(Parts 1 and 2.)

What does Obama legal advisor Cass Sunstein think about this idea

The proposal for a Church Committee-style investigation emerged from talks between civil liberties advocates and aides to Democratic leaders in Congress, according to sources involved. . . . Looking forward to 2009, when both Congress and the White House may well be controlled by Democrats, the idea is to have Congress appoint an investigative body to discover the full extent of what the Bush White House did in the war on terror to undermine the Constitution and U.S. and international laws. The goal would be to implement government reforms aimed at preventing future abuses -- and perhaps to bring accountability for wrongdoing by Bush officials.

Given that he endorsed the Bush Administration's lawlessness, I feel confident that he will oppose this idea. It is another reason why Cass Sunstein should have no place in an Obama Administration and should never be referred to as a progressive legal scholar. He has a long history of endorsing the extreme right wing legal views of the Bush Administration on executive power.

Speaking for me only

Fred Hiatt is a shameless man. Today he publishes an editorial in the Washington Post chiding John McCain for his McCarthyite smear of Barack Obama:

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had one of those unfortunate moments the other day, when he charged that his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, "would rather lose the war to win a political campaign." . . . It's one thing to say Mr. Obama is wrong. It's another to accuse him of putting political self-interest over country. This is not the "politics of civility" that Mr. McCain was promising as recently as last month.

A rather tepid critique from Hiatt's WaPo. But there is a reason for that -- Fred Hiatt has his own history of McCarthyite smears of Democrats:

The Tour de France reaches its decisive stage this morning with the Maillot Jeune likely to be decided in today's time trial. Spaniard Carlos Sastre holds a 1:34 lead over the superior time trialer Australian Cadel Evans. By the numbers, Evans should make up the time and win the Tour. But there are no guarantees.

In other news, the Yoo-Bybee II torture memo has been released, sort of (most of it has been redacted), but one chilling bit of "legal analysis" is disclosed:

"To validate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," it reads at one point. "Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture."

More . .

If things are going as swimmingly in Iraq as John McCain would like us to believe, why is the military so desperate to control the visual message?

The case of a freelance photographer in Iraq who was barred from covering the Marines after he posted photos on the Internet of several of them dead has underscored what some journalists say is a growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war. ...

[O]pponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of the war is being sanitized and that Americans who choose to do so have the right to see — in whatever medium — the human cost of a war that polls consistently show is unpopular with Americans.

[more ...]

Caption, anyone?

Story here.

Update: From Denver columnist Penny Parker:

EAVESDROPPING at Sen. John McCain's Denver appearance Friday. The press corps joked that given the speculation about McCain's running mate, perhaps he was going to announce the Dalai Lama as his veep during their meeting later in Aspen.

Said one out-of-town television reporter: "Obama can't do it because then it would be Obama-Lama."

Context: After a big battle yesterday, I won a detention hearing in federal court getting bail for a very young client in a drug case. Like all such hearings, it was decided by a Magistrate Court Judge.

Even when the defendant wins, the Government can get a stay of the release order while it decides whether to appeal to the District Court Judge. So despite winning the bail issue, my client stays locked up.

At 4:55 pm today, the Government filed a motion with the District Court Judge to revoke the Magistrate Judge's order. I will now spend the weekend writing yet another brief in hope that on Tuesday, when the reconsideration motion is heard, my client -- finally -- will be released.

This is an open thread.

We have 12 million people living in this country without proper documentation, many of whom work, have families and pay taxes.

While Congress stalls year after year on providing a path to citizenship for them, and the radical right says there is no room for them, the Bush Administration has no problem playing favorites:

The American Embassy in Baghdad announced Thursday that it had expanded tenfold its program to help Iraqi employees of the American government here, who faced threats for their work, to obtain visas and ultimately citizenship in the United States.

Why should the Iraqis get special treatment? Because they provided aid to the U.S. in its unneccessary preemptive war that we entered under false pretenses?[More...]

Bump and Update: TalkLeft now has its own DNC tote bag -- one that respects privacy rights.

Via Dem Convention Watch, Glenn Greenwald and Corrente, here is the tote bag the DNC will be providing participants.

Jokes about retroactive immunity aside, this isn't the bag you want. Given the security in place at the convention, this one is. (Larger photo here.)

Newly revised from our every day 4th Amendment subway tote just for the Denver Democratic National Convention, this is a far better choice.

Let the 4th Amendment speak for you as you hand your bag over for a search. It's a silent protest and reminder to authorities that you consider searches without reasonable suspicion or probable cause to be an infringement of your privacy rights. You can order yours now, whether you are an official convention attendee or not.

Dennis Kucinich didn't get the impeachment hearing he wanted, but he did get a hearing on "Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations." That gave former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson the opportunity to tell Congress that

there's a "compelling case" for the impeachment of President Bush, but that short of that, it should appoint a special commission to investigate egregious abuses of power. Anderson, testifying Friday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing looking at the constitutional limits of the executive branch, detailed a litany of what he said were "heinous" human rights abuses, unprecedented power grabs and denials of due process.

Illness kept John Dean from testifying, but in this article Dean compares President Bush's abuses of power to those of Richard Nixon.

Remember when John McCain promised to run a respectful campaign? Cliff Schecter examines McCain's hypocrisy in painting Barack Obama as the terrorists' choice for president, in his accusation that Obama would rather lose the war than lose the election, and (most recently) in running an ad that falsely implies Obama has been endorsed by Fidel Castro. If this is McCain's notion of a respectful campaign, what will we see if he decides to get nasty?

John McCain was right. No one has supported Bush more than McCain has on Iraq. TPM has a great timeline. Some of the highlights:

3/18/03, Fox, "O'Reilly Factor"

O'Reilly: "All right, Senator, if you were president, what would you have done differently in the run-up to this war?"

McCain: "Nothing."

O'Reilly: "Nothing?"

McCain: "The president has handled this, in my view, skillfully."

More . . .

Jerome Armstrong reports on the political landscape for the Fall congressional elections:

A 15 seat gain would be tremendous for Democrats in the House in 2008. Going into the 2006 election, there were 202 Democrats and 232 Republicans and 1 Independent. Democrats won 31 seats in '06, and then have won seats in 3 special elections, to now hold a 236-199 advantage heading into the 2008 election.

And my question is this, in terms of policy what will change because of this 15 seat gain? What do we expect from the current Democratic Party in terms of policy? Some things I suppose - federal funding of stem cell research, the renewal of S-Chip, the eventual wind down of the Iraq Debacle. These things matter. But will there be a renewal of progressivism in Washington with Obama as President and a padded Democratic majority? I doubt it. This election has been run by the Dem Party with a "We Are Not Bush Republicans On Everything, Just Some Things" platform. And that is what we will get.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only