The CIA's destruction of hundreds of hours of videotapes of detainee interrogations could put several prosecutions at risk.

Officials acknowledged on Friday that the destruction of evidence like videotaped interrogations could raise questions about whether the Central Intelligence Agency was seeking to hide evidence of coercion. A review of records in military tribunals indicates that five lower-level detainees at Guantánamo were initially charged with offenses based on information that was provided by or related to Mr. [Abu]Zubaydah. Lawyers for these detainees could argue that they needed the tapes to determine what, if anything, Mr. Zubaydah had said about them.

Think: Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh. I'm wondering whether it could also result in reversals of the convictions of Zacarias Moussaoui and Jose Padilla.

The known detainees whose interrogation videos were destroyed are Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Undoubtedly, more will come to light as the investigation proceeds. I won't be surprised if interrogation tapes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh were also destroyed. In that case, they might be deprived not only of potentially exculapatory information by Zubayah but of their own statements for use at their upcoming military commission trials.

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Andrew Young, former U.N. Ambassador, "civil rights icon" and Martin Luther King "lieutenant" says Barack Obama is not ready to be President.

In an interview posted online, Young also quipped that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has her husband behind her, and that "Bill is every bit as black as Barack."

....I want Barack Obama to be president," Young said, pausing for effect, "in 2016." "It's not a matter of being inexperienced. It's a matter of being young," Young said. "There's a certain level of maturity ... you've got to learn to take a certain amount of (expletive)."

The interview, on Newsmakers Live, is most likely a few months old. You can watch here. Another snippet:

"There are more black people that Bill and Hillary lean on," Young said. "You cannot be president alone. ... To put a brother in there by himself is to set him up for crucifixion. His time will come and the world will be ready for a visionary leadership."

Hillary Clinton brought her mom and Chelsea to Iowa.

Three generations of Clinton women hit the trail vowing "change across the generations" as Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped up her pitch to the women voters who could hold the key to Iowa's caucuses, which will launch the presidential nominating season in less than four weeks.

Hillary told the crowd her mother lives with her and Bill.

Clinton used the occasion to trot out a plan to bolster long-term care, including a $3,000 tax credit for caregivers, a doubling of the standard deduction for the elderly and a tax credit for purchasing long-term care insurance. She repeatedly pointed to her ability to care for her own mother as she ages.

"I don't think having my mother with me is a burden, I think it's a joy," said Clinton. "It isn't easy to do and a lot of families don't have a lot of options." ...Issues of long-term care and building families will be a focus of her presidency, Clinton said.

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Here's a CNN clip of Oprah and Obama.

Oprah Winfrey in Des Moines, Iowa today:

"Over the years, I have voted for as many Republicans as I have Democrats," Winfrey said — one line that didn't draw applause in the partisan crowd. "This isn't about partisanship for me. This is very, very personal. I'm here because of my personal conviction about Barack Obama and what I know he can do for America."

Obama on Oprah:

"You want Oprah as vice president?" he asked the crowd that responded with enthusiastic cheers. "That would be a demotion, you understand that?"

The Obama campaign gave out 23,00 tickets to the event. It said 18,500 people attended.

Obama spoke after Winfrey, and acknowledged that he was under no illusions that the crowd was there to hear him. Indeed, some people left during his speech, although the majority stuck around to hear him.

The New York Times puts attendance at "more than 10,000 screaming admirers." Oprah spoke for 17 minutes and as to why Obama should be President, said: [More...]

Meet Majid Khan.

The first of the so-called high value Guantánamo detainees to have seen a lawyer claims he was subjected to “state-sanctioned torture” while in secret C.I.A. prisons, and he has asked for a court order barring the government from destroying evidence of his treatment.

The request, in a filing by his lawyers, was made on Nov. 29, before officials from the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged that the agency had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two Qaeda operatives that current and former officials said included the use of harsh techniques.

An intelligence official denies that Khan was videotaped.

Mr. Dixon, one of Mr. Khan’s lawyers, said Saturday that the admission that officials had destroyed videotapes of interrogations showed why such an order was needed.

“They are no longer entitled to a presumption that the government has acted lawfully or in good faith,” Mr. Dixon said.

Background on Majid Khan is here and here.

As a follow-up to this post about Barack Obama's response to Paul Krugman's column about the failure of Obama's health care plan to include a mandate for universal health care coverage, I thought it interesting that Utah is considering a plan that would require every resident to have health insurance. Advisors to Gov. Gov. Jon Huntsman say it's the way to go:

"This is not government insurance. We don't think that's the solution to these challenges. Individuals are going to have more responsibility," [House Majority Leader Rep. David Clark,] said. "Our goal is to try to find a way for every Utahn to have an opportunity to have access to health care." For the poor, the plan would aim to boost enrollment in existing programs such as Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and Utah's Premium Partnership for Health, which helps workers pay premiums.

