Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law - WSJ.com

Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law - WSJ.com
...

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."

...

For centuries, corporations have been considered beings apart from their human owners, yet sharing with them some attributes, such as the right to make contracts and own property. Originally, corporations were a relatively rare form of organization. The government granted charters to corporations, delineating their specific functions. Their powers were presumed limited to those their charter spelled out.

"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible," Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in an 1819 case. "It possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it."

But as the Industrial Revolution took hold, corporations proliferated and views of their functions began to evolve.

In an 1886 tax dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the state of California, the court reporter quoted Chief Justice Morrison Waite telling attorneys to skip arguments over whether the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause applied to corporations, because "we are all of opinion that it does."

That seemingly off-hand comment reflected an "impulse to shield business activity from certain government regulation," says David Millon, a law professor at Washington and Lee University. ...

Military lawyer says Defense Department ignored calls for war crimes investigation | Raw Story

Military lawyer says Defense Department ignored calls for war crimes investigation | Raw Story

WASHINGTON---The military lawyer that represents an Afghan youth who spent roughly seven years in U.S. custody says the Defense Department has repeatedly ignored his requests for a war crimes investigation into the detainee's treatment.

Air Force Maj. David Frakt, the attorney for former detainee Mohammed Jawad, says over the past 16 months he sent multiple memos to Defense Department and military leaders asking them to account for what a military judge called "abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment” of his client. Jawad, who was arrested when he says he was 12 years old for allegedly tossing a grenade at U.S. military, was moved from cell to cell 112 times during a 14-day period to disrupt his sleep patterns, according to military documents. Frakt said he believes the treatment constituted torture, violated the Geneva Convention, war crime laws and Defense Department regulations.

"Why has no one--no one has been held remotely accountable for this," Frakt said in an interview with Raw Story. "This is a mandatory investigation. It's not optional, you can't just sweep it under the rug...but they did as far as I can tell."

As first reported in The Washington Independent, Frakt wrote in memos to Defense Department officials: “Accordingly, I believe I have an affirmative obligation to report the incident to my chain of command,” listing military rules that mandate reporting possible war crimes to a superior.

...

Frakt wrote his first memo on May 29, 2008, and sent it to the chief defense counsel at the Office of Military Commissions. After four months passed without a response, Frakt sent a similar memo via e-mail to the Commander in charge at the U.S. Southern Command post, Joint Task Force for Guantanamo Bay on October 7, 2008. He also copied four lawyers in the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel on the e-mail.

In January 2009, Frakt again e-mailed the commander in charge at the U.S. Southern Command post, Joint Task Force for Guantanamo Bay, added a captain's name to the list and included the same four lawyers from the Pentagon's Office of General Counsel on the email. ...

Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law - WSJ.com

Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law - WSJ.com

WASHINGTON -- In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.

During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."

...

"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible," Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in an 1819 case. "It possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it."

But as the Industrial Revolution took hold, corporations proliferated and views of their functions began to evolve.

In an 1886 tax dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the state of California, the court reporter quoted Chief Justice Morrison Waite telling attorneys to skip arguments over whether the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause applied to corporations, because "we are all of opinion that it does."

That seemingly off-hand comment reflected an "impulse to shield business activity from certain government regulation," says David Millon, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.

"A positive way to put it is that the economy is booming, American production is leading the world and the courts want to promote that," Mr. Millon says. Less charitably, "it's all about protecting corporate wealth" from taxes, regulations or other legislative initiatives.

Subsequent opinions expanded corporate rights. In 1928, the court struck down a Pennsylvania tax on transportation corporations because individual taxicab drivers were exempt. Corporations get "the same protection of equal laws that natural persons" have, Justice Pierce Butler wrote.

From the mid-20th century, though, the court has vacillated on how far corporate rights extend. In a 1973 case before a more liberal court, Justice William O. Douglas rejected the Butler opinion as "a relic" that overstepped "the narrow confines of judicial review" by second-guessing the legislature's decision to tax corporations differently than individuals.

Today, it's "just complete confusion" over which rights corporations can claim, says Prof. William Simon of Columbia Law School....

