Bush Lawyers

For When Newspeak and Doublethink Don't Go Far Enough

John Yoo, Tenured Loser
Apparently John Yoo gets to return to his job teaching at Berkeley law school, despite being the author of the infamous torture memoranda that gave Bush the greenlight for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the CIA 'black sites' around the world, etc.

The dean of Berkeley's law school says he is "substantively" troubled by former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo's legal memos, which critics say authorize torture, but he does not believe Yoo's conduct while working for the Bush administration justifies his dismissal from the law school where he has taught for a decade.

...

Assuming one believes as I do that Professor Yoo offered bad ideas and even worse advice during his government service, that judgment alone would not warrant dismissal or even a potentially chilling inquiry. As a legal matter, the test here is the relevant excerpt from the "General University Policy Regarding Academic Appointees," adopted for the 10-campus University of California by both the system-wide Academic Senate and the Board of Regents:

Types of unacceptable conduct: … Commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty. [Academic Personnel Manual sec. 015]

This very restrictive standard is binding on me as dean, but I will put aside that shield and state my independent and personal view of the matter. I believe the crucial questions in view of our university mission are these: Was there clear professional misconduct—that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney—material to Professor Yoo’s academic position? Did the writing of the memoranda, and his related conduct, violate a criminal or comparable statute?

I guess advocating torture and murder in an official government capacity is legal for an American.

In World War II, we put people like Yoo on trial at Nuremberg, but times have changed.

Source: Raw Story

Just So You Know Who You're Dealing With
Here's an excerpt of Yoo's sterling legal thinking, from a 2006 debate with an actual human being.

This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.

What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.

It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."

This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

Yes, Yoo thinks that there is no treaty or law that Congress can pass or approve that would ban the President of the United States from ordering the torture and mutilation of children.

It all depends on WHY he wants to crush a child's testicles with a hammer, you see.

Source: Information Clearinghouse

Eighth Amendment? What's That?
John Yoo is also the man who argued that torture doesn't violate the 8th Amendment because, even though a person has been declared an enemy combatant and is being held against their will, they're not being CONVICTED of anything, so it's ok to beat them and strap electrodes on and so forth.

A second constitutional provision which might be thought relevant to interrogations is the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment, however, applies solely to those persons upon whom criminal sanctions have been imposed.
--snip--
The Eighth Amendment thus has no application to those individuals who have not been punished as part of a criminal proceeding, irrespective of the fact that they have been detained by the government.
--snip--
The detention of enemy combatants can in no sense be deemed "punishment" for the purposes of the Eighth Amendment. Unlike imprisonment pursuant to criminal sanction, the detention of enemy combatants involves no sentence judicially imposed or legislatively required and those detained will be released at the end of the conflict.

See? It's ok to torture people as long as they have not been convicted of anything!

His reasoning, ironically enough, means that the only people safe from torture are convicts.

Justice Scalia shares this Alice in Wonderland approach to punishment of course.

Scalia said that it was "extraordinary" to assume that the U.S. Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" also applied to "so-called" torture.

"To begin with the Constitution ... is referring to punishment for crime. And, for example, incarcerating someone indefinitely would certainly be cruel and unusual punishment for a crime," he said in an interview with the Law in Action program on BBC Radio 4.

Scalia said stronger measures could be taken when a witness refused to answer questions.

"I suppose it's the same thing about so-called torture. Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution?" he asked.

"It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that. And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game" Scalia said. "How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?"

See? Torture is ok, if people are not yet convicted of a crime!

You can only punish the legally innocent!

What incentive is there for anyone to ever be tried at all? Just round up all your enemies, shove them in holes, and every couple of days haul them out for a rousing waterboard session. Don't bother thinking up charges; YOU WON'T NEED THEM.

Source: Firedoglake

Yoo Memo
And here of course is the famous Yoo Memo from last week, where he argues that, amongst other things, the military can MAIM YOU in the course of an interrogation, and that's ok.

Seriously. He does.

He also argues that the Fifth Amendment doesn't apply to torture, so long as it's done outside the United States, or to people who aren't US citizens.

And that the 8th amendment, again, has no place in torture.

