They're not just economic royalists and Yacht Tax Loophole lovers anymore, they have graduated to out and out eliminationist status:
Sacramento County Republican leaders Tuesday took down offensive material on their official party Web site that sought to link Sen. Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden and encouraged people to "Waterboard Barack Obama" - material that offended even state GOP leaders.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has pushed the party to try to broaden its appeal, took issue with the site. "In the governor's view, it's completely and totally inappropriate," said Julie Soderlund, a Schwarzenegger spokeswoman [...]
Taking credit for the site (sacramentorepublicans.org) and its content was county party chairman Craig MacGlashan - husband of Sacramento County Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan.
The Bee asked MacGlashan about the content after seeking his reaction to hate-filled graffiti that was spray-painted over an Obama display on a fence at Fair Oaks Boulevard and Garfield Avenue.
In recent weeks, MacGlashan, an attorney, joined local Democratic party officials in condemning vandalism to political displays.
The vandalism to the Obama display appeared to have been done overnight Monday. A racial epithet, profanity, "KKK" and the words "white power" were clearly visible from the roadway. Six of the nine fence panels were defaced.
"What you are describing to me is not free speech, it's vandalism. We don't condone it," MacGlashan said.
But he defended his Web site. "I'm aware of the content," he said. "Some people find it offensive, others do not. I cannot comment on how people interpret things."
Republicans have been taught for 30 years that the Presidency is their divine right and any Democrat who accedes to the office must be illegitimate. Compounding this is the fact that this next President is a black man. The hatred is welling up from everywhere and the resultant anger will make the Clinton Years look like the Era of Good Feeling.
Dana Rohrabacher's been saying stuff like this for years, only now he has an opponent who's going to call him on it.
Today, the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight held a hearing on detainee treatment at Guantanamo Bay, focusing on a recent FBI inspector general (IG) report documenting abusive practices at the facility. The report describes, among other things, a "war crimes file" created by FBI agents concerned about the interrogation tactics they witnessed at Guantanamo.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), however, sees nothing wrong with the accounts of abuse. While questioning IG Glenn Fine today, Rohrabacher insisted the report documented nothing more than "fraternity boy pranks and hazing pranks," and hardly constituted torture:
ROHRABACHER: They seem like more like pranks, hazing pranks from some fraternity than some well-thought-out policy of how do you torture someone and get information from them. [...]
I will have to tell you, when most people hear the word "torture," which has been bandied around here, I don't believe that they think of it as holding a growling dog near somebody but not the growling dog - you know, it's one thing to have the growling dog eating someone's leg or arm versus - which is absolute torture. It's another thing to have a growling dog around, or putting panties on someone's head, or discussing - telling him he had repressed homosexual tendencies in his presence. I mean, I'm sorry, these are acts of humiliation.
He apparently used the phrase "panties on someone's head" 13 times in 8 minutes.
I could go on and on about how interrogation practices at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which ban "outrages upon personal dignity," or the UN Convention Against Torture, or sundry torture statutes in this country, and how (as DoJ Inspector Glenn Fine said today) such tactics are not only criminal but incredibly ineffective in gathering intelligence, and how as the world's most powerful nation we have an obligation to uphold the highest standards of human rights lest the world sink to our level, but fortunately, I don't have to say all that this year, because Democratic nominee Debbie Cook is on the case. Here's the statement her campaign emailed me:
"At a time when we need a serious discussion and thorough review of the allegations of torture coming out of Guantanamo Bay, Congressman Rohrabacher has used his position of trust to make jokes and liken the interrogations to nothing more than a frat party.
We need a representative in Congress who will approach the serious issues facing our country with decorum and common sense, instead of cracking jokes. Torture is not to be taken lightly especially when the prestige and moral authority of the United States government is at stake.
The voters of the 46th district deserve a Member of Congress who works hard, has a good grasp of the issues before them and who is taken seriously by their colleagues. That's how you get things done in Congress."
Rohrabacher is an embarrassment, and Debbie Cook is going to give the people of the 46th District a real alternative this year.
As I wrote earlier today, the revelation that top-level officials in the White House actually debated what interrogation techniques to use on high-value targets, including torture, just sickens the stomach. In this context, it's clear that torture lawyer John Yoo was writing a document that was already written - a justification for the most heinous of crimes. That the Administration had to dip all the way down into the mid-level of the Justice Department, bypassing even the Attorney General, shows how difficult it was to find a cad willing to cover up their misdeeds, someone willing to disgrace the office and disgrace himself.