Appeals court overturns campaign finance rules - Yahoo! News

Appeals court overturns campaign finance rules - Yahoo! News

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By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer – Fri Sep 18, 2:23 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Independent advocacy groups will be able to spend more money to try to influence federal elections under a decision Friday from a federal appeals court that overturned rules limiting nonprofits' campaign spending.

Three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington agreed with Emily's List, a nonprofit that backs women Democratic candidates who support abortion rights, that the regulations limited free speech rights.

The Federal Election Commission enacted the rules in 2005, after concerns were raised about the amount of unlimited "soft money" contributions used to fund attacks in the 2004 election.

The FEC said nonprofits would have to pay for political activities involving federal candidates using limited "hard money" contributions. Individuals are only allowed to donate up to $5,000 annually to a nonprofit that indicates it plans to use the money to support or oppose a federal candidate.

"The First Amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, protects the right of individual citizens to spend unlimited amounts to express their views about policy issues and candidates for public office," the court ruling said. The First Amendment also "safeguards the right of citizens to band together and pool their resources as an unincorporated group or nonprofit organization in order to express their views about policy issues and candidates for public office." ...

New CIA Docs Detail Brutal "Extraordinary Rendition" Process

New CIA Docs Detail Brutal "Extraordinary Rendition" Process
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The document provides a step-by-step manual for extraordinary renditions.

The process starts with "capture shock." The detainee is subject to a medical examination prior to his flight. During the flight, the detainee is securely shackled, and is deprived of sight and sound through the use of blindfolds, earmuffs and hoods.

The detainee is "in the complete control of Americans." The detainee is stripped naked and shaved. A "series of photographs are taken of the HVD while nude." A medical officer and a psychologist play key roles in the process (though their professional ethics rules would prohibit such conduct.)

All of these practices are carefully engineered to facilitate the interrogation process. Nudity, sleep deprivation and dietary manipulation are used as standard preparatory steps. It then details the standard "corrective techniques:" these are a series of physical assaults labeled with innocuous titles like insult slap, abdominal slap, facial hold and attention grasp. "Coercive techniques" used include: walling (slamming a prisoner's head against the wall, with some protective measures to avoid severe injuries), water dousing, the use of the stress position (known to the inquisition as the strapado, to the Germans in World War II as Pfahlbinden), wall standing (referred to by the NKVD and KGB as stoika) and cramped confinement. Because of substantial redactions, it seems unlikely that this list is complete.

None of this information is surprising. In fact it all tallies perfectly with the description of the renditions program that can be derived from the report prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which used the appropriate legal designation for these techniques: "torture." ...

Editorial Observer - A Century-Old Principle - Keep Corporate Money Out of Elections - NYTimes.com

Editorial Observer - A Century-Old Principle - Keep Corporate Money Out of Elections - NYTimes.com

The founders were wary of corporate influence on politics — and their rhetoric sometimes got pretty heated. In an 1816 letter, Thomas Jefferson declared his hope to “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

This skepticism was enshrined in law in the early 20th century when the nation adopted strict rules banning corporations from contributing to political campaigns. Today that ban is in danger from the Supreme Court, which hears arguments next month in a little-noticed case that could open the floodgates to corporate money in politics.

The court has gone to extraordinary lengths to hear the case. And there are worrying signs that there may well be five votes to rule that the ban on corporate contributions violates the First Amendment.

The origins of the ban lie in the 1896 presidential race, which pitted the Republican William McKinley against William Jennings Bryan, the farm-belt populist. Bryan was a peerless orator, but McKinley had Mark Hanna — the premier political operative of his day — extracting so-called assessments from the nation’s biggest corporations and funneling them into a vast marketing campaign.

McKinley, who outspent Bryan by an estimated 10 to 1, won handily, proving Hanna’s famous dictum: “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can’t remember what the second one is.”

Popular outrage over corporate contributions reached a high point in the 1904 election.

The defeated candidate, the Democrat Alton Parker, charged — accurately, it turned out — that his opponent had been bankrolled by large life insurance companies. “The greatest moral question which now confronts us is,” Parker insisted, “shall the trusts and corporations be prevented from contributing money to control or aid in controlling elections?”

