The "make-shift" prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba housing mostly prisoners brought there from Afganistan is being considered for long-term use. Detainees will likely remain there for at least three more years.

"Navy Capt. Bob Buehn said his budget proposals through 2005 call for funds to continue housing detainees here, and could be expanded to accommodate even more than the roughly 2,000 prisoners authorized by Congress."

Plans call for "new roads, building construction and other improvements to house and support guards and other staff to watch the detainees."

We find this quote to be particularly ominous:

"We've already been here almost a year now," Buehn said, "and we're planning three years ahead. We have grand plans that go out for 20 and 25 years."

A new website, Stop the Rush to War in Iraq, offers easy to construct letters to be sent upon a click of your computer to your elected officials in Washington. The letter will reflect who you are and your specific concern about waging war in Iraq. Here are the site's options:

What's the rush?
There is no clear and present danger
We don't have the moral authority
We don't have the legal authority
War will destabilize the Middle East
War will jeopardize the War on Terror
We can't act alone on this one
We don't have the military capacity right now
We can't afford the cost right now
We're only in it for the money
It's just politics as usual
What is our government hiding?
We are being lied to
What happens if we win?
What happens if we lose?

(Via Counterspin)

The Baltimore Sun reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft has been lying low the past three months due to a run-in with the White House over his exaggeration of the importance of "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.

"After nearly a year of constant public appearances, Attorney General John Ashcroft has become the Bush administration's Bigfoot - the mythical, rarely seen figure who shows up only briefly before quickly ducking away. Until he made a few appearances last week marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ashcroft - a long-time politician who seems to enjoy the limelight - had kept an unusually low profile during the past three months. "

"The trigger for Ashcroft's vanishing act, according to news reports, was a run-in with the White House after he overstated the case against alleged terrorist Jose Padilla, who was initially accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb."

Senior Bush aides believed Padilla to be a mere "low level scout" for Al Qaeda. They were not happy with Ashcroft's spin.

"A Justice Department spokesman denied last week that the White House had ordered Ashcroft, a former Missouri governor who represented the state in the U.S. Senate, to keep quiet. But the attorney general's schedule shows a remarkable drop-off in news-making announcements."

"He held 17 news conferences in the three months before the Padilla announcement. In the three months afterward, he held one, a session Sept. 3 in which he announced that the nation was on a higher security alert."

Meanwhile, Padilla is still being held in a navy brig and has not been formally charged with a crime.

Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright weighs in on Iraq in an op-ed article in today's New York Times.

Her main problem with attacking Iraq now is the timing:

"We should pick this fight at a moment that best suits our interests. And right now, our primary interest remains the thorough destruction and disruption of Al Qaeda and related terrorist networks. "

"Although the president's speech yesterday was persuasive in many respects, he was neither specific nor compelling in his effort to link Saddam Hussein to other, more urgent threats. As evil as Mr. Hussein is, he is not the reason antiaircraft guns ring the capital, civil liberties are being compromised, a Department of Homeland Defense is being created and the Gettysburg Address again seems directly relevant to our lives."

"In the aftermath of tragedy a year ago, the chief executive told our nation that fighting terrorism would be "the focus of my presidency." That — not Iraq — remains the right focus."

Law. Com today has a series of articles on how the practice of immigration law has changed around the country since 9/11.

"Practitioners in the Washington, D.C., area, New York state and the San Francisco area have struggled in the past year with tightened restrictions and unsympathetic courts. As one immigration specialist says, she must keep telling her clients, "I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do."

Unlike some other bloggers, Howard Bashman of How Appealing knows how to credit a songwriter.

We always thought the song Howard quotes from today, "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats (old Bob Geldorf band) was the best rebuttal to those who said that the juvenile rage and school violence associated with Columbine, Paducah and Jonesboro were either new phenomena or the result of a sudden increase in the availability of guns. The song was a hit in the early 1980's. You can listen to it here.

"The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload.
And nobody's gonna go to school today,
She's going to make them stay at home.
And daddy doesn't understand it,
He always said she was as good as gold.
And he can see no reason
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?

Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
I want to shoot
The whole day down.