Yoo was a pawn bit none of this absolves him from blame. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers would like a word with him. Attorneys for Ali al-Marri, a so-called "enemy combatant" at Guantanamo, are using the memo to make the legal argument that his detention was actually illegal, since the memo was eventually withdrawn after al-Marri was captured and detained based on its legal theories. The "footnote" contained in the memo, that a previous memo waived the Fourth Amendment with respect to "domestic military operations," is causing Administration officials all sorts of grief on Capitol Hill. (That worm Mukasey, by the way, wouldn't say whether or not the Fourth Amendment waiver memo has been withdrawn.)
State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas is forcing a vote on a bill that ought to be named after a certain Berkeley professor:
The California Senate is preparing to weigh in on the hot-button topic of torture, with a twist that combines elements of the Hippocratic oath and the military oath.
Under a resolution that state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas plans to put to a vote Thursday, California regulators would notify physicians and other health professionals that they could lose their license and be prosecuted by the state if they are involved in the torture of suspected terrorists [...]
During a committee hearing in January, Ridley-Thomas said there is evidence that physicians, psychologists and nurses licensed by the state "have participated in torture or its coverup against detainees in U.S. custody."
He cited "confirmed reports from the International Red Cross, New England Journal of Medicine, military records and first-person accounts."
"California has the obligation, I believe, to notify its licensees of laws pertaining to torture that may result in prosecution," Ridley-Thomas said.
The senator said physicians have reportedly advised interrogators whether prisoners were fit enough to survive "physical maltreatment, informed interrogators about prisoners' phobias and other psychological vulnerabilities that could be exploited."
Invoking the Hippocratic oath that physicians traditionally take, he said the state can "withdraw its consent to torture by demanding that its health professionals remember their oath to first do no harm."
This is extremely small-bore, but if the federal government is abusing detainees, the states ought to be able to step in and inform their own residents of the Constitutional and international treaty obligations citizens are required to uphold.
California Republicans will have a choice to make. There is substantial evidence in the public record of health professionals aiding and abetting in the practices at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. For each Yacht Party member, they must understand that their vote could either sanction these abuses, or affirmatively state that some parts of the United States still follow the rule of law.
I can only applaud Sen. Ridley-Thomas for this courageous proposal, which hopefully will spark a movement of revolt amongst state legislatures. This Administration is lawless and reckless, and diminishing what credibility we have left globally with each passing day. California can stand up, and steadfastly shout "We do not agree; we do not consent."
At my home site I took a look today at John Yoo's recently declassified memo, which is more responsible for torture and detainee abuse at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and throughout American prison sites abroad than practically any other document.
If you're interested in weeping, you can read the 81-page memo yourself.
Yoo simply made up a new set of executive powers that trumped the Geneva Conventions, domestic statutes against torture, and virtually the whole system of the law itself.
If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.
Kind of a "self-defense before the fact" belief, completely contrary to how the American legal system works [...] The closed loop here is self-perpetuating. The DoJ writes a memo saying that the President has virtually unlimited power in wartime. The CIA and the Pentagon then takes the memo and uses it as proof of legality for their crimes. So we have an executive branch validating the rest of the executive branch, essentially a one-branch government that writes, executes and adjudicates the law.
There is no question that John Yoo is a war criminal; he provided the legal theories that the executive branch follows to this day, even though the Defense Department vacated this particular memo in 2003.
That comes out of my hide. Your hide. John Yoo is making his living based on public payments through taxes and other receipts. And he is absolutely a war criminal. (over)
Just to show that I'm not reflexively opposed to everything Dianne Feinstein does, she is on the floor of the Senate right now leading the fight in getting the entire US government to follow the Army Field Manual for interrogations and intelligence gathering, which would effectively ban waterboarding and any other forms of torture from being used by the CIA. She has worked very hard on this issue, and it looks like she'll get passage in the Senate on this today. That's very significant.
(I wish we'd hear from all of our challenger candidates more regularly. - promoted by David Dayen)
I am Steve Young, the Democrat challenging John Campbell [R, CA-48] the sixth richest member of congress. My challenge is truly a David vs. Goliath battle -- and we know how that one turned out.
