That is a fact. Now, you may ask "why is this important?"

Leading up to a 2004 visit to Vancouver, Canada, lawyers there sought to have him charged for his criminal behavior resulting in a court decision that reflected the Canadian Attorney General's view that Bush could not be brought up on torture charges at that time because he had diplomatic immunity:

“These charges were properly laid and backed up by powerful evidence. The government didn’t deny that evidence because it couldn’t deny it. Diplomatic immunity is purely procedural. It doesn’t affect the validity of the charges, only whether they can be proceeded with, for the time being, in a foreign court, in this case a Canadian court. Even if Bush has immunity, it’s only temporary and it won’t shield him or anyone in his administration from Canadian law, or any other law, when they leave office. That the Canadian government would try to hush this up by hiding Bush behind diplomatic immunity was only to be expected. Paul Martin invited Bush here to ingratiate himself with the President, despite the President’s crimes against our laws and against international law, despite even his inadmissibility as a war criminal under Canada’s immigration laws – above all, despite the unending human disaster the President’s ‘war of choice’ has brought to the people of Iraq.”

Cut back to 2009, as Bush makes plans to deliver a speech in Calgary, Canada, and this time?  Read more…

[I'm reposting and stickying this post from 12/05/2006, because nobody should think that Gitmo is the whole of America's problem with torture and executive lawlessness. The entire cancer of torture and executive lawlessness needs to be cut out. That's what "moving forward" means. See Jeralyn today on Ghost Air, which had twenty six planes. That's a lot of prisoners. Where are they? --lambert]

Let's do some arithmetic on how many prisoners Bush is holding in his gulags.

1. We know that there are thousands of prisoners (estimates range from 7,000 to 35,000).
2. Gitmo holds only 500.
3. So, where are the missing thousands? The only alternatives I can think of:
1. They've been released
2. They're still in jail
3. They've been disappeared.

Barring divine intervention, the bodies of the missing thousands occupy time and space in this world. Where are they?

Which door would you choose? (a), released? (b), still in jail? Or (c), disappeared?  Read more…

Posing as a Bidder, Utah Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres of Wilderness for Oil & Gas Drilling --

... While many environmental groups launched campaigns to oppose the sale of the land, one student in Salt Lake City attempted to block the sale by disrupting the auction itself. Twenty-seven-year-old Tim DeChristopher posed as a potential bidder and bid hundreds of thousands of dollars on parcels of the land, driving up prices and winning some 22,000 acres for himself, without any intention of paying for them.

 Read more…

Via TFT:
Obsidian Wings:

I'm not sure it tells anything we don't already know (read, e.g., The Dark Side). But the Levin-run Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse is now out (pdf exec summary). And it deserves some press attention.

 Read more…

[Welcome, Crooks and Liars readers!]

Reuters:

The Polish prosecutor's office is investigating allegations that there was a CIA prison in Poland where al Qaeda suspects were questioned and guards might have used methods close to torture, the prime minister's top adviser said on Friday.

I suppose this is happening now because the Bush administration has, er, disposed of the prisoners? Because the birds have all flown? One more little problem cleaned up before the perps enter the dreaded private sector?

Medicare's Poison Pill

Biden Rips Bush Administration

Looking to the future but with one eye on the past, Biden also promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with "a fine-toothed comb" and pursue criminal charges if necessary.

"If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation," he said, "they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution - out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no one, no attorney general, no president, no one is above the law."

More like this please.

Behind the firewall: Bush loyalist Mike Connell controls Congressional secrets as his email sites serve Karl Rove

 Read more…

The House of Representatives voted to refer Kucinich's Motion to impeach the president.

Wow, I thought it would go nowhere.

Members of the Judiciary Committee

The significance of this is that an impeached President cannot issue pardons, amongst other things.

Under the Bush Administration, reading is no longer fundamental. The Bush Administration has eliminated all funding for the program-- which has been funded by every administration since 1975--in the 2009 proposed budget.

"If the House had nothing better to do, this futile partisan act would be a waste of time," said Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman. "The 'people's House' should reflect the priorities of the American people, not the fantasies of left-wing bloggers.""

Thanks for caring, honey.

Oh, Congress held some administration officials in contempt. Good on them, I hope it's backed up with some jail time.

Searing.

My point: this is going on all over, from the Federal gov't to the MIC complex to diplomatic agencies. I'm posting these two pieces because it gives us a glimpse into a culture of corruption the SCLM rarely covers, but is everywhere. A str8 Republican! No, really!

ouston, Texas) The district attorney who defended the Texas law criminalizing homosexuality before the US Supreme Court is desperately trying to keep his job following the discovery of e-mails containing sexually explicit videos, racist jokes and what is described as torrid love notes to his executive secretary.

Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal (R) is facing a state investigation into the emails which were discovered on his office computer.

...

Rosenthal who argued before the US Supreme Court that the Texas law against sodomy was upholding the moral values of the state and was in place to protect families. The case was Lawrence v Texas.

 Read more…

Snicker. DCOW, but guess who has a crush on PonyBoi? Powerloin!

The folks at First Draft take an unfriendly look at President Bush's extemporaneous comments in the Ramallah press conference yesterday. With equal parts humor and malice, they slice the comments into bite-sized morsels and provide appropriate headings for them. I think I understand the comments all too well and hope to take another look at his statement when I have a little more time.

UPDATE: I mistook First Draft for Professor Richard Landes's The Second Draft. because you're a moron with the reading comprehension skillz of a second grader, you cheeto-snapper. The folks at First Draft are among the sophisticates who refer to President Bush as "Chimpy." Unfortunately, their take on President Bush's Ramallah press conference is on target.

