PFC Lynndie England's Article 32 hearing began today at Fort Bragg. The prosecution will call 25 witnesses. The defense also will call witnesses - some by telephone in Iraq. The defense included Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top generals on an early witness list, but they are not expected tto appear.

The hearing is the first chance in court for the 21-year-old Army reservist's attorneys to make their case that she was following orders from higher-ups when she was photographed mocking naked detainees at the prison.

Our prior Lynndie England coverage is accessible here.

Update: Prosecutors say England acted not out of frustration or on higher orders, but "just for sport."

Cool.

The Grateful Dead's Bob Weir is pleading with Deadheads everywhere not to vote for Ralph Nader. Performing on Saturday in Boston, Weir told the band's followers to be sure to vote, but the exorted, "Don't vote for Nader. I know him. He's an a--hole," our spies tell us. The band then broke into "Johnny B. Goode," a theme song of the Kerry-Edwards campaign ...

Nothing personal against Mr. Nader, he was very polite the one time I had a discussion with him shortly before the 2000 election, but I disagreed with several of the comments he made in his speech that night and thought some of them were mean-spirited. Let's not let him take any of Kerry's votes.

Example of a mean-sprited Nader comment:

Sickening. From the New England Journal of Medicine (by Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.):

There is increasing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Such medical complicity suggests still another disturbing dimension of this broadening scandal.

We know that medical personnel have failed to report to higher authorities wounds that were clearly caused by torture and that they have neglected to take steps to interrupt this torture. In addition, they have turned over prisoners' medical records to interrogators who could use them to exploit the prisoners' weaknesses or vulnerabilities. We have not yet learned the extent of medical involvement in delaying and possibly falsifying the death certificates of prisoners who have been killed by torturers.

Here's more:

The current issue of GQ Magazine brings us The secret life of G.W. Bush. What was he really doing in 1972 when he couldn't account for his time? Read on:

Isn't that a bare-chested George W. Bush cavorting with Saigon bar girls in 1972? And who knew that the leader of the free world once worked as a Rolling Stones roadie? Or hung out with Andy Warhol's Pop Art crowd? It's all laid out in a lavish photo spread and accompanying text in a national magazine now on the newsstands.

In a satirical prank complete with a half dozen arty photographs by a British conceptual artist, "Bush: The Missing Year" purports to account for the unexplained gap in the president's Air National Guard service in 1972-73. The story, by senior editor Jason Gay, details Bush's clandestine activities in the U.S. military's fictitious Special Undercover Missions Service (SUMS).

....Other images show the Bush stand-in playing cards with a Mick Jagger model and touching up a Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe. In the final staged photo, a white-haired Barbara Bush type yanks her son out of bed by his ear, a fifth of Jack Daniel's in his hand and pictures of nudes scattered on the floor.

The narrative that accompanies the photos is just as funny:

Unbelievable. The New York Times is reporting that the information that al Qaeda may attack specific buildings in New York and Washington is three to four years old.

Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terror plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

Was the terror threat issued to prevent Kerry from leaping ahead in the polls? Yesterday I didn't think so. Now, like many other people, I'm not sure. Especially after reading a comment like this:

"You could say that the bulk of this information is old, but we know that Al Qaeda collects, collects, collects until they're comfortable,'' said one senior government official. "Only then do they carry out an operation. And there are signs that some of this may have been updated or may be more recent.'' (our emphasis.)

Parse that sentence for a minute:

"signs" as in indications, not proof or evidence
"may have been updated," not "has been updated"
"may be more recent," not "is more recent" or "is very recent."

If this is all the Administration had to issue the alert, it's gone beyond "the little boy who cried wolf" to disingenous (at best) or outright deceitful.

[link via Just a Bump in the Beltway.]

Update: Agonist details the discrepancies between the accounts crediting a July 13 arrrest of an al Qaeda operative and seizure of his computer, with accounts dating the information 3-4 years ago, before 9/11.

Update: Jeff at Protein Wisdom disagrees with us.

