Supreme Court Refuses Detainees' Case

Most at Guantanamo have not been found guilty of anything. Yet they remain there, in a legal black hole, their only hope, sham military tribunals. Guantanamo is a disgrace to our country and to the rule of law.

AP:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the case of two Guantanamo Bay prisoners who want to challenge the legality of military commissions.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr face commission trials _ Hamdan for acting as a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, and Khadr for throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Green Beret soldier.

Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer would have granted the request to hear the case, the court said in turning it down. It takes four votes, though, to hear a case. (cont.)

Fmr CIA Officers: Tenet "The Alberto Gonzales Of The Intelligence Community"

CNN:
In a letter written Saturday to former CIA Director George Tenet, six former CIA officers described their former boss as "the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community," and called his book "an admission of failed leadership."

The writers said Tenet has "a moral obligation" to return the Medal of Freedom he received from President Bush.

They also called on him to give more than half the royalties he gets from book, "At the Center of the Storm," to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and families of the dead.

Ex-CIA analyst: Forged 'yellowcake' memo 'leads right back to' Cheney

Rawstory:
A former CIA analyst claims that falsified documents which were meant to show that Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime had been trying to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger can be traced back to Vice President Dick Cheney.

You can watch the video here

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

Guardian UK:
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Earth Like Planet Discovered

AFP:
Astronomers reported they they had found a "super-Earth" more than 20 light years away, the most intriguing world found so far in the search for extra-terrestrial life.

About five times the mass of Earth, the planet orbits a cool, dim "red dwarf" star in the constellation of Libra, the team from the European Southern Observatory said in a press release. (cont.)

Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes.

Bush Admin Uses Justice Dept To Restrict Voter Turn Out In Battleground States

McClatchy Washington Bureau:
For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates. (cont.)

Assault weapon used in VT shooting was banned till recently

Alternet:
It turns out that one of the two guns used in the Virginia Tech massacre, a Glock 9 pistol, had been banned by 1994's Federal Assault Weapons Ban, passed by the new Republican congress (by 1 vote) and enacted by Bill Clinton. The Ban subsequently faded into the sunset as the Republican congress (under Bush) failed to renew it despite protests from "every major national law enforcement organization in the country." read on...

Just before the ban expired in 2004, two republicans noted the ominous and the obvious:
Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Michael Castle, R-Del., said they were disheartened. "My leadership is playing Russian roulette," Shays said. "There will be without question a horrific crime committed without an assault weapon ban, and every member of Congress will have to ask where were they on this issue."

Patrick Leahy’s Opening Statements

C&L:
Senator Patrick Leahy, D-VT, gave a powerful opening statement this morning to open the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings dealing with the ongoing scandal involving Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the purge of 8 U.S. Attorneys.

You can watch the video here

Leahy: "Real oversight has returned to Capitol Hill. Investigations have already pulled back the curtain to reveal unbridled political meddling, Katrina style cronyism, and unfettered White House unilateralism that is directed at one of our most precious national assets. Our law enforcement - our legal system. Earlier in this process it seemed the administration was concluding that any answer would do, whether it was rooted in the facts or not. Those days are behind us. Just any answer won't do anymore. We need the facts to pursue the facts until we get the truth."

Leahy also made it clear that Gonzales would not be getting a free pass regarding his involvement in the authorization and justification of the use of torture by the U.S. Let's just hope Leahy doesn't give a free pass to Cheney or Bush either.

Stewart, Colbert Viewers More Informed than Fox Viewers

Editor & Publisher:
Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.

Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers. read on...

Top Conservatives Demand Bush Fire Gonzales

Time:
In what could prove an embarrassing new setback for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the eve of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a group of influential conservatives and longtime Bush supporters has written a letter to the White House to call for his resignation. read on...

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Independent UK:

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast....

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

Watchdog to Fitzgerald: Re-open Plame investigation in light of Rove's 'missing' emails

It was simply at matter of time.

Rawstory:
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a Washington-based legal watchdog organization, has called on Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to re-open an investigation into White House adviser Karl Rove's role in the identity leak of former CIA agent Valerie Plame.

"It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson," said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. read on...

Four Years Worth of Rove's E-mails Missing

Washington Post:
A lawyer for the Republican National Committee told congressional staff members yesterday that the RNC is missing at least four years' worth of e-mail from White House senior adviser Karl Rove that is being sought as part of investigations into the Bush administration, according to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. (cont.)

