There is a disturbing narrative running unchecked across the web. This same narrative is not even mentioned in the traditional media. For the last 20 or more years this country has filled jails and prison, clogged the courts, and ruined many a life all in the name of Law and Order. It is only slightly ironic that after all of this, something that has change to US for the worse, when it should be applied for one of the best reasons, has been judged as politically bad for the nation.

It the recent Newsweek, Dahlia Lithwick, a gifted writer who has focused on the real truths all through this Administration, joined the same dangerous narrative. Glenn Greenwald, a kind of web hero to many of the Progressives against the last 7 yrs responded to me during a Q&A at Firedoglake, that he felt the same way as laid in Dahlias article. To be very clear, Glenn also said if he were appointed our new Atty. Gen., his first act would be the opposite. Have you figured out the narrative yet ?

Yesterday Chairman Jerrold Nadler, of the  House Judiciary Constitution, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Subcmte. held a hearing with 4 expert witnesses. Well, 3 experts and admin. shill Prof. Rivkin. It has been shown on Cspan twice that I know of, once very early this morning and currently ending up now on Cspan 3. At this hearing many interesting facts came out for the first time. One of those facts was about the "Ticking Bomb Defense"

"Radio silence was the response when today’s witnesses were asked to identify a single example of a true ‘ticking bomb’ scenario ever occurring, even though such scenarios are often invoked to justify torture," Conyers said. "These scholars, who have studied this issue extensively and have intimate knowledge of the legal authority the Administration sought, could not identify a single example. I hope that the Administration officials who have agreed to testify will shed some light on this and many other questions raised in today’s hearing."

"Obliteration" speaks for itself. This morning on CNN Hillary was asked flatout if Iran was attacked Israel is she meant she would a Nuke on Iran. When she used the word  Obliteration , did she mean a nuclear bomb would be used ? She said that the word speaks for itself.She went on when pressed what she meant, she said it means "Massive Retaliation".  She struck fear deep in my heart in the same way I felt when the rumors Bush jr. was running for Pres. started yrs ago.

I'm quoting as best I can but it may not be exact, but it is damn close. She was also asked if she would attack Iran over their supplying of weapons and training to Iraqis ? She ducked and weaved around that direct question, sounding just like GWBush when he is asked the same question.

That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. Vice President Cheney knew about it. And President Bush knew about it.

There's not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. And if it had not been for the moral courage of Gen. John Abizaid to stand up to them all and reverse Franks's troop drawdown order, there's no telling how much more damage would have been done.

In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.

Tonight I got the same thrills and chills tonight that I got listening to MLK when I was growing up. BTW, I a 50+ White man, that's not bad, just different. If you watched the real speech, the whole speech and were as excited as I was, I believe we have seen a new MLK, but modernized.

Barack should quietly, if possible, and he hasn't already ( I think he already has ) let people now that the Rev. Wright is someone he loves. Rick Sanchez on CNN is trying hard to make this speech a thing that should blowup in Obama's face. Sen. Durbin made it sound as if Barack thought the Pastor was toxic. That is ridiculous. When the Rev. when after Fox News in barely hidden terms Rick played the clip over and over while stirring the pot foe all it was worth. It reminded me of the reactions to MLK back during the Civil Rights fight.

So Maliki decided to cleanup Basra right ? Our personal Puppet in Iraq made such a big decider move all by himself ? Both Bush and Maliki know the only reason the so-called surge even appeared to look like it worked is because of the cease-fire with Sadr. Now they have pushed him to the limit and if he breaks, all hell will break loose again. Just as good as going in to Iran ?

Probably not good enough for the Neocons, but it will enable them to stay close and bide their time.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi soldiers took control of the last bastions of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s militia in Basra on Saturday, and Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad strongly endorsed the Iraqi government’s monthlong military operation against the fighters...

Despite the apparent concession of Basra, Mr. Sadr issued defiant words on Saturday night. In a long statement read from the loudspeakers of his Sadr City Mosque, he threatened to declare "war until liberation" against the government if fighting against his militia forces continued.

The Gravel, the web site of the House of Representatives, is reporting on this typical Bush cronyism. Mark Knouse, the former executive director of the secretariat for the Commission for Labor Cooperation, a governing body of NAFTA appears to have spent money he was not entitled to spend. To make it worse he appears to have used it to promote his private lobbying wining and dining and god knows what else.

