Lazy Man's Post

More Obama DOJ Attacks on Whistle-Blowers

Read it.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Week-Long Leave

Too much going on to blog - about a week or so, I imagine. Keep up via the excellent blogs in the sidebar, and enjoy yourself.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

The Kind of Thing That Happens in War

Glen Greenwald posts the leaked video of a US helicopter attack on civilians in Iraq (2007) and a discussion...if you have the time...and reminds us that our freedom is what makes them hate us.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

No One Could Have Predicted...

In an attempt to garner public support, US Marines engaged in an intense battle with the Taliban in Marja, have been offering thousands of dollars a week to the local residents as compensation for property damage, but the move has backfired as the insurgents are using the same money against the international forces stationed in Afghanistan.

  One India

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....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

If You're White, Can You Still Be a Terrorist?

An East Texas man who federal prosecutors allege left explosive devices including pipe bombs in multiple area mail boxes, was motivated in part by anger at the government.

52-year-old Larry North […] was indicted Wednesday on a charge of illegally possessing a pipe bomb.

  TPM

No charges of terrorism, of course.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Anybody Still There?

Here's your change.

Let us hear no more excuses for Barack Obama. Let us hear no more defenses, no more special pleading, no more extenuations. Let us have no more reciting of the "pressures" he is under, of the "many obstacles" that balk him in his quest to do us good, of the "bad advisors" who are swaying him to unworthy acts against his will. Let us be done at last with all these wretched lies, these complicitous self-deceptions that are facilitating atrocity and tyranny on a monstrous scale.

Barack Obama has ordered the murder of an American citizen, without trial, without due process, without the production of any evidence. All it takes to kill any American citizen in this way is Barack Obama's signature on a piece of paper, his arbitrary designation of the target as a "suspected terrorist." In precisely the same way -- precisely the same way -- Josef Stalin would place a mark by a name in a list of "suspected terrorists" or "counterrevolutionaries," and the bearer of that name would die.

  Empire Burlesque

The Obama administration [oversees a] "presidential assassination program," whereby American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the Executive Branch that they're involved in Terrorism. At the time,The Washington Post's Dana Priest had noted deep in a long article that Obama had continued Bush's policy (which Bush never actually implemented) of having the Joint Chiefs of Staff compile "hit lists" of Americans, and Priest suggested that the American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was on that list. The following week, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, acknowledged in Congressional testimony that the administration reserves the "right" to carry out such assassinations.

  Glenn Greenwald

George Bush's decision merely to eavesdrop on American citizens without oversight, or to detainwithout due process Americans such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, provoked years of vehement, vocal and intense complaints from Democrats and progressives. All of that was disparaged as Bush claiming the powers of a King, a vicious attack on the Constitution, a violation of Our Values, the trampling on the Rule of Law. Yet here you have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping on or detaining Americans without oversight, but ordering them killed with no oversight and no due process of any kind. And the reaction among leading Democrats and progressives is largely non-existent

  Glenn Greenwald

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Light Blogging Week

Moving. Thanks for hanging in. Please be patient.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Earth Hour

8:30 PM

Straight From the Top

American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops, according to military officials in Kabul.

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen.Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year.

  NYT

That's an admission that would be enough to make a man choke on his pretzel.

Though fewer in number than deaths from airstrikes and Special Forces operations, such shootings have not dropped off, despite new rules from General McChrystal seeking to reduce the killing of innocents. The persistence of deadly convoy and checkpoint shootings has led to growing resentment among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate — a friction that has turned villages firmly against the occupation.

[...]

Many of the detainees at the military prison at Bagram Air Base joined the insurgency after the shootings of people they knew, said the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall.

WTF?

It's still not Sunday, but on the heels of the Wisconsin scandal of a priest abusing deaf boys, three deaf Italian men have come forth to make the same claim.

Bisoli, Laiti and 65 other former pupils signed a statement last year saying sexual abuse, pedophilia and corporal punishment occurred at the school from the 1950s to the 1980s.

While not all acknowledged being victims, 14 of the 67 wrote statements and made videotapes, detailing abuse they suffered, some for years, at the hands of priests and brothers of the Congregation for the Company of Mary. They named 24 priests, brothers and lay religious men.

  Yahoo

It Will Soon Be Time to Start Thinking About Vote Fraud Again

Supporters of unverifiable electronic voting, such as election officials and voting machines companies, had long argued that, though manipulation of such systems was possible, nobody had actually ever done so.

[...]

All eight defendants in Clay County, Kentucky's election fraud trial have been found guilty today by a federal jury. Six of those eight were high-ranking election officials, including the county clerk, a circuit judge and the school superintendent. The conspirators were charged with having manipulated federal elections in 2002, 2004 and 2006 by buying and selling votes and manipulating electronic voting machines.

According to AP, each of the now-convicted felons could face up to 20 years in prison for what prosecutors had described as a conspiracy to manipulate elections for decades in the rural, heavily Republican county.

[...]

[O]ne of the witnesses in the case [...] described how she was trained by the county's chief election official, Clerk Freddy Thompson (one of those convicted today), to change votes cast by voters on the county's ES&S touch-screen voting systems after they'd left the voting booth. The witness, Wanda White also detailed how she was instructed to change her own voter registration from Republican to Democratic so that she could serve as a Democratic precinct official.

[...]

The ES&S iVotronic touch-screen systems secretly manipulated by the cabal of election officials in Kentucky to change voter's votes, are used in a total of 18 states, including Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

  BradBlog

And There He Goes...

A politician can stick to his principles only so long. There goes Kucinich.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.