From just a skim of this trash, which I intend to digest later when my blood pressure goes back down, it appears that Yoo likes to dance on the edge of any number of knives; what the President does to prisoners is ok, because we're at war, and you can do what you like during a war to people on the other side, according to the Constitution and Federal Law. Of course, if we WERE at war, the Geneva Conventions would apply, so we're not, because that would be wrong. But if we're not at war, then the Fifth Amendment would apply, at least on US soil (which Guantanamo is, for example, by treaty)... so we're not.

We're in a Quantum War state, both in, and not in, war at the same time. Our prisoners are both POWs, and not POWs. Our prisons are both US facilities, and foreign ones, as we see fit.

And on, and on, and on, down and down we go into the very pits of hell.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Finally, From the Bill of Rights

Amendment IV


The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V


No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI


In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VIII


Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX


The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

It almost seems like the Fourth Amendment guarantees your right to being safe in your own body, doesn't it?

And the Fifth, to being held against your will without due process, except perhaps during a war, which we never declared.

Or the Sixth, guaranteeing that you can't be held forever without a trial.

Or the Eighth, that doesn't seem to deal strictly with stuff that happens after a trial, as Scalia says, does it? I mean, you don't have bail AFTER a conviction. It's almost like they're NEVER supposed to beat you with metal rods.

And the Ninth would seem to say that, just because the Constitution never spells out 'We cannot torture people, cut off their fingers, torture their kids and rape their wives', that doesn't mean that the Government can, in fact, cut off your fingers, torture your kids or rape your wife.

Funny. I must be wrong, because a Berkeley law professor says it just isn't so.

Source: Cornell Law

Government

Done To, Rather than By, For

Blown
A page of what happens if you speak out about government incompetence and corruption.

Typically? Nothing good.

Source: Mother Jones

Coppers

Cops charged in Halloween prank on teen

Associated Press
Mar. 4, 2008 07:44 PM
NEW YORK - Two police officers pleaded not guilty Tuesday to handcuffing a 14-year-old boy, kicking and hitting him, and abandoning him in his boxer shorts on isolated road as payback for a Halloween prank.

Officers Thomas Elliassen, 28, and Richard Danese, 29, were indicted on 33 counts Monday, some of them felonies. They were released without bail.

The officers were arrested last fall on charges of unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of Rayshawn Moreno.

Prosecutors say the officers were trying to teach the boy a lesson after he supposedly threw eggs at a car near their Staten Island precinct. But Moreno's attorney said the boy was throwing eggs at a friend.

The officers handcuffed Moreno and drove him to a remote area, then kicked and hit him while he lay facedown on a road, stripped to his boxer shorts, the indictment said. The officers then left the boy to find his way back, it said.

That's not a prank, lazy writers. Don't conflate the egg-throwing with the cops.

What the cops (allegedly) did was assault and battery on a child. Disgusting.

Source: AZ Central

Lapdogs
It's been bad enough watching Jon Stewart pull his punches on McCain, or fawn over him to Democratic guests, but this is a whole other level of bad.

Brian Williams: You know what I thought was unsaid ---they took their position Chris, we're seeing the replay --- they end up in this spot and the sun is coming is just from the side and there in the shadow is John McCain's buckled, concave shoulder. It's a part of his body the suit doesn't fill out because of his war injuries. Again you wouldn't spot it unless you knew to look for it. He doesn't give the same full chested profile as the president standing next to him. Talk about a warrior...

Chris Matthews: You know, when he was a prisoner all those years, as you know, in isolation from his fellows, I do believe, uhm, and machiavelli had this right --- it's not sentimental, it's factual --- the more you give to something, the more you become committed to it. That's true of marriage and children and everything we've committed to in our lives. He committed to his country over there. He made an investment in America, alone in that cell, when he was being tortured and afraid of being put to death at any moment -- and turning down a chance to come home.

Those are non-political facts which I think do work for him. When it gets close this November, which I do believe, and you likely agree, will be a very close contest between him and whoever wins the Democratic fight. And I think people will look at that fact, that here's a man who has invested deeply, and physically and personally in his country.

Williams: Absolutely, Couldn't agree more. Of course the son of a Navy Admiral, a product of Annapolis who couldn't wait to become a Navy aviator...

He's a Warrior. He's the most committed American alive -- the FACTS say so!

Yeesh. Gimme a goddamned break. Get these guys a cold shower already.

