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03 Dec 09

the highlights of Richard Armitage's interview with Prism - By Tom Ricks | The Best Defense

  • an
    interesting interview
    to Prism
  • "The second surprise was frankly how successful we were for
    the first 4 years-almost 5 years-at keeping the ISI [Pakistan's Inter-Service
    Intelligence] relatively out of it. They were so shocked with the speed at
    which we invaded Afghanistan that I think the ISI felt it was only a matter of
    time until we prevailed."
  • 5 more annotations...
01 Dec 09

Bitter And Afraid - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • The former vice president, the man who imported torture into the American constitutional system, failed to capture bin Laden, invaded a country under false pretenses, allowed the Afghanistan campaign to disintegrate, and added $5 trillion to the next generation's debt burden, is attacking a sitting president on a day he announces a critical military strategy in front of his troops.

  • The attack on Obama is an accusation of treason:


    “Here’s a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of
    what we put in place ... and who now travels around the world
    apologizing,” Cheney said. “I think our adversaries — especially when
    that’s preceded by a deep bow ... — see that as a sign of weakness.”



    Specifically, Cheney said the Justice Department decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in New York City is “great” for Al Qaeda.



    “One of their top people will be given the opportunity — courtesy of
    the United States government and the Obama administration — to have a
    platform from which they can espouse this hateful ideology that they
    adhere to,” he said. “I think it’s likely to give encouragement — aid
    and comfort — to the enemy.”

  • 2 more annotations...
30 Nov 09

Informed Comment: Swiss Islamophobia Betrays Enlightenment Ideals

  • This campaign poster was banned for being racist, but apparently the goal of the poster, now that is all right.
23 Nov 09

A Talking Point Built Of Straw - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • To see how false this claim is, all anyone ever had to was look at the Classified Information Procedures Act, a short and crystal clear 1980 law that not only permits, but requires, federal courts to undertake extreme measures to ensure the concealment of classified information, even including concealment from the defendant himself.
21 Nov 09

The Barbarian Inside The Gate - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • "I was very struck also by Janet Napolitano’s comment, I hadn’t read it before to see her say that, that the number one priority is to bring [Hasan] to justice is such a knee-jerk comment and such a stupid comment. He’s going to be brought to justice. He is not going to be innocent of murder. There are a lot of eyewitnesses to that. They should just go ahead and convict him and put him to death," - William Kristol, appearing on Fox News.
  • Let us be clear: this is a fascist statement.

An Intelligence Bonanza Of Another Sort - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • What the trial will likely show, instead, is that there was a great deal of information already available
    before they started torturing KSM.
  • That’s the real risk for Yoo: not the illegal actions that the trial
    will expose. But how much evidence there was independent of Yoo’s
    little torture shop.
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Yglesias Award Nominee - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • "[T]here is no question about the legitimacy of U.S. federal courts to incapacitate terrorists. Many of Holder’s critics appear to have forgotten that the Bush administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid; al-Qaeda agent Jose Padilla; “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh; the Lackawanna Six; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was prosecuted for the same conspiracy for which Mohammed is likely to be charged. Many of these terrorists are locked in a supermax prison in Colorado, never to be seen again,"
  • Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith, deputy attorney general and assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, respectively.

American Service-Members' Protection Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • The American Service-Members' Protection Act (ASPA) is a United States federal law introduced by US Senator Jesse Helms as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act and passed in August 2002 by Congress. The stated purpose of the amendment was "to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party".
  • authorizes the President to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court”
  • 4 more annotations...
17 Nov 09

Matthew Yglesias » Criminals and Warriors

  • but if you have to put the whole thing in either the “crime” box or the “war” box, there’s a pretty strong case for erring on the side of crime.
  • In political terms, the right likes the war idea because it involves taking terrorism more “seriously.” But in doing so, you partake of way too much of the terrorists’ narrative about themselves. It’s their conceit, after all, that blowing up a bomb in a train station and killing a few hundred random commuters is an act of war. And war is a socially sanctioned form of activity, generally held to be a legally and morally acceptable framework in which to kill people.
  • 2 more annotations...
16 Nov 09

Andy Worthington: A Truly Shocking Guantanamo Story: Judge Confirms That an Innocent Man Was Tortured to Make False Confessions

  • In the ruling, to put it bluntly, it was revealed that the U.S. government tortured an innocent man to extract false confessions and then threatened him until he obligingly repeated those lies as though they were the truth.

