Blogger Oliver Willis has started his new paying gig at Media Matters. Here's his first post on the torture scandal.

In other Media Matters news today, check out their press release (pdf) charging that Rush Limbaugh is endangering our troops:

Media Matters for America has sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking that he consider removing Rush Limbaugh’s radio show from the taxpayer-funded American Forces radio network. MMFA has also created a petition you can sign, urging Secretary Rumsfeld to remove Limbaugh’s show from the network.

And don't forget to get a copy of Media Matter's chief David Brock's new book:

The Republican Noise Machine :
Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy

President Bush is pulling at the heartstrings in his latest photo op. He's featured today shaking the new prosthetic hands of seven Iraqis whose hands were ordered amputated in 1995 at Abu Ghraib under Saddam Hussein. Bush does not deserve any credit:

Don North, a documentary producer, discovered the men last year and sought help for them in the United States, and a Houston journalist, Marvin Zindler, helped arrange for their surgeries and publicized their story.

Joe Agris, the plastic surgeon who fitted the men with high-tech hands last month, donated his services. The prosthetic devices, valued at $50k each, were also donated.

This is a shameless photo-op by Bush to support his war.

Dick Gephardt says the Dems would accept John McCain for a Vice Presidential candidate and McCain would be a good choice:

Asked after a speech in California on Monday what he thought of Mr. McCain's potential for the Democratic presidential ticket, Mr. Gephardt described him as a "very attractive figure in American politics" who "would be accepted by the Democratic Party," according to CNN. Mr. McCain is "someone a lot of Democrats could get interested in," Mr. Gephardt said at the Leon Panetta Center in Monterrey.

Not us. We still want Kerry to pick Edwards. We hope McCain sticks to his guns and rejects the overture, if made.

Public Defender Dude, a practicing Public Defender in California with a great blog, has a new piece up on the grossly excessive political clout of the California Prison Guards' Union. He says the power of the Abu Ghraib guards pales by comparison.

In California, the prison industry is the fastest growing industry around. In fact, if you want to talk about pure political muscle, there is no lobby quite as strong as the prison lobby. Consider what the prison guard's union has helped to accomplish in the last 20 years. They have increased tenfold the number of inmates in prison, they have increased exponentially the number of prisons, they have backed numerous draconian laws to ensure that more and more people go to prison for longer and longer for doing less and less.

by TChris

Amnesty International's 2004 report condemns human rights abuses by terrorists and by governments fighting against terrorism. Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, reminds us why we need to guard against affronts to human rights wherever they arise.

"Governments are losing their moral compass, sacrificing the global values of human rights in a blind pursuit of security. This failure of leadership is a dangerous concession to armed groups."

"While governments have been obsessed with the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they have allowed the real weapons of mass destruction-- injustice and impunity, poverty, discrimination and racism, the uncontrolled trade in small arms, violence against women and abuse of children -- to go unaddressed."

The press release regarding the 2004 report is here. The online version of the report is here.

by TChris

If the NY Times can say "We were wrong," why can't the President?

[W]e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. ... The problematic articles ... depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. ...

Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

The Times catalogs some of the instances in which the paper was duped by misinformation and provides a link to more comprehensive coverage of its errant reporting. The paper deserves praise for setting the record straight.

Now if only the Bush administration would do the same.

Maria Suarez has been released from prison after 22 years. At 16, she was sold as a sex slave to a man who abused her for five years.

....his neighbors, a young couple who feared the man known as a witch doctor, clubbed him to death. Suarez, who washed and hid the weapon, was convicted of conspiring in the murder.

The case has made major headlines because the U.S. said she would be deported upon being released. Homeland Security has finally acted --she can stay in the U.S. Ms. Suarez went home yesterday with her 86 year old mother. She is 44.

More here.

Some more fingerpointing within the Bush Administration--this time over who authorized the use of dogs during interrogations at Guantanamo. Col. Thomas Pappas, the most senior official at Abu Ghraib, testified under oath it was Major General Jeffrey Miller, who at one time commanded the Gitmo interrogation center. Miller flatly denies it.

"It was a technique I had personally discussed with General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison, testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses occurred in the wake of Miller's visit to Baghdad between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003. "He said that they used military working dogs at Gitmo [the nickname for Guantanamo Bay], and that they were effective in setting the atmosphere for which, you know, you could get information" from the prisoners, Pappas told the Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, according to a transcript provided to The Washington Post.

Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners were taken for interrogation.

