torture

Once upon a time, waterboarding was torture, and torture was a war crime.

H.R.2082 is the Bill in Congress which would have, if passed, overridden President Bush’s Veto of the bill to prohibit torture, making it illegal for any Agency or Department of the United States to utilized or practice torture. It did not pass. President Bush went on National television to tell America that torture was a "valuable tool in our fight against terrorism". We are now among those nations who violate Human rights through the officially sanctioned practice of torture.

Who voted to support and allow torture?.....

For torture.

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said. The bill provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and includes the interrogation requirement.

Over the past two years, the Art Pope Puppetshow has served as an exceptional lightning rod for galvanizing progressives against the toxic agenda of North Carolina's free-market extremists. With a multi-million dollar budget to oil their influence-buying machine, the Show has clearly had some measure of success in shaping the agenda with small town newspapers in general and with the Raleigh News and Observer, in particular.

The fondness of the N&O's political reporters for all things Pope has been well discussed, as have the water-carrying activities of Rick Martinez, an opinionator at the N&O whose wife Donna works backstage at the Show. And while I'm reluctant to boost his readership by linking to his columns, today's piece in the N&O shows Martinez at his worst.

I've taken a break from reading The One Percent Doctrine to relate an anecdote.

One of the lessons future administrations were supposed to have learned from LBJ and McNamaras' micromanaging of the Vietnam war was the delegation of such decisions to proper military authorities. It seems no one told George W. Bush.

In which we determine if the Republicans and Jesus are as close as some would have you think.

New Jersey lawmakers vote to abolish death penalty

In which we advance some new thinking that could make torture far more environmentally friendly than it is today.

Kay Hagan and Jim Neal are going to be asked all sorts of things by all sorts of people during the course of this campaign, about the substance of issues, as well as on their campaign tactics. In today's news, both are in the spotlight.

(Updated with tags . . . gotta remember to do that)
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