Last week, the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Labor issued an audit report in which it concluded that the CLC could not demonstrate that nearly $10,000 in travel expenditures incurred by Knouse and another CLC staffer actually "supported the CLC mission." The IG also found that, under Knouse’s leadership, the CLC spent $1 million without demonstrating that "it actually received the goods or services for which it paid."

Knouse can be investigated and prosecuted but only if a wavier is issued by U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and her counterparts in Mexico and Canada but there is a catch or 2. For one according to the Gavel "Knouse’s wife is an assistant in Chao’s executive office at the Labor Department."

While many of us are reading about the Food Riots across the World the traditional media is acting as if it doesn't really effect us here at home. They are dead wrong. The Poor in our country are being hit hard, extremely hard. I just returned from the grocery store where I paid double for a cheap loaf of bread. 6 months ago the loaf was 69 cents, and today it was $1.29. For many that will mean nothing at all, but those on a fixed income it is devastating.  When you already exist on Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches because it's about all you can afford most the time, to have even those priced out of your budget is disheartening to say the least.

The individual person is not the only ones with budgets already stretched thin, our School Systems are feeling the heat too.

In the New York school system, the nation's largest, which serves 850,000 meals a day, the milk bill is up $3 million over last year, said Eric Goldstein, chief executive for school support services.

That is just the beginning of what's to come.

Yes we fickin knew it was coming, but for some unknown reason I had held out hope. I knew better. The White House has finally released it's reasoning but I have yet to read the pdf yet. The WashingtonPost has more on it but be prepared to go off.

Federal laws prohibiting assault and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander-in-chief overrode such statutes, according to a newly declassified 2003 Justice Department memo released today. Terrorism Interrogators Immune From Prosecution, '03 Memo Says

Bullshit! There is no way in hell this can be allowed to stand. Between Yoo and the Bybee Memo the twisted logic should never stand up in court.

In a telephone interview shortly after he walked out of a federal prison in Oakdale, La., Mr. Siegelman said there had been "abuse of power" in his case, and repeatedly cited the influence of Karl Rove, the former White House political director.

"His fingerprints are smeared all over the case," Mr. Siegelman said, a day after a federal appeals court ordered him released on bond and said there were legitimate questions about his case.

Many of us hope this will be the case that finally sends Turdblossom to Jail and I'm sure Don wouldn't mind that either. This whole case has stunk since the beginning and never should of got to court in the first place.

73,000 in a single Southern Calif. County, that is hard to digest. I knew things were bad because I have written about the homeless quite a few times over the yrs but the numbers never seemed this big or shocked me in this way. In the last couple days my eyes seem to have been landing of stories along these lines. Even on Cspan this morning the topic was HB1 Visas and bringing in High Tech workers from overseas while we have so many out of work.

I don't want this diary to be about immigration, but about the poverty and the way it is growing here. In Ohio, where I was born and grew up, my old hometown newspaper had a shocking report. You may of seen it, many have picked up this story tho I haven't noticed it here at dkos yet.

It used to be if something bad was in the News, bad as in Torture, Secret Prisons, Ghost Prisoners, even Murder, I could count on it being diaried at  Dkos. It was great to know others cared enough to bring these issues to the sight of the public. It is pretty amazing the people that just visit dkos to skim the storys to see what reactions we have to them, and how they may even plan their spin. Even with the diary a day limit here nothing was missed. Many a time the analysis made in the diary or even the comments were in the Times or WaPo the next day. Yesterday several of those type of stories weren't even mentioned. One of a New Secret Prison and the Prisoner held in secret also. Another one told us about a denied medical attention for years while held in Gitmo as they have watched him die. I call that "Cruel and Inhumane" and Murder. Yet, one more tells of a 16 yr old kid sent to Gitmo for a crime the report first said another man did until months later the Official Report was changed, cleaned scrubbed, revised, amended.

Bush in his infinite wisdom has nominated Gus Puryear IV to a lifetime appointment on the bench. As with most if not all of Bush's choices this one has serious flaws in judgement. Leaving out the fact that Puryear is good friends with Cheneys son-in-law we can still find numerous reasons to reject him without a second thought.

