The GOP Presidential candidates on interrogation:

[Brit] Hume [asked] the candidates . . . How aggressively would you interrogate" . . . captured suspects?

Rudy Giuliani — . . . "I'd say every method they could think of," affirmed Giuliani.

. . . Mitt Romney . . . "Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used."

Via Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan, Gestapo Chief Muller's "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

As Sullivan writes:

There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: . . . The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Meet Jennifer in San Francisco. She's a pot dealer.

Jennifer, who is white, and who dresses tidily and arranges flowers for a popular art gallery, talks about the [Latino] dealers with clear discomfort. Not because they're troublesome or violent. It's more that she feels guilty. The police never arrest her.

Jennifer enjoys the flower arranging, but mostly it functions as a legitimate income to show the IRS. Really, she's a marijuana dealer.

As a female, Jennifer says, the police aren't looking for her:

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Meet Osama Eldawoody. He's an informant for the FBI. He goes to mosques and tries to figure out who might view Osama bin Laden favorably and who might, with the right direction, support and supplies, engage in an act of terrorism against the U.S. While working for the FBI, he attended 575 services, sometimes as often as four or five a day. He's now in the witness protection program.

Meet Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, from Pakistan. With Eldawoody's help, the U.S. convicted him of plotting to blow up a New York subway station and he is serving 30 years in prison.

Siraj's family and supporters say he was simply an angry, foolish young man with no connection to actual terrorists or capacity to obtain bombs, playing along -- for a while -- with a man who he believed was his closest friend. They say Eldawoody effectively goaded Siraj into plotting to plant explosives -- to be supplied by Eldawoody -- in the subway station, just below the Macy's store in midtown Manhattan, and then recorded those conversations.

Here's Eldawoody's role in the plot:

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[Cross posted at Firedoglake]

With ten dead in Iraq today and five Britons kidnapped, I was looking for some good news to write about. I didn't find it. And in what seems like a page out of a science-fiction novel, I found this: U.S. Isolates Traveler Infected with Super-TB.

The United States has isolated a man who may have exposed fellow passengers on two transatlantic flights to a strain of tuberculosis that is extremely hard to treat, officials said on Tuesday. It was the first time the federal government has issued such an isolation order since at least 1963, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said authorities were trying to notify passengers who traveled aboard Air France 385 from Atlanta to Paris on May 13 and back to the United States from Prague on Czech Air Flight 0104 on May 24.

It caught my attention immediately because while flipping channels this weekend, I happened upon the tv premiere of the movie Pandemic on the Hallmark Channel. It was about the quarantining of passengers arriving at LAX from Australia after a young man died en route. They suspected he had bird flu, but whatever he had, there was no vaccine.

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Watching Al Gore discuss the importance of reasoned discourse in a democracy, it strikes me that our earlier discussion on Hugo Chavez and the closing of a privately owned television station critical of the Chavez government was missing some key understandings.

Gore argues for reasoned discourse, but he implicitly assumes that our current media structure may be capable of delivering the information necessary to forwarding that discourse. Is this true? An open question.

What is not an open question in my view is that a government, any government, Left or Right, can be granted the power to shut down media outlets because it is critical of that government.

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I do not care one way or the other if the Democrats hold a Presidential debate on Fox, but my Gawd, if you are going to criticize folks for not appearing, as Kucinich does here, try to not sound so stupid:

Rep. Kucinich . . . criticized his opponents who were unwilling to show up to the CBC/Fox debate. "Fox broadcasts the World Series, too, but is it any less of a World Series because it's on Fox?

Um, last I looked, Fox did not have Brit Hume calling the World Series, Representative. I have an idea, why not have the Democratic Debate on The Simpsons? I mean if you want to be a figure of ridicule, what better venue Congressman?

It seems absurd to debunk a sexist smear, but nonetheless, in today's political world, it must be done. And Greg Sargent, with an assist from Carl Bernstein, does it:

We've just received our copy of Carl Bernstein's new book on Hillary, and something leaps right out at us. Specifically: Bernstein's reporting directly contradicts one of the more important and more damning allegations about Hillary and Bill that is made by former Timesman Jeff Gerth and current Times reporter Don Van Natta in their big forthcoming Hillary book. . . . The charge in question in the Gerth-Van Natta book -- which is called Her Way -- is that just after Bill's election in 1992, he and Hillary were already plotting two terms for her in the White House. . . . But Bernstein's book contains extensive on the record testimony . . . -- that appears to directly contradict this charge.

