Responding to Senator Barack Obama's statement that he would attack Al Qaida in Pakistan if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not, Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said he would seek permission from Mussarraf to attack Al Qaida in Pakistan. Rudy said:

We should seek [Pakistan's] permission if we ever have to take action there . . .

And if Musharraf says no? Bush joins the party

Jane Mayer in The New Yorker Magazine today exposes the torturous interrogation practices the C.I.A. used on its prize detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, during his not-so secret stay in an overseas prison.

Author Jane Mayer, on the CBS Evening News, said:

"The Red Cross went in and got to interview these people for the first time," said Mayer on the CBS Evening News. "What these people described was hanging from the ceilings by their arms and being water-boarded, partially drowned, put on leashes and knocked into walls and basically deprived of all kinds of sensory imagery for years."

The article also puts the lie to President Bush's continuous insistence that the U.S. does not engage in torture.

Mayer's article further described the CIA program of physical and psychological abuse as completely regimented and deliberate.

"There have always been mistakes made in the past when prisoners have been abused in wars," Mayer told Mitchell. "But this is the first time it's been done on purpose."

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Remember the dyslexic Missouri doctor who botched the drug dosages in dozens of executions?

The New York Times today opines on the practice of states like Missouri that "hood the executioner."

Missouri's ultimate response was to pass a law protecting the identity of the doctor administering the drugs and his ability to practice medicine even if he screws up:

Last month, however, Missouri’s governor signed a law that makes it a crime to reveal the identities of current or former executioners — as The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did in the case of the doctor who claimed dyslexia. It allows executioners to sue those who expose them and forbids medical licensing boards to punish doctors or nurses who participate in executions.

As the Times says,

Under the new secrecy law, Missouri’s capital punishment system may plunge deeper into incompetence and cruelty, and it will be harder for citizens to stop it.

Bottom line:

We oppose capital punishment for a host of reasons, including that it is unconstitutional. Even those who support executing their citizens must see the need to ensure that the process is not barbarically cruel and is fully open to public scrutiny.

One quibble with the Times. It cites Adam Liptak's recent articles on lethal injection. If the Times is serious about exposing the injustice of lethal injections, it ought to take Liptak's articles out from behind its "Times Select" firewall so everyone can read them.

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It's a done deal. President Bush today signed the FISA Amendment into law. Law Prof Jack Balkin justly blames the Democrats.

Following up on Big Tent Democrat's analysis of the FISA bill, I have a few thoughts and additional links. First, thanks to Balkanization for posting the link to the FISA bill. It's S. 1927 (pdf).

As Marty Lederman noted,

The key to understanding the FISA bill is that it will categorically exclude from FISA's requirements any and all "surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States," even if the surveillance occurs in the U.S.; even if the surveillance has nothing whatsoever to do with Al Qaeda, terrorism or crime; and, most importantly, even if the surveillance picks up communications of U.S. persons here in the States -- indeed, even if the surveillance is in part designed to intercept U.S. communications, so long as it is also "directed at" someone overseas.

....The amendment means, I think, that as far as statutory law is concerned, all of our international phone calls and e-mails can be surveilled, without exception, as long as the surveillance is in some sense "directed at" a person overseas.

Among those who sued over the warrantless NSA program were U.S. lawyers representing clients charged with terror offenses. At the time the suit was brought, lawyer Nancy Hollander, one of the plaintiffs, wrote:

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Jesse Spielman, a 23 year old Army private, was sentenced to 110 years yesterday for his part in the rape and murder of an Iraqi teenager and killing of her family members.

Spielman will be eligible for parole in ten years. The case was filed as a capital murder case, making the death penalty possible. Private Steven Green, believed to be the ringleader, will be tried in federal court where the Government is likely to seek the death penalty.

Spielman was convicted Friday of rape, conspiracy to commit rape, housebreaking with intent to rape and four counts of felony murder.

Military prosecutors did not say Spielman took part in the rape or murders but alleged that he went to the house knowing what the others intended to do and served as a lookout.

This was the ugliest singular atrocity I can remember coming out of the Iraq War. LNILR wrote it should have been considered a war crime.