In 1907, Congress passed the Tillman Act, the first federal law barring corporate campaign contributions. States adopted similar laws. ...

oligarchy of powerful interest groups, such as the financial sector, the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower warned, and AIPAC.

Europe’s Complicity in Evil : Information Clearing House - ICH

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“Terrorist threat” is the excuse for these Gestapo practices. However, there have been no domestic acts of terrorism in 8 years. The few “plots” that led to arrests were all instigated by FBI agents in order to keep the nonexistent threat alive in the public’s mind. Yet, despite any real terrorist threat the police state continues to gain ground. Considering the extent of America’s oppression of peoples abroad, one would expect much more blowback than has occurred, assuming that 9/11 was not itself an inside job designed to provide an excuse for America’s wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.

Europe must look beyond the empty American political rhetoric about “freedom and democracy” and recognize the emerging Brownshirt American State. Democracy is slipping away from America. Its place is being taken by an oligarchy of powerful interest groups, such as the financial sector, the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower warned, and AIPAC. Political campaign contributions from interest groups determine the content of US domestic and foreign policy. A country in which political elites are above the law and can violate with impunity both laws against torture and constitutional protections of civil liberties is not a free country.

American political leaders and the American people need Europe’s help in order to avoid the degeneration of the American political entity. American freedom, as well as sovereign independence elsewhere in the world, require criticisms of US foreign and domestic policies. The US media, which was concentrated into a few hands during the Clinton administration, functions as a Ministry of Propaganda for the government. It was the New York Times that gave credibility to the neoconservative propaganda and forged documents that were used to sell the invasion of Iraq to the public. It was the New York Times that sat for one year on the evidence that the Bush administration was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was not until after Bush was re-elected that the reporter was able to force his story through editorial opposition. Americans need criticism from Europe to compensate for the absence of an independent American media. Americans need outside help in order to reach an understanding of the immorality of their government’s policies, because they receive no such help from their own media. Without Europe’s help, Americans cannot regain the spirit of liberty and tolerance bequeathed to them by their Founding Fathers. America herself is a victim of the neoconservative and liberal internationalist pursuit of US hegemony.

We in America need to hear many voices telling us that it is self-defeating to become like an enemy in order to defeat an enemy. As Germans learned under Hitler and Russians learned under Stalin, it is the internal enemy--the unaccountable elite that controls a country’s government--that is the worst and most dangerous enemy.

If America has enemies who are against “freedom and democracy,” then America herself must make certain not to sacrifice her own civil liberties, and the sovereignty of other peoples, to a “war on terror.” Acts of terror are a small cost compared to the cost of the erosion of civil liberties that took centuries to achieve. Far more people died to achieve liberty than have died in terrorist attacks.

The United States cannot pretend to be a guarantor of liberty when the US government takes away liberty from its own citizens.

The United States cannot pretend to be a guarantor of peace and democracy when the US government uses deception to attack other lands on false pretenses.

Europe, whose culture was wrecked by 20th century wars, Europe, which has experienced tyranny from the left-wing and from the right-wing, has a right to its own voice.

America needs to hear this voice. ...

�� US Hypocrisy Astonishes the World����������������������� : Information Clearing House - ICH

US Hypocrisy Astonishes the World : Information Clearing House - ICH
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What does the world think of the United States? The American War Secretary and a US military veterans association think a photo of an injured and dying American soldier is insensitive, but not the wipeout of an Afghan village that came to get needed fuel.

The US government is like a criminal who accuses the police of his crime when he is arrested or a sociopathic abuser who blames the victim. It is a known fact that the CIA has violated US law and international law with its assassinations, kidnappings and torture. But it is not this criminal agency that will be held accountable. Instead, those who will be punished will be those moral beings who, appalled at the illegality and inhumanity of the CIA, leaked the evidence of the agency’s crimes. The CIA has asked the US Justice (sic) Department to investigate what the CIA alleges is the “criminal disclosure” of its secret program to murder suspected foreign terrorist leaders abroad. As we learned from Gitmo, those suspected by America are overwhelmingly innocent.
...
Accusing the truth-teller instead of the evil-doer is the position that the neoconservatives took against the New York Times when after one year’s delay, which gave George W. Bush time to get reelected, the Times published the NSA leak that revealed that the Bush administration was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The neocons, especially those associated with Commentary magazine, wanted the New York Times indicted for treason. To the evil neocon mind, anything that interferes with their diabolical agenda is treason.

