A Lopes Pal

Dissing the dead
Posted Wed. Jan. 30, 2008 7:02am
by Page Six

FRIENDS of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, who died in a car crash in Honduras in 2002, are fuming that the "Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency" reality show featured a photo shoot last week for Dragonfly clothing that used models dressed as dead rock stars — including Elvis, Kurt Cobain and Lopes, who was part of the TLC trio. "Imagine her family's surprise to hear that a model was impersonating Lisa for a catalog they never heard of," says a Lopes pal, who added that her family is currently working on a CD of her unreleased music. Show producers could not be reached.

They who would give up an essential liberty...

for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.
Benjamin Franklin

The AG just made the argument that the law is relative to the outcome and that since the admin isn’t breaking the law anymore or the law has been changed, it never really did. Good time to be reminded that Mukasey has 2 photos up in his office, GWB and George Orwell - and I am not making that up.

If I am tortured, its is only torture if I don't know anything. Ends justify the means became the law of the land, today.

Guilty until proven innocent, by any means necessary. This is vile and disgusting.

If this doesn't scare you, I honestly don't know what could. If this doesn’t start serious discussion of impeachment, I don't know what can.

If this doesn't shock the conscience of the nation (as it will the world), we have gone down a path from which there is no return and yes, the terrorists won. WON BIG.

As David Bowie said, This is not America. Or more apropos today, I'm Afraid of Americans.

TPMmuckraker reports:

Mukasey Shocks Biden's Conscience
By Paul Kiel - January 30, 2008, 12:12PM
Michael Mukasey finally got into the nitty gritty of how he thinks about torture, and he seemed to finally show his hand.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) said that he'd been getting the impression that Mukasey really thought about torture in relative terms, and wanted to know if that was so. Is it OK to waterboard someone if a nuclear weapon was hidden -- the Jack Bauer scenario -- but not OK to waterboard someone for more pedestrian information?

Mukasey responded that it was "not simply a relative issue," but there "is a statute where it is a relative issue," he added, citing the Detainee Treatment Act. That law engages the "shocks the conscience" standard, he explained, and you have to "balance the value of doing something against the cost of doing it."

What does "cost" mean, Biden wanted to know.

Mukasey said that was the wrong word. "I mean the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it, balanced against the value.... balanced against the information you might get." Information "that couldn't be used to save lives," he explained, would be of less value.

Marty Lederman blogs: "What this reveals is that DOJ and Mukasey have concluded that waterboarding is categorically not torture, and is not 'cruel treatment' under Common Article 3 (even though it is, by Mukasey's own lights, "cruel" -- go figure)."

Biden responded, "You're the first I've ever heard to say what you just said.... It shocks my conscience a little bit."

FISA

...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776

Keep this in mind in the weeks ahead. Pres. Bush wants immunity for Telecos so he will have immunity for his illegal activities. He has said repeatedly that the Telecos only cooperated with legal requests - so why the need for immunity? With torture tapes surfacing in Bangkok and this brewing, the administration is trying desperately to keep itself out of jail. Civil suits are moving forward that will expose this administration for the incompetence and arrogance, coupled with unprincipled illegality.

You will hear the President use a lot of scare tactics this week. Remember that the current law, though temporary and expiring this week, is effective until February of 2009. But don't expect to hear that.

The New York Times
Editorial
The FISA Follies, Redux

The Senate (reportedly still under Democratic control) seems determined to help President Bush violate Americans’ civil liberties and undermine the constitutional separation of powers. Majority Leader Harry Reid is supporting White House-backed legislation that would expand the administration’s ability to spy on Americans without court supervision and ensure that the country never learns the full extent of Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping program.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA — which Mr. Bush decided to ignore after 9/11 — requires a warrant to intercept telephone calls and e-mail messages between people in the United States and people abroad.

It needed updating to keep pace with technology, and the technical fixes were included in a bill that Congress passed last summer. The problem was that Mr. Bush managed to add measures that sharply undercut the court’s role in monitoring eavesdropping. Fortunately, lawmakers gave them an expiration date of Feb. 1.

The House has passed a reasonable new bill — fixing FISA without further endangering civil liberties. But Mr. Bush wants to weaken FISA as much as he can. And the Senate leadership has been only too happy to oblige.

With the help of Republican senators and the misguided chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, the White House got a bill that, once again, reduces court supervision of wiretapping. It also adds immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the illegal spying.

Mr. Bush says without amnesty, the government won’t get cooperation in the future. We don’t buy it. The real aim is to make sure the full story of the illegal wiretapping never comes out in court.

Mr. Reid — who is still falling for the White House’s soft-on-terrorism bullying — set up deliberations in a way that ensured that a better Judiciary Committee version of the bill would die a procedural death and that the Intelligence Committee bill would pass.

The Judiciary bill died this week, with the help of other bullyable Democratic senators like Mr. Rockefeller, Claire McCaskill, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson. The Republicans repaid them by announcing they would block any further attempts to reach a compromise.

It is now up to the House to protect Americans’ rights. Mr. Bush has already started issuing the ritual claims that if his bill is not passed instantly, Osama bin Laden will be telephoning his agents in the United States and no one will know. Let us be clear, Mr. Bush has always had the authority to order emergency wiretaps — and get court approval after the fact. That has never been the problem with FISA.

The House should vote to extend last summer’s flawed rules for at least 30 days and go on recess, forcing the Senate to do the same thing, and then bring the whole matter to a conference committee. There will then be plenty of time for a real debate.

Lawmakers and the rest of the nation should bear this in mind: Mr. Bush’s version of this law does not make intelligence-gathering more robust. Opponents like Senators Christopher Dodd and Patrick Leahy want to spy on Al Qaeda, too. They’re just not willing to do it in a way that undermines the very democracy that the spies, Congress and the president are supposed to be protecting.

Obama Brand Blue

Might just end up being Democratic blue after all. 55% in South Carolina! He garnered more total votes than Sen. McCain and Gov. Hickabee combined.