Working residents who do not qualify for those programs but can't afford health insurance would receive subsidies that put coverage within their reach. People who can afford health insurance but don't buy it could be prohibited from enrolling in university classes or getting a job. Nielsen said it's possible they could also someday face a tax penalty, as is the case in Massachusetts.

The Salt Lake Tribune has more on the plan.

Fans of irony will appreciate this:

The second [Supreme Court appeal] was filed by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, appealing a decision that has blocked the transfer to the Iraqis of another naturalized United States citizen, Shawqi Ahmad Omar. ... The administration’s Supreme Court appeal, Geren v. Omar, No. 07-394, describes the case as one of “exceptional importance,” adding, “As far as the government is aware, no court has previously sanctioned such a far-reaching and internationally unsettling exercise of American judicial power.”

Using the U.S. military to arrest an American citizen at his Baghdad home, holding that citizen in prison (at Abu Ghraib, among other places) for three years, and then turning him over to the Iraqi government for a terrorism trial is not, in the administration's view, "a far-reaching and internationally unsettling exercise of American ... power"? The unsettling use of military power doesn't disturb the Bush administration; it's only the use of judicial power to protect American citizens from the actions of the American government that it finds unsettling.
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The AP has an exclusive report that Mike Huckabee's response to the AIDS epidemic in 1992 was to oppose federal funding for research and advocate isolating AIDS patients:

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague," Huckabee wrote.

Huckabee also said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk.".

I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."

On funding AIDS research he wrote: [More...]

Sam Stein at Huffington Post has a new article on Mike Huckabee and the parole of Arkansas rapist Wayne Dumond. Shorter version: He succumbed to the anti-Clinton zealots.

The individuals who served on Arkansas' parole board recounted a similar Huckabee mindset. And Butch Reeves, the governor's top aide, told the Huffington Post on Wednesday that, contrary to his now former boss's claims, Huckabee lobbied the parole board to reverse its previous rejection. Huckabee has said that in supporting Dumond's parole he was merely following the judgment of the board. But just one month earlier the board had voted 4-to-1 against Dumond's parole

By that point in time, those who have followed the case claim, Huckabee was convinced both of Dumond's rehabilitation in prison and of his victimhood at the hands of the Clinton machine. Throughout the case, they claim, Huckabee exhibited poor judgment and a lack of political skill.

Stein interviewed Dumond's lawyer, John Wesley Hall (who contributes to TalkLeft as Last Night in Little Rock) about whether he ever met with Huckabee. The answer is no.

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New York Times columnist Paul Krugman criticizes Barack Obama's health care plan as inferior to those proposed by Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. He also writes that Obama's response to those who point out its deficiencies, particularly in its lack of a universal health care mandate which would require health insurance for everyone, is one that will come back to hurt Americans, by fortifying Republican opposition, should he become President.

[L]ately Mr. Obama has been stressing his differences with his rivals by attacking their plans from the right — which means that he has been giving credence to false talking points that will be used against any Democratic health care plan a couple of years from now.

....Mr. Obama is storing up trouble for health reformers by suggesting that there is something nasty about plans that “force every American to buy health care.”

....My main concern right now is with Mr. Obama’s rhetoric: by echoing the talking points of those who oppose any form of universal health care, he’s making the task of any future president who tries to deliver universal care considerably more difficult.

After discussing why Obama is wrong to oppose a mandate and universal health care, he concludes:

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In for a quick post on an important issue

Via Turkana, we see that Steny Hoyer and Rahmbo are determined to have Dems own the Iraq Debacle:

House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday. . . . "The way you pass appropriations bills is you get agreement among all the relevant players, among which the president with his veto pen is a very relevant player," Hoyer said. "Everybody knows he has no intention of signing anything without money for Iraq, unfettered, without constraints. I think that's ultimately going to be the result."

What a loser Hoyer is. If "everybody [knew] that [the Democratic House] ha[d] no intention of [passing] anything with[] money for Iraq, unfettered, without constraints[,]" then ultimately THAT would be the result.

What a pathetic cowardly loser Hoyer is. There is no difference between Democrats and Republicans on Iraq. They both own it.

Update: Chelsea is in Iowa today as well.

*****

While Oprah stumps at two events in Iowa for Obama today, Hillary has her own plan. She'll be bringing her mother to three events and promoting the "buddy system."

More than a mother-daughter act, the appearance was designed to illustrate an urgent point of her campaign: The Buddy. “I wanted to bring a buddy with me!” Mrs. Clinton said. “So I brought my mother, Dorothy Rodham.”

The idea is that women will be more likely to attend a caucus if they have someone to go with.

In her quest to win the caucuses, Mrs. Clinton is working to demystify the curious Iowa process. With women voters her key target, she believes two are more likely to attend together than one would alone.

“We have thousands of women in their 80s and 90s who live alone who want to caucus on the night of Jan. 3,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It’s very inspiring for me for people who want to be there.”

The Washington Post has more on the gender race between Hillary and Obama in Iowa. [More]