This is the way many Americans think. America uber alles! No one counts but us (and Israel). The deaths we inflict and the pain and suffering we bring to others are merely collateral damage on the bloody path to American hegemony.

The attitude of the “freedom and democracy” US government is that anyone who complains of illegality or immorality or inhumanity is a traitor. The Republican Senator Christopher S. Bond is a recent example. Bond got on his high horse about “irreparable damage” to the CIA from the disclosures of its criminal activities. Bond wants those “back stabbers” who revealed the CIA’s wrongdoings to be held accountable. Bond is unable to grasp that it is the criminal activities, not their disclosure, that is the source of the problem. Obviously, the whistleblower protection act has no support from Senator Bond, who sees it as just another law to plough under.

This is where the US government stands today: Ignoring and covering up government crimes is the patriotic thing to do. To reveal the government’s crimes is an act of treason. Many Americans on both sides of the aisle agree.

Yet, they still think that they are The Virtuous Nation, the exceptional nation, the salt of the earth.

Off the Charts - In Last Decade, a Lack of Job Growth in the Private Sector - NYTimes.com

Off the Charts - In Last Decade, a Lack of Job Growth in the Private Sector - NYTimes.com

Published: August 7, 2009

FOR the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring.

The accompanying charts show the job performance from July 1999, when the economy was booming and companies were complaining about how hard it was to find workers, through July of this year, when the economy was mired in the deepest and longest recession since World War II. For the decade, there was a net gain of 121,000 private sector jobs, according to the survey of employers conducted each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an economy with 109 million such jobs, that indicated an annual growth rate for the 10 years of 0.01 percent.

Until the current downturn, the long-term annual growth rate for private sector jobs had not dipped below 1 percent since the early 1960s. Most often, the rate was well above that.

As can be seen from the charts, there were some areas of strength in the economy. Health care jobs continued to grow, particularly jobs that involve caring for the elderly. Home health care employment rose at an annual rate of 5 percent, a rate that indicates a total gain of more than 60 percent. On an annual basis, that was twice the overall rate for health care of 2.4 percent a year.

There were also job gains in education and in a host of service industries, including lawyers (0.7 percent a year), accountants (0.9 percent) and computer systems designers (2.4 percent). The field of management and technical consulting leaped at an annual rate of 5 percent.

But while designing computers and related equipment was a growth field, building them was a very different story, as the manufacturing shifted largely to Asia. The number of jobs making computer and electronic equipment in the United States fell at an annual rate of 4.4 percent, substantially more than the overall decline in manufacturing jobs, of 3.7 percent.

That was a better showing than that of the automakers, which shed jobs at a rate of 6.7 percent a year. By contrast, auto dealers cut jobs at a much slower rate of 1.3 percent a year, although that ratemay accelerate later this year as General Motors and Chrysler dealerships are closed.
...

Editorial - Justice Too Long Delayed - NYTimes.com

Editorial - Justice Too Long Delayed - NYTimes.com

Of the many examples of the Bush administration’s abusive and incompetent detainee policies, one of the most baffling is the case of Mohammed Jawad. Mr. Jawad, an Afghan, was no older than 17 and likely even younger when he was captured in 2002 and thrown into indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Seven years, one suicide attempt and untold hours of physical and mental torture later, he remains there, a wrecked young man held on an allegation that he hurled a grenade at two American servicemen and their interpreter — without any credible evidence that he actually did or that he is a grave threat to American security.

In a belated victory for justice, a federal judge recognized that tragic fact last week and ordered the government to release Mr. Jawad.

Judge Ellen Huvelle of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia was rightly offended by the government’s repeated attempts to delay the proceeding and the flimsiness of its case. Her ruling, granting Mr. Jawad’s petition for habeas corpus, seeks to end a legal and human travesty perpetrated by the Bush team but, sadly, still being furthered under President Obama. ...

