Mike Mukasey, Bush’s nomination for attorney general, answering (or not) questions regarding whether waterboarding is constitutional. He claims not to know what waterboarding is, then when told what it is, he claims not to know if it’s torture or not, therefore he doesn’t know if it’s constitutional or not. Like Jonathan Turley stated, either way he’s no good. If he’s really that stupid as to not know what waterboarding is (and no one believes he is) then we don’t want him. If he’s lying (which anyone with a brain knows he is), then we don’t want him.

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Louis Prima
“Just a Gigolo”

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Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador’s Pacific coast.

Correa has refused to renew Washington’s lease on the Manta air base, set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.

“We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorean base,” Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.

“If there’s no problem having foreign soldiers on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.”

The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics flights from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent of illegal drug seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year.

More at Reuters

And while we’re talking about military bases…..did you hear this one? Tahmeed Ahma, a Miami high school teacher, went to the Homestead Air Base Sunday night, wielding two butcher knives and couple vodka bottles and yelled at two guards at the gate “death to America” and that he was there to kill soldiers. The one guard shot at Tahmeed, but missed!!! The FBI says he is not a terroist, but just a guy who wanted to commit suicide. He figured the guards would kill him. ha! I’m guessing those sharpshooter guards are now on their way to Thule Airbase for a longterm assignment.

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I’ve been watching a case down here in Florida. Martin Lee Anderson was a 14 year old youth who was struggling. His parents were strugging, also, to straighten him out. Martin was sent to a boot camp because of a probation violation, and his parents thought the people there were going to help them with their son. Instead, their son ended up dead at the hands of the guards at the boot camp.

The reason this case has been of special interest to me is because I have a son. He’s 26 now, but at the age of 14 he was having some emotional problems. We struggled so. I took him to therapy and put him on anti-depressants (which he hated me for). I made an appointment with the school psychologist. I asked for any help he might be able to give me. Any suggestions. His suggestion was to send my son to a boot camp. He had never had any discipline problems. None. But this was the psychologists answer. Needless to say, I walked out of the guy’s office never to return. I think there’s alot of kids in so called “boot camps” who don’t belong there, but in their struggle to find help for their children, parents go along with this idea. Because they are desperate.

Back to Martin. When Martin Lee Anderson ended up dead, the medical examiner claimed he died from internal bleeding caused by sickle cell anemia. The problem was, there was a videotape of Martin being beaten…….a 30 minute beating. A second autopsy determined Martin’s death was not caused by sickle cell, nor was it from natural causes.

There were calls to shut down the Florida Juvenile Justice systems boot camps but then governor Jeb Bush said no. Eventually the Florida legislature called for the closing of the camps.

Eight of the boot camp guards and a nurse were eventually charged with aggravated manslaughter, and it was a good day for Martin’s parents. They thought justice would be served. They were wrong.

This month, it took an all white jury in Panama City, Florida (redneck riviera) 90 minutes to decide to acquit all those charged. The day I heard that verdict I about died. I can’t imagine in my wildest dreams the anger, disappointment and sadness Martin’s parents must have felt that day.

The state has awarded Martin’s parents $5 million for wrongful death. But this is not the ultimate justice they were seeking.

Yesterday, the NAACP lead about 700 protesters at the federal courthouse in Tallahassee, demanding justice. I watched the protest on the television and all I could think of is ……..where are the white people? Why are there only black people protesting this injustice? There’s something very very wrong with this picture. While I do believe it is a black/white issue as far as the jury and acquittal are concerned (the panhandle of Florida is filled with redneck morons), I also believe people of all races should be screaming about this case. It’s just soooooooooooo wrong.

The Department of Justice in Washington and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida are going to review the state’s prosecution of this case. Let’s hope they do the right thing and these murderers go to jail.

Anyone who thinks race is not an issue in America is sadly mistaken. Read the comments in the local newspapers down here and you can see racism is alive and well. It just seems to me that we’re moving backwards. And with everything else that is wrong in this country right now, we should be united, not divided. People should unite and let the justice system know we’re not going to put up with this kind of injustice, no matter what color the victim!

C’mon people!!!

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“line up well with the national priorities of the administration”? Say what? I suppose if it doesn’t fit into the mold of the Bush administration’s talking-points echo chamber, then it’s a huge waste of time. They do, after all, admit to only watching FOX News.

Nope. I am NOT surprised.

Sources: White House cut testimony

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
[...]

But [Dr. Julie Gerberding’s] prepared testimony was devoted entirely to the CDC’s preparation, with few details on what effects climate change could have on the spread of disease. Only during questioning did she describe some specific diseases that likely would be affected, again without elaboration.
[...]

“It was eviscerated,” said a CDC official, familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the review process.

The official said that while it is customary for testimony to be changed in a White House review, these changes were particularly “heavy-handed,” with the document cut from its original 14 pages to four. It was six pages as presented to the Senate committee.

Associated Press

CNN.com

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GOP Senators to Push Judicial Nominee

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican senators are ready to try again to get one of President Bush’s judicial nominees from Mississippi onto the federal appeals court. But some Democrats seemed ready to put up a fight to keep Leslie Southwick off the bench.

“I am not convinced that he is the right nominee for this court at this time,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
[...]

Southwick has some supporters among Democrats, however, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “Judge Southwick is a qualified, sensitive and circumspect person,” said Feinstein, who said the nominee was neither insensitive or a racist.

Feinstein provided the winning vote for Southwick in the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, which approved his nomination on a 10-9 vote.

Associated Press

Source: AP

Hear, hear!

What say you, Arlen, that we take a quick peak at Southwick’s record?

Two strong cases to vote no, eh Arlen? If not, there’s more… probably… we really don’t know. You see, “not all of Southwick’s record has been provided to the Judiciary Committee, including records from his tenure in the Bush 41 Department of Justice and more than two year’s worth of unpublished decisions by the Mississippi Court of Appeals in cases on which he voted but did not write an opinion.”

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