And the good news is :
"VIDEO: Obama Endorses Gay Marriage" via Joe.My.God.May 9,2012
And another bit of good news DOJ finally taking Crazy bigoted Sheriff Arpaio to court. We can now hope he will be removed from office and possibly be sentenced to one of his open air desert prison camps and made to eat the slop his prisoners do.
That's probably asking too much.
So here's the story from :
Immigration Talk with a Mexican American
Discuss Immigration Issues with a Mexican American. Truth, Honesty and the American Way!, May 9, 2012
BREAKING NEWS: DOJ TO SUE ARPAIO FOR RACIAL PROFILING CRIMES!
Over 100 days after first issuing a report which found Arpaio’s Maricopa Country Sheriff’s Office to be in violation of civil rights laws, the DOJ has sent a letter telling Arpaio they have concluded that an agreement “cannot be secured through voluntary means.” DOJ is required, under the law, to notify a party before they sue them in court.
CLICK HERE TO SEE LETTER TO ARPAIO
Arpaio (and his masked goons) realizing their guilt, announced departmental changes to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in an effort to mend fences with the Hispanic community.
Sorry Arpaio -- TOO LITTLE - TOO LATE!
Ex CIA chief Jose Rodriguez admits to approving and implementing torture techniques and the law or morality be damned.
America's own Torquemada proud of torturing so called "detainees" and undermining the two centuries old rule of law in America. George Washington during the War of Independence insisted that the colonial army would not abuse or torture any enemy soldier who was taken prisoner.
What should add to the outrage of this criminal admitting to his crimes on prime time television is that he was not a trained interrogator or an expert on Islam or Islamic extremists . It appears he just made it all up as he went along.
Typical of the Bush/Cheney Regime's supporters he thinks International Laws and agreements and American Laws can be ignored and trashed on a whim. So every time the government and its departments don't like a particular law they can just ignore it and do as they please.
Here's a fairly comprehensive analysis by Cenk Uygur of Jose Rodriguez' admissions on 60 minutes of implementing torture. Cenk rips Rodriguez apart along with the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Cabal of madmen and those who were too afraid to speak out and those who never gave a damn about morality or the rule of law. Once America decided to use renditions and torture and abusing and degrading tens of thousands of POWs and turning Iraq into a Free Fire Zone America lost its way and any moral authority or high ground it might have had.
Now that Obama has come out of his corner fighting defending same sex marriage why can't he treat other issues just as forcefully such as the issue of Torture. Instead he merely uses the Cheney/Rumsfeld language of re-branding torture as being Enhanced Interrogation Techniques which in fact includes an array of techniques deemed as torture by International Law.
But as has been argued Obama may fear taking on the pro-torture Bush Regime because he himself has authorized the use of so called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques which are in fact Torture techniques.
60 Minutes Producer: "The Nazis Did A Lot Of This" by Andrew Sullivan at The Dish via The Daily Beast April 30, 2012
...here are a couple of things worth knowing about Jose Rodriguez: that he is a war criminal and that he destroyed the evidence that would prove it without a doubt. The third thing you need to know is that he has no shame about any of this, and intends to make money off it.
This man personally oversaw the use of torture techniques known for centuries, universally regarded as torture under domestic and international law, and describes his destruction of critical evidence that would have been invaluable in prosecuting such war crimes as "just getting rid of some ugly visuals." Another term for it is "obstruction of justice," which is not a crime in America if you head the CIA. But the "ugly visuals" were destroyed not for aesthetic reasons:
It was later revealed that the deputy to Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, then Executive Director of the CIA, wrote in an e-mail that Rodriguez thought "the heat from destroying is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into public domain – he said that out of context they would make us look terrible; it would be 'devastating' to us."
"Out of context?" You mean "out of the context that all this had been approved by the president"? One president who broke the law and tried to destroy evidence was impeached and resigned. Then there's the small question of the Big Lie, created by the Cheney faction, that outrageously claims that Rodriguez's war crimes helped catch Osama bin Laden many years and one administration later. The Senate investigation into the CIA Torture program - as exhaustive as one can get - comes to the opposite conclusion
America's Violent and Brutal Culture
American Atrocities: Not Who We Are? Really?
So Then Who in the Hell Are We? By Dan DeWalt at "ThisCantbehappening!" via Information Clearing House, May 7,2012
The latest PR catch phrase from business, administration, military, state and local officials after some atrocity or other is that whatever happened, it is certainly “not who we are,” a phrase appropriately initially uttered by the Vietnam War commander, Gen. William Westmoreland, with reference to the My Lai slaughter of 400 women, children and old men, all civilians, by a group of US soldiers.----------
Yet if all these abominations are not “who we are,” then why do our business, police and military and government institutions generate so many examples of obscene, horrific or criminal behavior?
If we examine the culture that guides our young men and women in battle, our public safety employees in their duties, or our business class in its pursuit of profit, it’s easy to see how shameful and reprehensible episodes such as these have become as routine as they have...
...It is a sick hypocrisy for Obama, Clinton, Panetta, or Allen to claim that these actions are not a direct result of U.S. military and foreign policy. If Dick Cheney and John Yoo were torturing language and logic to advocate the torture of humans, why wouldn't guards at Abu Ghraib fall into the same debased state of mind? (For example, years after he claimed it was "not who we are," documents proved [1] that, ahead of the My Lai massacre, Westmoreland himself had issued rules-of-engagement orders that any civilians found in Communist-held territory like My Lai, a "free-fire" zone, were to be considered enemy combatants, and treated the same as Viet Cong.)
Those in power attempt to frame the issue within the “one bad apple in the barrel” rubric. As long as they can pretend that war crimes and atrocities aren’t a logical outcome of official policy, they can shift blame to those without power and keep the odious policies in place. The cabinet secretary sanctimoniously intones platitudes about morality at the same time as one of his underlings is screaming “KILL!” into a fresh recruit's trembling face.
The same kind of thing happens in the case of police and federal law enforcement officials. Increasingly militarized themselves, they are trained to believe not that their duty is to “protect and serve” or to uphold the nation’s freedoms and liberty, but rather that they are centurions tasked with enforcing “order” and protecting property--generally government property and the property of the wealthy. The general public then becomes a kind of “enemy” to be subdued with whatever force is necessary. Those who stand up for their rights under the law are perceived as threats to the authority of the enforcers, and are dealt with as enemies, to be beaten, pepper-sprayed in the face, spied upon and locked up.
Every President is a War President Politics protects the garrison state by Steve Chapman at Chicago Tribune via Information Clearing House, May 7, 2012
...Looking at recent history, you would conclude not that the Constitution allows the president to make war, but that it requires him to do so. Modern leaders don't brag about keeping us out of war but about getting us in.
Barack Obama reinforces that truth more than any president of our era. He owed his victory in the 2008 Democratic primaries partly to his record of opposing the invasion of Iraq...
"We've had enough of a misguided war in Iraq that never should have been fought — a war that needs to end," he said during the campaign. He proclaimed, "Now is the time to start bringing our troops out of Iraq — immediately."
...Either Obama's supporters misread him or he misled them. In any case, he turned out to be very receptive to war. Instead of immediately withdrawing our troops from Iraq, he adhered to the very same departure timetable established by President George W. Bush. Not until the end of 2011 did the last American forces make their exit.
In Afghanistan, Obama actually increased our presence, while setting a distant deadline (2014) for ending our combat role. He has greatly increased the pace of drone missile attacks on targets in Pakistan, and he has made them in Yemen and Somalia.
He launched an air war against the government of Libya, which had neither attacked nor threatened us...
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