Source: Hullabaloo (Digby)

Olbermann'ed
Alternately, we could just let Keith deal with his colleagues whenever they get all weepy. He seems to hold them in thinly-veiled contempt much of the time to begin with.

Check out his backhand to Chris Matthews, famed hater of all things Hillary.

Summary: During MSNBC's coverage of the Democratic presidential primaries, referring to Tina Fey's statement on the February 23 edition of Saturday Night Live that " 'bitch' is the new black," Chris Matthews asked: "Dare we repeat what Tina Fey said was the new black?" Keith Olbermann responded: "There's another word that begins with the same letter as 'black' does. Let's distance ourselves -- especially you. Distance yourself as far as you can from that."

Burn.

Source: Media Matters

Goverment: Injuns Don't Need Money!
That seems to be the argument.

Well, that, and 'Math is Hard'

A federal judge said Wednesday he wants to resolve a 12-year lawsuit over government mismanagement of American Indian lands this June.

In a January decision, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said Interior Department accounting for billions of dollars owed to American Indian landholders has been "unreasonably delayed" and is ultimately impossible.

...

Lawyers for the government disagreed with Robertson at the hearing, saying the Interior Department's complicated methods of accounting are not impossible. Those efforts have already cost the government $127 million

We didn't intentionally hide money! It's just that math is hard!

So very hard. Much like piles of gold.

Source: Raw Story

Whiny Ass Titty Babies
Boeing's various flunkies are not happy that they lost out to those filthy Eurocommies on the new fuel tanker plane.

Nonetheless, the uproar continued. Boeing supporters and union officials criticized the decision and Boeing said its interpretation of the bidding criteria was different from the Air Force's.

Jim Albaugh, head of Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems unit, said Boeing offered its 767 aircraft because the company thought that plane offered the size and flexibility the Air Force wanted.

"We didn't think they wanted a bigger plane," Albaugh said at a conference of defense analysts in New York. "We were discouraged from offering the 777," a larger model.

...

Air Force officials have said the larger size of the KC-30 tanker offered by EADS and Northrop Grumman helped tip the balance in its favor because the tanker's larger size will enable it to carry more fuel, cargo or personnel.

Wynne, the Air Force secretary, told senators the planes were judged on nine key criteria and "across the spectrum, all evaluated, the Northrop Grumman airplane was clearly a better performer."

In addition, he said the Boeing proposal was judged to be more risky and more expensive.

Silly Americans. Size isn't the only way you lost out.

Though that's probably demeaning.

Seriously, Airbus is widely known to make better planes than Boeing. This only comes as a jolting surprise to Americans, Boeing (who surely thought they bought more goodwill with their bribes and so forth), and people who haven't paid attention to Europe's rising military star in the last decade.

Source: Raw Story

Torture Playlist

NEWS: Music has been used in American military prisons and on bases to induce sleep deprivation, "prolong capture shock," disorient detainees during interrogations—and also drown out screams. Based on a leaked interrogation log, news reports, and the accounts of soldiers and detainees, here are some of the songs that guards and interrogators chose.

Oddly, I don't see a lot of country on there.

Lead balloon. Ok.

In all seriousness, the musicians should sue. I'm fairly sure that their ASCAP licenses don't cover torture.

Source: Mother Jones

Overreach

Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.

The sites, in English, French and Spanish, had been online since 1998. Some, like www.cuba-hemingway.com, were literary. Others, like www.cuba-havanacity.com, discussed Cuban history and culture. Still others — www.ciaocuba.com and www.bonjourcuba.com — were purely commercial sites aimed at Italian and French tourists.

“I came to work in the morning, and we had no reservations at all,” Mr. Marshall said on the phone from the Canary Islands. “We thought it was a technical problem.”

It turned out, though, that Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been put on a Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American domain name registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. Mr. Marshall said eNom told him it did so after a call from the Treasury Department; the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that the sites were on the blacklist through a blog.

Either way, there is no dispute that eNom shut down Mr. Marshall’s sites without notifying him and has refused to release the domain names to him. In effect, Mr. Marshall said, eNom has taken his property and interfered with his business. He has slowly rebuilt his Web business over the last several months, and now many of the same sites operate with the suffix .net rather than .com, through a European registrar. His servers, he said, have been in the Bahamas all along.