Miller not only denies the conversations, he denies dogs were ever used at Guantanamo to frighten detainees. So far, there have been no pictures released of interrogation chambers at Gitmo, so we can't know if Miller is telling the truth. Have any of the released Guantanamo detainees mentioned being threatened by dogs?

Walter in Denver reminds us that the 3rd Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash is this Friday, May 28, at the Denver Press Club. The festivities begin around 7 pm. Address: 1330 Glenarm, Denver.

Various items will be available in a silent auction format, with proceeds benefitting The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

If you have anything you'd like to donate, contact Walter. He says you'll get some nice publicity for your trouble. Kudos to Zombyboy for the graphics and Darren Copeland for the lead on the Denver Press Club.

We will be there, although, we don't think we'll get drunk and start flinging subpoenas on the stage as Jeff Goldstein of the uber-right blog Protein Wisdom, predicts. On the other hand, you never know.

We just hope we finally get to meet Vodka Pundit in person It's been two years since we met via cyberspace, offering to buy him and his bride Melissa a drink on their next trip to Denver from Colorado Springs, and we're still waiting. Vodkapundit, like Instapundit, was an early and gracious linker to and supporter of TalkLeft -- despite the fact that our politics match only on occasion--when the Libertarian in them and the liberal in us strike the same chord.

If you're anywhere around Denver this Friday, please stop by. We can tell you from having attended a prior RMBB that the attendees definitely are a varied bunch of characters... and that a most excellent time is had by all.

by TChris

Another Louisiana judge is in trouble -- this one for being drunk in the courtroom.

A prosecutor's dream judge, District Judge Monty L. Doggett issued arrest warrants when he was too drunk to read them. Deputies once had to carry the drunken judge out of his courtroom.

Judge Doggett's attitude toward his problem didn't help his efforts to retain his robe.

Doggett claimed that since he was re-elected after his alcoholism was made public, his constituents were aware of his problem and did not care.

It wouldn't be surprising if his constituents didn't notice his bad judging, given the other disastrous Louisiana judges that TalkLeft has featured: here and here and here.

by TChris

David Wayne Boyce is asking the Virginia Supreme Court to rule that DNA tests prove he wasn't present when Timothy Askew was killed in May 1990.

"I am wrongly incarcerated for 14 years for a crime I did not commit," Boyce wrote in the 37-page petition. "Please end this horrible living nightmare of gross injustice and set me free."

Boyce had been sharing a motel room with Askew, but Askew rented a second room on the night of his death. Askew was killed in that room. Recent DNA tests on crime scene evidence, including hair, blood, and seminal fluid, found no DNA from Boyce, although they indicated the presence of DNA from someone other than Askew.

As is customary, the prosecution refuses to admit the possibility that it prosecuted an innocent man. It deems the DNA evidence "inconclusive." Maybe, but no physical evidence ever linked Boyce to the crime, and the prosecution based its case on an alleged confession given to a jailhouse informant -- evidence that is notoriously unreliable. Even if the court doesn't accept Boyce's plea to be set free, it should give him a new trial. His jury didn't hear all the evidence that, thanks to advances in DNA testing, now casts a dark shadow of doubt on Boyce's guilt.

by TChris

It's true, as the NY Times editorializes, that the FBI and Justice Department "ought to hang their heads in shame over the mistaken arrest and jailing" of Brandon Mayfield. This isn't the first time that the FBI has followed -- in David Cole's words -- an "arrest first, ask questions later" policy.

Mayfield is fortunate that the Spanish National Police took a more professional approach than the FBI, which confidently announced that a fingerprint found on a bag of detonators tied to train bombings in Madrid was a "100 percent match" with Mayfield's prints. When Spanish investigators met with the FBI to question that conclusion, the FBI came away from the meeting believing that the Spanish police "felt satisfied" with the FBI's analysis. More likely, the FBI -- an agency that doesn't respond well to criticism -- felt satisfied that the Spanish police shouldn't be questioning their conclusions. In any event, the Spanish investigators didn't give up after being brushed off by the FBI; they continued their work and matched the prints with a more likely suspect.

Props to the Spanish police for their professionalism. They kept an innocent man from getting into a whole lot of trouble. The FBI and Justice Department should hang their heads not only for botching the fingerprint analysis, but for advising a judge that they had cause to arrest Mayfield because of a contact between Mayfield and a man on a terrorism watch list that, according to Mayfield, never occurred, and because Mayfield advertised in a Muslim "yellow pages" and attended a mosque (not as incriminating as taking out an ad in the Terrorist Gazette or attending a terrorist picnic, but apparently proof of guilt to the Justice Department).