by TChris

Muslim head scarves have been in the news recently, as an Oklahoma school district settled a lawsuit attacking a dress code that prohibited Muslim students from wearing a hijab. The Constitution protects students from the government's interference with the free exercise of their religions, while federal legislation provides private employees with more limited protection against religious discrimination. Using that law, a Muslim employee of Walt Disney World sued Disney, alleging that she was fired because she wouldn't remove her head scarf at work.

Aicha Baha says she was fired after her religious faith compelled her to defy Disney's policy prohibiting employees from wearing anything other than their uniforms. The only head coverings Disney allows are Disney hats (and possibly mouse ears). Federal law requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee's need to practice a religion. Baha says Disney offered to accommodate her religious needs by allowing her to wear the hijab in private, but not when she was in contact with the public.

Baha has good reason to believe that it would be reasonable for Disney to let her practice her religion on more than a part-time basis.

by TChris

As TalkLeft noted in March, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia refused to return to Iraq after deciding that he couldn't further an immoral war. The price of that decision: conviction of desertion in a court martial, a year in prison, and a bad-conduct discharge at the end of his prison term.

Sergeant Mejia, 28, has said his experience in Iraq, seeing brutality, senseless deaths and commanders who he said put glory over good decisions, convinced him that the war was "oil driven" and immoral.

After Mejia refused to return to Iraq, he applied for conscientious objector status, but the military recognizes only an objection to war in general, not an objection to specific conflicts. Mejia wasn't allowed to use that application as a defense, nor was he allowed to testify about the mistreatment of detainees that he witnessed.

by TChris

NBC's Tim Russert and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating the White House's disclosure to selected journalists that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA agent. (Background collected here.) Time and NBC will attempt to quash the subpoenaes to protect the confidentiality of their sources.

The request to interview reporters may suggest that the probe is nearing a conclusion, because Justice Department guidelines require that prosecutors exhaust all other avenues before calling reporters before a grand jury. Attorneys for several grand jury witnesses and news organizations said it is not clear whether [Special Prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald is moving toward seeking indictments in the case or whether he is preparing to complete it without bringing criminal charges.

A reporter's right to protect confidential sources is not absolute, and courts sometimes order disclosure as a last resort to advance a criminal investigation. Journalists sometimes disobey court orders to disclose sources, risking contempt sanctions. No word on whether a subpoena has been issued to Robert Novak, who was clearly the recipient of a leak about Plame's identity and was thus a key witness to the alleged crime.

The results from the Blogads Reader Survey are out. More than 17,000 readers responded. Some interesting numbers:

This survey shows that blog readers are older and more affluent than most optimistic guestimates: 61% of blog readers responding to the survey are over 30, and 75% make more than $45,000 a year. Moreover, blog readers are more cyber-active than I'd hoped: 54% of their news consumption is online. 21% are themselves bloggers and 46% describe themselves as opinion makers. And, in the last six months:

• 50% have spent more than $50 online on books.
• 47% have spent more than $500 online for plane tickets.
• 50% have contributed more than $50 to a cause or candidate, and 5% have contributed more than $1000. (Only 25% of NYTimes.com readers have contributed anything online in the last year.)

Blog readers are media-mavens: 21% subscribe to the New Yorker magazine, 15% to the Economist, 15% to Newsweek and 14% to the Atlantic Monthly. They are also far more male -- 79%! -- than I expected, versus 56% of NYTimes.com's readers.

Blogads.

The Washington Post is reporting that previously secret documents now being released show that the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison were not being abused to soften them up for interrogation, but were being done as punishment and amusement .

The information comes in part from the guards themselves. One guard said:

He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' "

....All the MPs who provided statements also described abuses that appeared to have little to do with intelligence gathering. Instead, they said detainees were beaten and sexually humiliated as punishment or for fun.

Here's a few of the stories behind the photos:

• The Naked Pyramid Photo: "I was laughing at some of the stuff."
• Punches and Kicks Photo: "Knocked the Detainee Unconscious."
• The Dogs Photo: "They Let the Dogs Corner Him."

Some examples of the abuse:

This is pretty amazing. The Department of Justice wrote several memos to Pentagon officials advising them how to avoid being charged with war crimes while denying prisoners their rights.

A series of Justice Department memorandums written in late 2001 and the first few months of 2002 were crucial in building a legal framework for United States officials to avoid complying with international laws and treaties on handling prisoners, lawyers and former officials say.

The confidential memorandums, several of which were written or co-written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. They were endorsed by top lawyers in the White House, the Pentagon and the vice president's office but drew dissents from the State Department.