Mr. Marshall said he did not understand “how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law.” Worse, he said, “these days not even a judge is required for the U.S. government to censor online materials.”

It's time for the US to stop meddling with the interwebs.

I'd say we should hand control over to the EU, but Germany and France have little love for free speech when it suits them.

Sigh.

Source: The New York Times

Lolz

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen from the chief fund-raising arm of House Republicans, according to party officials who described the findings of emergency internal audits.

The financial records of the group, the National Republican Congressional Committee, may also have been falsified for several years, Republican officials said. The campaign committees of several Republican lawmakers may also have been victims of a scam that is now under criminal investigation by the F.B.I.

The audits were ordered after the abrupt departure several weeks ago of Christopher J. Ward, who had been treasurer of the committee. Lawmakers said that Mr. Ward, who served a similar role for dozens of individual members of Congress and their political committees, is the focus of the F.B.I.’s criminal investigation.

The committee has acknowledged publicly that it was aware of “irregularities in our financial audit process” and that it had called in the F.B.I. in February because “these irregularities may include fraud.”

But until now the committee has not acknowledged that any money was missing from its bank accounts or that the financial irregularities might extend beyond the national committee to the campaign funds of individual Republican lawmakers who also worked with Mr. Ward, a longtime party operative.

Republicans have such sticky fingers. Tsk, tsk.

Source: The New York Times

Comcast Owns Your Government

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Comcast Corp. on Tuesday acknowledged hiring people to fill seats before the start of a contentious federal hearing on how the company manages its broadband network, allowing its employees to take those seats when the filled-to-capacity hearing started.

Many people were turned away before Monday's Federal Communications Commission hearing at Harvard Law School, leading critics to accuse Comcast of stifling debate over the company's practice of favoring some forms of Internet traffic over others.

Comcast said it hired people to hold seats only after an advocacy group called Free Press urged its backers to attend.

That makes it all better, doesn't it! How dare people agitate against their Corporate Feudal Lords!

Source: Boston.com (Boston Globe)

Tase the World

Edison Would Be So Proud

Our Electrified World

First, a bit of light tech news out of the Consumer Electronics Show, because you wouldn't want to have to kill and torture helpless people without a soundtrack.

Today at CES, Taser International introduced the Taser MPH -- the first combination hand-held music player and Taser.

The player, which has a 1-GB capacity that can hold about 150 songs, is embedded in a holster that slips on your belt. Feel the need to zap someone and you can unholster the Taser, use the built-in laser pointer to aim, and blam -- a couple of darts carrying 50,000 volts hits your victim.

And you don't have to miss a beat.

Guffaw, guffaw, don't have to miss a beat. Hilarious.

Not like these things have any negative consequenc--what's that?

A man in his 20s died after a Coral Gables police officer used a Taser stun gun to subdue him Friday morning.

..

Miami-Dade police said Jones displayed ''aggressive and combative behavior'' so a police officer used a Taser stun gun to restrain him.

After the discharge, Jones became unresponsive, and paramedics took him to Doctor's Hospital in Coral Gables, where he was pronounced dead.

What about something with a little 'local flavor'?

After an ambulance had been dispatched to Borden's Bedford home last Nov. 6, he was transported to the jail for violating house arrest. Borden was disabled and a diabetic. While in the jail, he was observed talking to inanimate objects.

In trying to subdue Borden, as he lay handcuffed on the floor, jailers shocked him three times with a Taser, which delivers a 50,000-volt shock. Borden's pants were around his ankles at the time he was shocked.

The county coroner ruled Borden's death a heart attack brought on by electric shock, an enlarged heart and pharmaceutical drugs in his body.

Ah, the highlights of our own local Bloomington police using tasers. In that case, they took a mentally ill man with an enlarged heart out of the back of an ambulance and then tasered him to death. "Oops."

But surely that's an isolated incident, and the police don't routinely use tasers to torture or dominate people... oh geez.

But, Andrews points out, using the TASER to bring down a threatening suspect isn't always the way the gun is used.

In Glendale, Colo., Glen Leyba was on his apartment floor, thrashing violently. A police officer, hoping to control him, stunned him three times, before he died. While the coroner blamed a drug overdose, the family blames multiple, unnecessary electric shocks, Andrews reports.

