1.  “While human rights and legal advocacy groups applauded President Barack Obama’s decision to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay within a year, many immediately raised another thorny question: “What about Bagram?”

The answer came as a shock. In a brief filing in federal court last week, lawyers from Obama’s Department of Justice said they would adopt the same position taken by the George W. Bush administration – that detainees held at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.

The U.S. government is holding more than 600 prisoners at Bagram. Some claim they are victims of “extraordinary rendition” by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), while many more say they have been tortured and abused at the facility just outside Kabul.

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, told IPS, “In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that Guantánamo detainees have a right to habeas corpus to challenge their detention but it did not limit that right to Guantánamo. Justice Kennedy said the Court would not look kindly on the executive who imprisons people in other countries to avoid the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.”

She added, “The Obama administration is reportedly sending detainees to Bagram instead of Guantánamo. It is alarming that hundreds of people in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan will evidently be denied access to courts to review their ‘enemy combatant’ designations.”

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=14311

2.  “Just one day after reports came out regarding the Obama Administration’s 19 month withdrawal plan from Iraq, the Pentagon was detailing the enormous number of troops that would remain on the ground after Obama ostensibly fulfills his promise to remove all combat troops, and all the combat they’ll be engaging in.

After the “pullout,” as many as 50,000 troops will remain on the ground, and despite being touted as a withdrawal of combat troops, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell conceded that some would continue to “conduct combat operations,” and Iraq would still be considered a war zone. The rest would be what he described as “enablers.”

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/02/25/us-combat-missions-in-iraq-will-continue-after-pullout/

3.  This would certainly remove a black mark on the State of Georgia:

“Will Obama close the School of the Americas?

Barack Obama has not had much to say about closing the School of the Americas since he signed the order to close Guantanamo Bay but since the annual SOA protest last November in Georgia maybe he will change his mind. The demonstration to promote advocacy and to close the School of the Americas is from February 15-17 2009 in Washington, DC. At the annual SOA protest last November six protesters were sentenced to federal prison for non-violent direct action to close the SOA. One of the human rights advocates sentenced to prison was Denver’s Theresa Cusimano.

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation formerly known as the School of the Americas is infamous for their human rights violations. The SOA is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers located in Fort Benning, Georgia. Jorge Illueca former Panamanian president called the SOA the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA hit national headlines in 1989 when six Jesuit priests and two others were murdered in El Salvador by death squads that were trained in the United States by the SOA.

The SOA/WHINSEC has educated dictators such as Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer, the convicted terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and many of Augustus Pinochet’s officers. Many criticize the SOA because American tax payer dollars are going towards printing up manuals that teach torture, repression and murder.

President Obama recently closed Guantanamo Bay so many are wondering if he will close the School of the Americas. Obama closed Guantanamo to stop the spread of anti-Americanism and because it was not swiftly prosecuting terrorists. Obama had this to say about closing Guantanamo, “We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution.” Many activists claim that the SOA spreads anti-Americanism, produces terrorists and does not abide by the constitution. Democrat Dennis Kucinich and republican Ron Paul both advocate the closing of the SOA/WHINSEC. “

http://www.examiner.com/x-3032-Denver-Progressive-Examiner~y2009m2d16-Will-Obama-close-the-School-of-the-Americas

4.  And why, exactly, should we believe them, or let them split hairs?

“Stalin-era famine that killed millions was not genocide, Russian historians say
Russia issued a DVD and a thick book of historical documents on Wednesday to dispute claims that the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s amounted to genocide. “

http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/02/25/russia-famine-that-killed-millions-not-genocide/

5.  Hilarious – England now has a civil war on its hand.  Yet another sign that it’s time to bring the troops home:

“THE British Army is facing increasing numbers of British Muslims fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Senior officers claim they are engaged in a “surreal mini civil war”, having to face fighters from the West Midlands and Yorkshire.

Dozens of British-born Muslims, mainly of Pakistani and Somali origin, are believed to have travelled to the country to wage holy war against British troops in Helmand province and other parts of southern Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports.

Interceptions of Taliban communications have revealed “seemingly committed jihadists” speaking with “West Midlands accents”.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23652231-details/UK+troops+fighting+British+Muslims+in+Afghanistan/article.do

6.  “Ron Paul Schools Bernanke and Congress

Ron Paul schooled Bernanke and Congress this week on some basic economic principles. Here are some of his best quotes:

You can’t reinflate the bubble!

If we think we can patch up a system that has failed, it’s not going to work.

We have a total misunderstanding of what credit is, versus capital. Capital can’t come from the thin-air creation by a Federal Reserve system, capital has to come from savings. We work hard, produce, live within our means, and what is leftover is called capital. This whole idea that we can ‘re-capitalize’ markets by merely turning on the printing presses and increasing credit is a total fallacy.

The Federal Reserve is the culprit!“

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/02/ron-paul-schools-congress.html

7.  Also hilarious:

“Afghanistan: US thinks the unthinkable: asking Iran for help with supply routes“

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12467

8.  “When Karl Rove says these things, does he first delude himself into believing that he opposes and would not use “straw men” tactics of the type which, with a straight face, he’s self-righteously condemning today?  Or he is fully aware that he spent the last eight years degrading our discourse with exactly that tactic and is now purposely projecting what he himself did onto Obama? 

Either way, Rove, as always, is the living and breathing embodiment of the limitless deceit which our political discourse not only permits but rewards.  Just imagine what it says about our country that Karl Rove — Karl Rove — knows he can sermonize against people who ”cheapen” rather than ”enrich” the “dialogue of our age” without suffering any reputational damage for such side-splitting dishonesty.  To the contrary, other than Matt Drudge, no individual is more adored by the establishment journalists of The Liberal Media.  As Gloria Borger of CNN and U.S. News reverently put it:  ”when Rove speaks, the political class pays attention — usually with good reason.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

9.  So much for the trope that the Democrats are the party of the working man:

“On February 19, the California legislature, after weeks of wrangling, passed a special budget to address the historically high $42 billion deficit. It represents an unadulterated washout for working people who are attacked on almost every front by the Democratic Party, which controls a broad majority in the legislature.
…
But what went unreported by The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle is that those on the other side of the class ledger – the corporations – enjoyed a startlingly different fate. According to the Los Angeles Times, “About $1 billion in corporate tax breaks – directed mostly at multi-state and multinational companies – is tucked into the proposal.” Not only were corporate taxes not raised, they were actually reduced, thereby contributing to the deficit rather than alleviating it. And this corporate welfare comes on the heels of a steady decline in corporate taxes.

In the 1980’s, 9 percent of corporate profits were taxed by the states. In 2001, it dropped to 6 percent, meaning that in that year and every year thereafter, California lost $1.34 billion in revenue (see The New York Times, July 16, 2003).

Evidently The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle viewed the corporate largess concocted by California politicians in this current budget as nothing new and consequently unworthy of reporting.

The moral of this budget is clear. Corporations are well organized and consequently have successfully pressed for their own narrow interests. Lacking any social conscience, which should surprise no one, they fail to pursue the common good but remain obsessively fixated on ever-greater profits for themselves.“

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22109.htm

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