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Update [2007-5-29 15:28:41 by Big Tent Democrat]: As Scott Lemieux points out, here is a chance for the Dem Congress to redeem itself somewhat. Overrule the Court's statutory interpretation please.

Via AdamB, another reason why Justice Alito is a disastrous addition to the Court (surely O'Connor would not have voted with the majority in this case.) Today in a 5-4 decision, Ledbetter v. Goodyear, Alito writng for the Court, wrote:

Ledbetter’s arguments here—that the paychecks that she received during the charging period and the 1998 raise denial each violated Title VII and triggered a new EEOC charging period—cannot be reconciled with Evans, Ricks, Lorance, and Morgan. . . . ©urrent effects alone cannot breathe life into prior, uncharged discrimination; as we held in Evans, such effects in themselves have “no present legal consequences.” 431 U. S., at 558. Ledbetter should have filed an EEOC charge within 180 days after each allegedly discriminatory pay decision was made and communicated to her. She did not do so, and the paychecks that were issued to her during the 180 days prior to the filing of her EEOC charge do not provide a basis for overcoming that prior failure.

Sounds reasonable? Not really, but if you think so you should not after reading Justice Ginsberg's dissent:

Via TPM, The Politico has been picked on a lot by the left blogs and today there can be no wonder why after this:

But, like Dwight Eisenhower's in 1952, Giuliani's national security stature after the Sept. 11 attacks more likely explains his continued popularity within the religious right, whose voters have long held hawkish positions on the issue.

Like five star General Supreme Allied Commander during the Good War/Greatest Generation Dwight David Eisenhower?

As Sargent puts it:

In the real world, of course, Rudy doesn't have national security stature at all. He was a mob-busting U.S. Attorney, ran New York as mayor for two terms, walked through the smoke and dust on 9/11, then did a bit of globe-trotting as part of his post-mayoralty moneymaking efforts. Rudy has no national security experience of any kind -- let alone "stature" in this field.

But Rudy gives good press conferences right Politico. Honestly, how stupid can you be?

Josh Marshall writes:

We're so far deep into this mess that sometimes I believe we're past the point of argument. You look at the evidence and you either see it or you don't.

Well, let's face it. It is not about seeing anymore. It is about admitting your grievous mistakes. And this applies not only to President Bush, Republicans and Iraq war supporters. It applies to pundits, the Media, bloggers, well everyone.

Because once the mistakes are admitted, the recriminations will REALLY start to fly on all levels. Think Vietnam.

So a Creationism "Museum" is opening:

[T]his museum created by the Answers in Genesis ministry . . . combines displays of extraordinary nautilus shell fossils and biblical tableaus, celebrations of natural wonders and allusions to human sin. Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel. Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection. But inside the museum the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day . . .

Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but beliefs can not dictate to science. thus, you can believe this if you want:

Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah’s flood; in fact dinosaurs were on the ark.

But you don't get to teach it at public schools. The First Amendment doncha you know. Separation of Church and State.

We spend a lot of time decrying hack journalism, but let me highlight some of the good work being done. Here is Peter Canellos of the Globe truthsquadding the GOP Presidential candidates:

-- In defending the Iraq war, leading Republican presidential contenders are increasingly echoing words and phrases used by President Bush in the run-up to the war that reinforce the misleading impression that Iraq was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

. . . Senator John McCain . . . suggested that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would "follow us home" from Iraq -- a comment some viewers may have taken to mean that bin Laden was in Iraq, which he is not.

Former New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani asserted, in response to a question about Iraq, that "these people want to follow us here and they have followed us here. Fort Dix happened a week ago. " However, none of the six people arrested for allegedly plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were from Iraq.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney . . . said [terroristgroups] have "come together" to try to bring down the United States, though specialists say few of the groups Romney cited have worked together and only some have threatened the United States.