The telex machine is kept so clean
As it types to a waiting world.
And mother feels so shocked,
Father's world is rocked,
And their thoughts turn to
Their own little girl.
Sweet 16 ain't so peachy keen,
No, it ain't so neat to admit defeat.
They can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?....

All the playing's stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while.
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die.
And then the bullhorn crackles,
And the captain crackles,
With the problems and the how's and why's.
And he can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die?"

Back to song credits....TalkLeft has had a line from a Bob Dylan song as our "motto" since the day we started blogging (see bottom left column of main page)--we not only credit Dylan but link to the lyrics. In case there was any doubt as to what our position would be on the issue of she who failed to credit Jackson Browne, now you know.

Update: This just in from Reuters on an interview with Michael Carneal, the teenage "shooter" in the Paducah, Kentucky case.

"People want one simple answer I can't give it," he told The Courier-Journal of Louisville in an interview at the Kentucky State Reformatory, where he is serving a life sentence."

"Back then, Carneal said, he believed his parents didn't love him, and that he was constantly taunted by other students, including some who he said falsely claimed he was gay."

"One thing that did not influence him, he said, is video games or violent movies."

Ratings for yesterday's daylong 9/11 coverage:

[viewers]

FOX NEWS 1,004,000

CNN 922,000

MSNBC 316,000

Here's the New York Times ratings analysis.

What could be more ridiculous or unfair than denying college aid only to drug offenders, including those convicted for small amounts of pot, while allowing aid to be granted to those convicted of violent crimes?

We're bumping our earlier post on the 87,000 students being denied financial aid due to a mis-interpreted drug law. Sixty-seven members of Congress have co-sponsored a bill (H.R. 786) to repeal the law, but it has yet to receive a hearing. 30,000 students are affected in the 2002-2003 school year alone.

From NORML today:

"The provision, spearheaded in 1998 by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), withholds grants, loans or work assistance from anyone convicted of a drug offense, including the misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Those applicants convicted of other crimes, including violent crime, remain eligible."

In recent years, the Department of Education has interpreted the provision as meaning that any applicant with a prior drug conviction is ineligible to receive financial aid. The provision's sponsor has since alleged that he never intended to make the law retroactive. Nevertheless, Souder has done little to support legislative efforts to amend it."

"Currently, legislation introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) to repeal the ban is pending before Congress. Sixty-seven members of Congress have co-sponsored the bill (H.R. 786), although it has yet to receive a hearing."

Here's a letter you can send to your member of Congress in support of H.R. 786.

Counterspin today takes issue with The Daily Rant for calling NPR Host Tavis Smiley "divisive" and cynically comparing him to Rush Limbaugh because Smiley "once called President Bush a 'serial killer'."

We take issue with the comparison as well. The quote at issue was made by Smiley on Rivera Live, October 24, 2000--the subject was whether there was a difference between Bush and Gore on issues of importance to minority voters, particularly African-Americans.

Tavis was answering a question from Geraldo referencing a comment made earlier in the show by Arianna Huffington, also a guest on the show. Tavis had been stuck in traffic and arrived late on the set. Geraldo recapped her comments to him. Here are the remarks in context.

Ms. HUFFINGTON: [Ralph Nader] really, genuinely believes that it doesn't really make any difference to the country whether Gore or Bush is president, and I, frankly, completely agree with him. In the end, when it comes to major issues, Charlie, things that you care about, like the war on drugs, like incarceration rates, like 1,400,000 African-American men disenfranchised because of felony convictions. On all these issues, it doesn't matter. They're absolutely similar; so they are when it comes to corporate takeover.

[Later in the show, after Tavis' arrival]

RIVERA (to Smiley): But Arianna suggests that neither of these candidates [Gore or Bush] is making the minority vote or minority issues, whether it's housing, you know, this ridiculous failed war on drugs, any--any issue you want to think of impacting poor folks, many of them black and brown, n--neither candidate's making that a big priority. Do you agree?

Mr. SMILEY: I think she's right about that to a certain extent. There are--there are some issues on which, if you are a--a voter of color, certainly if you're an African-American, you have a hard time choosing. For example, both of these guys support the death penalty. As far as I'm concerned, Bush in Texas is nothing more than a serial killer.

RIVERA: Whoo! Whoo!

