Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today said the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay will be in operation for years to come - until the war on terror has ended.

But the war on terror has no end. It looks like Guantanamo is just another financial burden we will be saddled with for life - and it hasn't even produced a terrorist.

This is just a further indication that the military tribunals are a sham. Should there be an acquittal, as 60 Minutes pointed out a few weeks ago, the detainee will just be returned to his cell until the end of the war on terror. In other words, a life sentence.

After a long, hard day at work, the last thing I needed to see when I got home was that Senate Republicans are proposing raising the retirement age for social security eligibility to 69 from the current 65 1/2. Do we have to work ourselves into the grave to collect our money? Maybe if we didn't have a President who lied to us and led us into an unnecessary war at a cost of untold billions, the U.S. would be able to honor its obligation to its own citizens.

I'm sure there are topics besides Michael Jackson you'd like to discuss today, so here's a place for them. I'll be back this afternoon to join in.

The Senate today issued a long overdue apology for refusing to heed the requests of seven Presidents to enact a law making lynching a crime.

The apology was enacted on a voice vote which was not recorded. This article says that while there were 80 co-sponsors of the bill, only six Senators showed up for the voice vote.

With many members straggling back to town from a weekend at home, and only six coming to the floor to vote, the Senate delivered a historic apology Monday night for failing to move against a wave of lynchings that claimed more than 4,700 Americans – most of them black – from the 1880s until the 1960s.

Who was against it? America Blog has the updated list.

If you've never seen a photo of a lynching, go here.

First off, the news today is that Shcapelle has lodged her appeal.

Second, I have received an e-mail from someone close to Schapelle Corby advising that this is now the official site for Schapelle Corby and that the family has placed its trust in Kay Danes, once imprisoned in Laos for a year for allegedly smuggling jewels. Ms. Danes is now working with Schapelle's legal and press team. The family has released this message:

Verdict Watch, Day 7
Monday June 13, 2005

Congratulations to Michael Jackson....Not Guilty on all counts! Kudos to Tom Mesereau and team. Shame on DA Tom Sneddon, man on a mission.

Other losers:

• Martin Bashir
• The Accuser's mother
• Larry Feldman
• Gloria Allred

Sneddon Press Conference: He's not going to quarrel with the jury's verdict. He has not spoken with accuser or family. Denies that his past history with Michael Jackson had anything to do with his office's decision to file.

Via Marijuana Policy Project:

In a new Mason-Dixon poll released today, registered voters said by a greater than 3-1 margin that they don't want the federal government to arrest medical marijuana patients, even though the Supreme Court has given it permission to do so. In the poll, conducted June 8-11, 68% of voters said medical marijuana patients should not be arrested, compared to just 16% who said they should.

Responses varied little by party, age, or gender, with 63% of Republicans, 73% of Democrats, and 68% of independents agreeing that medical marijuana patients should not be arrested.

If you haven't been following the Roger Ailes (of Fox News, not the blogger) battle with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, you can catch up here, reading Alter's latest letter.

The Iraq tribunal that will be trying Saddam Hussein has released a video of him being interrogated.

The incident Mr. Hussein was questioned about involved the 1982 killings of up to 160 men took place in Dujail, a predominantly Shiite village north of Baghdad, where Mr. Hussein had survived an assassination attempt that year.

These killings form the basis of one of the charges against him. You can watch the video here.

With a stinging rebuke, the Supreme Court today threw out the death sentence of Thomas Miller-El. Prosecutors in the case had removed 91% of the black jurors.

Prosecutors removed 10 out of 11 potential black jurors before the trial. Miller-El is black while the victim was white. The jury had nine whites, one Hispanic, one Filipino and one black....[Justice David] Souter said the jury selection process was "replete with evidence that the prosecutors were selecting and rejecting potential jurors because of race."

The opinion by Justice Souter is here. Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice Rehnquist dissented.

The New York Times reports Monday that six of the detainees held at Guantanamo were under 18 when they were seized - and that at least one reports being brutalized.

Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp.

One lawyer said that his client, a Saudi of Chadian descent, was not yet 15 when he was captured and has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm.

The military is denying the claim, and says that there were three juvenile detainees but that they were released in January, 2004. However, it's all in how you define juvenile:

Via Crooks and Liars....Hannity and Colmes will air an interview with Dick Cheney Monday night....The AP reports:

"I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does. He's never won anything, as best I can tell," Cheney said in an interview to be aired Monday on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes."

At least his mother loved him. Who could love this face? Go ahead, name your caption.