Bump and Update: The New York Times has a new article describing the two memos from 2005:

One 2005 opinion gave the Justice Department’s most authoritative legal approval to the harshest agency techniques, including head slapping, exposure to cold and simulated drowning, even when used in combination.

The second opinion declared that under some circumstances, such techniques were not “cruel, inhuman or degrading,” a category of treatment that Congress banned in December 2005.

As one Senator opined today:

“I find it unfathomable that the committee tasked with oversight of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program would be provided more information by The New York Times than by the Department of Justice,” Mr. Rockefeller wrote.

As for the timing of the memos:

A senior administration official who insisted on anonymity said the opinion on the “combined effects” of different techniques was approved in May 2005.

The opinion that the methods were not cruel or inhuman was approved later in 2005, the official said. Officials have said both opinions remain in effect.

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Original Post
White House Denies Memos Authorized Torture

Predictably, the White House is denying that memos issued in 2005 authorized previously prohibited CIA interrogation techniques that amount to torture.

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(Guest Post by Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson)

On Iran, Hillary has been right in her strong criticism of Bush

I was pleased to see that last Monday Hillary joined Senator Jim Webb in co-sponsoring a bill that would prohibit the use of funds for military action in Iran without specific authorization from Congress. Last week, Hillary voted to support a non-binding resolution that designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. As a former diplomat, I have had considerable experience in the use of such resolutions to bring pressure – diplomatic pressure – to bear on a regime to rein in rogue elements. And make no mistake about it, the Guards are not only in operational control of Iran's policy toward Iraq and Afghanistan, where Iranian supplied munitions are costing American lives; they are agents of reaction and repression inside Iran. While it is a fact that the Bush administration's duplicity should give all Americans pause, we cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that we have real enemies in the world, and that we must be prepared to exercise the appropriate levers of power in support of our interests.

Both Hillary and Jim Webb correctly worry that the administration is considering a preemptive military strike against Iran. That is why Hillary continues to confront the Bush-Cheney White House and to challenge the legitimacy of any attack against Iran without prior Congressional approval.

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Bad news for Sen. Larry Craig. The court has denied his motion to withdraw his guilty plea.

“Because the defendant’s plea was accurate, voluntary and intelligent, and because the conviction is supported by the evidence ... the Defendant’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea is denied,” Hennepin County Judge Charles Porter wrote.

Here's the Order (pdf).

The question now: Will Craig appeal?

Update: Craig will not resign before the end of his term.

Hours after the Supreme Court granted cert on the issue of whether Kentucky's lethal injection procedures constituted cruel and unusual punishment, Judge Sharon Keller in Texas, without consulting the other judges, closed the criminal courts at 5:00 pm.

As a result, Michael Richard's attorneys were unable to file for a stay of execution. Richard was executed that night.

Cheryl Johnson, the Judge assigned to handle any late minute motions in Richard's case is angry.

"If I'm in charge of the execution, I ought to have known about those things, and I ought to have been asked whether I was willing to stay late and accept those filings."

Johnson said her first reaction was "utter dismay." Johnson said she would have accepted the brief for consideration by the court. "Sure," she said. "I mean, this is a death case."

There were judges in the courthouse at the time Keller closed it.

Three judges were working late in the courthouse that evening, and others were available by phone if needed, court personnel said.

Amnesty International has released a report tracking the botched executions in the U.S.

"The use of lethal injections in the US has led to at least nine bungled executions, including one in which the prisoner took 69 minutes to die and another in which the condemned man complained five times: "It don't work," a report by Amnesty International says today.

The report contains a catalogue of botched executions dating from 2000, when lethal injection was adopted by 37 of the 38 US states with the death penalty."

As to Texas:

Amnesty notes that Texas, which operates America's busiest execution chamber, has banned one of the chemicals involved for use in euthanising pets, because it does not effectively mask pain.

In other words, you wouldn't do a dog this way.

Yesterday, a Tyler, TX judge set a Nov. 6 execution date for Allen Bridgers.

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Jack Balkin writes:

The twisting of law by the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales is far worse than Gonzales' misleading testimony in front of Congress about the U.S. Attorney scandal. That scandal dominated the headlines for weeks. This one deserves far more searching press scrutiny. Despite the fact that Congress repeatedly passed legislation stating that it was illegal for U.S. personnel to engage in torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the Justice Department repeatedly redefined the terms of these prohibitions so that the CIA could keep doing exactly what the Justice Department had authorized to do before. Gonzales treated all of these laws as if they made no difference at all, as if they were just pieces of paper. . . . MORE

The Senate approved a $459 billion Pentagon funding bill Wednesday.

Included in the package: $3 billion for the 700 mile border fence and $794 million for border security along the Mexico-U.S. border.

This is what the Republicans wanted all along. Money for enforcement, none for immigration reform.

Did the Dems vote against it? Of course not. The border provisions passed on a vote of 95 to 1.

Also in the bill: $43 billion for new weapons systems.

Following up on Big Tent Democrat's earlier post, the New York Times has a five page article revealing that in 2005, over the objections of his Deputy Attorney General James Comey, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved legal opinions written by Steven Bradbury concerning enhanced interrogation techniques.

The 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.

Who is Bradbury? [More...]

Via Sentencing Law and Policy, the Senate's Joint Economic Committee (JEC) will hold a hearing this morning on ""Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?" The purpose is "to explore the economic consequences and causes of and solutions to the steep increase of the U.S. prison population."

The press release is here (pdf).

The United States has experienced a sharp increase in its prison population in the past thirty years. From the 1920s to the mid-1970s, the incarceration rate in the United States remained steady at approximately 110 prisoners per 100,000 people. Today, the incarceration rate is 737 inmates per 100,000 residents, comprising 2.1 million persons in federal, state, and local prisons. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but now has 25 percent of its prisoners. There are approximately 5 million Americans under the supervision of the correctional system, including parole, probation, and other community supervision sanctions.

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There's quite a few new diaries on TalkLeft, I hope you will check them out and recommend those you like.

• Life Was His Sentence, Life Was What He Got Back

• Krugman, Economics and the Next Civil War

• Obama Begins His Offensive Against Hillary

• Phoenix Airport Fatality

• A Dominican Heroine

Speaking of torture, Justice Anton Scalia Joins the Cast of 24 in the role of Jack Bauer....very funny. From Slate V . (It's slow to load, here's the direct link.)

Has there ever been a more disgraceful Attorney General than Alberto Gonzales? Has there ever been a more disgraceful Administration than the Bush Administration? No:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

The nation may never recover from the damage done by these scoundrels.