1. “Bin Laden could be dead, whereabouts unknown: Zardari April 27, 2009 Reuters
Griffin said he believes he has the answer to what happened to Bin Laden. “One little hint,” he said, “was provided by the funeral announcement on December Fifteenth (2001),” a statement that drew laughter from the audience. Griffin also noted that after December 13, the CIA, which had been monitoring Bin Laden’s cell phone communications, did not intercept a single call. Griffin said his new book would also discuss the various videos that have surfaced since then purporting to be of Bin Laden, and would show that they lacked demonstrable authenticity, and in some cases, were “obviously fakes.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/19954
2. “This is because many of us still think there’s something special, in a good way, about government. Economist Dan Klein called Americans’ view of government “the people’s romance” [.pdf]. When most people find out that government is doing something, anything, they typically assume good rather than self-interested motives on the part of government. Self-interested motives in the private sector usually are good motives because, as Adam Smith pointed out, self-interest leads us to serve others. But the government sector has no such check. It’s common, for example, for policemen, after they’ve shot an innocent victim, to be put on paid leave while their own colleagues, some of whom might even be their friends, investigate. The government sector’s version of Adam Smith’s invisible hand is – take your pick – the visible fist or the middle finger. Fortunately, we can try to change this, at least on the margin. And the way to do so is to call for some Bush administration officials to be prosecuted.”
http://original.antiwar.com/henderson/2009/04/27/the-case-for-prosecuting-bush/
3. Colleen Rowley:
“Editor’s Note: Former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration defenders keep insisting that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” worked and that people would feel differently about these tactics if they only knew the wonderful results.
That, however, is not the view of many professional interrogators who were sickened by the Bush administration’s torture for ethical, legal and practical reasons, as former FBI agent/legal counsel Coleen Rowley notes in this guest essay:
Back in December 2007, when I wrote “Torture is Wrong, Illegal and It Doesn’t Work,” I mentioned that “the FBI agent who reportedly had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot, Ali Soufan, the only Arabic-speaking agent in New York and one of only eight in the country, and who has since resigned from the FBI, could and should tell people the truth of how the CIA’s tactics were counterproductive.”
Well guess what?! HE FINALLY DID SO on Thursday!
“My Tortured Decision” is how former FBI Agent Soufan titled his New York Times op-ed, speaking out to specifically refute a number of Dick Cheney’s lies about how torture “worked”. The truth, according to Soufan, is quite the opposite.
Soufan wrote: “There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah [the first al-Qaeda suspect subjected to waterboarding and other harsh tactics] that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics.
“In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.” [For the full op-ed, click here.]
Former Agent Soufan is to be applauded for speaking out after seven years, something even FBI Director Mueller has not really found the courage to do (although Mueller was forced recently to truthfully admit that no attack on America has been disrupted as a result of intelligence obtained through “enhanced techniques”).“
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/042409a.html
4. “Flu Is a Combination of Swine Flu from 3 CONTINENTS, Plus Avian and Human Flu
This swine flu is unusual because it combines virus segments from 3 different animals – birds, pigs and humans – and also from 3 different continents – Europe, Asia and North America.
As the Wall Street Journal puts it:
In addition to genetic material associated with North American swine flu, the strain has gene segments associated with European and Asian swine flu, North American avian flu and human flu.
(confirmed here).
It is essential for epidemiologists and virologists to weigh in on this issue. If this is a natural occurrence, they need to do a better job of explaining how it happened. This is especially true given that the Indonesian health minister has just said this might be a man-made disease, and a retired Army General has also raised the possibility. If this is naturally-occuring, it is imperative to get the word out.
If not, we need to know that immediately.“
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/flu-is-combination-of-swine-flu-from-3.html
5. This is good news:
“Major defeat for Bush/Obama position on secrecy
The District Court in Jeppesen had accepted the Bush DOJ’s argument and dismissed the lawsuit, and on appeal in February, the Obama DOJ — to the obvious surprise of the judges and in a reversal of everything Democrats claimed they believed during the Bush presidency — told the Ninth Circuit panel that they embrace the Bush DOJ “state secrets” position in full (a position they’ve since repeated in other cases).