 Puryear recently confronted tough questions about his conduct, experience and potential conflicts of interest from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must approve him before a full Senate vote. Now, a former CCA manager tells TIME that Puryear oversaw a reporting system in which accounts of major, sometimes violent prison disturbances and other significant events were often masked or minimized in accounts provided to government agencies with oversight over prison contracts. Ronald T. Jones, the former CCA manager, alleges that the company even began keeping two sets of books — one for internal use that described prison deficiencies in telling detail, and a second set that Jones describes as "doctored" for public consumption, to limit bad publicity, litigation or fines that could derail CCA's multimillion dollar contracts with federal, state or local agencies.

To say the timing of this is odd would be a understatement, but we should be used to that by now. Ashcroft is set to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday. He fought not to testify until threaten with a subpoena. Ashcroft is going to be asked about a program most of us had never heard of until recently. In simple terms, instead of bringing a major rich company to trial, where they could face criminal and civil penaltys, not to mention the bad PR, they are given a "Monitor". Given is not quite the right word since the companys have to pay the "Monitor" Millions of dollars. In Ashcrofts case it's somewhere between $28 million to $52 million for 18 months of work. Thems some nice pickin's. One can only imagine how much real money was left on the table by the DOJ to give this deal.

The Justice Department yesterday imposed new restrictions on government-sanctioned contracts with outside experts to implement and monitor corporate fraud settlements, an issue that has come under scrutiny because of a multimillion-dollar contract given to former attorney general John D. Ashcroft.

Many of us have had these suspicions for a long time. Now a Tech. has confirmed some of our worse fears. The compilicity of the Telecoms is undeniable when you look at how it is being done. According to "Computer security analyst Babak Pasdar says that a major mobile telecommunications carrier has a built-in backdoor that provides an undisclosed third-party with unfettered access to its internal technical infrastructure, including the ability to eavesdrop on all calls through its network." http://arstechnica.com/...

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

 Wired

 In yesterdays LA Times Jonathan Turley presents and dissects what he calls the Mukasey Paradox. He calls it a thing of beauty, I call it Nixon 2.0. Turley seems to believe that Mukasey has perfected the paradox and is in awe of him for doing so. While I have to agree with the twisted part when Turley says "When you think about it, his manipulations are a beautiful, twisted thing.", I see nothing beautiful about it. Here is the whole thing in a nutshell.

In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.

Mukasey's Paradox

Back in Jan.07 Tim Shorrock ran a article in Salon I don't think enough people saw. That piece has bothered me ever since on a  few levels. It was about our Fearful DNI McConnell and his previous jobs before becoming DNI. As we are fighting to stop the AT&T Immunity Act now is a good time to look back at these things again, and maybe a few others.

Did you know that before becoming our DNI that McConnell was director of defense programs at Booz Allen Hamilton ? Booz is one of those Mega Companys that profit so much off our Gov. Part of the Insiders if you will. Tim pointed out what this could of meant during McConnells nomination hearings.

With revenues of $3.7 billion in 2005, Booz Allen is one of the nation's biggest defense and intelligence contractors. Under McConnell's watch, Booz Allen has been deeply involved in some of the most controversial counterterrorism programs the Bush administration has run, including the infamous Total Information Awareness data-mining scheme. As a key contractor and advisor to the NSA, Booz Allen is almost certainly participating in the agency's warrantless surveillance of the telephone calls and e-mails of American citizens.

Curious ? More below the fold.

I want to spend a little time, one on one, telling you who I am and what I would like to know about you, and  hear from you. For as much of a politically aware person as I am, I haven't followed all the small details of your run for Pres.. What I have paid attention to is the damage around me.

 I grew up in the 60's and 70's, a wild child or sorts. I was there when we stood our ground to end the Viet Nam War, and throw Nixon out. Now some 30 plus yrs later we are faced again with choices to make. They almost mirror the choices we made back then yet magnified many times. As we get closer to the Election many of us want to know just how far, if at all, we can count on you ? We have some serious questions, not ones we would expect John to answer, we already know where he stands. Much better known people than me are asking these questions also. If you are curious the questions are below the fold.