They hafve set up a commission to investigate European illegal fishing off Somalia, which is a good thing, since the pirates started out as fishemen who are being starved by the depletion of their waters by illegal fishing.
It should have happened 5 years ago.
Well, the Senate report on torture is out, and it appears that Rumsfeld and His Evil Minions™ were authorizing torture before the infamous memos justifying such behavior had been drafted, despite the fact that numerous experts on interrogation said that it torture does not work.
Notably, it was based on the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training which was used to allow captured Americans to resist torture designed to elicit false confessions.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et all did not care. They just wanted to torture out of a combination of sadism and machismo.
That being said, I do like the last line of the article, “If torture occurred before the memo was written, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, and the writing of the memo is potentially criminal.”
In a related note, we now know the answer to the question, “Why waterboard someone 183 times in one month?”
They did it for propaganda purposes, specifically, in order to extract false statements linking al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein”
The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Seriously, these people need to spend the rest of their lives in a SUPERMAX facility.
In Arizona v. Gant, by a 5/4 decision, the Supreme Court largely reversed New York v. Belton, which had said that a police officer could search a car when they arrested someone without probable cause.
It was an odd mix of judges too who voted in favor of the 4th amendment, Stevens, Souter,Ginsburg, Scalia(!) and Thomas (!!!).
Basically, the old rule was that if you arrested someone, you could search his car, and now the standard is, “police may search a vehicle without a warrant only when the suspect could reach for a weapon or try to destroy evidence, or when it is ‘reasonable to believe’ there is evidence in the car supporting the crime at hand.”
The other 4, including the 2GW Bush appointees, think that it will be too confusing, but it’s not: If you arrest someone for an expired license, or not seat belting their kids, and they are away from the car, you do not have authority to search it.
This ain’t rocket science.*
*Full Disclosure, in 1999-2000 and 1996-1998, I worked as a mechanical engineer for what is now Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, and I have some claim to actually having been a rocket scientist.
It appears that Rahm Emanuel’s and Robert Gibbs statements about not prosecuting people, incensed senior career lawyers at the Department of Justice, who saw this as political meddling in a law enforcement decision.
Interestingly enough, as Scott Horton notes, the net result of this fallout may be to force AG Holder to appoint a special prosecutor in order to defuse those charges, which to my mind is a good thing.
Sounds like a joke, but the punchline is that the Three Stooges of the Senate have penned a letter to President Obama asking for a get out of jail free card for the torture memo writers, because, of course, accountability is only for blow jobs in Washington, DC.
SecDef Gates is looking to insource acquisition expertise into the Pentagon, hiring 4,100 people in this area by 2010, and 9,000 by 2015.
This is a good idea, but the mindset in this article shows why it will be hard, starting with the title, Top Talent Won’t Pick Pentagon for Pay.
The first assumption is that junior hires, “they won’t know enough to make much of a difference for at least six or seven years,” is simply wrong.
A good person can be online and doing good work in under 6 months, one who is merely competent can do the same in 18.
What’s more, with the expansion of internal positions at the Pentagon, the job prospects for outside consultants shrink accordingly, which will both bring new people in, and dissuade people who have done a few years in there from moving into outside positions.
It’s not going to be easy, but it will be much better than what we have now.
And the Shrill One, Paul Krugman, catches it
So the market was greatly reassured when Tim Geithner declared that the “vast majority” of banks are well capitalized. Count me as baffled. …..
After all, there are a lot of banks in America. There are 1,722 institutions on the Fed’s list of “large commercial banks”. And I have no doubt that most of these banks — indeed, the vast majority — are in fine shape. That’s because they’re regional institutions that never got into the risky games played by the big guys.
But the big guys are where the money is. ….
The construction of the statement was odd, and I noticed it, but missed the connection, that about 20 banks control something in excess of ¾ of the assets out there. If 17 of those banks are insolvent, only 1% of the banks would be in trouble, but a majority of bank holdings would be wiped out.
So, I’m reviewing my post on GGP going bankrupt, and my schadenfreude regarding NY Times columnist Thomas “The ‘Stache of Banality” Friedman’s wife’s family’s net worth has gone from $4 billion to $25 million, and I see this Google ad in the left column:
Umm….Once again, it looks like Google Ads has chosen to serve up ads that are selling something that I am lambasting.
Anyone know anyone at BlogAds?
Actually, I really don’t generate much revenue, about enough to treat my wife to a dinner and babysitting about twice a year, which still makes me the most overpaid writer in the blogosphere, but I reserve the right to bite the hand that feeds me.
Freddie Mac actinf CFO David Kellermann was found dead of an apparent suicide in his Northern Virginia home.
My condolences to his family.
Generally, in such matters, it’s the decent people who care about what they are doing and the people that work for and their customers who do this.
Well, the IMF has updated its recession forecast for 2009, and their estimate has become much more pessimistic, with their estimate for contraction at -1.3%, down from -0.5%, they are also anticipating credit losses on the order of $4.1 trillion, and that the financial system will not stabilize until sometime in 2010.
Honestly, I still think that the new estimate is overly optimistic, but I’m a born bear.
This is born out by the fact that official UK economic predictions are that the British Isles will experience their fastest contraction since the end of the WW II, and Japanese exports are down year over year by almost ½.
That being said, we have some good news in real estate, with the Architecture billings index rising last month, and home were up 0.7%month to month in February, though prices are still down 6.5% year over year, but it’s the first two month price gain in about 2 years.
