by Last Night in Little Rock

Get the creeps when you walk into a Wal-Mart store? I do. It feels un-American to buy there, and I'll tell you why.

Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation to have been created in the U.S., making it by sheer growth. Even with Exxon/Mobil's price gouging during Katrina, Wal-Mart still came out on top of the Fortune 500 list this year. Wal-Mart pays cash for everything it buys: Products, land, construction of buildings and stores. It is flush with cash. Far more than the normal American can even imagine.

Today, we see Wal-Mart apologize, noted here on TalkLeft, for some minor employee linking "Planet of the Apes" DVDs with "black oriented" movies. Just stupidity, or is it the air in Bentonville, Arkansas? Sam Walton should be spinning in his grave.

In December, 2002, Mullah Habibullah and a man named Dilawar died while being held for interrogation at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. Their deaths were ruled homicides, caused by blunt force trauma. In other words, they were beaten to death.

An investigation ensued but the military would not release the details. Subsequently it was revealed that both died while shackled to the ceiling of their cells, after repeatedly being kneed in the legs. (More details of their beatings and deaths are below.)

Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, then the leader of the military police company guarding the prisoners, was charged with lying to investigators and being derelict in his duties. He was the only officer charged in the deaths.

Friday, the military announced that charges against Beiring have been dropped.

The Sunday Observer has reviewed a sworn statement from Captain John S Edmondson, commander of Guantanamo's hospital about the force-feeding of 81 detainees on a hunger strike.

New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive. They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp's chief doctor, seen by The Observer.

Edmondson describes the force-feeding procedure and says:

It is painful.... Although 'non-narcotic pain relievers such as ibuprofen are usually sufficient, sometimes stronger drugs,' including opiates such as morphine, have had to be administered.

Reading Last Night in Little Rock's earlier post on Time Magzine's disclosure that former Rep. Randy Cunningham wore a wire after he began cooperating with the Government, makes me wonder, who else has been recording their associates on behalf of the Government in an attempt to get leniency for their own misdeeds in the various political scandals.

How about Jack Abramoff? As his attorney Abbe Lowell said, he had been cooperating in hopes of a deal for about 18 months.

Abramoff attorney Abbe Lowell said in a released statement that 18 months ago Abramoff made contact with prosecutors “to admit his wrongdoing and to seek forgiveness from those he has wronged. He intends to continue to work with the Justice Department and others to fully resolve all matters of interest, to provide restitution to anyone he has harmed, and to seek absolution from all.”

The possibilities are close to endless. Did they get Michael Scanlon to wear a wire? Rep. Robert Ney? How about those who took deals in PlameGate? Would Karl Rove wear one to nail someone else and avoid going to jail? Will we see Congressmen do patdowns of each other before sitting down in fancy restaurants when they meet for lunch?

How debasing. Wires are what the DEA makes lowlife informants wear when making a drug buy. I wonder if Cunningham will ever feel clean again.

[Graphic exlcusive to TalkLeft.]

The outrageous privacy actions of our Government continue to come to light.

The News Tribune reports that the I.R.S. tracked the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.

As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.

...Murray said she learned about the problem from the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelly. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.

An I.R.S. spokesperson acknowledges that one of its "vendors" did collect the information and that it is illegal. It says it has never used the information and since told the vendor to "screen the information out." (It seems that a vendor is a private collection agency.)

But a Deputy IRS Commissioner defended the practice and said it is lawful.

Wal-Mart says the cross-promotion of the Planet of the Apes movie and black-themed films on it's website was intentional by an employee, but well-meaning. Huh?

A business manager trying to promote "Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream" programmed the site so that shoppers who bought any boxed set also would be offered the movie about the civil rights leader and other black-themed films.

[Background here. Clarification: Crooks and Liars was not saying there was a Wal-Mart conspiracy, just noting the wierdness of the promotion. Hat tip to Patriot Daily.]

by Last Night in Little Rock

Embattled Majority Leader [not Whip] on leave Rep. Tom DeLay, while still stoutly maintaining his innocence in his Texas criminal case, early Saturday afternoon abandoned all efforts to retain his House leadership role, according to CNN and NYTimes.com in letters to the Speaker and other Republican House leaders.

This was hardly a magnanimous gesture on DeLay's part: The proverbial handwriting was on the wall.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Time magazine reports that resigned Congressman Duke Cunningham wore a wire before he broke down and entered his plea, so "sources" say.

I smell a 5K1.1 sentence reduction for cooperation in the offing.

by TChris

Nicholas Grancio was a person of interest both to the FBI and to the Colombo crime family, which wanted Grancio dead. A lawsuit filed by Grancio's wife alleges that an FBI surveillance team and a team of hit men were both following Grancio in 1992. Colombo crime family member Gregory Scarpa Sr., an FBI informant, spotted the surveillance. The suit alleges that Scarpa called FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio and persuaded DeVecchio to call off the surveillance of Grancio. DeVecchio obliged, the suit says, clearing the way for the hit men to take out Grancio. Grancio was shot to death in his car minutes later.

The case "is about the corrupt and unlawful relationship between law enforcement and a ruthless killer and career criminal that went unchecked for years and led to the cold-blooded murder of a man," court documents say.

More about DeVecchio’s cozy relationship with Scarpa:

A new report from Congressional Research Service attempts to answer the question of whether Bush had the legal authority to authorize the National Security Agency to order warrantless surveillance on Americans. CRS is the public policy, independent research arm of Congress.

While the Congressional report reached no bottom-line conclusions on whether the program is legal or not, it concluded that the legal rationale appears somewhat dubious. The legal rationale "does not seem to be as well-grounded" as the Bush administration's lawyers have suggested, and Congress did not appear to have intended to authorize warrantless wiretaps when it gave President Bush the authority to wage war against Al Qaeda in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the report concluded.

Tom Kean, Chair of the 9/11 Commission agrees:

Catchy title, no? In theory, it's true. A heaing will be held Tuesday Thursday in federal court in Miami to determine whether Jose Padilla will be granted bail, or detained as a danger to the community or a flight risk pending trial.

David Markus was in court today, and has the details of who is going to represent Padilla and how it was determined. The short answer is: The Miami Federal Defenders (great office with great lawyers by the way) will be lead counsel, and Andy Patel, one of Padilla's New York lawyers since 2002, will be co-counsel. But read David's post for a little bit of how this was determined, and how the Assistant U.S. Attorney tried to block the federal defender from entering the case.

As to the bail issue, David reports:

Judge Garber then asked the government what its position was on bail. AUSA Pell said that the government was asking for pretrial detention based on risk of flight and danger to the community, to which Judge Garber quipped: "Why am I not surprised?"

Defense Tech writes about a recent military study showing that 80% of U.S. Marine torso deaths in Iraq might have been prevented if they had had extra body armor. The study is here (pdf) and covered the period of March 2003 through June 2005.

The New York Times has this report on the study.

In all, 526 marines have been killed in combat in Iraq. A total of 1,706 American troops have died in combat there. The findings and other research by military pathologists suggests that an analysis of all combat deaths in Iraq, including those of Army troops, would show that 300 or more lives might have been saved with improved body armor.

Happy Blogiversary to Noah of Defense Tech, which turns three today.