David Corn

It has nothing to do with glass jaws or lead feet. It has everything to do with the fact that Corn and the media have a set of rules for Clinton, and an entirely different set of rules for her opponents.

It was the MSM who criticized Clinton for remaining above the fray while they simultaneously prodded Obama and Edwards to launch into a month-long attack on Clinton's character, honesty, and ambition?

But alas, those rules suddenly changed once Clinton decided to stick up for herself.

I wish Corn, Robinson, Klein, Matthews, Russert, Huffington et al. would get together and decide what exactly the rules are for ALL the candidates.

Further, when the grand inquisition convenes, they should agree on ONE rule book, not ONE rule book for Clinton, and A DIFFERENT AND MORE-GENEROUS one for her opponents.

A short statement about the "Oprah" effect for Obama.

_____________________

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) – Relax, University of South Carolina football fans. Your season may be over, but Williams-Brice Stadium won't be empty for long.

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign announced Wednesday afternoon that because of overwhelming demand, their rally on Sunday with Oprah Winfrey will be moved to the 80,000 seat college football stadium in Columbia (although, the campaign said they don't expect to fill the stadium — that's coach Steve Spurrier's job).

The campaign had been scheduled to hold the rally at the Colonial Center in downtown Columbia, which seats 18,000 people, but on Tuesday Obama's state director Stacey Brayboy announced that "overwhelming excitement" had caused a run on free tickets.

_________________

A personal note...Williams-Brice Stadium is one small commuter airport strip away from the bungalow in which I was concieved. (there is, as yet, no historical marker...)

I wonder if any primary campaign rally has ever had to worry about overfilling an 18,000 seat arena?

Now if OPRAH goes negative on Hillary, (of course, there's no reason to expect she would) THAT would be worth considering.

Edwards and Obama are in a tight political race with a percieved semi-incumbent. Hillary's got many, many skeletons in the crypt that have yet to be openly exhumed.

If the media doesn't dust off those old bones, and if her primary competitors won't, one can be assured that the Repugnants WILL, either overtly at a critical juncture during the general campaign or more covertly through their network of IV-fed syncophantic columnists and bloggers.

Don't discount the machinations of the Rovebot...

-T

Sorry, that should've been "SELF-perceived semi- incumbent.

NPR covered this yesterday. They reported part of the reason the tapes were destroyed was concern by the CIA for the people in the videos, meaning they were afraid of legal action against those individuals should waterboarding be ruled illegal. Also the courts asked for all materials including any videos in at least two court cases, and both times the CIA lied and said none existed.

Torture video or neocon porn?

Torture video or neocon porn?

It's redacted footage of Valerie Plame waterboarding terrorists when she was a supposed covert agent.

Torture Video or Neocon porn?

Too funny. I'm guessing neocon porn. Maybe that’s why old dead-eye Dick had to get his ticker reset a couple weeks ago, he's probably wearing his copy out!

Too funny. I'm guessing neocon porn.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Better neocon porn than liberal kiddie porn:

Talk show host indicted for child porn

SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - San Francisco radio talk show host Bernie Ward has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of using the Internet to send and receive child pornography, his lawyer said today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Damn sickos!

Former GOP aide fesses up to 'imaginary' teen trysts

Defense attorney had claimed boy made it up; said client was 'conservative guy, caring'.

A former GOP congressional aide has pleaded guilty to molesting two male teens, including the 13-year-old son of a family with whom the staffer lived while working on Capitol Hill.

37-year-old Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, who has worked previously for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), as well the Republican chair of California's Orange County, agreed to two felony counts of lewd acts upon a child, reports the Associated Press. A jury had deadlocked at an earlier trial this year -- in which Nielsen was accused of engaging in sexual acts with a 14-year-old boy he met on the internet -- and prosecutors were prepared to bring additional charges in a retrial.

Bush Spins Iran's Centrifuges

[…]

Back in 1976—with Gerald Ford president, Dick Cheney his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld secretary of defense—the Ford administration bought the Shah’s argument that Iran needed a nuclear program to meet its future energy requirements.

