Monthly Archives: May 2009
Obama making torture his own, Part 2
From ABC’s Jake Tapper:
President Obama met with White House counsel Greg Craig and other members of the White House counsel team last week and told them that he had second thoughts about the decision to hand over photographs of detainee abuse to the ACLU, per a judge’s order, and had changed his mind.
The president “believes [...]
Obama making torture his own…
… or at least covering for his predecessor. Glenn Greenwald sums up the message sent by the Obama administration to the British government:
If your court describes the torture to which one of your residents was subjected while in U.S. custody, we will withhold information from you that could enable you to break up terrorist plots [...]
Great moments in commercial history, Vol. II
Again, I’ve been caught out watching commercials because of the NBA playoffs. I just don’t have the time, energy or mental capacity to plan ahead and record each of the 9,000 playoff games I want to watch. But I do wonder if my life would be a little less joyous if I had missed commercial [...]
The torture story goes on
Just keeping you peeps up to date.
Dick Cheney is not providing plausible deniability for his former boss. Here is Cheney speaking about the “enhanced interrogation program”:
SCHIEFFER: Did President Bush know everything you knew?
CHENEY: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew — he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized [...]
Stay classy, morons
I’m still a bit sick, so you’re getting treated to more video goodness:
Seriously, how pathetic are the Republican Senators for releasing garbage like that? (To be fair, they do get kudos for using Carl Orff’s ‘O Fortuna’ as the soundtrack.)
It’s not like closing Gitmo means releasing convicted terrorists into American cities. What it does mean [...]
Why we have to limit their size
The main lesson of [the bailouts] is that society cannot permit the existence of private institutions that are too large to fail. And that’s not only because they might eventually fail and then we are on the hook for their liabilities. It’s also because the lesson of the bailouts — both the auto and banking [...]
Quote of the week: Chris Matthews smackdown
Speculation is rising about who Obama will pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. The punditocracy is convinced that Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a likely candidate because she’s relatively young and would add some diversity to a male dominated institution. Predictable, the smear machine is working overtime to ruin her chances. The [...]
Torture versus war
A couple of weeks ago, when I first outlined a case for prosecutions of torturers, our intrepid commenter, Ian, objected on the basis that our illegitimate wars were a far greater stain on our country. For instance, our occupation of Iraq has sent hundreds of thousands to early graves; what are a few hundred tortured [...]
Mental health break: Bruuuuce edition
In honor of the superlative Bruce Springtseen concert I saw on Saturday (even the Springsteen nerds agree it awesome), I present this trip back in time:
Here are some videos from Saturday’s concert.
Although the quality isn’t that great, this is my favorite:
By the way, are any of you listening/reading/watching anything good I should be aware of?
Great moments in commercial history
It’s that time of year when I waste my nights watching NBA playoff games. By the way, the Bulls/Celtics series has been incredible. The game last night took three over times to decide.
But anyways, NBA playoff time means being inundated with commercials I don’t usually see. The one I wanted to share with you today [...]