Because life without humor is like sushine without warmth:

I had the pleasure of watching Chris Rock perform live stand up this New Year's Eve at Madison Square Garden. It was raunchy and ridiculously politically incorrect, but also entertaining as hell. Rock was on fire and he did a lot of really strong topical material about the electoral process, the top contenders, and a lot of other major 2007 stories. Here are a few highlights:

On Elections: "Why would they have Election Day on a Tuesday? Would you hold a party on a Tuesday? No, cause you want people to come. They obviously don't want you showing up."

On Bush: "He's made it hard for a white man to run for president. People are saying, 'After Bush, I'm not sure we can take another chance on a white guy."

"He just doesn't give a fuck about you. In the history of not giving a fuck no one has ever given less of a fuck."

 Read more…

Bush calls on Iran to "come clean".

Leaving aside the obvious bad jokes, didn't I just read something in the news about an NIE?

And you America doubters-in-chief thought it would stop the drumbeat to war.

Watch as Bush explains it all, nice and slow for all the haters in the house:

I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace.

[...] I believed before the NIE that Iran was dangerous and I believe after the NIE that Iran is dangerous.

And I have said Iran is dangerous. And the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world. Quite the contrary.

How could it be read any other way?

FDL:

There’s one other avenue that I’d like to see Rather’s attorneys pursue, if feasible: Bush’s W-2 records. An anonymous source points out that “[b]y dividing his total wages by his rate of pay at the time [a known quantity], we would finally know how many hours [Bush] worked in the Guard.”

So, Rather should subpoena Bush's W-2s!

Assuming that those hours weren’t falsified, and that W-2s are subpoenable (a quick search suggests they are), this would be a simple, elegant way to prove whether Dubya actually fulfilled his obligations in the Alabama ANG, and therefore whether that aspect of Rather’s story was accurate. They might also come in handy if Rather wants to pursue the scrubbing rumors - there could be intriguing discrepancies between the W-2s and the ANG records.

A simple arithmetical process, eh?

I'm no Villager, but it struck me there might be more than a few Beltway dog whistles in the following little story by Carl Hulse in the Times:

Fearing that President Bush would again use a Congressional recess to install disputed executive branch appointees without Senate confirmation, Democrats convened the Senate for the first of four microsessions to be held during the holiday break, precisely to thwart such an end run.

“I am glad to see the leadership stepped up here,” said Jim Webb, the junior senator from Virginia, called upon by the majority to open the Senate with a skeleton staff for the express purpose of immediately closing it down.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, chose to schedule the so-called pro forma sessions because Mr. Bush took advantage of past recesses to install nominees including John R. Bolton, as ambassador to the United Nations, and, most recently, Sam Fox, a donor to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as ambassador to Belgium. This time, Democrats were particularly suspicious of plans to appoint as surgeon general a nominee they oppose.

“This is the first time that pro formas have been used to block recess appointments,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid.

Mr. Reid said he would be willing to consider some of the president’s more contentious nominees as long as the White House moved forward with Democratic choices for regulatory bodies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Excellent. Now Reid should go ahead and block everything. The Republicans are; why shouldn't we? Tit-for-tat is a highly successful strategy, after all, even though so far the Democrats have applied it only to members of their own caucus, and their base.

Anyhow, the possible dog-whistles:

[Oopsie. Scottie walked it back. I guess it was just a cheap stunt to sell books. Who knew?]

Your case has re-opened. On Plame, what did Bush know, and when did he know it? 'Cause Scott "Sucker MC" McClellan dropped a dime:

E&P was first mainstream news outlet to report on Monday night that the McClellan excerpt [from his new tell-all book] reads:

"The most powerful leader [sic] in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration "were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

Chris Dodd--yay!--responds:

A fake plan from Bush? Could it be? The always excellent James Fallows:

The plan announced with fanfare from the White House last week, to reduce airline delays by opening up military airspace, is preposterous. It will not make the slightest difference in airline delays or the general neuralgia of Thanksgiving travel. You think the media were gullible about Administration claims five years ago? Gee, it's good to see that that will never happen again....

What's wrong with this plan?

Let me guess: It's purely rhetorical, based on false premises, and won't solve the problem.  Read more…

Which is pretty funny, since as President, Bush seems to have pre-approved pardons for every war criminal with a Republican party card. McClatchy's Joe Galloway has the money quote:

When George W. Bush was the governor of Texas, the state investigated, indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison for 10 years a county sheriff who, with his deputies, had waterboarded a criminal suspect. That sheriff got no pardon from Gov. Bush.

Of course waterboarding's illegal. And that would make Bush a war criminal. No wonder Mukasey crawfished on torture--he didn't want his boss to ever have to go before a tribunal. The only wonder, if it is, indeed, a wonder, is that Senate Judiciary members DiFi and Upchuck sold out Leahy and Feingold, and let Mukasey's nomination proceed.

Of course waterboarding is torture. Galloway:

Is waterboarding torture?

The answer to all of these questions, put simply, is yes.

All of Judge Michael Mukasey’s artful dodging and word play to avoid acknowledging the obvious to the august members of Senate Judiciary Committee does nothing to change the fact.

Every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee knows that waterboarding is torture, even the majority who voted to send Judge Mukasey’s nomination to be attorney general, America’s chief law enforcement official, to the floor for a vote.

When you hog-tie a human being, tilt him head down, stuff a rag in his mouth and over his nostrils and pour water onto the rag slowly and steadily to the point where his lungs fill with water and he's suffocating and drowning, that is torture.

For example:

Froomkin:

"I've committed our troops into harm's way twice, and it's not a pleasant experience because I understand the consequences firsthand.

What does Bush know "first hand" about consequences to the troops, except when he's using them for props in a photo-op, serving them fake turkey, or prancing around a flightdeck in a jumpsuit?

The kind of headline we like to see:

Bush pleads for Mukasey's confirmation

Make him plead some more!