The memorandums .....suggested how officials could inoculate themselves from liability by claiming that abused prisoners were in some other nation's custody.

And don't miss this editorial in the June 8 issue of The Nation, Orders to Torture (subscription required):

The Pentagon released some figures today about the number of Iraqi and Afghan prisoner deaths being investigated for possible criminal prosecution: The total is now 37.

The Army has undertaken criminal investigations into the deaths of at least 32 Iraqis and five Afghans held by U.S. forces since August 2002, Pentagon officials revealed Friday. The deaths are from 33 separate cases, two of which involved more than one death. That is eight more cases than the Pentagon had publicly reported two weeks ago.

Nine are active cases, and eight of those are classified as homicides involving suspected assaults of detainees before or during interrogation sessions. Two have been resolved as homicide cases. Four are called justifiable homicides and 15 have been classified as deaths by natural or undetermined cause, the Pentagon said. Of the total of 33 cases, 30 involve detainees who died inside a U.S.-run detention facility. In the three other cases, two Iraqis and one Afghani died while under U.S. control outside a facility.

Earlier this month, the the Pentagon acknowledged 25 deaths. So more are still coming out of the woodwork.

Wow. Secret Service employee Larry Stewart, the ink expert who testified at the Martha Stewart trial, has been charged with two counts of perjury--for lying on the witness stand at her trial.

The government said it had uncovered eight separate false statements made by Larry Stewart on the stand about two subjects: that he participated in an August 2002 examination of the worksheet, and that he was familiar with a book proposal on ink analysis.

The Government doesn't think it will affect her conviction. We disagree. We'd also like to know when the Government realized Stewart lied.

Meanwhile, shares in Shares in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. (MSO) rose 11 percent today. We got an e-mail from Martha's website a few days ago asking us to let people know how they can help Martha. It was signed by Martha. Here's how:

Wonkette Rules. She has been mercilessly obsessing on the Washingtonienne scandal. Washingtonienne is a staffer of Ohio Republican Senator Mike DeWine who published her sexploits on her now defunct weblog. We won't go into details here, just go read Wonkette. But there's real news today: Gannett News reports that Senator DeWine has issued a statement.

Sen. Mike DeWine said Thursday that he has not decided whether to fire an aide who allegedly posted her exploits in an Internet diary, including accepting $400 from a married man for sex. "We're in the process of completing a review," the Ohio Republican said. "It's a personnel matter." DeWine said he expects to make a decision soon.

....In the blog, the woman said she had a variety of partners. These included an older man, a co-worker with whom she was involved in an "office sex scandal"; and a married Bush appointee who also gave her money.

The cached version of Washingtonienne's blog is here. Be forewarned, it's graphic explicit.

Update: DeWine fires Washingtonienne. She calls Wonkette and gives a taped interview . Her name is Jessica Cutler. The Washington Post will have an article about her, with a picture, on Sunday.

Via e-mail from American Progress:

...the Hindustan Times of India today reports that the RNC outsourced its key fundraising and get-out-the-vote operations to firms in India. The report notes that over a 14 month period while the Republican Party was trumpeting patriotism, the RNC exported its voter info database to various call centers in India.

More details here.

The Washington Post has them.. Statements describing sexual humiliation and savage beatings. And new photos.

The statements provide the most detailed picture yet of what took place on the cellblock. Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting or with a prohibited item. Some said they were pressed to denounce Islam or were force-fed pork and liquor. Many provided graphic details of how they were sexually humiliated and assaulted, threatened with rape, and forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers.

"They forced us to walk like dogs on our hands and knees," said Hiadar Sabar Abed Miktub al-Aboodi, detainee No. 13077. "We had to bark like a dog, and if we didn't do that they started hitting us hard on our face and chest with no mercy. After that, they took us to our cells, took the mattresses out and dropped water on the floor and they made us sleep on our stomachs on the floor with the bags on our head and they took pictures of everything."

Sean-Paul at Agonist reports this email from a reader who says that this Iranian website is reporting the following (Note that the Iranian website is not in English so we have no idea if that's what is really being reported.)

1. The site is in possession of "documents" that prove Berg was a CIA special agent who had initiated widespread contacts with Muslims resident in the US over the past two years, with the aim of penetrating Al-Qaeda.
2. Berg had been very successful in this mission, providing golden opportunities for the CIA and the FBI to deliver severe blows to Al-Qaeda.
3. With start of the Iraq war and Al-Qaeda's activities there, Berg was sent to Iraq under cover of a telecommunication businessman.