Mr. SMILEY: But we can't expect that much more out of--out of Gore because this guy supports the death penalty as well, and indeed, the Democrats, when they came here to LA, increased the penalties for which the death penalty can apply in their platform. So if you--if you believe in the--that the death penalty is disproportionately applied to African-Americans, how do you support...

RIVERA: I do.

Mr. SMILEY: ...I do--I do, too--how do you support either one of these guys? On the other hand, there are some clear distinctions, and for me...

RIVERA: Like? Like?

Mr. SMILEY: For example, the issue that I've been talking most about on radio and television--I cannot abide the thought of having three more Clarence Thomases on the Supreme Court. If Bush gets elected, by his own words, his two favorites on the bench now are Scalia and Thomas. If this guy gets a chance, he's going to put three more Clarence Thomases on the bench, and for all this diversity on display that we saw at the convention in Philadelphia, people are talking the talk, but nobody's walking the walk.

And this surplus that we keep talking about spending, who's talking specifically about how this surplus is going to be spent to help those who are economically, politically and socially disenfranchised? And so, you know, you can look at these guys, as Arianna says, and not see much difference between the two of them.

But for me--and I'm not--I'm not typically a one-issue voter--I'm voting Supreme Court. We screw up, we pick the wrong guy to run the White House, we can ostensibly straighten that mess out in four years. You pick the wrong guy to run the White House and he stacks the bench for the next 30, 40, 50 years, you can't straighten that out.

Source: Lexis

Tavis was expressing his opposition to the death penalty and correctly pointed out that under Bush's stewardship as governor, Texas executed more people than any other state. Bush maintained during his presidential campaign that the 143 executions in Texas while he was governor were "fair and just."

Tavis was not being divisive--nor was he inciting viewers or promoting extremist views, as Limbaugh does. He was pretty accurate on all accounts.

We posted earlier in the week about the wrongful conviction of Bruce Godschalk in Pennsylvania. In response today, we received the following from another wrongfully convicted Pennsylvania inmate whom the prosecution had sought to put to death. It's long, but well worth the read.

"I too was fervently prosecuted by the Montgomery County PA DA's office for a serious crime I was innocent of. The incident was "investigated" poorly -even so all involved were comfortable with filing a notice to seek my execution. I wrote a page or so about it. Please publish it if it fits your needs."

Death Decisions by Paul Camiolo

Having once been through the process where I was accused of a crime punishable by death, and the prosecutor filing notice to seek the death penalty against me, I can offer unique perspective on this issue.

I believe when the District Attorney accuses a person of a heinous crime, and states their intention to seek the death penalty, the DA has a moral obligation to ensure that the investigation completed has exhausted all possibilities of innocence, and to demonstrate that death is the only appropriate penalty for the crime.

Also from Altercation today, the very sad news that Warren Zevon has incurable lung cancer. He's one of our favorites. We wish him the best.

Update: From the LA Times, Facing Mortality with Mischief Rather Than Tears.

First it Jeb's daughter Nicole splashing the front pages with her recent drug probe. Now its brother Neil's turn: he's getting divorced after 22 years of marriage and 3 children, one of whom, 18 year old Lauren, is an international fashion model.

Brother Neil's claim to fame:

"Bush, 46, served until 1988 as director of Denver-based Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan, which cost taxpayers more than $1 billion when it collapsed. He was one of 12 defendants who agreed in 1991 to pay $49.5 million to settle a negligence lawsuit brought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Bush denied wrongdoing and was not charged in the grand jury investigation that followed, but the federal government imposed sanctions on him should he ever become involved in any other federally insured savings and loan or bank. "

Update: Hesiod of Counterspin reminds us of this from Jake Tapper at Salon on Jan. 24 regarding Neil Bush's speech in Saudi Arabia:

"Presidential brother Neil Bush, while giving a speech Monday in Saudi Arabia, condemned the American media for stereotyping the Arab world and urged Arab leaders to hire lobbyists and public relations representatives to combat these negative images as well as to sway public opinion to a more sympathetic view of Arabs in the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to reports in foreign media outlets. Bush implied that Israel has done a better job of getting its message across in the American media."

"The U.S. media campaign against the interests of Arabs and Muslims, and the American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, could be influenced through a sustained lobbying and P.R. effort," said the younger Bush, according to the Arab News, Saudi Arabia's first English-language daily."