I am writing to ask for your help. Two reasons make the House race in California's 48th district important:
We need a representative with the spine to vote his heart; and
As we have learned from sad experience, we don't have the votes in Washington to pass necessary legislation.
We need a voice - reflective of our values - in the U.S. House in Washington.
In a rare moment of unusual candor, a wanton display of unrestrained recklessness, an attempt to wag his "strong-on-Terra" manhood (or a combination of some or all of the foregoing), the absentee chickenhawk congressman of the 3rd congressional district of California reached into the darkest crevices of his soulless being and bravely declared as follows:
I cannot say, per se, that waterboarding is torture.
Bill Richardson is goal-oriented, assertive and confident. He has served as a Congressman, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Secretary of Energy and is in his second term as Governor of New Mexico after a landslide re-election victory in November 2006.
Here are five of many reasons why I believe Richardson possesses the experience, vision and leadership skills to be a great President:
1. A Bright Vision for America
2. An Ironclad Promise to Promptly End the U.S. Occupation of Iraq
3. A Bold Agenda To Address The Pressing Challenges Facing Our Nation and Planet
4. The White House and A Landslide Victory for Democrats Nationwide in 2008
5. Comprehensive Immigration Reform In Accordance With the Values Upon Which Our Country Was Founded
Serious question here. Dianne Feinstein seems unreachable. No matter how many calls, emails, petitions, letters, smoke signals (well honestly we have not tried that yet) we have sent to her there is no response. She seems unaccountable.
Earlier this week it was Mukasey. Tomorrow will be FISA.
It's enough to make you throw your hands in the air and give up. But you know what. We have a moral obligation not to.
What I want to know is do you have an idea on how we can get through to her? How do we hold her accountable for her actions?
If torture is something that "shocks the conscience," and Dianne Feinstein has come out in favor of someone who refuses to make a clear statement about waterboarding being torture, then let's use that language in our response back to her, and in discussion about what she did.
Dianne Feinstein attached electrodes to my conscience, then she hit the power switch.
Her vote for Mukasey is a vote in support of this administration's shameful ambiguity about using torture. Dianne Feinstein has embraced this administration's ongoing debasement of the pride and humanity and moral standings of a nation founded in the rule of law.
For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they "strongly disapprove" of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.
Make no mistake, at this point, a vote for Judge Mukasey is a vote for torture.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California say the will support Michael Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general. Both are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
They did the old Friday-afternoon get-out-of-Dodge news dump on it, too. Guess DiFi learned a lot on that Air Force One ride with George.
Michael Mukasey has refused to explain whether waterboarding is torture. Allowing him to be the nation's highest law enforcement official means sanctioning that opinion at the highest levels. Worse, Mukasey's views on executive power - believing that the President has unenumerated powers in wartime - sanction official lawbreaking at the highest levels, and emasculate Congress in their attempts to do anything about it. DiFi just eliminated her need to show up at the office.
In announcing her support for Mukasey, Feinstein, D-Calif., said "first and foremost, Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales," referring to the former attorney general who resigned in September after months of questions about his honesty.
Inspiring!
Wow, the standards of government have gone completely into the toilet.
Water-boarding is term that describes strapping an individual to a board, with a towel pulled tightly across his face, and pouring water on him or her to cut off air and simulate drowning.
When asked directly last week whether he thought waterboarding is constitutional, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey was evasive. As noted by NPR, Mukasey "danced around the issue of whether waterboarding actually is torture and stopped short of saying that it is." "If it amounts to torture," Mukasey said carefully, "then it is not constitutional."
Waterboarding is torture, and anyone who is unwilling to identify it as such is not qualified to be the chief legal officer of the United States of America. If I were in the U.S. Senate, I would vote against Mukasey unless he denounces such specific forms of torture.
What about the Democrats in the U.S. Senate and other Democratic Presidential candidates? Will they oppose Mukasey unless he denounces the use of torture by our government?
My post about Jane Harman's remarks at a town hall meeting yesterday about the secret "torture memos" revealed this week by the New York Times is up at Think Progress, submitted through their Blog Fellows Program, which I can't recommend enough. Let me contextualize those remarks a bit more, and add some of the other interesting things Rep. Harman had to say.