That argument, of course, is even more valid today, with the price that can be obtained for oil and the specter of Peak Oil.

Cheney and Rumsfeld persuaded a hesitant President Ford to offer Iran a deal that would have meant at least $6.4 billion for U.S. corporations like Westinghouse and General Electric, had not the Shah been unceremoniously dumped three years later.

The offer included a reprocessing facility for a complete nuclear fuels cycle—essentially the same capability that the U.S. and Israel now insist Iran cannot be allowed to acquire.

A pity that our domesticated media seem unable to catch the disingenuousness.

Of course LBH posts no link and omits the rest of the article or else he would have to admit it's not an open and shut case. Here are some more parts.
********************
Talk show host indicted for child porn
Weinberg said the case stems from an "error of judgment" Ward made when he spent a few days in 2004 looking at pornography images and exchanging images with other adults when doing research for a book on hypocrisy.

The attorney said, "It's really tragic that the government has decided to prosecute him for a judgment he made as a journalist and to treat him as a child pornographer when he is not."
----------
Weinberg said Ward wanted to learn about the culture of child pornography because he planned to include hypocrisy about pornography in his book. Ward never finished the book because the FBI searched his house and seized his hard drive in early 2005, the attorney said.

"It may have been an error of judgment, but he was not doing it to exploit children," Weinberg said.
********************
So is this guy a real pervert or a just a journalist who made a dumb decision about how to research something? That will be for the court to decide.

LBH? He has some legit comments? But his neglecting to disclose that Bernie Ward was a Catholic priest is summary of what these right wingnuts do, Let us analyze:

Bernie Ward was a lefty radio dude: That makes him bad?

Bernie Ward was a Christian priest: lets not mention?

Bottom line is he has been indicted, and as such he is innocent until proven guilty (LBH have you given up on that basic American tenet). I think it is best not to try people by blog. Bernie Ward is not running this nation, so your comparison seems to be lacking of relevance? You are as much of a tool now, just have you always been. Good to hear from you again.

Congressional Pages: 'Kids gone wild'

Public sex, criminal activity rock Capitol Hill page system

Sex among young Congressional pages has become so rampant that two youngsters were recently sent home for engaging in oral sex in front of, and with encouragement from, other pages.

Lax oversight of the underage charges who serve as "gofers" on Capitol Hill has led to resignations by two members of the Congressional board that oversees the program and claims that pages are routinely engage in sex acts with each other and committing crimes.

So far, four pages have been sent home for "inappropriate sexual conduct" and shoplifting but sources on Capitol Hill says the system is out of control and some concerned parents have dubbed the system "kids gone wild."

******

Young people having sex? OMG What next?

Teen pregnancy is going up - maybe condoms are a better plan? Pretending these young folks have superior will power is silly.

Iran stops selling oil in U.S. dollars

Iran has completely stopped selling oil in U.S. dollars.

The oil minister, Gholam Hussein Nozari said considering dollar depreciation and the loss of crude oil exporter countries, now dollar is not considered as a trustworthy currency any more.

Iranian authorities in the OPEC summit suggested a trustworthy currency to be determined to stop the loss of oil exporter countries, he added.

A team of oil, economy, and finance ministries of OPEC members has been organized to pursue this issue on the expert level and the results will be announced in the next meeting, he pointed.

Nozari also highlighted that the Sinopec Chinese Company has recently requested to purchase more oil from Iran and regarding fluctuating oil market such requests are usually accepted.

*****

Economic warfare?

Intelligence expert who rewrote book on Iran

Report has torpedoed plans for military action and brought 'howls' from neocons

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday December 8, 2007
The Guardian

The intelligence came from an exotic variety of sources: there was the so-called Laptop of Death; there was the Iranian commander who mysteriously disappeared in Turkey. Also in the mix was video footage of a nuclear plant in central Iran and intercepts of Iranian telephone calls by the British listening station GCHQ.

But pivotal to the US investigation into Iran's suspect nuclear weapons programme was the work of a little-known intelligence specialist, Thomas Fingar. He was the principal author of an intelligence report published on Monday that concluded Iran, contrary to previous US claims, had halted its covert programme four years ago and had not restarted it. Almost single-handedly he has stopped - or, at the very least, postponed - any US military action against Iran.

