Monday Morning Open Thread

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 13 July 2009 03:35:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

Good morning.

The confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor start today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. All signals point to a relatively smooth process ahead.

However, keep your eyes on Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-AL). He's the ranking Republican on the Judiciary committee and is leading the charge against Sotomayor. In 1986, Sessions own nomination to become a federal judge was defeated (in a Republican-led Senate) because he was accused of being a racist. Let's just say, the leopard hasn't changed its spots. The Jefferson of 1986 is the Jefferson of 2009. He can't help himself. The nomination of a Latina to the Supreme Court could put him over the edge.

It says a lot about the current state of the GOP that Sessions is the leader of the anti-Sotomayor effort. (It's really not too hard to imagine Sessions in the uniform of a Confederate officer.) In some ways, the hearings will show us more about Sessiona and the GOP than Sotomayor.

Should be a busy week...

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Congress Should Have Been Briefed

post from MyDD on 13 July 2009 03:19:07 AM. © MyDD

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace that the Bush Administration should the Congress should have been told about the secret CIA program to kill Al-Qaeda[...]

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Sonia Sotomayor Hearings Today

post from MAL Contends . . . on 13 July 2009 03:11:00 AM. © MAL Contends . . .

Update: Civil Rights Groups: 'We are watching;' GOP: We don't care.

As much as the rightwing has tried to bash Sotomayor, "They haven't laid a glove on her," in the words of Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), her leading Senate supporter.

The Brennan Center for Justice has a comprehensive report on Judge Sotomayor?s Record in Constitutional Cases by attorney Monica Youn.

Youn's report builds an irrefutable case on Sotomayor?s outstanding performance as a judge, but facts seldom get in the way of the Republican Nutty Party.

Look for GOP Senators to be respectful in the hearings, and for activists to be true to their rightwing, racist, hate-America roots going back to Nixon, to Sen. Joe McCarthy. [By the way anyone been to that POS's grave site lately up in Appleton?]

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Cheney 'ordered CIA to hide plan'.

post from The Osterley Times on 13 July 2009 03:04:00 AM. © The Osterley Times

There are some things which elicit almost no surprise:

The head of the CIA has accused former US Vice-President Dick Cheney of concealing an intelligence programme from Congress, a top US senator says.
The existence of the programme, set up after 9/11, was hidden for eight years and even now its nature is not known.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein confirmed CIA chief Leon Panetta told Congressional committees he had abandoned the project on hearing of it.

He said that Mr Cheney was behind the secrecy, Sen Feinstein said.

There has been no comment from Mr Cheney.

Dianne Feinstein is not what I would call a firebrand. Indeed, she is the kind of Democrat that I think gives the Democratic party a bad name, so keen is she to always give credence to Republican talking points.

Make no mistake, Dianne Feinstein defines Blue Dog, there isn?t a Republican or conservative issue out there that doesn?t have her backing. She voted for the wars, she voted for the tax cuts, she voted for the Patriot Act, the list goes on and on, looking at the record without a name attached she would have to be a solid Republican.

So, when she says that she is shocked by the behaviour of a Republican Vice President, we should pay attention. This is not a lady known to attack the other party along purely partisan lines.

And yet even she is shocked by what Cheney has done.

The Bush administration may have broken the law, Sen Feinstein said, adding that Congress should never be kept in the dark, even though the country was still in shock after the 9/11 attacks.

"This is a big problem," she said.

"I understand the need of the day... but I think you weaken your case when you go outside the law."

The fact that Feinstein is shocked to discover the fact that the Bush administration might have strayed outside the law is further proof of her blue dog status. The rest of us have simply accepted that this is what the Bush administration did.

Cheney, who witnessed what happened to Nixon first hand, believed that the presidency needed to be reclaimed and that too much power had been taken away from the executive. To that end, he treated Congress with contempt. And I think he was able to do so because Democrats like Fienstein bowed before the Cheney doctrine of executive power and the need to give the president whatever powers he claimed to have in order that he could "keep us safe".

So, it's not a small matter when someone like Feinstein says that Cheney has broken the law.

Of course, we still don't have a clue as to what this illegal programme actually did.

Details of the newly-revealed secret programme have still not been divulged, but sources say it did not relate to the CIA's rendition programme, interrogation methods or a controversial domestic surveillance project.

Officials quoted by the New York Times say the programme was launched by anti-terror operatives at the CIA soon after the 2001 attacks, and involved planning and training but never became fully operational.

