Fact-esque

We Have Always Been at War with Oceania

Quaker Dave says all the needs to be said about BushCo's National Sanctity of Human Life Day.   As usual the thought occurs: if someone made a movie about a presidency as audacious and dissolute as this one, nobody would believe it.

Speaking of movies - you can read this brilliant NYT story about a soccer team called the Fugees, as in "refugees," or you can wait for the movie to come out.  Don't wait.

via FDL: A commenter, who has experience with the situation described in the Fugees story, writes in with some clarification.   It seems that the reporter may have overstated the class differences between the Fugees and the rest of the Clarkson universe, which I expected to be the case when I linked to it.  The thing reads like Dickens.  But that failing doesn't touch the heart of the story, which you'll see if you read it.

Lighten Up

Light a candle for Jane to send some good energy her way and the way of everyone facing trying times in the world tonight.   

If you want to make a donation, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation gets top marks from Charity Navigator.

Project Hamad

Hate the Military Commissions Act?  Got a printer?  Got a blog?  Join Project Hamad:

Adel Hamad was a teacher of elementary school orphans, a hospital worker, and someone who coordinated the delivery of food, medicine and blankets to refugees. He has been imprisoned for 5 years and classified as an enemy combatant, despite the lack of any allegations or evidence that he ever acted against the U.S. or its allies, or even had political sympathies for those who did. His friends and colleagues describe him as a funny, apolitical man who loved charity work and ping-pong. One of the U.S. Army Majors at his Tribunal called his detention unconscionable.

Growing evidence shows that the majority of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have not committed any belligerent act against the U.S. or its allies. These prisoners, who have no legal recourse, have not been given their day in court. Nor have their detentions been scrutinized by a judge. They remain in jail year after year, separated from their families, often not fully knowing the accusations against them or the identity of their accusers.

The CIA, the Defense Department, commanders in the military, have all acknowledged that there are many innocents in jail. Yet instead of expediting their release, Congress recently eliminated the writ of habeas corpus, an essential safeguard enshrined in our Constitution against an unchecked executive power. Before habeas corpus existed, rulers could throw people in jail without justification and without the prisoner having the right to defend himself in court.

The good news is that with the convening of the new congress in 2007, several senators are pressing to revisit the Military Commission Act, which nullified habeas corpus. This will no doubt help to shed new light on the situation of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and improve the chances of the release of those who are innocent.

By joining Project Hamad you are not being asked to declare that any given detainee is innocent.  On the contrary, you are joining others in calling for the restoration of habeas corpus, that anyone detained by the U.S. government has the right to know the accusations against him, to know who is making them, to have a lawyer, and to have the right to defend themselves before a federally appointed judge, a judge who can review the merits of the accusations against them. Adel Hamad and other detainees, most of whom have never been charged with a crime, deserve this.

You can help this cause by spreading the word of Project Hamad to your friends and family.

Join the project!

I'm In It to Win It!

Does that phrase test well coming out of the mouths of women?

"I'm in this race, and I'm going to win."  Katherine Harris to Sean Hannity.

"I'm in. And I'm in to win."  Hillary Clinton to the Internets. 

Get ready for endless NYT and NYT-inspired stories full of sneering speculation about the state of the Clinton marriage and why we really must care.   I'm hoping that they bring the poisonous Ruderon, nee Wilgoren, back for the duration.

UPDATE: I should be clear.  I don't want Wilgoren/Ruderon back b/c she'll hammer Clinton but b/c she's so horrible, that she's fun to read and tear apart.  Of course, it'd be great if the politcal reporting at the NYT suddenly became fair, informative and something that advanced the public debate. 

Best Series

The Koufax Awards are always tough to predict.  There' s a lot of impressive talent in blogtopia.  But this year The Talking Dog should be a mortal lock for Best Series.   Since February of 2006, Seth has been interviewing players in the saga of detainees held by America at Guantanamo and elsewhere.   The latest installment in the series is an interview with H. Candace Gorman:

H. Candace Gorman is an attorney based in Chicago specializing in Civil Rights law (among her credits are a successful argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Jones v. R.R. Donnelly & Sons, a landmark case on the statute of limitations in employment discrimination cases that has even impacted my own legal practice). Ms. Gorman represents two North African nationals detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is the author of the Guantanamo Blog, and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. On January 15, 2007, I had the privilege of interviewing Ms. Gorman by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, supplemented extensively by Ms. Gorman's e-mailed comments.

