No man who writes this could be:

Dive into a conversation about America in the Arab world today, or even in Europe and Africa, and it won’t take 30 seconds before the words “Abu Ghraib” and “Guantánamo Bay” are thrown at you. Yes, both are shameful, but Abu Ghraib was a day at the beach compared to what Al Qaeda and its Sunni jihadist supporters have been doing in Iraq, yet none of their acts have become one-punch global insults like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

Is Tom Friedman out of his mind? Is his winning argument that 'yes, the United States is shameful, but Al Qaida is worse?'

This man is considered a leading pundit in our country? The last 6 years can come as no surprise in light of that. Friedman is a disgrace.

Sen. Barack Obama today named the Republican senators he'd work closely with as President. One of them is uber-conservative Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who Obama says "has become a friend of mine."

Via Democratic Underground:

Senator Coburn, who said that lesbianism is "so rampant in some of the schools...that they'll let only one girl go to the bathroom."

Senator Coburn, who claims he can tell if someone is telling the truth because of his medical training.

Dr. Coburn, who said: "You know, I immediately thought about silicone breast implants and the legal wrangling and the class-action suits off that. And I thought I would just share with you what science says today about silicone breast implants. If you have them, you're healthier than if you don't. That is what the ultimate science shows...In fact, there's no science that shows that silicone breast implants are detrimental and, in fact, they make you healthier."

Senator Coburn, who thought Schindler's List was smut, an "all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity.

More....

Michael O'Hanlon defends himself again and elides what to me is the fundamental problem with his recent analysis - his dishonest depiction of himself as an Iraq War and Surge critic. He was a strong supporter of both the war and the Surge. O'Hanlon writes:

How can one gather and assess information about Iraq -- collected on a trip or from any other source? Information from a war zone is difficult to attain and interpretation is open to many views. Unfortunately, much of the blogosphere and other media outlets have emphasized the wrong question, challenging the integrity of anyone who dares to express politically incorrect views about Iraq. Last week, Jonathan Finer criticized [O'Hanlon and Pollack] on this page and he ignored how critical Pollack and I have been of administration policy in the past. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) That is nonsense. O'Hanlon dishonestly continues to portray himself as a critic of the war and the Surge.

He is lying. That is the fundamental problem with his work in my view. Others have taken apart his analysis. I stand by my position that his willingness to lie about his strong support for the war and the Surge disqualifies his analysis from serious consideration. Others can take apart his analysis. I stand by my view that his fundamental dishonesty make his observations not worthy of consideration.

I'm up in Vail, about to head out the door for an invigorating hike. It's gorgeous outside.

For those of you inside, here's an open thread.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed what it says is a "groundbreaking brief" (available here) on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.

On August 24, 2007, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) attorneys and co-counsel submitted a ground-breaking brief to the Supreme Court in the case that will determine whether detainees at Guantánamo possess the fundamental constitutional rights to due process and habeas corpus.

The brief was filed on behalf of men from the first habeas corpus petitions submitted immediately after the landmark 2004 Supreme Court decision in CCR's case Rasul v. Bush. Al Odah v. United States, as the case is now called, has been consolidated with a related case, Boumediene v. Bush; both challenge the Military Commissions Act (MCA), which attempted to strip away the statutory right to habeas corpus the Supreme Court recognized in 2004 and replace it with a far more limited review process set up by the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA).

I just received a copy of Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor, Jr. and KC Johnson.

Anyone interested in this travesty of a prosecution simply must read this book.

The book gives nice coverage to the blogs, including TalkLeft and Liestoppers.

I have an op-ed in today's Washington Examiner newspaper reproduced here...There is No Immigrant Crime Wave.

Politicians will do anything to get elected, including using random, unrelated high-profile crimes to mislead the public, generating fear and hysteria.

Using government statistics that show just 4% of our 2.25 million federal and state inmate population are non-citizens and that young foreign-born men are five times less likely to be incarcerated than those born in the U.S, I argue:

Immigration does not breed crime. Our prisons are not overflowing because of crimes by the undocumented. They are overflowing because of our failed criminal justice policies and over reliance on incarceration versus treatment and rehabilitation with respect to our nonviolent homegrown offenders.

There is nothing wrong with having a debate about immigration. But it is deplorable to falsely stereotype and malign millions of law-abiding people because of one’s desire for a particular outcome in that debate.

