by TChris

Newsweek promises to take you "inside Dick Cheney's dark, secretive mind-set." A disturbing journey, that.

Cheney, the conservative that moderates once seemed to like, has strangely iced over in recent years. Even his old friends sometimes wonder if he has not grown angrier, more suspicious, even paranoid.

(Try to get past the description of Brit Hume as a "friendly but also serious and credible interrogator" of Cheney.)

by TChris

The TalkLeft writers are working or playing or hanging out in Amsterdam. Here's a place to chat about the week's events.

by TChris

A Supreme Court Justice's law clerk has the potential to influence some of the Court's written opinions. Justice Alito is catching criticism for hiring Adam Ciongoli, "a former top aide to Attorney General John Ashcroft and an architect of the Bush administration's legal strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to be one of his law clerks." Here's one example:

"It really indicates a lapse in judgment," Deborah L. Rhode, who teaches legal ethics at Stanford, said of Justice Alito's decision. "I just don't think it helps your reputation for nonpartisanship, particularly after such partisan confirmation hearings, to start out by hiring someone who is perceived to have an ideological agenda."

The concern is that Ciongoli might weigh in on cases addressing the administration's detention without trial of those it labels as enemy combatants.

by TChris

Will we allow fear to turn the United States into a nation of spies? Tens of thousands of school bus drivers around the country have been "trained to watch for potential terrorists, in a program financed by the Homeland Security Department." The School Bus Watch program is intended "to turn 600,000 bus drivers into an army of observers."

But what are they observing? It's fine to teach bus drivers how to inspect their busses for signs of tampering, but the notion that "a bus driver, going down the same streets and going into the same neighborhoods every day," will "know when there's a car that shouldn't be there" is silly. Does an out-of-town friend who drops in for a visit become a suspected terrorist because a bus driver doesn't think her Toyota should be there?

At weekly crime meetings in Nashville, neighborhood residents are told that it's crucial to report anyone "who doesn't belong here." That advice, according to this story, is taken to mean: "If you see more than two young black males ages 12-18 wearing hooded sweat shirts and moving by foot, quickly, run to the phone and call the police."

Apparently young white males wearing hooded sweatshirts are not suspect. This was articulated by a East Nashville Police Department representative who confirmed the fears and suspicions of the residents and assured them (more than five times) that 100% of the recent crimes committed in East Nashville were indeed committed by black males. In other words, "Your fears are completely justified."

In a diverse society that values freedom of movement, it's dangerous to assume that bus drivers, neighbors, or anyone else can reliably decide who "doesn't belong" or who "shouldn't be there."

by TChris

Where did LA County Sheriff Lee Baca get the idea that he can punish jail inmates by making them stand around naked?

More than 100 inmates at a Los Angeles County jail were ordered to strip naked, had their mattresses taken away and were left with only blankets to cover themselves for a day as Los Angeles Sheriff's Department officials tried to quell racially charged violence that has plagued the jail system for nearly two weeks.

The Sheriff opined that he was acting at "outer edge of our core values," but he's fallen off the edge.

"It comes to a different level of basic human rights if you take away clothing and dignity," said Michael Gennaco, chief of Sheriff Lee Baca's office of independent review.

by TChris

It's no longer quite so much fun to be an undercover cop (or a cop under the covers) for the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's office.

A Virginia sheriff said Friday he will no longer allow detectives to receive sexual services while investigating suspected prostitution after they spent $1,200 at massage parlors last month and sparked a public outcry.

The detectives spent so much, according to the sheriff, because it takes "multiple visits" to "build trust" with the massage parlor employees. Not to mention the $350 tip that one detective left after a particularly satisfying undercover experience.

by TChris

A 14 year old boy, Martin Anderson, violated a probation condition. As a consequence, he was sent to a juvenile-detention boot camp in Florida, where he died. A medical examiner, Dr. Charles Siebert, concluded that Martin died from internal bleeding that Siebert attributed to "sickle cell trait, a disorder that caused his red blood cells to change shape and produce 'a whole cascade of events' that led to hemorrhaging." Siebert inferred that bruises on the boy's body were inflicted during efforts to revive him and were unrelated to his death.