The AP reported that the Army knew that Green had homicidal tendencies. The killings may have been the reason for the the June, 2006 kidnappings and beheadings of U.S. soldiers in Yousifiya. Shorter version of the crime:

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All the brouhaha about lobbyists was stuck in my mind as I watched "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" tonight. While the filibuster scene is the most famous, I find this bit by Claude Rains, playing Senator Paine, Jefferson Smith's mentor, the most interesting:

Listen, Jeff--you--you don't understand these things--you mustn't condemn me for my part in this without--you've had no experience--you see things as black or white--and a man as angel or devil. That's the young idealist in you. And that isn't how the world runs, Jeff--certainly not Government and politics. It's a question of give and take--you have to play the rules--compromise--you have to leave your ideals outside the door, with your rubbers. I feel I'm the right man for the Senate. And there are certain powers- influence. To stay there, I must respect them. And now and then--for the sake of that power--a dam has to be built--and one must shut his eyes. It's--it's a small compromise. The best men have had to make them. Do`you understand? . . . [MORE]

As readers of this blog know, I believe that the Congress can only end the Iraq Debacle by not funding after a date certain. I was pleased to see the issue discussed in the YKos Presidential Forum. This is Part 2 of the forum:

Senator Clinton avoided the question, Rep. Kucinich reiterated his point, Senator Dodd seemed to accept Kucinich's point and Richardson was sidetracked with his "1 point" plan, which was irrelevant to the question presented.

Nonetheless, I was glad to see the issue get a little bit of attention. On the flip is Part 1 of the Forum.

The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. . . . It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. . . . A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. - Federalist 51

Surely there are few Administrations in history that best demonstrate the need for these auxiliary precautions than the Bush Administration.

In writing approvingly of the FISA Amendment, Orin Kerr ignores these concerns:

Rudy Giuliani, the latest practitioner:

In response to questions, they said would not support raising the gasoline tax to finance spending on the nation’s roads and bridges in response to the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis this week. Mr. Giuliani got into a terse exchange with his questioner, David Yepsen, a political columnist for The Des Moines Register, when Mr. Yepsen tried to ask him about such a tax.

‘“David, there’s an assumption in your question that is not necessarily correct, sort of the Democratic, liberal assumption, ‘I need money; I raise taxes,’ ” Mr. Giuliani said.

“Then what are you going to cut, sir,” Mr. Yepsen responded. Mr. Giuliani said that as mayor of New York, he had increased revenue to pay for bridge and road repair by cutting taxes, thereby jolting the economy, and said he would do the same thing as president. The city’s coffers in that period were flush largely with revenues produced by the stock market boom of the late 1990s.

Here's a hint Rudy, your tax cut did not cause the stock market to boom in the 1990s. The President was one William Jefferson Clinton, and Clinton did this to boost the economy:

TPM does a very good interview with Ron Fournier of the AP on the "lobbyist" issue that became the headline of yesterday's YKos Presidential Forum:

As Fournier suggests, the way the issue was portrayed in the forum was, to say the least artificial. Blasting lobbyists while taking money from state lobbyists and the spouses of lobbyists, as Obama does, or from certain principals like hedge fund managers, as Edwards does, is certainly disingenuous. The question is how come that does not make most stories? To Fournier's great credit, it did make his:

Congress' lamenting the heat and their need for a vacation leaves me cold.

"It's hot, it's humid, people are tired and ready to go home," says Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) as he sucks on a cigarette at the Cantina Marina event. "Most of America wants us to go home. It's like this every summer."

But it's not every summer that lawmakers take to cots in the Senate to dramatize an all-night debate over the Iraq war. Nor is it every summer that angry Republicans march off the House floor in the wee hours to protest a parliamentary maneuver by Democrats.

It's hot everywhere. In the past ten days I've been in Denver, Omaha and Chicago. I'm tired of 95 degree humid weather too, but I didn't let it affect my work.

The Democrats caved on FISA and who knows what else -- we'll probably have to wait until the fine print of the passed bills with last minute amendments becomes available to see what they really did.

Why? Because Bush said he'd exercise his unitary power to deny them a recess and force them to cancel or rebook vacation plans?

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I'm at Midway airport in Chicago, waiting for my flight home from Yearly Kos.

Here's something I've never seen before: Rocking chairs.

I'm sitting in a very comfortable hand-painted rocking chair, thoughtfully placed next to a power outlet, with Wi-Fi, in the middle of concurse A between two moving runways. What a stress-free way to blog. My gate is within eye distance. I could blog like this for hours.

Cheers for Midway. More like this please.

If you haven't read Markos' closing remarks last night, you can read them (or watch him deliver them) here.

Shorter version: "I'm just a guy who built a website. You did the rest."

And this I love: Gina Cooper, Yearly Kos' executive director has announced that next year it won't be called Yearly Kos 3 but Netroots Nation.