Here's Obama reaching out to the evangelical right. The Associated Press reports:

In an interview this week with "Relevant," a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother."

Obama then added: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term."

Obama made no such distinction last year:

Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he "strongly disagreed" with the ruling because it "dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women."

NARAL leaders ought to feel like idiots. [More...]

Nihilists! F##k me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

-Walter Sobchak

At corrente, I wrote a guest post on developing a blogosphere ethos. I won't repeat it here, but I want to put a question to supporters of the Clinton/Edwards vision of a mandate for universal health care. Suppose for a moment that Barack Obama changed his position (aka flip flopped) on the issue and embraced mandates. Would you consider that a good thing?

A corollary to the question, what if he changed his position due to political pressure as opposed to a good faith change of mind - would that make a difference? To understand why I ask these questions, read my post at corrente.

Speaking for me only

Link:

I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise.

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate. [MORE . . . ]

[Photo from the DEA Gift Shop]

The Drug Enforcement Administration turns 35 this week. Here is a little history :

It was created by executive order of President Richard Nixon and went live on July 1 1973.

At its outset, the DEA had 1,470 Special Agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Furthermore, in 1974, the DEA had 43 foreign offices in 31 countries. Today, the DEA has 5,235 Special Agents, a budget of more than $2.3 billion and 86 foreign offices in 62 countries.

Since 1973, drug arrests have tripled: [more...]

Philip Alston, a special investigator with the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, has some harsh words for the State of Alabama's "refusal to even discuss the possibility that the state's capital punishment system is in need of improvement."

"(Alabama) officials seem strikingly indifferent to the risk of executing innocent people and have a range of standard responses, most of which are characterized by a refusal to engage with the facts," Alston wrote in the report, released Monday.

The Birmingham News agrees: [more ...]

Apparently the U.S. isn't alone in shamefully detaining suspected immigration policy violators.

Latin American leaders on Tuesday voiced their "deep rejection" of the immigration policy adopted recently by the European Union (EU).

Presidents of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) "member states and associate states reject any attempt to criminalize the irregular migration and the adoption of restrictive immigration policies, in particular against the most vulnerable sectors of society, namely, women and children," said a statement at issued Mercosur summit.

The EU policy goes into effect in 2010 and allows authorities to detain improperly or undocumented immigrants for up to 18 months before deporting them.[More...]

Matt Yglesias writes today:

I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that the current President of the United States violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act . . . . I wasn't alive in 1973-74 [when Nixon was forced to resign]. I have a vague sense that at that time America's elites operated with some sense of conscience and dignity, and it was taken for granted even among Republican leaders that one couldn't just break the law. . . . I don't really know what changed, or why David Broder and other gatekeepers of elite consensus can't see that something's gone wrong here, but I'm not happy about it.

Nicely put. But then he writes in his VERY NEXT POST:

As a result of a copyright infringement lawsuit between Google and Viacom,

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

This decision appears to affect You Tube watchers world-wide. Google raised privacy issues with the court, to no avail:

[I]t said privacy concerns expressed by Google about handing over the log were "speculative".

Google isn't blameless in this latest threat to our privacy. [More...]

Original Post: 7/2/08

Bush to Consider Closing Guantanamo

ABC News reports that President Bush is holding talks about the future of Guantanamo and may decide to close it.

As TalkLeft noted here and here, Ronnie White's death in a jail cell, within a day of his arrest for running over a police officer, is more than suspicious. Under the circumstances, this editorial in The Washington Post is spot on:

IT IS UNSURPRISING but still infuriating that Prince George's County correctional officers have refused to cooperate with investigators looking into the death of inmate Ronnie L. White. These officers, who swore to serve the cause of justice, are preventing investigators from uncovering the circumstances of the death of Mr. White, who was strangled, according to a preliminary autopsy report.

The questions awaiting an answer are many: [more ...]

If you thought racial profiling was on the way out, think again:

The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

.... Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.

Among the factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person's race or ethnicity.

Like Jeralyn, mcjoan has a good analysis of the just released Al Haramein v. Bush opinion by Judge Vaughn Walker of the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The NYTimes has the news points. But mcjoan makes a great point about the significance of the opinion to the current Dem capitulation on FISA:

[T]his opinion should shame a Democratic Congress which has been absolutely negligent in its duty of oversight over the executive. [ . . ]