Raw Story � Report: CIA operatives threatened to quit over waterboarding

Raw Story � Report: CIA operatives threatened to quit over waterboarding

Two of the key designers of the Bush administration’s torture program ended up in a “tug of war” with their superiors about how far to go when coercing information out of suspects, says a new article in the Washington Post.

... "Put him in a cell filled with cadavers, was one suggestion, according to a former U.S. official with knowledge of the brainstorming sessions. Surround him with naked women, was another. Jolt him with electric shocks to the teeth, was a third.

... "In the initial stages, Abu Zubaida was stripped of his clothes while CIA officers took turns at low-intensity questioning. Later, [CIA contractor James E.] Mitchell added sleep deprivation and a constant bombardment of loud music, including tracks by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. After each escalation, he would dispatch an interrogator into Abu Zubaida’s cell to issue a single demand: “Tell me what I want to know.” ...

US violated Geneva Conventions, Bush Iraq commander says [Petraeus]

Raw Story � US violated Geneva Conventions, Bush Iraq commander says | By John Byrne | Published: May 29, 2009 | Updated 2 days ago

The head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, said Friday that the US had violated the Geneva Conventions in a stunning admission from President Bush’s onetime top general in Iraq that the US may have violated international law.

“When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it’s important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those,” Gen. Petraeus said on Fox News Friday afternoon. ....

A Call for Universal Voter Registration | CommonDreams.org

A Call for Universal Voter Registration | CommonDreams.org

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

Between 2 and 4 million Americans were unable to vote in the last election because of problems with their registration. And that's just people who tried to vote; in 2006, there were more than 65 million who were eligible to vote, but weren't even registered. That's a third of potential voters.

It doesn't have to be this way. Registration rates in other countries frequently run upwards of 90 percent (both Canada and France hit that mark, for example, while Venezuela stands at roughly 94 percent, and Russia about 97). Now reformers are seizing the moment to use existing law to expand registration, as well as considering new laws that could finally put the United States on an equal footing with many of the world's other democracies.

"That's a pretty staggering number," says Project Vote's executive director Michael Slater of the millions unable to cast a ballot in 2008. "We don't have the egregious problems with voter registration that we had in the past, but it's still a system that's far from perfect and it's still a system that's preventing people from voting in America."

... Placing the burden on voters to register before they can participate in elections was first done in Massachusetts in 1801, but it was only after the 15th Amendment granted African-American men the right to vote and waves of immigrants began arriving on the country's shores that such laws gained traction. Under the original Massachusetts law, town assessors drew up lists of voters, which were then publicly posted. If come election day your name wasn't on the list, you could simply present the necessary documents and register to vote. Since then, many states have shifted the burden onto the voter and closed the window in which it's possible to register. "Voter registration deadlines vary widely across the nation," says Demos' Eaton, observing that "these cut-off dates bear little relevance to a state's ability to run smooth elections." ...

NYT defines torture when it comes to foreign governments - isolation, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation. Much milder than anything the US did

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The NYT Finally Prints "Torture"

Here we have it in broad daylight: the New York Times' cowardice in the face of its own government. In an obit today, the editors manage to use the word "torture". It's in an obit. The obit runs:

Col. Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American fighter pilot who was routinely tortured in a Chinese prison during and after the Korean War, becoming — along with three other American airmen held at the same prison — a symbol and victim of cold war tension, died in Las Vegas on April 30. He was 83 and lived in Las Vegas. The cause was complications of back surgery, his son Kurt said.

From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.

After a short mock trial in Beijing on May 24, 1955, Captain Fischer and the other pilots — Lt. Col. Edwin L. Heller, First Lt. Lyle W. Cameron and First Lt. Roland W. Parks — were found guilty of violating Chinese territory by flying across the border while on missions over North Korea. Under duress, Captain Fischer had falsely confessed to participating in germ warfare.

You will notice how the NYT defines torture when it comes to foreign governments - isolation, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation. Much milder than anything the US did to one of its own citizens, Jose Padilla. But the parallel is almost perfect: these are, after all, theexact Chinese Communist techniques that were reverse engineered from the SERE program. So you have a perfect demonstration of the NYT's double-standard. If Chinese do it to Americans, it's torture; if Americans do it to an American, it's "harsh interrogation." Does Jill Abramson really expect us to take this lying down?