Iraq: The Elephant in the Room

Gov. Bill Richardson

[…]

Only one thing will bring long-term stability in Iraq: political progress. The stated purpose of the surge was to give Iraqi politicians the breathing room to take the necessary steps towards real reconciliation. That has not happened - and those on the ground know it. Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, last month flatly declared "There will be no reconciliation . . .this is a struggle about power," and Iraq's Vice President (and most important Sunni politician) recently echoed that with "there has been no significant progress in months."

Political progress is impossible as long as our troops are on the ground, making the status-quo possible for Iraqi politicians and leading Iraqi citizens to doubt whether we'll ever leave. There is no military solution to this problem, so our military should not be there.

In fact, the only real progress we've seen in Iraq in the recent months happened in Basra, where the removal of the British garrison has brought about a 90% decrease in violence. No occupying forces equaled less violence, and zero coalition casualties. This is the kind of change we need to see across Iraq to create the landscape for real political progress.

There is a clear answer -- to truly reduce violence and to force Iraqis to find their own political solution, we must begin immediately to withdraw all of our forces - all of them, without any residual troops left behind. There is no military solution in Iraq, and there will be no political solution while our military remains there.

Leaving troops in Iraq until 2013 is not an option - not if we want to end this war, not if we want to move forward and begin addressing problems here at home.

Ignoring this issue won't change those facts.

Iraqi Parliament Closes Shop for Month

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi legislators suspended parliamentary sessions Thursday until the end of the month because of the Muslim religious season — the end of much-delayed efforts to pass U.S.-backed legislation aimed at achieving national reconciliation this year.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, welcomed a report from his top commander in Iraq that violence has declined 60 percent in the last six months. But Gates warned that "people are getting impatient" for the Iraqi government to take advantage of improved security and move toward needed political reforms.

The Sunni speaker of parliament announced the decision to suspend sessions after days of debate over a draft bill that would allow thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to their government jobs. The measure is among the 18 benchmarks set by the United States to encourage reconciliation.

******

Why are our troops even there?

Basra's murderous militias tell Christian women to cover up or face death

On her first day at Basra University this year a man came up to Zeena, a 21-year-old Christian woman, and three other Christian girls and ordered them to cover their heads with a hijab, or Islamic headscarf.

“We didn't listen to him, and thought he might just be some extremist student representing only himself,” she said. The next day Zeena and two of her friends returned to class with uncovered heads.

This time a man in the black clothes of the Shia militia stopped them at the entrance and took them aside. “He said, 'We asked you yesterday to wear a hijab, so why are you and your friends not covering your hair?'. He was talking very aggressively and I was scared,” Zeena recalled.

The girls explained that they were Christians and that their faith did not call for headscarves. “He said: 'Outside this university you are Christian and can do what you want; inside you are not. Next time I want to see you wearing a hijab or I swear to God the three of you will be killed immediately',” Zeena recalled. Terrified, the girls ran home. They now wear the headscarf all the time.

*****

This is what our troops are dying for?

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002

In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

*****

Time to impeach the whole group of so-called leaders from both parties.

Huckabee Stands by AIDS Statement

Sunday December 9, 2007 5:31 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) - GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said Sunday he won't run from his statement 15 years ago that AIDS patients should have been isolated.

Huckabee acknowledged the prevailing scientific view then, and since, that the virus that causes AIDS is not spread through casual contact, but said that was not certain. He cited revelations in 1991 that a dentist had infected a patient in an extraordinary case that highlighted the risk of infection through contact with blood or bodily fluids.

``I still believe this today,'' he said in a broadcast interview, that ``we were acting more out of political correctness'' in responding to the AIDS crisis. ``I don't run from it, I don't recant it,'' he said of his position in 1992. Yet he said he would state his view differently in retrospect.

Huckabee, as a Senate candidate that year, told The Associated Press that ``we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague'' if the federal government was going to deal with the spread of the disease effectively. ``It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents,'' he said then.

