We've previously written about Cameron Todd Willingham who was executed in Texas in 2004 for an arson/murder. Evidence was mounting that the fire was not arson, but accidental. See here, here, and here.

Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune reports today that the forensic report requested by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which is charged with investigating allegations of forensic error and misconduct, concludes the fire in the Willingham case was accidentally set.

In a withering critique, a nationally known fire scientist has told a state commission on forensics that Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule a deadly house fire was an arson -- a finding that led to the murder conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

The finding comes in the first state-sanctioned review of an execution in Texas, home to the country's busiest death chamber. If the commission reaches the same conclusion, it could lead to the first-ever declaration by an official state body that an inmate was wrongly executed.

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Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said “I think health care is a privilege. I wouldn’t call it a right.”

Journalist Arthur Salm makes the argument that health care is a right under the Constitution. His authority:

Take this from the Preamble to the Constitution (my italics):

” … establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare …

And this, from the Declaration of Independence (again, my italics):

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

So, Salim argues these documents, "as read and understood through modern sensibilities" provide a right to health care. [More...]

Dick Cheney continues to insist the CIA interrogators should neither be investigated nor prosecuted. He continues to praise their work.

"The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions," he said in a statement dated Monday.

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Kagro asks:

Maybe I'm just not sufficiently wonky on the health care subject [. . .] [b]ut I don't get how you can possibly hand me a health care bill with an individual mandate and no public option. . . . Paying an insurance company whose product I don't want? That makes no goddamn sense to me whatsoever, and I want nothing to do with it.

Now, it should come as no surprise that the dingbats at Third Way are pushing this nonsense as a "compromise." . . . [W]hile Third Way may get warm in the shorts over a "compromise" that keeps the mandates and chucks the public option, I note that it's once again the DLC and their allies that come up with the plan that has me ready to turn my back on the Democratic Party's Big Plan of the Day.

(Emphasis supplied.) Maybe I am not sufficiently wonky enough on health care, but perhaps someone can explain to me how the Third Way is suggesting anything different from what Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Paul Starr, Mike Tomasky, Mark Schmitt and Kevin Drum are selling? (BTW, that dirty DLCer Terry McAuliffe is on the other side of this fight.) But shooting the the Third Way/DLC fish in a barrel is easy. But the rest of the names I mention? Nope. That would violate the logrolling ethic that dominates today's "progressive" blogosphere.

Speaking for me only

Now that progressive bloggers have decided that President Obama needs to have his potential failure on health care reform rationalized, I wonder if the Obama team is considering throwing the "Left of the Left" a bone on the torture scandal.

I certainly would be quick to step up to become an apologist for Obama if he would get behind the idea of a Truth Commission (See? I do not even need actual prosecutions. I am a cheap date.)

This is an Open Thread.

Mohammed Jawad (smiling, on the left) seized as a young teenager in Afghanistan 8 years ago, and sent to Guantanamo in 2003, has arrived home in Afghanistan. The DOJ's paltry announcement is here. From the Herald article:

Mohammed Jawad, whose confession to throwing a hand grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers was rejected as coerced by torture, was taken by helicopter into Kabul from Bagram Air Base and taken to the office of the Afghan attorney general. A former defense attorney, U.S. Marine Corps Maj, Eric Montalvo, said Jawad would meet with President Hamid Karzai and would then be released to an uncle.

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Today's document release on detainee interrogations continues. The ACLU has received Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel Letters and Memos to CIA Regarding Detention and Interrogation Policies - Documents Responsive to 2009 Torture FOIA. They include:

• August 31, 2006 Letter to Rizzo from OLC concerning Conditions of Confinement

• August 31, 2006 Memorandum to Rizzo from OLC concerning Application of Detainee Treatment Act to Conditions of Confinement

• 2007 OLC opinion on Interrogation Techniques

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Wishful thinking:

So now, liberals have to fight hard for something they're not terribly excited about. A health bill will likely have a very weak public option or it won't have one at all. But liberals will have to battle for that bill as if it's life and death (which in fact it will be for thousands of Americans), because its defeat would constitute a historic victory for the birthers and the gun-toters and the Hitler analogists. In the coming weeks, building toward a possible congressional vote in November, progressives will have to get out in force to show middle America that there's support for reform as well as opposition, even though they may find the final bill disappointing.

Actually, no they do not and more importantly, no they WILL not. No matter how much Mike Tomasky and Ezra Klein harangue progressives. Time to deal with that reality. Especially the folks in the White House.

Speaking for me only

In addition to the CIA's Inspector General report (pdf) released today, the CIA and Justice Department finally released documents in the ongoing FOIA litigation with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and other organizations over ghost detainees. (Background here.)

The first is a 2005 CIA report entitled Detainee Reporting Pivotal in War Against Al-Qa'ida. The second is a 2004 report, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Preeminient Source Against Al-Qa'ida.

These are the documents Dick Cheney said would support a case for torture. [More...]

The Inspector General's 2004 Report is out and available here (pdf). Hightlights are here. (According to the AP, the correct spelling is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.)

One thing that leapt out at me was Paragraph 95 on page 43: Interrogators threatened to kill Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's children. Then there's a blacked out portion, followed by a statement that the interrogator reporting this did not believe the threat violated the law.

Do the blacked out lines refer to what they did to convince Khalid Shaikh Mohammed they could carry out the threat? In March, 2003, I wrote about the CIA's acknowledgement it had taken custody of Mohammed's sons from Pakistan to use them as leverage to get their father to talk: [More...]

My series on political bargaining was intended to point out that what "health care reform" will eventually look like is effected by how you bargain for it now. Consider Ezra Klein's most recent post:

I keep recommending this Families USA brief (pdf, but worth it!) outlining the 10 most important elements of health-care reform. The public option is one of them, to be sure, and I think there's a substantial chance it will be present in the final legislation. But what about the expansion of Medicaid to 133 percent of the poverty line? That's a solid 20 million poor Americans who don't have coverage now, and will soon. What about the out-of-pocket caps, so no one goes medically bankrupt ever again? Or the assurance that no insurer can ever discriminate based on a preexisting condition? Or the subsidies for working Americans who can't quite afford coverage? Or the requirements that insurers spend more money on medical care and less money on premiums? Or the guarantee that the gruesome practice of rescission will finally end?

Even accepting Ezra's premise (and I do not), how does Ezra know all of this will be in a final bill? If today the public option can be jettisoned, what can go tomorrow? Max Baucus does not even have a bill on the table. Ezra suggests progressives bargain against themselves. Here's the ultimate question for Ezra, how does he expect all those good things to stay in the bill if progressives follow his advice and bargain against themselves?

Speaking for me only

Attorney General Eric Holder issued this statement today about his decision to conduct a review of some cases of CIA abuse of detainees as recommended in the Inspector General's report.

"I have reviewed the OPR report in depth. Moreover, I have closely examined the full, still-classified version of the 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report, as well as other relevant information available to the Department.

As a result of my analysis of all of this material, I have concluded that the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations.

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