4 years of missing e-mails? I wonder what Patrick Fitzgerald would think? We quickly have forgotten Rove's role in the outing of Valerie Plame. Perhaps he was using his RNC account to discuss that matter as well?

Sperm made from human bone marrow

BBC News:
Scientists say they have successfully made immature sperm cells from human bone marrow samples.

If these can be grown into fully developed sperm, which the researchers hope to do within five years, they may be useful in fertility treatments. read on...

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut

You can watch a recent video clip of him, from the Daily Show, here

What Vonnegut had to say about Bush:

"George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PP's, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences"

BREAKING: White House lost Over FIVE MILLION e-mails in two year period

CREW:
Through two confidential sources, CREW learned that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over FIVE MILLION emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.

CREW Executive Director, Melanie Sloan issued this statement:
"It’s clear that the White House has been willfully violating the law, the only question now is to what extent? The ever changing excuses offered by the administration – that they didn’t want to violate the Hatch Act, that staff wasn’t clear on the law – are patently ridiculous. Very convenient that embarrassing – and potentially incriminating – emails have gone missing. It’s the Nixon White House all over again."

Leahy: Bush aides lying about e-mails

MSNBC:
WASHINGTON - President Bush's aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy suggested Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.

Leahy is right. Anybody, that knows anything about e-mails, knows that they don't get lost. Even if you delete them on your computer they don't go away. Of course, Bush's limited understanding of "the internets", and the fact that he says he doesn't use e-mail, may indicate a lack of knowledge on this subject that goes beyond the president.

John McCain Fucked by the Republican Fantasy World

Bill Maher:
John McCain's not an idiot. I'm sure he knows that it's not safe in Baghdad, but he has to pretend that it's safe in Baghdad because that's what the GOP base wants to hear.

We keep hearing that a significant majority of Americans think the war was a mistake and want the troops out.

And that's true. But those figures are an average of all voters and are pretty deceptive, because most Republicans are still gung-ho about the war. In fact, two-thirds of likely GOP primary voters support what Bush is doing in Iraq. They support the surge. They've swallowed so much Kool-Aid that any change in their diet would kill them.

U.S. British War on Terror Failing

AFP:
The US-led and British-backed war on terror is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions rather than on root causes, a think tank warned Wednesday.

"The 'war on terror' is failing and actually increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks," the Oxford Research Group said in its study, titled "Beyond Terror: The Truth About The Real Threats To Our World."

You can see video from CNN International here

Diabetics cured by stem-cell treatment

Times Online:
Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again.

American Tortured by Americans

Alternet:
An American former Navy soldier and private contractor imprisoned and tortured in Iraq by the U.S. military and falsely accused of "aiding terrorists" warns that our worst fears about Iraq have come true.

A year ago, Donald Vance learned what its like to be falsely accused by the U.S. military of aiding terrorists. He was held without charge for more than three months in a high-security prison in Iraq, and interrogated daily after sleepless nights without legal counsel or even a phone call to his family. read on...

U.S. Offered to Hit Iran for British

Guardian UK:
The US offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, including buzzing Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions with warplanes, the Guardian has learned. (cont.)

Congress Investigates Off-The Record Email Addresses Used By Rove, Top Officials

LA Times:
Democrats say a private e-mail system was used in violation of federal rules.

Now, that dual computer system is creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove's once-vaunted White House operation.

Democrats say evidence suggests the RNC e-mail system was used for political and government policy matters in violation of federal record preservation and disclosure rules. read on...

Professor Who Criticized Bush Added to Terror Watch List

Rawstory:
A top Constitutional scholar from Princeton who gave a televised speech that slammed President George W. Bush's executive overreach recently learned that he had been added to the Transportation Security Administration's terrorist watch list. He shared his experience this weekend at the law blog Balkinization. continued...

Reality to John McCain

The blood of these Iraqi's is on his hands. It sickens me that a man I used to respect has sunk so low as to support this nightmare. He of all people should know better.

