Over the Weekend

The Talking Dog, who has been running an outstanding series of interviews with the lawyers defending Guatanamo detainees, reacts to the news of the three suicides at the facility:

While the military spokesperson was quick to blame the detainees for this last desperate act of defiance and call their hanging themselves some kind of military tactic, the detentions were, of course, widely perceived as unjust if not unlawful, and were certainly unprecedented. Particularly given the earlier hunger strikes and numerous suicide attempts, it's not even hard to see why the detainees would take such desperate measure. Note the completely undocumented, unsupported statement that one of the detainees who killed himself was a high ranking al Qaeda official. Really? Who was he? The government won't even dignify these human beings by telling us their names. Of course, if such an individual really was at Guantanamo, why wasn't he perpetually monitored, like the dozens or hundreds there who are; they'd never be unwatched long enough to have pulled off a hanging if they fell into that category. There's certainly a 98% chance he wasn't charged with anything, seeing as only 10 out of the nearly 500 detainees there have been charged...

In short, I call bullshit: these were almost certainly poor schmucks picked up in our outsourced war and still held because our government is incapable of admitting error, no matter how obvious it is that it committed the error.

When is a loss a loss?   Every. Time.  Brent Budowsky isn't heartened by Busby's improved losing:

Everyone knew for many months this election was coming, and was important. With the ability of the entire Democratic Party to focus on one House election, of such importance, at such a critical moment, it is inexcusable that the Republicans could outspend the Democrats by huge amounts, and my guess is, it would make the Kenny O'Donnells and Larry O'Briens fist pounding angry that some Democratic spinmeisters would try to spin this into a positive.

It was inexcusable, with months to plan for this election, that Democrats were outmanned on absentee voting; that the candidate of the Party was so sloppy and unprepared that she blunders on the front page issue of immigration; and that the Party that has become almost completely dominated by a consultariat class was so media un-savvy that the candidate doomed herself, with a wrongheaded apology, that only guaranteed saturation coverage to the demonization attack against her.

And from Bizarro World, which is where we happen to be living, Harry Reid wants Congress to pass a law forcing it to do its job:

Reid's proposed bill, called the Iran Intelligence Oversight Act, would require an updated national intelligence estimate on Iran, with an unclassified summary made public.

It also would require President Bush to report to Congress on his objectives and strategies for Iran.

While they're at it, maybe we could re-ratify the Constitution for old times' sake.