Reefer Sanity - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to
    reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no
    accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious
    group behind calls for more research.
  • "Despite more than 30 years of clinical research, only a small number
    of randomized, controlled trials have been conducted on smoked
    cannabis," said Dr. Edward Langston, an AMA board member, noting that
    the limited number of studies was "insufficient to satisfy the current
    standards for a prescription drug product."
11 Nov 09

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • [N]ew research from psychologists and criminologists suggests
    that jurors tend not to discount evidence obtained from rough
    interrogations even though there's plenty of evidence to suggest that
    those claims aren't reliable.

Must-see video of Sen. Kerry grilling AEI’s Kenneth Green: “You just can’t just throw that stuff out there.” « Climate Progress

  • Green:  All I can say, Senator, is that I read the IPCC reports, the science of climate change report in its totality cover to cover, I follow the latest journals, my doctoral degree is in environmental science and engineering.  I daresay I’m capable of understanding the literature and forming my own opinion. I –


    Kerry (interrupting):  Has your study been peer reviewed?


    Green: Pardon me?


    Kerry: Has your study been peer reviewed?


    Green: No, I don’t work in the peer review literature, Senator. I don’t work for a university.


    That is uber-weird.  Green seems to be suggesting (falsely) that you have to work for a university to write peer reviewed research.  Play the video.  It sure sounds that way — otherwise the second sentence is a pure non sequitur.


    Kerry: So, you don’t submit your studies for any peer review?


    Green: Ah, no.


    Kerry: You realize that there are something like two or three thousand studies all of which concur which have been peer reviewed, and not one of the studies dissenting has been peer reviewed?


    Green: That’s not correct, Senator.


    Kerry: Show me a peer reviewed study.


    Green: I’ll send you a list.


    Kerry: Please, because nobody else has.


    Green: I’ll be glad to.

10 Nov 09

Why Reading the Health Bill Is a Waste of Time | Capital Gains and Games

  • For these reasons, reading an actual bill is a completely useless exercise for the vast majority of members of Congress and staff. They rely heavily on committee reports that are supposed to accompany all bills coming up for a floor vote. These reports are written by committee staff and are required to faithfully reflect the bill's intent. They may contain important details, clarifications, data, citations to hearings, and supporting materials, such as a section-by-section analysis, that allow the legislation to be intelligible to non-lawyers and other non-experts.
  • In addition, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have organizations that review all bills coming up for a vote, summarize them and offer political perspectives. Here, for example, is the House Republican Conference report on the health bill. If one's party holds the White House, a member may find the Statement of Administration Policy to be important in understanding a bill and how to vote on it. Here is the SAP on the health bill. The Congressional Budget Office's analysis may also be important. Here is its report on the health bill.
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07 Nov 09

Easier To Get Than Beer - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • I actually feel better
    knowing my child is with trusted friends, ingesting measured substances
    than on a corner at night buying an illegal substance from a stranger.
  • As a teenager, I witnessed firsthand a world in which it was easier to
    get marijuana than alcohol. I don't just say this now because it suits
    my agenda; it's the truth. If my friends wanted booze for a party, they
    planned days ahead. If they wanted pot, they just made a phone call.
    The difference was that old, but very true, cliché that drug dealers
    don’t check ID. That's why research has repeatedly shown that teenagers
    have easier access
    to marijuana than beer. What can never be quantified, however, are all
    the other harms that go along with this vast underground, underage drug
    economy that continues to thrive thanks to marijuana prohibition.
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