In George W. Bush's own words, we should investigate and prosecute all acts of torture | BuzzFlash.org

In George W. Bush's own words, we should investigate and prosecute all acts of torture | BuzzFlash.org
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Chad Rubel

Wouldn't it be nice... if the White House would release a statement containing these words:

"Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law."

The White House did release a statement starting with these words. But it wasn't from the Obama Administration. No, this statement came on June 26, 2003 -- under the reign of George W. Bush.

Really.

"The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment." ...

Emptywheel � Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month

Emptywheel � Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month

I've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Note, the information comes from the CIA IG report which, in the case of Abu Zubaydah, is based on having viewed the torture tapes as well as other materials. So this is presumably a number that was once backed up by video evidence.

The same OLC memo passage explains how the CIA might manage to waterboard these men so many times in one month each (though even with these chilling numbers, the CIA's math doesn't add up).

...where authorized, it may be used for two "sessions" per day of up to two hours. During a session, water may be applied up to six times for ten seconds or longer (but never more than 40 seconds). In a 24-hour period, a detainee may be subjected to up to twelve minutes of water appliaction. See id. at 42. Additionally, the waterboard may be used on as many as five days during a 30-day approval period.

So: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you'd need 18 applications in a day. Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you've waterboarded 90 times--still just half of what they did to KSM.

The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM.

That doesn't sound very effective to me. ...

Report Calls CIA Detainee Treatment 'Inhuman' - washingtonpost.com

Report Calls CIA Detainee Treatment 'Inhuman' - washingtonpost.com |By Joby Warrick and Julie Tate Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 7, 2009; Page A06

Medical officers who oversaw interrogations of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a confidential report that labeled the CIA program "inhuman."

...

In addition to the coercive methods -- which the ICRC said "amounted to torture" and a violation of U.S. and international treaty obligations -- the report said detainees were routinely threatened with further violence against themselves and their families. Nine of the 14 prisoners said they were threatened with "electric shocks, infection with HIV, sodomy of the detainee and . . . being brought close to death," it said.

The ICRC report was based on accounts made separately to agency investigators by individual detainees, all of whom had been kept in isolation before the interviews, the document states. CIA officials have confirmed that three of the prisoners were subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning....

The Red Cross Torture Report ... You no longer have any excuse to look away or move on.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan |08 Apr 2009 12:54 pm

The Red Cross Torture Report

You can download it here. It is the most damning and credible indictment of the American government to appear in years - more damning because it was prepared in the usual secrecy and not intended as a public document; more damning because it comes not from Jane Mayer or Mark Danner or Dana Priest or this blog, but from the most credible and respected human rights watchdog in the world: the International Committee for the Red Cross. It is broad, meticulous evidence of pre-meditated, illegal, and immoral war crimes that were then subject to cover-up and lies at the highest levels. It makes Nixon's crimes look petty. You no longer have any excuse to look away or move on.

Either America deals with this or it does not. It is a test of character and integrity for the country and for the political elite. It is a test for the new president.

Cheney War Crimes: Just Look at the Statute | CommonDreams.org

Cheney War Crimes: Just Look at the Statute | CommonDreams.org | by Matthew Rothschild

President Obama needs to tell Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Dick Cheney, right now, for war crimes.

Just look at the statute, Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code, Section 2441. It says that someone is guilty of a war crime if he or she commits a "grave breach of common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions. And then it defines what a grave breach would be.

One such breach is torture, or the conspiracy to commit torture, which Cheney was clearly in on, as when he repeatedly defended waterboarding and talked about the need to go to the "dark side" Here's the language from the statute: "The act of a person who commits, or conspires to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind."

Another grave breach is "cruel or inhuman treatment," or the conspiracy to inflict such treatment. Again, Cheney was supervising such treatment in the White House, which would qualify as committing this crime. One time, it got so ghoulish that Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the other principals, "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly." ...

...

And it's time for Obama to stop pussyfooting around. He should indict, arrest, and prosecute Cheney.

