From the Jurist:

Military doctors participating in the force-feeding of hunger’striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] are violating medical ethics, according to commentary published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) [journal website]. The three authors - Sondra S. Crosby, MD, Caroline M. Apovian, MD, Michael A. Grodin, MD - wrote that military doctors should not force treatment on detainees who have refused to voluntarily provide an informed consent, and said they were “disturbed” after conducting a review of detainee medical records and finding no evidence that the detainees had received psychiatric evaluations or been informed about the health consequences of hunger’striking or tube force-feeding. The World Medical Association (WMA) [official website] issued a revised declaration [text] last year saying:

Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied by threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the forced feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting.

The American Medical Association [organization website] has also endorsed the WMA’s position and has urged the Department of Defense (DOD) to stop the practice of force-feeding detainees [press release] who have formed an “unimpaired and rational judgment” to refuse nourishment.

The DOD adopted a policy of force-feeding after up to 128 detainees [JURIST reports] went on hunger strike in 2005. Guantanamo Bay spokesperson Navy Commander Rick Haupt says that 20 of 23 fasting detainees are currently being force-fed and that the military does not punish doctors who refuse to participate in the procedures.

Boston Globe has more.

By Mark Trumbull
Christian Science Monitor

Americans didn’t spend more than they made last year, newly revised figures show, but debt remains a problem for many.

America still has debt problems, but as of this week the phrase “negative savings rate” no longer applies to the nation’s household habits.

Through June of this year, US citizens have socked away $164 billion. Moreover, in releasing its annual revision of prior-year data, the Commerce Department now says that Americans earned more income than they spent in 2005 and 2006 - a reversal of prior tallies showing a negative savings rate for those years.

This doesn’t mean that no debt burden hangs over American households. But it indicates a healthier outlook for consumer finances - a welcome boost as the economy navigates the worst housing-market slump in a generation.

The improving savings picture also hints that reform is possible - perhaps even inevitable - for a nation that, by some measures, still lives on the financial edge.

“People in some sense were doing what the market was telling them to do,” by borrowing during a period of low interest rates and fast-rising home prices, says Paul Kasriel, chief economist at the Northern Trust Co. in Chicago. “Now it’s in reverse,” as interest rates have risen and the key family assets - houses - have stopped soaring in value.

In the long run, Mr. Kasriel foresees an era of belt-tightening for households and for the nation. The shift toward a positive savings rate could be an initial step in that process.

The savings-rate revisions, released Tuesday, were also incorporated in the Commerce Department’s latest economic snapshot.

On Friday, the agency said the nation’s gross domestic product grew at an annual pace of 3.4 percent in the second quarter. Because personal spending was lower than previously reported, the growth of GDP was revised downward for the years 2003 through 2006. Economic growth averaged 3.2 percent during those years, down from 3.5 percent in previously published estimates.

Weaker growth then may mean stronger growth now, some economists say. Since consumers weren’t quite as profligate as believed, they could have more staying power in the months ahead.

read more HERE

By LARA JAKES JORDAN and LAURIE KELLMAN
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conceded Wednesday he used confusing language when describing national security efforts during recent Senate testimony, seeking to set the record straight about the government’s terror surveillance program and clear questions about his credibility.

His letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stopping short of an apology, came as congressional Democrats agreed to give the government greater authority to spy on foreign terror suspects - but only temporarily and by limiting Gonzales’ role in deciding how the power is used.

The Bush administration is urgently pushing Congress to revamp a 1978 law to detect terror plots overseas, but it has faced sharp criticism of the FBI’s misuse of terror investigation tools and widespread skepticism about Gonzales’ honesty.

More at the AP

Dennis Kucinich questions Rumsfeld at today’s hearing.

Listen to these people. There’s your 20 some %. They’re out there…….. stupid as can be.

Some coverage of congressional hearing today: “The Tillman Fratricide: What the Leadership of the Defense Department Knew.”

I used to think that if you enlist in the service, you get what you get. You have no reason to complain about being sent into combat. But I don’t think that anymore. Not with the evil bastards we have running this country. Not with the way they fuck our troops every step of the way. Kudos to this kid for getting home.

The Army has released a reservist from active duty and sent him home to Florida after he asked a federal court to block his fifth deployment to war zones, his lawyer said Tuesday.

The Army released Sgt. Erik Botta, 26, who served in Iraq three times and in Afghanistan once, because it determined he “was not medically qualified to remain on active duty,” said his attorney, Mark Waple.

The decision was surprising because Botta never claimed any medical disqualification and suffers from no illnesses, Waple said.

Botta had said at the time he filed his court petition in July that he wasn’t against the war, but simply felt he had done his duty. He was granted an initial exemption from deployment last year, allowing him to pursue an electrical engineering degree at Palm (nasdaq: PALM - news - people ) Beach Community College and work as a senior technician on Blackhawk and Seahawk helicopters at Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.

But his latest exemption request was initially denied by the Army.

In his court petition, Botta had said he thought the Army should consider his previous tours “to assure a sharing of exposure to the hazards of combat,” and contended that the Army’s refusal to exempt him “constitutes unlawful custody.”

Botta, who was stationed at Fort Jackson near Columbia, S.C., returned to his home in Port St. Lucie on Monday night, his attorney said.

“We’re very happy to have Erik home with his family, headed back to school and back to his job,” Waple said.

More at Forbes

By Jack Shafer
from Slate Online

Having bagged his trophy, how long will it take Rupert to bugger it?

The story flows down the page like a Wall Street Journal feature: A passel of haughty heirs controls a major corporation that transmutes every business opportunity into disaster, driving the firm’s stock off the cliff. A takeover bid arrives but melodrama ensues as the heirs squabble-first over the bidder’s character (it’s bad) but ultimately over how much money will be thrown their way as the heirs settle for what they can get.

So goes Rupert and the Bancrofts, in which the family that controls Dow Jones & Co. delivers it to Rupert Murdoch’s own News Corp. family dynasty. For the rotten old bastard-and I mean that affectionately-the Bancroft episode is only one chapter in his multivolume history of double-down wheeling and dealing. But having won the prize, will Murdoch come to regret it as he has so many of his acquisitions and investments and discard it?

The last time Murdoch made a controversial purchase of a family-controlled operation was when he picked up the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1990s from the O’Malleys for $350 million. The team was supposed to be the basis of his big sports media thrust, but after a couple of years he dumped the team.

read more HERE

By Amy Goldstein and Carrie Johnson
Washington Post

The night before the government secured a guilty plea from the manufacturer of the addictive painkiller OxyContin, a senior Justice Department official called the U.S. attorney handling the case and, at the behest of an executive for the drugmaker, urged him to slow down, the prosecutor told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

John L. Brownlee, the U.S. attorney in Roanoke, testified that he was at home the evening of Oct. 24 when he received the call on his cellphone from Michael J. Elston, then chief of staff to the deputy attorney general and one of the Justice aides involved in the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

Brownlee settled the case anyway. Eight days later, his name appeared on a list compiled by Elston of prosecutors that officials had suggested be fired.

Brownlee ultimately kept his job. But as Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales confronts withering criticism over the dismissals, the episode in the OxyContin case provides fresh evidence of efforts by senior officials in the department’s headquarters to sway the work of U.S. attorneys’ offices.

Justice Department officials said it was not unusual for senior members to weigh in on major criminal cases, and a spokesman, Dean Boyd, said the department “encourages healthy internal debate and discussion on complex cases like this one.”

read more HERE