Shelly Leyba, Glen's sister, says, "Glen was in a medical emergency, down on the ground, no threat."

..

On Long Island, David Glowczenski was suffering a mental breakdown, so his family called police for help.

His sister, Jean Griffin, says, "We called them for safety because he was disoriented. …And an hour later he was dead."

Glowzenski died after a confrontation in which an officer stunned him nine times with a TASER, and he wasn't on drugs or alcohol, Andrews notes. "He committed no crime; he didn't do anything wrong," Griffin says.

I'm not even going to go into the whole 'Don't Tase Me Bro' thing, where a peaceful political event was turned into a ghoulish freakshow as a student who simply asked one too many questions was himself put to the question, so to speak, by overzealous cops.

Despite the speaker he was interrogating asking him to be allowed to finish.

Sigh.

Americans have a fascination with military technology. We, as Jon Stewart said this week on A Daily Show in his GW voice, 'love the boomy-boomy'.

It's one of our greatest failings that we believe not only that we CAN solve almost any problem with the application of grotesque amounts of force, but that we're right to do so; more than justified, *called* to put the world to order at the end of a gun, the blast of a thermobaric bomb, or the barbs of a Taser.

Look folks, here's how this works. A taser sends 50,000 volts down two long fires with barbed fishooks at the end, which puncture the victim's skin and pump about 1000+ volts of that into their nervous system. Waves of excruciating pain and paralysis pass through them, and they fall to the ground.

That's if all goes according to plan. Often, the police then proceed to Taser them. Again. And again. And again.

Then, perhaps, they die. But so what if they don't?

Lately we've seen a lot of argument about these new, meticulously designed torture methods, Tasers, waterboarding, and the like, that don't kill, at least most of the time, because of precise engineering. If they live, the Conservatives ask, what's the harm?

We no longer live in a world where it's crazy to ask if you can torture someone as long as they live.

This substitution of precise bio-physical engineering for ethics is happening across the entire spectrum of US executive power. The Army is developing their so-called 'Agony Ray', a microwave gun that heats the nerves in your skin so that you feel like you're on fire. They can blast an entire crowd of people at once with this, and there's only a SLIGHT risk that it will boil your eyeballs and blind you. Which makes it ok.

The CIA has famously been deploying waterboarding, but they have many other nasty tools, often engineered at one point or another by our lovely German friends, to wrack the body and mind. The 20th Century didn't just see advances in guns and planes and cannon, it also saw a quantum leap in inquisitions.

Of course, in a move that would have pinhead Thomas Friedman giddy with glee, we're outsourcing much of these torture sessions overseas. Cuts down on overhead, what without courts, lawyers, or civil rights getting in the way of the bottom line.

The book opens with a description of the basement of the Syrian secret police's "Palestine Branch" interrogation centre. It is called "The Grave"thanks to its coffin-like cells. with barely enough room to lie down.

The torture masters here employ a device called the "German chair", an empty metal frame used to stretch a prisoner's spine to near breaking point. Moroccan jailers allegedly used a scalpel to cut the genitals off Ethiopian student Binyam Mohamed. While incarcerated in Cairo, Mamdouh Habib was placed in a cell which filled with water until it reached his neck. Egyptian Abu Omar became incontinent after he was hung upside down and given electric shocks to his genitals. Worse still, there is evidence that some prisoners in Uzbekistan were boiled alive.

In this way, the US outsourced torture and gained intelligence through extreme methods its own agents were not able to use.

So it goes, as we indulge our bloodlust without getting our hands dirty, ever looking for the neater, cleaner, faster, whizzier way to induce human suffering. Whether it's handing our victims off to third world shops to do it in our name or using high technology to hide the scars of our work, the end result is the same. We have become a nation of torturers, sophisticated and cynical, unwilling to even sully ourselves while brutalizing others.

Finally, on the Taser front, Amnesty International, noting that more than 200 people have died after being Tasered, has called on the device to be severely restricted in use, treating it more like a gun than a fist. Ideally of course, it would be recalled entirely.

Instead, the Taser people are bundling mp3 players inside, so you can listen to your favorite songs while you protect the public from themselves and their freedom.

God Bless America.

