Torture Bill

I think this deserves an encyclopedic article.

Open thread

“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”

Please read Len Hart’s existentialist thoughts of the day.

And as a second subject, now that the Geneva Conventions are toast, who do you think will join the administration in creating a new Terror Convention?

Since this is an Open Thread and catch-all, I also thought I’d mention that someone was the 6,000th visitor to Cannablog just a moment ago.

“I call it ‘The Aristocrats’!”

Hat-tip to watertiger.

Filed under “Antisocial humor.”

Even the hopeless sinner

 

One Love! One Heart!
Let’s get together and feel all right.
Hear the children cryin’ (One Love!);
Hear the children cryin’ (One Heart!),
Sayin’: give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Sayin’: let’s get together and feel all right. Wo wo-wo wo-wo!

 

Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One Love!);
There is one question I’d really love to ask (One Heart!):
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner,
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs?

 

One Love! What about the one heart? One Heart!
What about – ? Let’s get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (One Love!);
So shall it be in the end (One Heart!),
All right!
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.
One more thing!

 

Let’s get together to fight this Holy Armagiddyon (One Love!),
So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One Song!).
Have pity on those whose chances grows t’inner;
There ain’t no hiding place from the Father of Creation.

 

Sayin’: One Love! What about the One Heart? (One Heart!)
What about the – ? Let’s get together and feel all right.
I’m pleadin’ to mankind! (One Love!);
Oh, Lord! (One Heart) Wo-ooh!

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.

Jack and Karl sitting in a tree

Laura Rozen has the report, which you can read.

Skimming these, this is shocking stuff. The buying of influence at pretty high levels of the White House. And so sloppy! Check out page 13 of the .pdf here. Abramoff to his staffer, Kevin Ring. “Dammit. It was sent to Susan [Ralston, Rove’s aide] on her mc pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system.” Ring to Abramoff: “Your email to Susan was forwarded to …. She said it it is better not to put this stuff in writing in their [the White house] email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be law suits, etc. Who knows?” They seem to express knowledge of potentially improper or illegal activity as it was happening.

More background from Laura and the New York Times here.

Mr. Rove has described Mr. Abramoff as a “casual acquaintance,” but the records obtained by the House committee show that Mr. Rove and his aides sought Mr. Abramoff’s help in obtaining seats at sporting events, and that Mr. Rove sat with Mr. Abramoff in the lobbyist’s box seats for an N.C.A.A. basketball playoff game in 2002.

After that game, Mr. Abramoff described Mr. Rove in an e-mail message to a colleague: “He’s a great guy. Told me anytime we need something just let him know through Susan.” The message was referring to Susan Ralson, Mr. Abramoff’s former secretary, who joined the White House in February 2001 as Mr. Rove’s executive assistant.

* * *

On learning in July 2002 that Mr. Rove planned to dine at Signatures with a party of 8 to 10 people, Mr. Abramoff wrote to a colleague: “I want him to be given a very nice bottle of wine and have Joseph whisper in his ear (only he should hear) that Abramoff wanted him to have this wine on the house.” In another e-mail message, Mr. Abramoff directed his restaurant staff to “please put Karl Rove in his usual table.”

Here is your constitution, please read

The Existentialist Cowboy has already written what the Torture Bill means. It is unconstitutional, as both an ex post facto law and a bill of attainder.

We don’t often see language like that and most people don’t know what it means.

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

–US Constitution, Article I

This is how former chief justice William Rehnquist described what it meant in the constitution:

A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial.

That is what this pro-Torture Bill does, singling out those people whom the president designates to be imprisoned without trial and tortured — also a violation of the Eighth Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments.

The pro-Torture Bill is also ex post facto, meaning retroactive in effect, as it attempts to legislate away crimes that have already been committed by the administration.

Radiating just the right amount of cool and heat

Lamb – B-line

Needs no introduction

Night has fallen

There may be little more that I can say regarding politics.

The era of freedom in America is over, though we do not yet see it in our home towns. In Washington, they have given all power and authority to the commander in chief, the decider, and that is what he has become.

If you think this is overwrought, you are not paying attention to what I have been saying and showing you.

The congress, both houses, have approved legislation which gives George Bush the authority to detain anyone and torture without trial or due process of any kind. You are not safe from arrest, no matter how well you may have tried to protect yourself.

You have relatives you think are not in any danger, but they are. You have sons and daughters and sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers who will be arrested, for violating the laws of war which this administration will invent out of whole cloth. The war on drugs is the same as the war on terrorism, the war on terrorism will become the war on cannabis. They will call us terrorists merely for saying things that make you feel scared of your government.

I need you to understand something — my way is not the way of the sword, the gun or the bomb. My way is the way of love.

You will not win if you take another way. Even if you think you are one of the jailers, and you feel very safe and secure in your place, you will be jailed. And if you pick up the sword then you will die by the sword.

We are not willing to be crucified again, and none of us are up on that cross alone.

The time has come for music.