Another unnamed official told AP it was an embryonic intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at yielding intelligence that would be used to conduct covert operations abroad.

But the BBC's Kim Ghattas, in Washington, says there is some debate in the intelligence world about how significant the programme actually was.

I am slightly sceptical when I am told that this programme was not "significant". It was certainly significant enough for Cheney to want to keep it secret and significant enough for Panetta to cancel it the very second that he became aware of it.

What it entails we might never know. But the very fact that Dianne Feinstein is shocked by it's illegality is enough to make me sit up and pay attention.

How many more acts of Cheney's illegality have to come to light before the Obama administration finally prosecute the old reprobate?

Or are we going to uphold the Nixon theory of executive power and say that, "it is not illegal if the president does it"?

UPDATE:

Let me be clear that I, like everyone else, have no bloody idea what this programme entails. However, Seymour Hersh as hinted earlier in the year as to what he has discovered:

In March, the respected investigative reporter Seymour Hersh revealed that he had uncovered evidence during research for an as-yet unpublished book that Cheney oversaw an "executive assassination ring" for years.

"It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it," he said at the time.

"It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."

Whether or not the secret programme involved assassination, an insight in to how radical it might have been was offered by Peter Hoekstra, a leading Republican on the House of Representatives intelligence committee. He told the New York Times that he believed Congress would have approved it in the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks but would have backed away after that.

I feel quite sure that we will eventually learn what this programme actually entailed.

UPDATE II:

video details and more

Here is Feinstein talking about this. Notice how she seeks to put this in the light of 9-11. The fact that she is shocked gives some hint as to how bad this programme was.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Cheney, Congress, secrets, illegality, Feinstein, Panetta

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Late Night Karaoke

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 13 July 2009 03:00:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

[...]

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D-Day for Sonia Sotomayor

post from conversations with an unapologetic black liberal on 13 July 2009 02:36:46 AM. © conversations with an unapologetic black liberal

The only aspect of her life that is truly different from most nominees is her race-she's Hispanic.

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Veterans Scandal in Montana

post from MAL Contends . . . on 13 July 2009 02:24:00 AM. © MAL Contends . . .

Here's an appalling, emerging Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA) scandal in an agency that one would think ought to operate with the force and discipline of a Vince Lombardi-coached offensive line.

But the flag-waving and faux patriotism that is such a pervasive aspect of our culture does not translate into the DVA helping our 26 million veterans as they deserve.

See the following pieces posted over the weekend about a scandal in our neighbor to the northwest:

- VA 'Quack' Scandal in Montana May Be Worst Yet

- Massive Patient Abuse Fraud,Courageous Vets Stand Against Hospital Cover-up

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Chinese president Hu personally involved in
arrest of Australian

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 13 July 2009 02:21:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

Could this band of thugs be any creepier? The president of the country actively participating in the arrest of foreign nationals following a failed business deal? Really, what fools in the west ever thought Beijing could be trusted?

China's President Hu Jintao personally endorsed an investigation into global miner Rio Tinto that led to the detention of four of its China-based staff, a newspaper said on Monday, citing Chinese government sources.

The investigation appears to be part of a realignment of how China managed its economy in the wake of the global financial crisis, with spy and security agencies promoted to top strategy-making bodies, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said.

The detention a week ago of Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto's top iron ore salesman in China, Australian Stern Hu, and three of his Chinese subordinates has cast a shadow over Australia-China relations and unnerved the iron ore trade.

Can you even imagine if the tables were turned?

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The Next Justice

From Dallas… Farewell day for my family today. Meanwhile, Judge Sonia Sotomayor gets her day. She’ll be easily confirmed, so it will be interesting to hear where Republicans take their line of questioning. Roll Call: … The Senate[...]

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Governor Rick finds a different loon for the
Texas Board of Ed but affirms his support for "The Republican War on Science"

Gail Lowe, an "outspoken creationist" with no visible educational credentials, is Texas Gov. Rick Perry's choice to head the State Board of Education.