This is a rundown of the whole series:

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with attorneys Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner,  Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila),  with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainee Shafiq Rasul  , with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott,  with  law professor and Coast Guard officer  Glenn Sulmasy, and with author and geographer Trevor Paglen on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, to be of interest.

Now that's Koufax material.

You can help defer Awards hosting costs here.

St. Jim of the Immaculate Privatization

Former congressman, Jim Greenwood (PA-08) is practically considered a saint in Bucks County.  His supporters will be glad to know that he's earning his six-figure income from Big Pharma by opposing the federal government's ability to negotiate for lower drug prices.  From Roll Call (sub req):

Former Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.), president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, is lobbying against the change to the Medicare program because premiums, he said, “are lower than had been anticipated. We think the program is working, working nicely. It’s not broken.”

Greenwood added, “The problem is, if this legislation were to become law, it would be a very clumsy system. The [HHS] secretary would be picking and choosing which drugs he or she would negotiate prices on. It really undermines the basic structure of the program.”

Despite Jim's dutiful protestations, this bill passed along with the rest of the Dems' 100-Hour Agenda but it has a steep climb in the Senate along with the rest of the Dems' 100-Hour Agenda.  Such a steep climb, in fact, that I have a bad feeling that the House votes were meaningless exercises that unintentionally gave Republicans in moderate districts the chance to get a working-class vote on their record.

Still, it's a day to celebrate.  The Dems hung together impressively.  The press has been great, postioning the Dems as the party that gets it done for working America.  Pelosi is a rockstar to anyone who pays attention to what her job is instead of which table she sits at in the lunchroom.

On to Filibuster Country.

That's Incredible!

Remarkably, Americans are taking to the woman who is steering an economic agenda built around relief for working Americans through the House of Representatives.

A new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows positive views of Pelosi, 66, climbed over the past month and are considerably higher than the marks Americans gave one of her highly publicized predecessors, Republican Newt Gingrich, in the first weeks of his tenure as speaker in 1995.

The poll conducted Jan. 13 to 16 showed even more support for the party's early priorities, including repealing subsidies for oil companies, cutting prescription-drug costs for seniors and raising the minimum wage, which were backed by large majorities of respondents.

It seems almost impossible to believe but none of the predicted fallout from the disastrous Murtha/Whoever That Other Guy Was and other equally memorable personnel debacles that threatened to destroy Pelosi's speakership before it began, can be detected.

Good Luck

to Jane Hamsher, who will be in surgery today.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mick Arran is Back

I can't believe it's taken me this long to make note of the happy fact that Mick Arran, formerly of Ethel the Blog and the outstanding Dispatch from the Trenches, is back in a bloggin'. His new digs are Witness for the Prosecution and the revamped Dispatch from the Trenches. All you need to know about Mick and his blogs is the perfect description he's written for himself: Working class wonk.

Go forth and read.

Cassandra Was Right

Nicole Belle, writing at Crooks and Liars, points to this fantastic rundown of the Florida and North Carolina eVoting problems that led to the seating of two Congresspeople who lost their elections. 

We now have two members of Congress seated as a result of elections decided by less than 400 votes.  A simple analysis of current and historical data for expected undervotes shows that the double digit undervote rates in each candidate’s stronghold resulted in lost votes; votes that would have lead to a victory by either of the now designated losing candidates.  The first shall be last, once again.

I'll say it again - electronic voting is the story of the century so far.   It's already brought us to where exactly we are today thanks to the stolen election in 2000, brought to us by the good people of ChoicePoint and the State of Florida.  I'm afraid to consider what it's going to bring us in the coming years.  All I know for sure is that every day we are silent and refuse to demand a voter-verified paper ballot, acheiving the goal of free and fair elections becomes more distant.