Today, in a 26-page ruling (.pdf), the appellate court resoundingly rejected the Bush/Obama position, holding that the “state secrets” privilege — except in extremely rare circumstances not applicable here — does not entitle the Government to demand dismissal of an entire lawsuit based on the assertion that the “subject matter” of the lawsuit is a state secret. Instead, the privilege only allows the Government to make specific claims of secrecy with regard to specific documents and other facts — exactly how the privilege was virtually always used before the Bush and Obama DOJs sought to expand it into a vast weapon of immunity from all lawsuits challenging the legality of any executive branch program relating to national security
In rejecting this radical secrecy theory, the court emphasized how the Bush/Obama doctrine, if accepted, would essentially place the President above and beyond the rule of law:
Read that last sentence — that, said the court, is the power of lawlessness which the Obama administration was attempting to preserve for itself.
Critically, the court went on to note that the Government’s interests in maintaining secrecy “is not the only weighty constitutional values at stake.” Quoting the Supreme Court’s language in Boumediene — which in 2008 declared unconstitutional the Military Commission Act’s attempt to abolish habeas corpus — the court today noted that equally imperative for the court is to preserve “freedom’s first principles [including] freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers.” The court concluded that applying the secrecy privilege on a document-by-document basis, rather than allowing the Government to abuse the privilege to bar citizens from vindicating their legal rights in court, preserves all of those competing interests. In short, presidential assertions of secrecy are neither absolute nor supreme.
Today’s decision is a major defeat for the Obama DOJ’s efforts to preserve for itself the radically expanded secrecy powers invented by the Bush DOJ to shield itself from all judicial scrutiny.
[And on Specter.]
(1) The idea that Specter is a ”liberal” Republican or even a “moderate” reflects how far to the Right both the GOP and our overall political spectrum has shifted.
Consider Specter’s most significant votes over the last eight years, ones cast in favor of such definitive right-wing measures as: the war on Iraq, the Military Commissions Act, Patriot Act renewal, confirmation of virtually every controversial Bush appointee, retroactive telecom immunity, warrantless eavesdropping expansions, and Bush tax cuts (several times). Time and again during the Bush era, Specter stood with Republicans on the most controversial and consequential issues.
(2) Democrats will understandably celebrate today’s announcement, but beyond the questions of raw political power, it is mystifying why they would want to build their majority by embracing politicians who reject most of their ostensible views.
Reports today suggest that Democratic officials promised Specter that the party establishment would support him, rather than a real Democrat, in a primary. If true, few events more vividly illustrate the complete lack of core beliefs of Democratic leaders, as well as the rapidly diminishing differences between the parties. Why would Democrats want a full-blooded Republican representing them in the blue state of Pennsylvania? Specter is highly likely to reprise the Joe Lieberman role for Democrats: a “Democrat” who leads the way in criticizing and blocking Democratic initiatives, forcing the party still further towards Republican policies.
(3) Arlen Specter is one of the worst, most soul-less, most belief-free individuals in politics. The moment most vividly illustrating what Specter is: prior to the vote on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, he went to the floor of the Senate and said what the bill “seeks to do is set back basic rights by some 900 years” and is “patently unconstitutional on its face.” He then proceeded to vote YES on the bill’s passage.
(4) Today is the best day to watch Fox News since the election — mass grieving flavored by impotent bitterness.
In his Press Conference, Specter just reiterated that he opposes the nomination of one of Obama’s few truly excellent nominees: Dawn Johnsen as OLC Chief. What a great Democrat Specter will be. Specter also just detailed how key Democratic officials promised to support him and raise money for him in the 2010 election if he switched, so now Democrats — Harry Reid and the rest — are committed to keeping him in power for another 8 years, committed to keeping the Pennsylvania Senate seat in the hands of Arlen Specter.
Specter is also complaining incessantly about the fact that Lieberman lost his primary and Specter only won his 2004 primary by 1%. This apparently demonstrates all sorts of bad things about our political process. They really do believe that they are divinely entitled to keep their seats forever, and anything which threatens that is intrinsically illegitimate and wrong. “
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
