, but for now I want to give you the schedule for the coming weeks.

The campaign officially kicks off Monday, Sept. 17, with a conference call with Salon.com contributor and New York Times bestselling author Glenn Greenwald. He will discuss the future of the Constitution with Cenk Uygur, co-host of Air America’s “Young Turks” morning show, and take members’ questions. The conference call is open to anyone who RSVPs through www.ourconstitution.net.

In the next month, the campaign will hold conference calls on Sept. 20 with Dr. Drew Westen, an Emory University psychologist, Huffington Post contributor, and author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” and on Oct. 4 with John Dean, former White House counsel for Richard Nixon and author of the new book “Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches,” just released by Viking Press. There also will be a free screening and discussion with director Robert Greenwald (“Outfoxed,” “Unconstitutional”) in Hollywood on Sept. 25.

“Southern Californians are itching for a fight,” said ACLU/SC field director Susanne Savage. “The U.S. Constitution is our core issue. We intend to lead a campaign that will expose the sad truths about our government’s policies, inspire people to act and give our electeds the political cover they need to stop legislating out of fear.”

There is no more important issue for our country moving forward than to regain the sense of justice and truth that’s been sorely missing for too long.  Please visit OurConstitution.net and see what you can do to help.  We can and must return this nation to one where there are just weights and measures.

Environment, Health Care, Orange County

CA-46: Who Needs Any More of Crazy Dana’s Insanity?

(Proudly cross-posted at Ditch Crazy Dana, Southern California’s resource for fighting back against the sheer insanity of Dana Rohrabacher. : ) – promoted by atdleft)

I’ve had it. I’m sick of it. And I won’t take it anymore. Dana Rohrabacher simply has to go. NOW!

Crazy Dana loved the Taliban. Crazy Dana still loves disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Crazy Dana dismisses the seriously distubing reality of global climate change as just “dinosaur flatulence”. Crazy Dana is vehemently anti-choice, even though he represents a pro-choice district. And now, Crazy Dana wishes death by terrorist attack upon the family members of ANYONE who has the nerve to call him out on his sheer insanity.

Simply put, Crazy Dana is batshit insane. In fact, TOO BATSHIT INSANE to even be allowed inside our nation’s Capitol, let alone serving another term in Congress. He doesn’t represent our values, and he can’t get our logic. This is the final straw, and now it’s time for us to plan how to restore sanity to our Congressional office.

(Follow me after the flip for more on how we can really DITCH CRAZY DANA…)

So what can we do to restore insanity to our Congressional office? Well, we need to let our neighbors know just how insane our member of Congress truly is. We are a coastal community that cares about our natural resources. We are a socially tolerant community that values women’s reproductive rights. We are a reasonable community that values pragmatic, common-sense solutions. And simply put, Crazy Dana doesn’t represent us on any of these issues.

Crazy Dana refuses to acknowledge the serious threat of global climate change. Crazy Dana wants to completely take away a woman’s right to choose. Crazy Dana wants natural gas drilling off our precious coast. And now, Crazy Dana wishes acts of terror upon family members of anyone who disagrees with his insane point of view. This is NOT someone who should represent us in Congress.

We need to let our neighbors know of Dana’s insanity. We need to let them know that Dana does not represent our values in Washington. We need to let them know that Dana is no “cool maverick”, but rather a far right extremist. We need to let them know that there are leaders in our community who are better fit to serve us in Congress. Basically, it’s time for us to begin organizing in the 46th. We cannot afford any more of Crazy Dana. We need to return to reason in this district. NOW!

Los Angeles Area, Orange County

“I hope it’s your family members that … suffer the consequences”

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(I added the audio. This garbage cannot be allowed to stand. -Brian;
Thanks, Brian, for the audio! And thanks, dday, for posting about this horrifying rambling by Orange County’s most notorious psychotic politician. – promoted by atdleft)

Check out this diary for video.

Of all the wingnutty statements from Rep. Dana “you say Taliban, I say Paliban” Rohrabacher, this may be the wingnuttiest.  What makes it worse is that he said it in the presence of Col. Ann Wright, who served this country for 45 years in the military and the diplomatic service, fighting for the very values on which Rohrabacher spits. 

During a Congressional hearing this week with members of the European Parliament on the practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby detainees are flown on CIA planes to secret prisons all over the world to be tortured either at Guantanamo or their countries of origin, Rohrabacher scoffed at all notions of eliminating this deeply troublesome program, which has harmed our stature with our allies and around the world and has debased our souls, and then busted out with this:

Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American […]

Rohrabacher never once mentioned due process, the rule of law, right to a trial for anyone picked up in the extraordinary rendition program. Merely because persons were “rendered” and imprisoned by the US meant to Rohrbacker they were guilty.

Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects. When citizens attending the hearing, including members of Codepink Women for Peace and Veterans for Peace, heard Rohrabacher’s statement, they collectively groaned. Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rorhbacker said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: “I hope it’s your family members that die when terrorists strike.”


(NOTE: in the clip provided, Rohrabacher specifically said “suffer the consequences,” not die.)

So a US Representative wished for death on his fellow Americans because they disagree with him that the best way to fight terror is to hook people’s genitals up to electrodes so they can give us false information.

This is of course nothing new for Rohrabacher.  During the election he told the father of an Iraq soldier that “you’re the one calling your son a war criminal.” (go about 5:15 into the clip)

But this is pretty low on the scale of human discourse.  Hoping that your critics are killed by terrorists.  And don’t forget, after the fact he’d exploit those dead to justify permanent and endless war.

California

No Torture: Call Your Senator

The United States Senate is about to debate a Republican-sponsored bill which would retroactively legalize torture, legalize secret trials, and eliminate eight hundred years of the right of habeas corpus.

California’s Democratic Senators have not yet declared their opposition to this bill.  Call them and tell them you oppose it.  Here’s roughly what I said to the nice folks who answered the phones and took my comments:

I am a Democrat and a constituent of the Senator’s and I want to know how she plans to vote on the legalization of torture and elimination of habeas corpus.

[The senator is reviewing the bill and has not taken a position.  Can I take your comment?]

Yes.  This is the defining issue for me as an American and for my support of the Senator.  If she does not oppose the legalization of torture and elimination of habeas corpus with every tool she has, she will never see one dime from me, she will never again receive a vote from me, and I will do everything in my power to see that she has a primary challenge the next time she runs.

I know this is not California politics, but we are Americans, not just Californians.  Numbers below the fold.

Dianne Feinstein:

Washington: 202/224-3841
San Francisco: 415/393-0707
Los Angeles: 310/914-7300
San Diego: 619/231-9712
Fresno: 559/485-7430

Barbara Boxer:

Washington: (202) 224-3553
San Francisco: (415) 956-6701 fax
Los Angeles: (213) 894-5000
Sacramento: (916) 448-2787
San Diego: (619) 239-3884
Fresno: (559) 497-5109
Inland Empire: (909) 888-8525