London Times:
"The latest massacre of Iraqi children came as 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress. "


Larry Johnson comments on how McCain's visit uneccessarily put the troops at risk:
"John McCain and Lindsey Graham put American soldiers' lives at risk just so they could have a photo op. That's the bottomline. Why didn't they do a ride along on a real patrol? Perhaps they could have joined the U.S. team that responded to an ambush of an American patrol yesterday? Of course a total of six U.S. soldiers died in that operation. Shit! You can't take real risks. No sir. Instead, U.S. military resources are devoted to making propaganda. U.S. soldiers were ordered into harms way just to ensure a congressional delegation could walk around, look serious, and perpetuate the lie that more U.S. soldiers must come to Iraq and die. That was a propaganda event and fucking General Petraeus ought to be ashamed. "

Iran to release British sailors tomorrow

Guardian UK:

Fifteen British marines and sailors held captive in Iran for almost a fortnight are expected to fly home tomorrow morning after the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced their release as a "gift" to the UK.

In a surprise announcement during a news conference at the presidential palace in Tehran, Mr Ahmadinejad said the 14 men and one woman would be "going back home" in a move marking the birthday of the prophet Muhammad last Saturday and acknowledging Easter.

You can read the full article here

Bush f**k-up commemorative plates

Alternet:
"Bill Maher, noting that only 3% of Republicans currently call themselves "Bush Republicans," launches into a satirical commercial for a series of collectible Bush F**k-Up Commemorative Plates. "

You can check out the video here

The Secret War Against Iran

ABC News:
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

Terrorism- Hick's Plea Bargain Arranged to Furthur Political Ends

Center for American Progress:
In February, Vice President Cheney traveled to Australia to visit with his close ally Prime Minister John Howard, who pleaded for the release of the Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks. Last Friday, Hicks became the first person to be sentenced by a military commission convened under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, accepting nine months of imprisonment and a gag order preventing him discussing the case for 12 months.

The plea bargain itself was brokered by Susan Crawford, the top military commission official and a former Department of Defense inspector general under then-Secretary of Defense Cheney, without the knowledge or input of the lawyers prosecuting Hicks. Indeed, even the lead prosecutor expressed shock over the light sentence. Given the nature of the deal, suspicions are being raised that the plea agreement may have been an orchestrated gesture by Cheney to benefit Howard -- who is trailing in the polls -- in his re-election bid. Hick's father commented that "it is clearly a political fix arranged between Mr. Howard and the Bush administration to shut up Hicks until after the election in November."

Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson said, "I'm not naive. ... I'm quite sure they worked out a plea bargain that...would allow David Hicks to return to Australia, and satisfy Prime Minister Howard's needs." One observer noted that the arrangement would be unconstitutional under U.S. law. The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan highlighted the questionable circumstances surrounding the plea bargain: "If you think this was in any way a legitimate court process, you're smoking something even George Michael would pay a lot of money for. It was a political deal, revealing the circus that the alleged Gitmo court system really is."

Israeli Press Report: US will Strike Iran on Good Friday

Global Research:
Citing Russian media and AP, the Jerusalem Post is now reporting that the US will strike Iran on Good Friday between the hours of 4.00 am and 4.00 pm in a coordinated series of air strikes and missile attacks aimed at selected strategic targets.

Russian intelligence sources identify US forces assembled in the Persian Gulf armed with aircraft and missiles that could carry out the hard power attack. The US fleet in the Gulf includes two aircraft carriers: USS Eisenhower and USS Stennis with a third on the way, USS Nimitz.

You can read the full article here

The Daily Donohue: The Violent Rantings of a lunatic bully over a Chocolate Jesus

I was raised Catholic and I must say, people like Donahue are an absolute embarrassment to the faith. This kind of authoritarian bully madness should be shunned by every good Catholic

From C&L(John Amato):
Donohue is a typical right wing bully. I have to figure that many Catholics are offended as I am by this man and I wish they would come out and say it. All he does is name call and spew hatred and violence as he searches for ways to silence people—in this case telling Cosmo that he's lucky he doesn't cut off his head. And his offense? A chocolate Jesus. Cosmo Cavallaro calls him out on Anderson Cooper. Digby show us art at the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Will Donahue protest Michelangelo? I've seen " The David," and I was in awe of its beauty. Feministe has more…

You can watch the video here

Call that humiliation?

Former Monty Python fame Terry Jones weighs in on the British hostages in Iran:

No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.

To read the full commentary click here