It is well-known that most Cuban-Americans favor the Republicans. Could that be changing? Markos of Daily Kos presents this anecdotal report:

My father-in-law, Cuban-American to the core, is itching to vote against Bush. He visited his family in Cuba every year, and is furious that anyone would try to separate him from his family. Three months ago, Kerry was a "communist". Today, he's got my father-in-law's vote in crucial New Hampshire. And lots more votes just like it in Florida.

Kos's conclusion:

It's the little things that'll add up to Kerry's landslide in November.

Julia at Sisyphus Shrugged reports on how Monica is "fighting like a junkyard dog to leave it all behind her and get on with her life" by raking in the bucks speaking about Clinton. Check out the money Monica is getting these days:

Lewinsky gave a number of paid interviews about her relationship with Clinton; news reports said one interview with Britain's Channel 4 News alone netted her $400 000. Most recently, she was paid for an interview with ITV News in June, in which she accused Clinton of lying about their affair in his autobiography.

Next up for Monica: A panel discussion on check book journalism at the Edinburgh Television Festival on August 28.

From Brad Plummer at the MoJo Wire:

This new report on child torture in Abu Ghraib is just horrible. Why isn't anyone in the U.S. covering it?

It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets," he said in a statement given to investigators probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. "Then, when I heard the screaming I climbed the door … and I saw [the soldier's name is deleted] who was wearing a military uniform." Hilas, who was himself threatened with being sexually assaulted in Abu Graib, then describes in horrific detail how the soldier raped "the little kid"…

It's not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a [Scotland] Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to 107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention.

Where is our press on this story? Is the Unicef report available online? Rolling Stone is still covering Abu Graib, but where is everyone else?

Via Law Prof Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy: The 4th Circuit En Banc today has refused to invalidate the federal sentencing guidelines. The order states:

According to the vote of a majority of the en banc court constituted to hear this appeal, we affirm the judgment and hold that Blakely v. Washington, does not operate to invalidate Hammoud's sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines. Therefore, district courts within the Fourth Circuit are hereby instructed to continue sentencing defendants in accordance with the guidelines, as was the practice before Blakely. In the interest of judicial economy, however, we recommend that district court within the Fourth Circuit also announce, at the time of sentencing, a sentence pursuant to 18 USC 3553(a), treating the guidelines as advisory only. Majority and dissenting opinions will follow in due course.

David Sirota from American Progress reports on The Sirota Blog :

THEN:

• "I've asked the attorney general and the deputy attorney general to examine racial profiling. It's wrong in America and we've got to get rid of it."
  - President Bush, 7/30/01

NOW:

• "President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney."
  - Arizona Daily Star, 7/31/04

Cyber-sis Avedon Carol of Sideshow reminds us of the human toll and suffering caused by the War in Iraq in Sgt. Joel Gomez Awakes. Go read "A Soldier's New Life" in the Daily Herald. Here's a quote:

He lies there frozen on his bed as his parents and doctors explain why he has been in the hospital for the past three weeks. The information comes quickly, and parts of it confuse him after a long coma. There had been an accident in Iraq. His tank rolled into a river near Bayji, and he had been under water for 10 minutes. His spine is broken in two places, and some internal organs have been severely damaged. He will not walk again. If he gains enough arm mobility to brush his teeth, it will be a major accomplishment. In the ensuing weeks, Joel Gomez will become a nameless number in military records and media reports. History will now refer to him as one of the 308 U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq during the month of March.

Avedon found the article through Today in Iraq which also has this amusing Bush picture.

Mark Hacking has been arrested for aggravated murder in the Utah case of his missing wife Lori Hacking. This is not much of a surprise considering authorities called off the search for Lori Hacking this weekend, saying that information they obtained from the husband made a volunteer search unnecessary.

Will he face the death penalty because his wife was pregnant? Could he be guilty of a lesser crime such as manslaughter because the killing was committed in the heat of passion ? Could he be not guilty at all because he is insane or because the killing was committed in self-defense or because it was a suicide? Or did he not kill her at all, but merely disposed of the body?

More facts are needed before coming to any conclusion. Fox News Legal Analyst Lis Wiehl and I will be discussing the new developments in the case, as well as the Scott Peterson case, tonight on Hannity and Colmes around 9:30 ET.