Perjury is a VERY serious offense if you are a Democratic president testifying about an extramarital affair.

“There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station,” said U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald in a news release. “There is no place for perjury and false statements in federal lawsuits. No person is above the law, and nobody — even a suspected murderer — is beneath its protection.”

That makes this an extremely important case. It means that we as a nation have to face directly what kind of nation we are and what our national ethics are. If we prosecute and punish a rougue police chief, what about rogue president?

And to John Yoo, David Addington, Dick Cheney, et al, I say, during this holiday season: Merry Fitzmas, boys. It is hoped that there is something in YOUR stockings as well.

F I T Z !!!

The perps in the Bush-Cheney Gang will all walk unless spine transplants are perfected in the near future and given to members of Congress.

Digg it.

Dugg.

Thank you Loosehead, for keeping this urgent issue in the public eye.

Makes me so happy that there are people like Bonnie T and Fitz…Yes, we need alittle Sanity…right this very minute. Thanks alot.

And just to put my funny foreign bit in, after jerking the British Courts around on allowability of evidence of torture in respect of British resident Gitmo guest Binyam Mohamed, ALL charges against him have just been dropped, and new ones will, we are told, be substituted. So they don’t even know why he’s been there all that time! It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Couldn’t Fitz be persuaded to go after these creeps as well? Surely at least one of them has some connection with Chicago?

The whole Gitmo torture thing is going to be a very hard issue to fix.

I am sure that all those reports put in front of Bush said we have no choice but to let these people in the USA after their release. This would be a non-starter for him.

I am not saying that we should do this necessarily, but detaining them forever is not a solution. Maybe we can pay off Iraq to let them in the country? Say we leave Iraq and in exchange they take the Gitmo prisoners off our hands. I would say that is a win, win, win.

This is encouraging to see. It’s nice to have hope that enough people believe in doing the right thing and are actually willing to follow that up with real action.

I’m on the road right now in Albuquerque and was heartened to pop into the local Obama store and see all the energy there.

Maybe we really can change things around in this country.

Not all. We’ll take Binyam Mohamed if they let him go.He’s already a British resident and surely the USA doesn’t think we would torture him.Oh wait….

Thinking about it, Fitzgerald must have known how these words would resonate. You have to keep hoping there are enough people out there determined enough not to let bygones be bygones. All sorts of problems will anyway arise if Obama gets to have charge of cleaning up GITMO. Watch the lawsuits roll.

John McCain was tortured, and knows it is wrong. Yet, while giving lip service to banning torture, he has condoned the Bush administration’s use of torture.

OT DOW down 514.45 – 2200 mass layoffs (50 or more per company) in September compared with 500 in August

heh.

great work in response to great evil.

Dugg your Digg ratfood! Thanks for opening it up!
I can’t wait for the summons and Arrests under a Obama DOJ who will be doing the Peoples LAW enforcement. No matter what Bush Does or proclaims this administration needs to be investigated and every crime brought before the forces of the People’s Justice. And let
Justice do it work on those who misused their power to violate our most sacred precepts that WE DON NOT Torture NO Mater WHAT!! It is an insult to the American Way of justice!

I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m sure Obama doesn’t condone any of the crimes committed by the current administration but I don’t believe prosecuting the people responsible makes his list of priorities.

Dr. Murphy — I did this for you, you know…
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/865

McCain doesn’t have any genuine principles. On the torture issue, he folded like a cheap suit, then he had alterations made and sold the suit to Palin for $5,000, which is how he will balance the budget after he is elected president.

OT

Study: Coverage of McCain Much More Negative Than That of Obama
By Howard Kurtz

Are you shocked? Me too. Here’s another,

Study: Coverage of sunrises determines Much more negative coverage of sun rises in west theory.

Is Howard Kurtz confusing fair criticism in reporting with bias in reporting? It think so.

The American people are rejecting McCain politics of personal destruction. Kurtz is late to the party. He and Scheiffer and Brokaw are are the bus – “Hey, no fair! Why would you say that about an honorable guy like McCain.”

I know, I know, somewhere some wingnut is once again going to denounce ole’ Pat for going after a criminal for perjury when that criminal lies about some other crime, the prosecution of which is blocked by a legal technicality.

“There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station,” said U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald in a news release. “There is no place for perjury and false statements in federal lawsuits. No person is above the law, and nobody — even a suspected murderer — is beneath its protection.”

Boy he’s good, isn’t he? I hope all the democrats celebrating a victory on Nov 4 hear these words now and think, we need to fix this sad chapter in American history effectively with accountability.

I don’t think any wingnut will come to this officer’s defense. They just realized they can’t be the Joe McCarthy party and they’re figuring out they can’t be the torture party either. War party it is.

OT:

I am getting really tired of the media trying to make this race seem closer than it is: Today’s recent headline:

AP Poll: Candidates running nearly even

I am not going to provide the link because I do not feel they deserve the traffic. It is one of the most emailed stories listed on Yahoo right now.

The Poll is flawed includes results of last Thursday throuh Sunday. And the only way they could make it look even is if they used their methodology of “likely” voters. Amongst registered voters the poll still showed Obama up by 10.

I think the media folks are worried that the American people know this is a done deal and that they will be tuning out and watching the World Series and they will lose eyeballs. Poor Poor AP trying to keep their ratings up.

