John McCain...on the minimum wage
John McCain...on housing policy and links to lobbyists
John McCain...on Social Security
John McCain...on NAFTA
John McCain...on 100 years in Iraq
John McCain...on the new GI Bill
John McCain...on SCHIP
John McCain...on Roe v. Wade
John McCain...defending the Iraq strategy
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Doing something about tree thieves in KY
My home state's looking to make sawing down someone else's trees a felony, punishable by one to five years in prison. I guess it's turning into a big problem in some areas.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Description of water torture...
...or as we call it today - waterboarding. Here's the link. And here's an excerpt:
So here's my take on the current waterboarding/torture issue. I start from this description and others I've read to conclude that waterboarding is torture. I have a hard time believing any intellectually honest person can come to any other conclusion. I believe that the attorneys from the Bush Administration that have tried to justify waterboarding as legal under U.S. or international law are engaged in truly dishonest lawyering.
It also seems to me that the folx - attorneys and others - that try and argue that waterboarding is legal conflate the idea of whether it is torture with whether it might be, even though torturous, under some circumstances acceptable, defensible or appropriate. I would put myself in the camp that would say there is no situation where torturing a suspect is appropriate or will evenget you what you're looking for. But I can at least understand that someone might have a legitimate belief that torture might be necessary sometimes, albeit very rarely.
I think it was the Attorney General who most recently gave a perfect example of what I'm talking about. He seemed to indicate that waterboarding could be considered torture, but might also not be torture depending on how exigent the need for getting information out of the suspect might be. This kind of rationale is what I mean when I say that pro-waterboarding folx conflate the issue of whether it's torture with whether it might still be used under some circumstances.
I remember that the blindfold was heavy and completely covered my face. As the two men held me down, one on each side, someone began pouring water onto the blindfold, and suddenly I was drowning. The water streamed into my nose and then into my mouth when I gasped for breath. I couldn't stop it. All I could breathe was water, and it was terrifying. I think I began to lose consciousness. I felt my lungs begin to fill with burning liquid.
Pulling out my fingernails or even cutting off a finger would have been preferable. At least if someone had attacked my hands, I would have had to simply tolerate pain. But drowning is another matter.
So here's my take on the current waterboarding/torture issue. I start from this description and others I've read to conclude that waterboarding is torture. I have a hard time believing any intellectually honest person can come to any other conclusion. I believe that the attorneys from the Bush Administration that have tried to justify waterboarding as legal under U.S. or international law are engaged in truly dishonest lawyering.
It also seems to me that the folx - attorneys and others - that try and argue that waterboarding is legal conflate the idea of whether it is torture with whether it might be, even though torturous, under some circumstances acceptable, defensible or appropriate. I would put myself in the camp that would say there is no situation where torturing a suspect is appropriate or will evenget you what you're looking for. But I can at least understand that someone might have a legitimate belief that torture might be necessary sometimes, albeit very rarely.
I think it was the Attorney General who most recently gave a perfect example of what I'm talking about. He seemed to indicate that waterboarding could be considered torture, but might also not be torture depending on how exigent the need for getting information out of the suspect might be. This kind of rationale is what I mean when I say that pro-waterboarding folx conflate the issue of whether it's torture with whether it might still be used under some circumstances.
Sentencing Reforms
As I make my way through the blogosphere and try to whittle down the numerous areas and topics that I keep track of on a regular basis, one of the main lawyer areas I find myself drawn to is sentencing reform in our criminal justice system. So, as I educate myself on what's going on in the area and to throw it out to the universe for general consumption (and higher google search rating), here are some articles on the topic I've found that touch on the things I care about.
Why tight budget times will speed path to technocorrections and It's the prison economy, stupid- from the excellent Sentencing Law and Policy Blog
A couple of local articles from MI and PA
A story about PA and efforts to reform its criminal justice system
Granholm expected to suggest prison spending cuts in new budget
U.S. among harshest for sentencing children
and of course an old stand-by anti-death penalty article
Why tight budget times will speed path to technocorrections and It's the prison economy, stupid- from the excellent Sentencing Law and Policy Blog
A couple of local articles from MI and PA
A story about PA and efforts to reform its criminal justice system
Granholm expected to suggest prison spending cuts in new budget
U.S. among harshest for sentencing children
and of course an old stand-by anti-death penalty article
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Army tells VA to stop helping disabled soldiers with disability paperwork?