Additionally, mortgage applications are up, though this is largely refi activity, and the delay in foreclosures in California have returned with a vengeance, now that the little “holiday” created by the law changes that lengthened the time line from default to eviction has passed.
Banking still sucks though with Fannie and Freddie losses from defaults rising, Capital One’s losses on credit card defaults were worse than expected, as were Morgan Stanley’s losses (the cut dividends too), though Wells Fargo, who largely eschewed the high flying ways of the other large banks, had record profit and displaced Bank of America as the nation’s top lender.
In energy, oil rose slightly, despite reports of a growing inventory, and in currency, the dollar fell on reduced investor worries.
Because Dick Cheney is demanding that more torture memos be declassified, because his memos, or at least the ones that he wants released, show that torture worked, and got important information.
Not surprising, as Cheney is a master of bureaucratic infighting and the CYA memo
I agree with Dan Froomkin when he says, “Call Cheney’s bluff,” I also think that if he wants memos releases, they should be reports from the agents in place, and not self serving memos from the OVP.
*If you do not know what Bizarro World is, go here, or better yet, read some classic Superman® comic books….Bizarro, and Superman® are a part of basic American cultural literacy.
Paul Krugman makes a very good case that the US explosion in productivity starting in the 1990s was a mirage, and was basically equal parts Walmart buying Chinese crap, and the finance industry lining their own pockets.
It was the tail, not the dog.
First, we have a report that the “Israeli agent” that Jane Harman was having a phone conversation with was an Israeli-American named Haim Saban, if the name sounds familiar, it’s because you watch the credits for Mighty Morphin’ Power rangers.
He’s a producer who made much of his fortune by importing and redubbing the children’s show.
Then we have Ron Kampeas at the JTA noting that the phone call in question happened in the Summer of 2005, which is pre-Katrina, has her discussing becoming Intel committee chairman.
Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. It was around a week before the scope of the incompetence hit, and began destroying whatever remained of Bush’s post 911, so the possibility of a Democratically controlled house was remote. People were still talking about a permanent Republican majority.
In any case, Keampeas points us toward
Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy magazine, who appears to have a line on the personalities, and the machinations therein within the intelligence establishment that might figure in this:
On the other side, the statement from the Neww York Times editor that Harman did not attempt to influence the publication of the illegal wiretap article may not be true, as Bill Keller has clarified his statements, and it appears that she contacted Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman regarding the matter, at the request of Michael Hayden, who keeps showing up in every bit of evil in the intelligence establishment like a demented Amway salesman.
It also means that Harman was actively working against the election of John Kerry, because if the Times had published before the election, it would likely have swung the race.
Finally, we have Jane Harman asking for the transcripts of her phone calls to be declassified and released.
Here is my older post on this, and try to figure this out.
It’s beginning to read like a John le Carré novel.
Yemen’s few remaining Jews are being targeted with violence and murder, and they have a place to go.
Before Israel, there was the case of the St. Louis as an illustrative point.
Tho the surprise of no one, and to the disappointment of almost everyone, Norm Coleman has appealed the decision of the election court to the Minnesota Supreme Court. His lawyers are claiming that it’s the principal of the thing.
Meanwhile, in upstate New York, the NY-20 vote count continues apace, and it looks like Scott Murphy is picking up votes with each round.
What is interesting here is that it looks like Democratic campaigns are out-hustling Republicans on absentee ballots, which in years past, always seemed to trend Republican.
It’s a very good development.
Nancy Pelosi is now proposing a bipartisan commission to investigate the cases and abuses that have led to the current banking crisis.
It would be modeled after the Pecora Commission, which looked into the 1929 crash.
This ignores both recent, and less recent history, with the history of the Iran-Contra commission being that the Republicans would use it to obstruct any real investigation of Reagan’s arms for hostages swap, and the Pecora Commission itself, which really did not do much until the Dems took control of Congress, and unleashed their cheif counsel, Ferdinand Pecora.
The Republicans are far more venal and partisan than they were in 1987, and infinitely more so than in 1932, and the idea that they can be trusted even as spectators is a pipe dream.
18 months ago, the Bucksbaum family, the owners of the General Growth Properties mall chain were worth about $4 billion dollars.
Following GGP’s bankruptcy, it’s $25 million, and Tom “Suck on This” Friedman is much more exposed to the downsides of that flat world that he espouses.
CT state treasurer Denise Nappier, who is responsible for managing the state pension funds, which hold a significant stake in Bank of America, is calling for the CEO Ken Lewis to be kicked off the board, along with, “lead director O. Temple Sloan and chairman of the governance committee Tom Ryan.”
She is not calling for his removal, but rather separation of the rolls of chief executive and chairman of the board of directors, and other significant shareholders are in agreement.
There is a shareholder meeting in 8 days, so this should get interesting.
Pass the popcorn.
BTW, doesn’t Mr. Lewis take an awful picture? He looks mean, spiteful, selfish, and egotistical all at once.
He seems to look that way in all of his pictures….Maybe that’s the real him.
Read the whole editorial, it’s brutal, and calls for a thorough investigation of everyone who conspired on this, and the penultimate ‘graph calls for the Congress to remove Jay Bybee as a federal court judge:
These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.
(emphasis mine)
Somehow, I do not expect Mr. Bybee to go quietly though.
Hopefully, he’ll rat on his fellow conspirators, but I would not expect that either.
I would have expected a bounce in the numbers for this party following the trial; they were in the low single digits before hand, but they seem to be riding a rising wave right now, and might secure a seat in the European Parliament.
I’m not surprised.