Digby

Bruised Genitalia

Gosh, I sure hope nobody tore up these photos over the week-end before the Attorney General finally got around to ordering everyone to cease destroying evidence:

Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture.

Now it Makes Sense

The banks get by with a little help from their friends:

But unfortunately, the "freeze" is just another fraud - and like the other bailout proposals, it has nothing to do with U.S. house prices, with "working families," keeping people in their homes or any of that nonsense.

The sole goal of the freeze is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from suing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value - right now almost 10 times their market worth.

Inside Edition

If anyone questions the view that the Village isn't like the rest of us, check this out from the Politico:

For Sunday talk shows, thriving in the D.C. ratings — although clearly trumped in size by New York — provides bragging rights over which show reaches more political insiders.

But more importantly, since the Sunday shows’ objective is not only to reflect on the past week’s events but to get political leaders to break news and move the conversation forward in the newspapers and the blogosphere on Monday morning, it’s essential for both leading Republicans and leading Democrats to reach members of D.C.’s chattering class.

The Pirates of Mesopotamia

So, apparently Halliburton isn't just pillaging the treasuries of Iraq and the US. Their mercenaries are allegedly raping their own female employees, with no repercussions. From Jane Hamsher:

No doubt it was just a few "bad apples":

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

Parallel Universes

Everybody should read this post by Kevin Drum, showing the two diametrically opposed versions of who torture victim Abu Zubayda actually was. The fellow who's been all over TV today is saying that Zubaydah was some sort of intellectual mastermind, and that torture broke him saving many lives. Ron Suskind reported that Zubaydah was little more than a gopher who made up fabulous tales to stop the torture --- which led the US authorities on many merry chases tracking down bogus terrorist plots.


Let's Talk About The Bill Of Rights

There has been a lively discussion recently about this post by Zack Exley who is working with left leaning evangelicals to find some common ground on which to build a coalition around values such as "people over profit, the environment over mindless growth, meaning over consumerism, means of making a living and health care for all, care for the needy, peace and more."

Partisan Soljahs

Whenever I'm asked who my favorite columnist is, I always say Paul Krugman, and it's not just because of his positions on the issues, which I largely (but not always) agree with. It's because he has, in my view, a clear-eyed, no bullshit view of current American politics and understands how to wage the battle. So I've been thinking about this Krugman-Obama flap trying to sort out my emotional reaction to seeing a Democratic presidential candidate put out a misleading oppo research document on someone whom I see as so fundamentally valuable to the progressive movement.

Cards On The Table

Despite some very passionate arguments that Pelosi, Harman and Rockefeller should not be held liable for doing nothing about the torture regime they were briefed on, because it will short circuit the investigations about the destruction of the torture tapes, I remain unconvinced.As Glenn Greenwald says:

I continue to be amazed and disturbed by the number of people willing to defend the actions of Rockefeller and his comrades by claiming that these poor, victimized Congressional members just have no ability to do anything when they learn about outright lawbreaking by the administration. As I asked yesterday, why would they even bother to attend briefings if they believed that they were "powerless" to act even upon learning of serious illegalities? Here is the central purpose of the Select Committee on Intelligence -- the primary reason it exists, as stated by the resolution which created the Committee:

It is further the purpose of this resolution to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.