Request for admissions

The purpose of our investigation is not to secure convictions and punishment. The purpose is to obtain voluntary confessions. We should desire nothing more than to know what happened and when those who have done bad things are contrite and admit their actions, they are rehabilitated if they do not do them again.

There is not an alternative that works. If you threaten violence or restraint in return for honesty, you will not get honesty. We give to the perpetrators of these crimes the protection of conscience that a repentant sinner is not condemned, for there is not a one of us who has never needed forgiveness.

Say what you know and what you have done, tell us all that will help us to stop those who are continuing to torture and molest innocent children and adults. Whether the victims are American or foreign to our soil, they are human beings who hurt and love and who can become your enemy or your closest friend. It is your choice how you treat them, and one another, and that is what you shall reap from them.

But end this violence and sad destruction of all that is good and holy. Become good, you have that chance right now.

Why you’re reading this

You want the truth? You can handle the truth.

paradox explains.

Cannabis can be used long-term and causes the sick to heal

Long-term use of cannabis extract reduces neuropathic pain, spasticity and incontinence of patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and other diseases. According to clinical trial data presented at the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) and at the 10th congress of the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS),

Investigators at the EFNS conference reported that subjects who continue their use of cannabis extracts long-term maintain reductions in pain, spasticity, and bladder dysfunction, as well as improvements in sleep quality for periods of up to 100 weeks.

Separate trial data presented this week at ECTRIMS also reported that Sativex administration significantly reduces MS-associated spasticity and has a positive impact on MS-associated incontinence and nocturia.

NORML has more.

Hat-tip to Pete Guither.

Say hello

to A Woman Was Lynched Today.

I know a fireman who looks after the fire

From the New Haven Independent:

Student Kevin Miner, who said he’d voted for Lieberman twice in 2000, said one question had been eating him up for a long time: “I want to know what the moral reasoning is from a man who went from being a freedom rider to a torture apologist. I want to know what happened.”

The crowd — dozens of students joined by a lot of faculty and staff — applauded the question.

Hat-tip to Jane Hamsher.

This is what I want to know. It is not as important to me to focus on the upcoming elections now, as to get to the bottom of what happened to cause these people to turn against humanity.

That is what the torture voters did. They turned against humanity itself, they voted to turn humans back into animals.

Why do they hate humanity? What was done to them, and what have they done, and how can they be given what they need to heal? There is no time to let the span of historical time resolve these questions, the world is on fire and there needs to be a fire water brigade.

I know a fireman who burns things, his name is Joe Lieberman. This is what it means to vote for torture to save Israel, and this is what he wants, I think. Israel as a people will survive, but not by being fire starters and bad neighbors.

We have to say those things that need to be said, and weigh them. This is how we find out the truth, and pass along our information to the war crimes trials that will come.

Doctor James Dobson

Digby:

Spongebob holding hands with Big Bird on a video about tolerance is shocking homosexual brainwashing. Exchanging lewd e-mails with Republican congressman is good clean fun.

That’s an allegedly professional child psychologist and religious leader there, adopting Drudge’s GOP approved talking point that this whole sordid affair is nothing more than an elaborate joke perpetrated by the victims. No harm, no foul, no evidence. Let’s have some tolerance for powerful Republicans who can’t be bothered to stop a drunken congressman from hitting on teenagers. The kids are alright.

Hat-tip to John Amato.

I would prefer not to investigate people not part of the congress or the administration. The crime of authorizing torture was committed by those branches of government, and others who were merely enablers did not have jurisdiction. People like Doctor Dobson are part of the problem, however, insofar as they create a deceptive religious halo around what is truly offensive to the sight of God. When they also come out in defense of congressmen who solicit minors for sex, we have reason to ask what they are concealing. Since we have no compulsory process to obtain testimony, we can only say that information is welcome.

We do what we must now, in peace

“Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln

Hat-tip to Nicole Belle.

It’s easy

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.
There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

Words are always metaphors

It seems to me that many people write because they want to be believed. As such, they use a lot of very careful language and avoid saying things that would cause some readers to react with disbelief. Moreover, certain whole topics are avoided, religion especially, in order to avoid seeming like you might be an unreliable source.

Here’s what I have learned: to speak the truth as I understand it now. If my understanding changes, then speak with my new understanding. It is a process of learning and passing on what I learn, it is not a process of lecture by someone professing to be an expert who has all the answers.

I don’t have all the answers, and the answers I have may only be right for me sometimes. You have to decide for yourself if I am speaking in a way that increases your own understanding.

We don’t have the luxury of time to make sure that we properly research the forms and procedures of bringing about a change. This is a transformation which we are undertaking right now, and together. There will be a new social order and it will be better, more perfect than the old one. This is not a violent struggle, this is a movement for peace.

Glenn Greenwald wants to avoid discussion of anything at all “speculative” — that is entirely his free choice. The speculations of the “wingnuts” are different but in some ways similar to my own, and I have explained my own history as a conservative libertarian. We do not find the truth unless we first speculate where it may be found, and search there. If we do not find what we expected, then we change our theories. That is how science works, that is how investigations work, and that is also how religion works. Glenn is a careful lawyer and a good one. He is doing a different job.

Fundamentalists live by the dead word of scripture, with no feeling of the spirit of God within themselves, except perhaps as an angry adversary that commands obedience. They think God is the Devil, and it is they themselves looking in the mirror at themselves, because they are filled with hatred.

They are not my enemies, they are my brothers and sisters too. They are lost down a path that they do not realize is a dead end, a fatal trap. I want them to turn around and walk into the light of love, but I cannot force them. Love is a voluntary act.

There are many of us standing here now. We have been here all the time, and we are waking everyone else up that we can. This is a twelve-alarm fire, you are in danger, you are in a burning building.

Where I stand is sacred ground, Berkeley and San Francisco. These are the places the right wing despises most, because they fear God.