Sources: The LA Times
Miami Herald
The Bloomington Alternative
CBS News
Amnesty International
The Courier-Mail
Engagdet

News of the Day (Monday Commute Edition)

Driving down the highway, try not to read this news.

A motley collection today.

The State Security Apparatus Thanks You for Giving Up Your Sense of Humor

I haven't actually seen Superbad, but I know an element of the plot is that a character gets a fake id with the obviously fraudulent name 'McLovin' in order to purchase booze, what with being underage and all. The DVD release of Superbad includes a replica of this ID as one of those 'bonus' freebies that usually are pretty lame. Lamer than this at least.

The license is an obvious forgery, much as it was in the movie itself. It doesn't look anything like an actual Hawaii license, it has a lenticular picture for the driver's photo (showing the movie character and his erstwhile disguise when you tilt the id to different angles, etc). You would have to be blind to confuse it with ANY Hawaii ID, let alone one that applies to whoever would be using it, who would look like neither one of the two separate photos on the card.

Some people, however, think that if it happens in the movies, it can happen here.

We're very pleased that Wal-Mart has taken prompt, corrective measures to comply with the City's request to protect the integrity of our driver's license. It was foolish of the movie studio to include this prop in the DVD, particularly because it could be used by unscrupulous people to deceive others who are unfamiliar with our driver's license. For example, those who saw 'Superbad' know the underage teenager used his fake Hawaii license to buy liquor," Mayor Hannemann said in a statement.

Wow. Being mayor of Honolulu must require you to live with your head permanently up your ass. Amazing.

Source: The Consumerist (make sure to check out the photos of the fake ID and a real sample ID for educational purposes)

Drink Away the Pain Edition
Some lucky bastard with a lot of money bought a very, very old bottle of Macallan scotch for $54,000 dollars, or about 13 and a half euros at the going rate. (A joke, folks. It has to be at least 25).

That would be just the thing to kill off the lingering sense of Kafka-esque horror upon learning that the Democratic leadership did nothing to stop torture for five long years under the Bush administration. Alas, beyond my price range. I shall settle, perhaps, for videogame violence, my standard, and far cheaper, catharsis.

Department of Nidoking Might Want to Start Eating At Home

So a guy had a hard time getting an order properly made at a Burger King, and it seems they slipped an unwrapped, possibly used, condom into his burger because he was deemed too demanding by the surly wait staff. The manager laughed off his complaint about, you know, getting a condom in his burger.

Uggh. Yeah.

Source: The Rutland Herald

Mike Huckabee is the Craziest Motherfucker Alive
I mean, it's bad enough he pressured a pardon board to release a convicted rapist over the pleas of his victims, who warned him that the man would kill and rape again, because the woman he had raped and been convicted of raping was related to Bill Clinton, distantly, and so the whole trial just HAD to be a conspiracy.

Really, that's bad enough.

But it turns out that he also supported....... camps of some sort.... for people with HIV.

Highlighting the new scrutiny of Mr. Huckabee’s record, The Associated Press revealed yesterday that as a candidate for the United States Senate in 1992, Mr. Huckabee said in a response in a 229-question survey that he believed that AIDS patients should be isolated from the public and that homosexuality was an “aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” that posed a “dangerous public risk.”

Fears of AIDS spreading widely in the United States were common in the mid-1980s, as doctors struggled to learn about how the virus that causes the disease was transmitted. But by the time Mr. Huckabee answered the A.P. survey, it was well established that the virus could not be spread through casual contact.

Right up there with Margaret Thatcher, he is. Can't someone PLEASE, PLEASE find the inevitable stash of photos he's taken with little boys (he was a conservative minister after all) before the primaries are over? I'm already sick to death of this chump's smarmy voice.

Source: FireDogLake
Source: Jesus' General

Torquemada

Not much to add to this. Apparently the Dem leadership has been aware of Bush's torture practices since 2002. Only one of the notified individuals, then ranking Dem on the House Intel Committee, Rep. Jane Harman, objected in any way.

She later lost that position in what was widely seen as a public spat with Pelosi, who did not object to torture. Technically Harman was supposed to rotate out of that job, but it's easy to see another motive for getting her out of Intel oversight before she could, you know, do something about the torture with the new Democratic majority. Pelosi had to make sure her own bloody hands stayed out of public view.

What a lovely world we live in.

Source: The Washington Post
FireDogLake