"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," said Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.), in the preface to the Physicians for Human Rights report, "Broken Laws, Broken Lives". "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

That question is now firmly on Obama's desk.

And if he continues to dodge it, he'll make a sick joke of the pious claim that we are a nation of laws, not men.

US injected hundreds of foreigners dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will ..."prescribing Haldol . . . is medically and ethically wrong."

Some Detainees Are Drugged For Deportation | Immigrants Sedated Without Medical Reason | by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers | Page A1; May 14, 2008

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.
...
"Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards "taking down" a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.
...
Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes. The practice is banned by several countries where, confidential documents make clear, U.S. escorts have been unable to inject deportees with extra doses of drugs during layovers en route to faraway places.
...
Internal government records show that most sedated deportees, such as Ade, received a cocktail of three drugs that included Haldol, also known as haloperidol, a medication normally used to treat schizophrenia and other acute psychotic states. Of the 53 deportees without a mental illness who were drugged in 2007, The Post's analysis found, 50 were injected with Haldol, sometimes in large amounts.
...
Haldol gained notoriety in the Soviet Union, where it was often given to political dissidents imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals. "In the history of oppression, using haloperidol is kind of like detaining people in Abu Ghraib," the infamous prison in Iraq, said Nigel Rodley, who teaches international human rights law at the University of Essex in Britain and is a former United Nations special investigator on torture.

For people who are not psychotic, said Philip Seeman, a University of Toronto specialist in psychiatry and pharmacology, "prescribing Haldol . . . is medically and ethically wrong." ...

Indiana voters shut out for no rational reason -- -- chicagotribune.com

Indiana voters shut out for no rational reason -- -- chicagotribune.com By Steny Hoyer and Chris Dodd | May 13, 2008
...
The Supreme Court has just decided to restrict our voting rights—and frankly, in pages and pages of opinions, we're having trouble seeing their good reason. By a 6-3 decision, the justices chose to uphold Indiana's voter ID law, the nation's harshest, leaving states free to turn away voters who can't present a driver's license or passport on demand at the polls.

That might not seem like a lot to ask, if you're not working two jobs, if you're not depending on public transportation, if you're not confined to a retirement home. Maybe you can make it to the secretary of state's office whenever you want.

But millions of Americans can't—Americans like the dozen nuns who were reportedly turned away from the voting booth in South Bend, Ind., last week. Because they don't drive, they didn't have licenses; and because they're in their 80s and 90s, few of them had the energy to go apply for one across town.



Now, there's a high hurdle in front of their right to vote—the most fundamental right in a democracy.

And there isn't a shred of evidence to justify it. By long-standing precedent, a law like Indiana's would only be constitutional if it served a real public interest, such as preventing fraud. Given the severe remedy proposed, you'd expect American elections to be drowning in fraud.

But you would be wrong. Here is the sum total of evidence Justice John Paul Stevens cited in his lead opinion:

Political fixer "Boss Tweed" used to pay for multiple votes per person—in 1868.

In 2004, one voter committed impersonation fraud in Washington state.

In East Chicago, Ind., a candidate interfered with absentee ballots.

A 140-year-old story, a law-breaking voter, and a single case of absentee fraud, which the Indiana law did nothing to prevent anyhow—that was all the proof the Supreme Court needed to place a disproportionate burden on the thousands who are too poor, too elderly or too disabled to meet rigid ID laws. ...

What the F.B.I. Agents Saw - water, toture, women's underwear, 2 months in isolation (US recognized torture)

What the F.B.I. Agents Saw - New York TimesPublished: May 22, 2008

Does this sound familiar? Muslim men are stripped in front of female guards and sexually humiliated. A prisoner is made to wear a dog’s collar and leash, another is hooded with women’s underwear. Others are shackled in stress positions for hours, held in isolation for months, and threatened with attack dogs.

You might think we are talking about that one cell block in Abu Ghraib, where President Bush wants the world to believe a few rogue soldiers dreamed up a sadistic nightmare. These atrocities were committed in the interrogation centers in American military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And they were not revealed by Red Cross officials, human rights activists, Democrats in Congress or others the administration writes off as soft-on-terror.

