One Utah

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 purported to suspend the right of habeas corpus, among other things.
Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.
Writing for the majority in the 5-4 decision, Justice [...]

After four years of delays, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has finally released its Phase II report. In a sweeping review of the administration’s pre-war case for invasion, the Committee found that the American public was being fed information at odds with the truth about Iraq.
The lies came directly from President Bush, [...]

Via Radar:
According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ [...]

Sorry, this has nothing to do with President Bush’s upcoming visit to Utah, later this month. Instead, it’s a remarkable glimpse of a mind that is fixated on what I would call the opposite of reality. Back in April 2003, Josh Marshall warned that the neocon strategy for the entire Middle East could [...]

The Bush administration’s plan for rigged 9/11 terrorist show trials to coincide with the 2008 presidential election has run into legal difficulties.
Charges have been dropped against the “20th hijacker,” Mohamed al-Qahtani. He allegedly came to the United States to take part in the September 11, 2001 attacks, but he was denied entry to the [...]

Last week, I saw this post  Leading America Into the Wildnerness, at Kos:
Whether it’s finance or science, health care or education, America isn’t leading the way — it’s not even pointing the direction.  Instead, we’re on the sidelines, trying to squeeze the grip of our still considerable military leadership ever tighter, only to have more [...]

Today our friend and fellow blogger Frank Staheli, with a little help from HBO, reminded me of something important– what used to be the foundation stone of American foreign policy, in fact. Frank coined a term, “the Radical Islamic Monster,” in an attempt to somehow explain who our nation is supposed to be fighting [...]

Today, we learned about a new report on the Iraq fiasco, Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath (PDF) from the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the National Defense University. The author is Joseph Collins, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations.
Here are the first two paragraphs of [...]

The Government Accountability Office released a report (PDF) today concluding that the United States has no plan to combat al Qaeda and other terrorist threats in Pakistan. The GAO found that “[t]errorists are still operating freely in Pakistan along the country’s Afghanistan border, despite the U.S. giving Pakistan more than $10.5 billion in military and [...]

From ABC News:
In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved the torture of prisoners held by the Central Intelligence Agency. The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, which in 2002-2003 included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor [...]

If thousands of people weren’t being killed, this would be funny. Our politicians can’t keep track of America’s many, ever-changing enemies in Iraq. President Bush has never made it very clear who we’re fighting. It’s “a combination of terrorists, elements of former regime criminals and sectarian militias,” he said in October 2006, [...]

President Bush and the rest of the right wing never get tired of telling us that America is hated by religious fanatics who can’t stand the ideas of freedom and democracy. Considering how many right-wingers are religious fanatics themselves, they may be projecting their own intolerance on others.
Although there are a minority who truly [...]