In an interview on ``Fox News Sunday,'' the former Arkansas governor denied those words were a call to quarantine the AIDS population, although he did not explain how else isolation would be achieved. ``I didn't say we should quarantine,'' he said. The idea was not to ``lock people up.''

Huckabee stated his 1992 positions in an AP questionnaire in which he also called homosexuality ``an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle.''

GOP presidential rival Rudy Giuliani on Sunday declined to discuss the matter during a separate television interview except to say he had heard Huckabee say it was not ``his current position.''

``I have enough of my own statements and issues that I have to deal with,'' the former New York mayor said, laughing.

Giuliani, who appeared on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' said he did not believe homosexuality was aberrant. What is sinful are ``the acts, not the orientation.''

*****

Well, that is how the neochronic brain works.

Democratic Complicity in Bush’s Torture Regimen

by Glenn Greenwald

The Washington Post reports today that the Bush administration, beginning in 2002, repeatedly briefed leading Congressional Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — including, at various times, Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, and Jane Harman — regarding the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation methods,” including details about waterboarding and other torture measures. With one exception (Harman, who vaguely claims to have sent a letter to the CIA), these lawmakers not only failed to object to these policies, but affirmatively supported them.

This information was almost certainly leaked to the Post by intelligence officials who are highly irritated — understandably so — from watching the manipulative spectacle whereby these Democrats now prance around as outraged victims of policies to which they deliberately acquiesced, when they weren’t fully supporting them. Numerous liberal bloggers are already drawing the only conclusions that can be drawn, and expressing their outrage and horror at the Democratic Party leadership. Those sentiments are indisputably appropriate, and I just want to add a few more points to them.

*****

A very good piece. Until people come around to the reality that it is not right versus left it is us versus them.

CIA photos 'show UK Guantanamo detainee was tortured'

Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture.

The photographic evidence will be vital to clear Binyam Mohammed, 27, who the Americans want to bring before a Military Commission on charges of terrorism, say his lawyers.

Last week it emerged that Britain had negotiated the release of four detainees who have British residence status but Mr Mohammed, who speaks with a London accent, and at least three others are being held back.

In a letter sent to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Britain is urged to ask the US to stop the CIA destroying the pictures.

Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve representing Mr Mohammed, said that he also knows the identity of the agents who were present when his client was allegedly beaten and tortured. Writing to Mr Miliband, he said: "Given the opportunity, we can prove that the evidence was the fruit of torture. Indeed, we can prove that a photographic record was made of this by the CIA. Through diligent investigation we know when the CIA took pictures of Mr Mohammed's brutalised genitalia, we know the identity of the CIA agents who were present including the person who took the pictures (we know both their false identities and their true names), and we know what those pictures show."

He added: "I have been privy to materials that allegedly support the finding that Mr Mohammed should be held, and while I cannot discuss some here (due to classification rules), I can state unequivocally that I have seen no evidence of any kind against Mr Mohammed that is not the bitter fruit of torture."

Reprieve says it will be pressing for criminal prosecutions against the CIA agents alleged to have carried out the torture.

Last week it emerged that the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the torture of detainees held by the US.

Binyam Mohammed was born in Ethiopia but was given leave to remain in the UK after seeking asylum in 1994. Seven years later, he travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Americans allege that he underwent training in firearms and explosives. In 2002, he was arrested by Pakistani immigration officials at Karachi airport on his way back to the UK. He says he was then taken to Morocco and tortured for 18 months, including having his penis slashed, before being sent to Guantanamo, where he still remains.

Mr Stafford-Smith added in his letter: "As you know, the only purported basis for the US holding Mr Mohammed is an allegation that he is an ('illegal') enemy combatant. Five-and-a-half years after his initial seizure, he is not currently charged in a military commission, and he has never been offered a fair trial. As you are aware, Mr Mohammed was rendered to Morocco by the CIA and tortured for 18 months in a way that was medieval.

"There can be no rational dispute that this is true. We have the CIA flight records which precisely match Mr Mohammed's version of events. He has nothing to do with Morocco, and he was not taken there by the CIA for a Club Med vacation."