Hope you'll read the whole thing. It will make the xenophobic anti-immgrants out there see red.

I have to completely agree with the Netroots "establishment" on this:

This is, I think, a disaster:

"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord. "So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that," she added.

Two points in response. The first is that I think the Democrat best positioned to deal with GOP political mobilization in a post-attack environment is going to be the one who isn't reflexively inclined to see failed Republican policies resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Americans as a political advantage for the Republicans.

For the first time in quite some time, Hillary sounds like the DLC and Mark Penn. This is a huge gaffe. Obama, Edwards and all the rest will pounce on this.

Peter Beinart questions the Netroots' commitment to issues. He asks why so much loathing for Gravel?

What does Markos Moulitsas have against Mike Gravel? The über-blogger recently called for exiling the longshot presidential candidate from future Democratic debates. "Mike Gravel is a waste of our time," he wrote in an August 7 post. "[He's] a running joke." That's an odd assessment coming from the founder of Daily Kos. Every time Gravel gets behind a lectern, he flays the Democratic Party for knuckling under to militarists and corporations. In other words, he sounds just like Markos Moulitsas. . . .

Actually he doesn't. And in my drive to be the most loathed person on the blogs, in a new piece at the Guardian website, I again flay the Netroots for caring more about horseraces than issues:

What we do not see from MoveOn or any of the leading left blogs are any attempts to pressure Democrats into taking action immediately to end the Iraq war. Every plan, every project, seemingly every post, is focused on how to exploit Iraq as a political weapon against Republicans in the 2008 elections. Very little thought is brought to bear on how to pressure Democrats to use the power of congress to end the Iraq war now.

My question is diffferent than Beinart's. It is not why the Netroots loathes Gravel. Rather why does the Netroots not fight for the issues that they are supposed to care about?

There's no doubt Rudy Giuliani could benefit from a new firm to boost his image. But, did he have to hire this one?

Last year, a commercial made by Thompson's firm for Tennessee's U.S. Senate race was criticized for what the NAACP and others said were racial overtones.

Run by the Republican National Committee against Democrat Harold Ford, who is black, the ad showed a white woman saying she had met Ford at a Playboy-sponsored party. As the ad ended, the woman, her shoulders bared, whispered into the camera, "Harold, call me."

The NAACP said the commercial played to prejudices about black men and white women, and Republican Bob Corker, who won the Senate seat, called the ad tacky. The RNC denied any racial subtext but asked TV stations to stop running the commercial.

I can't wait to see the firm's New Rudy.

This is progress. I hope it catches on.

The [Bergen County] Sheriff's Department is not giving inmates fully loaded iMacs along with their jumpsuits as they come through the locking doors. They won't be working on their profiles on MySpace or bidding for rock hammers on eBay.

Rather, the department is offering stripped-down, durable mini-PCs, essentially limited to legal research, that inmates can have delivered to their cells for allotted periods. The department purchased the 80 laptops using $100,000 of its income from inmates' commissary purchases.

In other words, these computers have no internet access. The policy should be extended to federal inmates in pre-trial detention, many of whose cases are complex, involving discovery so voluminious it's only available on dvd or cd-rom.

It's important to remember that pre-trial detainees, who are often housed in county jails due to lack of available space in federal detention centers, or because there is no federal detention center in their neck of the woods, have not been convicted of any crime. They are simply being warehoused awaiting trial.

More...

Jose Padilla has sued 59 goverment officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, over his mistreatment during his confinement in the S.C. military brig. His primary claim: psychological torture.

He's not doing it for the money: He's only asking for $1.00 damages from each official:

"Mr. Padilla suffered gross physical and psychological abuse at the hands of federal officials as part of a scheme of abusive interrogation intended to break down Mr. Padilla's humanity and his will to live," the 30-page complaint says.

"The grave violations suffered by Padilla were not isolated occurrences by rogue lower-level officials," the suit says. Besides Mr. Rumsfeld, it names Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lowell Jacoby, among others, who "personally ordered and/or approved Mr. Padilla's detention and interrogation program."

Related: Lindsay of Majikthise has a new article in In These Times, Perverse Justice, questioning whether detainees who are subjected to long periods of extreme isolation can receive a fair trial.