Essence of the story:
There was ameeting last March between an Army team from Washington and VA officials at Fort Drum Army base in upstate New York. At that meeting, Army representatives told the VA not to review the narrative summaries of soldiers' injuries, and the VA complied with the Army's request.
NPR did a story about the issuestory aired and the Army Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker denied that the Army that told the VA to stop this help.
Since that denial NPR obtained a four-page VA document that contradicts the surgeon general's statement. The document says Col. Becky Baker of the Army Surgeon General's office told the VA to discontinue counseling soldiers on the appropriateness of Defense Department ratings because "there exists a conflict of interest."
There was ameeting last March between an Army team from Washington and VA officials at Fort Drum Army base in upstate New York. At that meeting, Army representatives told the VA not to review the narrative summaries of soldiers' injuries, and the VA complied with the Army's request.
NPR did a story about the issuestory aired and the Army Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker denied that the Army that told the VA to stop this help.
Since that denial NPR obtained a four-page VA document that contradicts the surgeon general's statement. The document says Col. Becky Baker of the Army Surgeon General's office told the VA to discontinue counseling soldiers on the appropriateness of Defense Department ratings because "there exists a conflict of interest."
President touts benefits for troops in SOTU address - doesn't include funding for the benefit in his proposed budget
A Washington Post story has the scoop on how Bush could try and score political points in his State of the Union address by advocating "supporting the troops" in his State of the Union address, but then not putting funding for those same benefits in his proposed budget, which was submitted just a week later.
Do I really need to comment on how this is typical for this administration's version of "support" for the troops?
Do I really need to comment on how this is typical for this administration's version of "support" for the troops?
The Surge has failed
I agree with Sen Levin, who said "that the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq has failed because it hasn't achieved its primary goal of sparking political reconciliation among that country's rival sectarian groups."
The whole point of the surge was to provide "breathing room" for the political process to work. That hasn't worked.
And the point about the violence being down misses the point for me. When I was in the desert, from September to January, I saw the daily (classified) e-mails that summarized the attacks, KIAs (killed in action), WIAs (wounded in action), NBD (non-battle deaths), NBIs (non-battle injuries) for U.S. Forces in Iraq. Those e-mails also gave the numbers of Coalition Forces deaths and injuries, Iraqi Forces deaths and injuries and detainees. As has been reported in the media, I'm sure that the number of KIAs for US forces was down in that period as compared to the previous year. But, even those 1s and 2s were quite sobering to read every day. It was also striking the number of WIAs, NBDs and NBIs that came through, which numbers just don't get reported in the media (not to mention the sheer number of deaths all of the numbers in those daily e-mails represented among all the forces).
Overall, I was struck by the difference between what I read in the media about how the violence was down and, therefore, the surge was working versus what I read on the internal military reports of deaths and injuries. Bottom line for me - when I consider the stress on the forces (as covered in a previous post) and the numbers of deaths and injuries I saw - the surge was a failure.
The whole point of the surge was to provide "breathing room" for the political process to work. That hasn't worked.
And the point about the violence being down misses the point for me. When I was in the desert, from September to January, I saw the daily (classified) e-mails that summarized the attacks, KIAs (killed in action), WIAs (wounded in action), NBD (non-battle deaths), NBIs (non-battle injuries) for U.S. Forces in Iraq. Those e-mails also gave the numbers of Coalition Forces deaths and injuries, Iraqi Forces deaths and injuries and detainees. As has been reported in the media, I'm sure that the number of KIAs for US forces was down in that period as compared to the previous year. But, even those 1s and 2s were quite sobering to read every day. It was also striking the number of WIAs, NBDs and NBIs that came through, which numbers just don't get reported in the media (not to mention the sheer number of deaths all of the numbers in those daily e-mails represented among all the forces).
Overall, I was struck by the difference between what I read in the media about how the violence was down and, therefore, the surge was working versus what I read on the internal military reports of deaths and injuries. Bottom line for me - when I consider the stress on the forces (as covered in a previous post) and the numbers of deaths and injuries I saw - the surge was a failure.
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