Courtesy Antemedius:

You think that just because President Obama is afraid of the consequences of investigating the criminal Bush administrations State Sponsored Torture program that the former President and his henchmen are off the hook? Well think again. And this is not just on theoretically either. I’ll have a lot more detail on this on Monday, but here is what I got from a friend of mine at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)

President Bush was supposed to be in Geneva on Monday. He was going to address a group at the Hotel President Wilson. It was to be one of those big dollar events where the Ex-President speaks to a rah-rah crowd for a big passel of cash. That is now canceled, and just canceled this evening. Why is that?

Continues at source.

Sir:

I have just learned of your statement in the Michigan group’s lawsuit attempting to undo the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. I should like to repeat the pertinent passage here, in which you claim there is “no need” to extend hate crimes definitions:

“Of the 1.38 million violent crimes reported in the U.S. by the FBI in 2008, only 243 were considered as motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation,” he wrote on the group’s Web site. “The sole purpose of this law is to criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their Biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin.”

Translation: “Help! help, I’m being oppressed!”

Mr. Thompson, I can only suppose that by “Christians expressing their Biblically-based belief” you mean the part that involves kidnapping homosexuals, transporting them to the middle of nowhere, and beating them to death. Which is what happened to Matthew Shepard, and which has always been considered a crime in the United States of America. The law named for the late Mr. Shepard extends some special penalties, but is actually designed to let local law enforcement officials call on the technology and expertise of federal agencies to solve such crimes.  Source Article

The Nation
By Jeremy Scahill

January 28, 2010

Every detail of September 16, 2007, is burned in Mohammed Kinani’s memory. Shortly after 9 am he was preparing to leave his house for work at his family’s auto parts business in Baghdad when he got a call from his sister, Jenan, who asked him to pick her and her children up across town and bring them back to his home for a visit. The Kinanis are a tightknit Shiite family, and Mohammed often served as a chauffeur through Baghdad’s dangerous streets to make such family gatherings possible.

Mohammed had just pulled away from his family’s home in the Khadamiya neighborhood in his SUV. His youngest son, 9-year-old Ali, came tearing down the road after him, asking his father if he could accompany him. Mohammed told him to run along and play with his brothers and sister. But Ali, an energetic and determined kid, insisted. Mohammed gave in, and off the father and son went.

As Mohammed and Ali drove through Baghdad that hot and sunny Sunday, they passed a newly rebuilt park downtown. Ali gazed at the park and then turned to his father and asked, “Daddy, when are you gonna bring us here?”

“Next week,” Mohammed replied. “If God wills it, son.” Source Article

An accompanying slideshow of Ali Kinani, his family, and the Nisour massacre can be found here.

Courtesy Newsweek:

It’s hard to know just yet what the precise impact of theSupreme Court’s landmark decision on campaign-finance reform this morning will be. But one thing is for sure: it will be huge. Dramatic, sweeping, fundamental, seismic—all those adjectives apply to this alteration of the political landscape. In all likelihood, Republicans will be the biggest beneficiaries. They’ve had a long history of taking care of their corporate buddies. And with the Administration today opening a new front in their battle on Wall Street, you can bet the financial industry will happily raid their bursting cash coffers to support Republicans in November.

The decision is a stunning display of judicial activism from a chief justice who promised to engage in anything but. Remember all his promises to respect precedent? Apparently he doesn’t. As E.J. Dionne writes:“Remember Roberts saying judges were like umpires calling the balls and strikes? In this case, he and his colleagues canceled the game altogether and decided on their own what the final score would be.” Roberts expanded the scope of the initial case before him,Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to take on a century’s worth of campaign-finance regulation. Dahlia Lithwick describes it perfectly: “The court had to reach out far beyond any place it needed to go….This started off as a case about a single movie. It morphed into John Roberts’s Golden Globe night.”

For their part Republicans are defending the ruling as rolling back infringements of free speech. They’re wrong. The First Amendment protects an individual’s right to free speech. Corporations are not individuals, although in this ruling, the Supreme Court equates the two. That leaves the door open for further challenges. Today’s ruling focuses on independent expenditures but leaves in place the restrictions that bar corporations from donating to political parties or individual candidates. That’s still the terrain of individual supporters and explicitly designated political action committees, which are also subject to strict rules. But with this ruling, it’s easy to imagine a legal challenge to allowing direct contributions as well. After all, if corporations are give the same free speech protections as individuals when it comes to political campaigns, why can’t they have the same right to donate? That argument might not pass muster with the Supremes, but I’d be willing to bet it will be raised.

-Source.

TPM Muckraker

Zachary Roth | January 7, 2010, 2:02PM

Who ever said there are no second acts in American life never met some of the Republicans who played roles in the U.S. attorney firings.

Three figures from the Bush Justice Department scandal of 2006 are back in the limelight, running for office under the GOP banner in 2010.

Perhaps the most prominent is Tim Griffin, the former RNC operative who worked as a top White House aide to Karl Rove. In numerous emails to colleagues, Rove made clear his desire to see Griffin land a powerful government post. And in December 2006, Bud Cummins was fired as U.S. attorney in Arkansas, in order to create a vacancy for Griffin. Griffin was appointed U.S. attorney via an interim appointment, but the Democratic Senate refused to confirm him, and in June 2007 he resigned. Source