I asked the question to Harman about the secret memos. Earlier this week, the White House claimed that all relevant members of Congress had been fully briefed on the classified program sanctioning harsh interrogation techniques by the CIA. At the time of the memos, Harman was a member of the "Gang Of Eight" routinely briefed on intelligence matters. Harman was shaking her head as I asked the question if she was fully briefed, chuckling almost in disbelief. Her answer:
We were not fully briefed. We were told about operational details but not these memos. Jay Rockefeller said the same thing, and I associate myself with his remarks. And we want to see these memos.
Yesterday I managed to get myself to services for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The familiar rituals and rites of Judaism can be comforting but often lapse into rote recitation. But yesterday, the rabbi's sermon woke me up and put a new spin on the moral code that underpins all humanity, which is at the heart of not only Jewish teaching, but the foundational premises of our country, principles we are rapidly losing over the course of the Bush Presidency.
The rabbi talked about a little-remarked-upon section of the Old Testament. Leviticus is filled with a laundry list of commandments and guidelines for life in Biblical times. One section focuses on "just weights and measures."
35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. 36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.
(Proudly cross-posted at Ditch Crazy Dana, Southern California's resource for fighting back against the sheer insanity of Dana Rohrabacher. : ) - promoted by atdleft)
I've had it. I'm sick of it. And I won't take it anymore. Dana Rohrabacher simply has to go. NOW!
Simply put, Crazy Dana is batshit insane. In fact, TOO BATSHIT INSANE to even be allowed inside our nation's Capitol, let alone serving another term in Congress. He doesn't represent our values, and he can't get our logic. This is the final straw, and now it's time for us to plan how to restore sanity to our Congressional office.
(Follow me after the flip for more on how we can really DITCH CRAZY DANA...)
(I added the audio. This garbage cannot be allowed to stand. -Brian;
Thanks, Brian, for the audio! And thanks, dday, for posting about this horrifying rambling by Orange County's most notorious psychotic politician. - promoted by atdleft)
Of all the wingnutty statements from Rep. Dana "you say Taliban, I say Paliban" Rohrabacher, this may be the wingnuttiest. What makes it worse is that he said it in the presence of Col. Ann Wright, who served this country for 45 years in the military and the diplomatic service, fighting for the very values on which Rohrabacher spits.
During a Congressional hearing this week with members of the European Parliament on the practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby detainees are flown on CIA planes to secret prisons all over the world to be tortured either at Guantanamo or their countries of origin, Rohrabacher scoffed at all notions of eliminating this deeply troublesome program, which has harmed our stature with our allies and around the world and has debased our souls, and then busted out with this:
Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American [...]
Rohrabacher never once mentioned due process, the rule of law, right to a trial for anyone picked up in the extraordinary rendition program. Merely because persons were "rendered" and imprisoned by the US meant to Rohrbacker they were guilty.
Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects. When citizens attending the hearing, including members of Codepink Women for Peace and Veterans for Peace, heard Rohrabacher's statement, they collectively groaned. Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rorhbacker said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: "I hope it's your family members that die when terrorists strike."
(NOTE: in the clip provided, Rohrabacher specifically said "suffer the consequences," not die.)
So a US Representative wished for death on his fellow Americans because they disagree with him that the best way to fight terror is to hook people's genitals up to electrodes so they can give us false information.
This is of course nothing new for Rohrabacher. During the election he told the father of an Iraq soldier that "you're the one calling your son a war criminal." (go about 5:15 into the clip)
But this is pretty low on the scale of human discourse. Hoping that your critics are killed by terrorists. And don't forget, after the fact he'd exploit those dead to justify permanent and endless war.
The United States Senate is about to debate a Republican-sponsored bill which would retroactively legalize torture, legalize secret trials, and eliminate eight hundred years of the right of habeas corpus.
California's Democratic Senators have not yet declared their opposition to this bill. Call them and tell them you oppose it. Here's roughly what I said to the nice folks who answered the phones and took my comments:
I am a Democrat and a constituent of the Senator's and I want to know how she plans to vote on the legalization of torture and elimination of habeas corpus.
[The senator is reviewing the bill and has not taken a position. Can I take your comment?]
Yes. This is the defining issue for me as an American and for my support of the Senator. If she does not oppose the legalization of torture and elimination of habeas corpus with every tool she has, she will never see one dime from me, she will never again receive a vote from me, and I will do everything in my power to see that she has a primary challenge the next time she runs.
I know this is not California politics, but we are Americans, not just Californians. Numbers below the fold.