"The scientists identify poor media coverage of science as a key problem. And, journalistic analyses of media reporting on global warming agree with that. Thus, the challenge isn?t expert knowledge, but communicating that knowledge to the general public with a thick and confusing media filter while dealing with determined disinformation campaigns."
-- A Siegel, in a Get Energy Smart Now blogpost,
"Republicans reject Science; Scientists reject Republicans"

by Ken

This is what comes of setting the bar low. All laughingstock Texas Gov. Rick Perry, had to do was get out the word that he was thinking of appointing a fugitive mental patient to chair the State Board of Education, and his actual designation of a merely unqualified intellectual hooligan becomes a sort of act of "moderation." At the same time, since there's nothing remotely moderate about the designee, it seems unlikely that he's risking fallout from the neanderthals whose hearts and minds he's wooing in his struggle to win renomination against the challenge of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

As our Capitol Annex colleague Vince Leibowitz noted in connection with the reports that certifiable wingnut loon Cynthia Dunbar was being considered for the job: "If Perry does this, it is part of his ongoing campaign to govern Texas solely for the amusement of one million Republican Primary voters who will likely decide between Perry and U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison next March. Perry?s got to shore up his rightwing base, and a Cynthia Dunbar appointment would no doubt earn him a lot of points in that camp."

Rachel Weiner reported yesterday on the Huffington Post:

Gail Lowe: Perry Picks Creationist To Run State Education Board

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has chosen Gail Lowe, an outspoken creationist, to run the state's Board of Education.

It was actually the less controversial choice. Cynthia Dunbar, reportedly under consideration for the post, believed government should be guided by a "biblical litmus test" and thought public education was a "subtly deceptive tool of perversion." (She home-schooled her own children.) She has also endorsed conspiracy theories suggesting President Obama is not a natural-born citizen.

Lowe, on the other hand, thinks evolution should be taught and "kids ought to be able to hold religious beliefs and still study science without any conflict." But in 2008, she took the position that "biology textbooks which do not teach both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution must be rejected by the board." She has voted against new textbooks that do not contain those "weaknesses." She is a newspaper editor, not a teacher.

Lowe will replace Don McLeroy, another self-described creationist and dentist whose reappointment was blocked by Democrats. He had been chairman of the board since 2007 and will remain a member.

Freedom of speech being a bedrock of American democracy, Gail Lowe is free to say anything she likes about the theory of evolution. But anyone who fantasizes a role for her in the education of American schoolchildren has an obligation to recognize that nothing she says about "the strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution" can be allowed to have any influence of any kind over educational policy because she gives no evidence of any knowledge of (a) the theory of evolution, (b) its "scientific strengths and weaknesses," or (c) anything else to do with science. She is simply spewing the reality-thumbing propaganda of Crap Christianity.

It is tiresome to have to say it yet again, and pointless too, because the people who need to grasp these simple realities have disconnected the batteries that power their brains. Still, actual scientists have been addressing the "weaknesses" of evolutionary theory since evolutionary theory was first formulated, which is why the theory has evolved to such a great extent. That's how science works. It's not like propaganda, which is simply concocted in the minds of people to suit their prejudices and agendas. So-called "creationism" bears no relation to science; it's just a facade invented to advance the Crap Christian agenda while pretending the motivation is something other than crap-religious.

Just the other day our colleague A Siegel was reporting on his Get Energy Smart Now blog ("Republicans reject Science; Scientists reject Republicans") on a Pew Research poll ("Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media") that appears to document a more or less terminal divide between science and scientists on the one hand and The Republican War on Science on the other:

* ?Both scientists and the public overwhelmingly say it is appropriate for scientists to become active in political debates about such issues as nuclear power or stem cell research.?
* While scientists self-identify as liberal, most American?s don?t see scientists as liberal. Thus, engaged experts might view themselves as politically liberal, the general public is likely not to view them in this way.
* Scientists are the third most respected profession (after the military and teachers)

These three combine to suggest that scientists could be strong spokesman for ?liberal?, ?progressive?, ?science-based? policy.

As Stephen Colbert put it, ?reality has a well-known liberal bias?. Scientists work in, specialize in understanding reality. Should it shock anyone that they have a liberal bias?

Now, disinformation on key issues clearly has had an impact. 87% of scientists state that evolution is the result of natural processes with just 32 percent public agreement.

[T]he near consensus among scientists about global warming is not mirrored in the general public. While 84% of scientists say the earth is getting warmer because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels, just 49% of the public agrees.

These sort of significant gaps between expert and informed knowledge and general, public view should be -- are -- troubling. The scientists identify poor media coverage of science as a key problem. And, journalistic analyses of media reporting on global warming agree with that. Thus, the challenge isn?t expert knowledge, but communicating that knowledge to the general public with a thick and confusing media filter while dealing with determined disinformation campaigns.

#

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