Martin's parents believe that Martin died as the result of a beating inflicted by boot camp guards. The beating was videotaped, and the video establishes that the guards abused Martin, whether or not they killed him.

On the 1-hour, 20-minute tape, which has no sound, as many as nine guards can be seen restraining Anderson. Guards kneed him and wrestled him to the ground, where he was repeatedly struck by one guard, either on his arm or the side of his torso, while he lay still. He was limp throughout most of it and never appeared to offer significant resistance.

The "tough love" philosophy that prevails in many boot camps is nothing more than an excuse to abuse kids. A parent who physically mistreated a kid in this way would be arrested. Our society shouldn't tolerate a double standard at boot camps. The Florida camp, and any others like it, should be shut down.

by TChris

As TalkLeft noted here, two air marshals have been arrested for smuggling cocaine. Now it appears that one of the marshals might rat out other marshals who may have participated in a broader drug smuggling conspiracy.

Stuart Maneth, an agent with the inspector general's office of the Homeland Security Department, testified that one of the suspects had told the authorities that after their arrest last week, he was warned by his co-defendant against "giving up other F.A.M.'s."

Of course, federal marshals are well aware that federally prosecuted criminals can gain a huge advantage by ratting out others, truthfully or not. What they say should be taken with several grains of salt, but it will be interesting to see if evidence of a larger conspiracy materializes.

by TChris

As noted here, Pat Roberts, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, isn't particularly interested in protecting Americans from unwarranted surveillance, and seems to think that the best way to protect the president from criticism is to broaden FISA to give the executive branch greater power to intercept domestic communications. Even that isn't good enough for the Bush administration, which must have admonished Roberts for trying to think independently.

Yesterday the NY Times reported that Roberts isn't sure exactly how to reform FISA, but believes that NSA spying requests should still "come before the FISA court." That isn't what the White House thinks, so the Senate Intelligence Committee's majority staff director, Bill Duhnke, had to tell the Times that its reporting "didn't reflect 'the tenor and status' of the negotiations between Congress and the White House." Duhnke assured the press today that Roberts is open to allowing the administration to continue bypassing the FISA court, while preferring that "the entire (intelligence) committee be briefed and involved in oversight issues." In other words, business as usual, with perhaps a few more senators hearing classified information that they won't be able to share with the public. This is oversight?

by TChris

It's left to Harry Reid to accomplish a task that should be done routinely by the corporate media: fact-checking a presidential speech. The results are posted at Raw Story. The theme:

In his latest appearance before handpicked supporters, the president today called on the American people to just trust him with our nation's security. Trust him on Iraq. Trust him on domestic spying. And trust him on preparing and protecting America for terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Unfortunately, more than five years of incompetence have failed to protect the American people and have eroded the president's credibility.

by TChris

How ridiculous is this? The vice president shoots his hunting partner in the face (not to mention the heart), and when the poor guy gets out of the hospital, he apologizes to the vice president for getting shot.

"Gosh, Dick, I'm so sorry my face got in the way of your buckshot. Did you get the quail anyway?"

As a reality check, this story recounts the various discrepancies in the factual accounts of the shooting and its aftermath that eventually made their way to the public.

by TChris

The United Nations Human Rights Commission advocated the closure of the Guantánamo prison in a report issued this week. Today, a NY Times editorial blasts the Bush administration's refusal to recognize the damage that Guantánamo does to the nation's credibility as a protector of human rights.

The Bush administration offered its usual weak response, that President Bush has decided there is a permanent state of war that puts him above the law. And that is exactly the problem: by creating Guantánamo outside the legal system for prisoners who, according to Mr. Bush, have no rights, the United States is stuck holding these 500 men in perpetuity. The handful who may be guilty of heinous crimes can never be tried in a real court because of their illegal detentions. A vast majority did nothing or were guilty only of fighting on a battlefield, but the administration refuses to sort them out.

And the editorial reminds us that accountability has been erased from this administration's vocabulary.