They were described in a painful report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, based on the accounts of hundreds of F.B.I. agents who saw American interrogators repeatedly mistreat prisoners in ways that the agents considered violations of American law and the Geneva Conventions. According to the report, some of the agents began keeping a “war crimes file” — until they were ordered to stop.

These were not random acts. It is clear from the inspector general’s report that this was organized behavior by both civilian and military interrogators following the specific orders of top officials. The report shows what happens when an American president, his secretary of defense, his Justice Department and other top officials corrupt American law to rationalize and authorize the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners:

— Four F.B.I. agents saw an interrogator cuff two detainees and force water down their throats.

— Prisoners at Guantánamo were shackled hand-to-foot for prolonged periods and subjected to extreme heat and cold.

— At least one detainee at Guantánamo was kept in an isolation cell for at least two months, a practice the military considers to be torture when applied to American soldiers.

The study said F.B.I. agents reported this illegal behavior to Washington. They were told not to take part, but the bureau appears to have done nothing to end the abuse. It certainly never told Congress or the American people. The inspector general said the agents’ concerns were conveyed to the National Security Council, but he found no evidence that it acted on them. ...

1.1 Million Purged from Indiana Voter Registration Rolls According to State Data, Says BBV

BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 5/5/2008 1:23PM | 1.1 Million Purged from Indiana Voter Registration Rolls According to State Data, Says BBV

In addition to the recent, outrageously bad decision by the Supreme Court to approve Indiana's draconian polling place Photo ID restrictions, sure to keep thousands of legal voters from even being able to cast votes in tomorrow's important Primary Election --- despite the state's inability to offer up a single instance of in-person polling place voter impersonation that's ever occurred during the state's entire history (as we've covered here, here and here, for example) --- another 1.1 million voters have now been purged from the voting rolls altogether, reports Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, as based on the Hoosier State's own data. ...

United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service,

School Military Recruiting Could Violate International Protocol - CommonDreams.orgWednesday, May 14, 2008 by Inter Press Service | by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Pressed by the demands of the “global war on terrorism”, the United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.

The 46-page report, “Soldiers of Misfortune“, which was prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, also found that the U.S. military disproportionately targets poor and minority public school students.

Military recruiters, according to the report, use “exaggerated promises of financial rewards for enlistment, [which] undermines the voluntariness of their enlistment.” In some cases documented by the report, recruiters used coercion, deception, and even sexual abuse in order to gain recruits. Perpetrators of such practices are only very rarely punished, the report found.

“The United States military’s procedures for recruiting students plainly violate internationally accepted standards and fail to protect youth from abusive and aggressive recruitment tactics,” said Jennifer Turner of the ACLU Human Rights Project. ...

Widespread “voter fraud” is a myth promulgated to suppress voter participation, according to a new Project Vote report

New Report Examines "The Politics of Voter Fraud" | March 05, 2007

Washington, DC - Widespread “voter fraud” is a myth promulgated to suppress voter participation, according to a new Project Vote report released this week. “The Politics of Voter Fraud” finds that fraudulent voting, or the intentional corruption of the voting process by voters, is extremely rare. Yet, false or exaggerated claims of fraudulent voting are commonly made in close electoral contests, and later cited by proponents of laws that restrict voting. The report is authored by Lorraine Minnite, Ph.D., Barnard College, Columbia University.

“I set out to study what situations generated incidents of voter fraud and, after researching the laws and examining the existing evidence, I found that voter fraud did not occur with enough frequency or was enough of a significant factor in elections to model or study,” Minnite said. “Instead, in this report, I examined circumstances in which claims of voter fraud were made and how they came to receive widespread public attention.”

Analysis of federal government records concludes that only 24 people were convicted of or pleaded guilty to illegal voting between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year. The available state-level evidence of fraudulent voting, culled from interviews, reviews of newspaper coverage and court proceedings paints a similar picture.

“We shouldn’t base public policy on urban legends but on sound facts. It’s clear from this report that fraudulent voting isn’t threatening the integrity of our elections; we do know that erecting additional bureaucratic obstacles to voting discourages legitimate voters,” said Project Vote Deputy Director Michael Slater. ...