Good for him on this case, but I don’t really see how his quote jives with either the Salah case (which made some nice case law for letting torture testimony from hooded, identity concealed torturers into evidence – case law I’m sure we’ll see used in the future) or with a DOJ that has been knowingly advocating FOR torture for the last 6 years or so. Child disappearances, US based torture of US citizens, infection of the US military with torture – Fitzgerald makes the point that no one in Chitown should judge current members of law enforcement by what Burge did and he’s right on that.

They should, however, judge current members of law enforcement for what has been done over the last 6 years and is being done, right now.

The whole Gitmo torture thing is going to be a very hard issue to fix.

Yep. And with lawsuits now re: the Uighurs, with Gov taking the position Hamdan can’t be released at the end of his “sentence”, with the nuts and bolts of the stories of 80 yo cripples shipped to GITMO for interrogation experimentation, etc. –

well, even though neither McCain nor Obama has shown any indication that they will ever try to right any wrongs re: innocent people tortured and disappeared, apparently Bush has decided his ass is best covered if he creates as much chaos as possible at GITMO before leaving office, in the hopes that a future administration will find things in such horrific shape that they won’t be able to close down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10…..gitmo.html

Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration officials
…
Mr. Bush adopted the view of his most hawkish advisers that closing Guantánamo would involve too many legal and political risks to be acceptable

Besides, this way Bush (and Addington and Goldsmith and Yoo et al) can get “validation” And after all, is it really such a big deal to have old cripples used for torture experiments if, in the end, we can give a Fratboy and a Harvard law prof “validation?”

Mr. Cheney and his chief of staff, David S. Addington, have made it clear in the internal discussions this year that keeping Guantánamo open under a new president would validate the administration’s decisions dealing with terrorists, the officials said.

And showing that the NYT has plenty of Judy Millers still available to the WH, we ;earn from the reporter, Steven Myers, that

Closing Guantánamo would most likely mean abandoning prosecutions against some detainees and risking the release of others who still pose a threat to the United States and its allies.

No attribution, no counterpoint.

And golly, Dept of Homeland Sec, headed by Chertoff – who also conducted the criminal reviews and took the torture field trip to GITMO and gave big thumbs up to the torture – is fighting just as hard as DOJ to keep innocent detainees, purchased and experimented on for year, forever in a little black box.

That official and others said that officials from the Department of Homeland Security, along with the Justice Department, have argued most vigorously for keeping Guantánamo open, largely because a ruling like the Uighur case could result in foreign fighters being freed into American communities.

“The federal courts have an absolute right to release these people, but the court didn’t say where, and what does that mean, to release them,” the senior official said.

Chertoff should breathe easy – after all, the dismissal of el-Masri’s case shows our courts could give a rats ass who the loyal Bushies bought, sold, tortured or even killed. The Wecht case pretty much shows what happens to someone who mentions homicide.

Yoo validated Cheney’s Law articulated by Addington. Addington was the author of all the presidential signing statements, as well. All three should be in the dock.

One of the things we noticed during the Libby coverarge was how Pat seemed to use public documents and public statements to say things that operated on several levels.

This act SHOWS us how you do accountability for torture. Leading by example, I’m glad someone still knows how to do that

At his press conference on October 28, 2005, announcing Libby’s indictment, Fitzgerald said this:

” . . . I think people might not understand this, we as prosecutors and FBI agents, have to deal with false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury all the time. And the Department of Justice charges those statutes all the time.

When I was in New York working as a prosecutor, we brought those cases because we realize that the truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.”

A stunning statement of faith in the rule of law.

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/…..erence.pdf

That’s a bit of my point/ If you hew to first principles (like, torture is wrong) and believe in the rule of law (like, no one is above the law and everyone is entitled to the protection of the law)

You end up with breathtaking sane responses to insane cruetly

Thanks for the post LHP

Here’s an excerpt from a forum on Religion & the Death Penalty at the University of Chicago on January 25, 2002:

http://www.pewforum.org/deathp…..cript3.php

“QUESTION: Hi, this is a comment for Justice Scalia. My name is David Bates. I’m a formerly incarcerated individual, served ten years in prison, was falsely accused of a crime, tortured, beaten. I’m worried because this seems more like a joke. You have innocent people on death row right now who have been forced to sign confessions, who have been tortured, suffocated and beaten, and it’s like this is a tea party here. I’m scared that you’re a justice. I’m honest. I’m scared. I’m worried.

JUSTICE SCALIA: And your question, sir?

QUESTION: This is going to be a comment. I’m saying I know personally there are several people on death row who are there because of forced confessions, who have been tortured and suffocated, and that needs to be addressed.

JUSTICE SCALIA: You should call somebody about that and have it investigated, sir. Do not keep it to yourself. Take it to the police. “

Since the police are the torturers, there are only two logical inferences one can draw from this exchange — Scalia is incredibly cruel, or Scalia is a fool.

I don’t believe he is a fool.

Done, thanks for the link.

As an editor here at the Chicago Reader, the alt-weekly that originally broke the story, I can say that people in Chicago are glad that Burge will see justice. But the mayor–who as state’s attorney turned a blind eye to the allegations–still remains unencumbered by the scandal. If you live here, that’s still a very raw point:
http://blogs.chicagoreader.com…..ice-chief/

I’d also like to somewhat selfishly note the work of my former colleague John Conroy on the scandal; he broke the story and stuck with it for almost two decades. If it wasn’t for him (and the death-row pardons of George Ryan, which kicked off the civil lawsuits in which Burge is alleged to have perjured himself), this might not have gone anywhere. Here’s a full record of his articles:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/policetorture/

His book on torture, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People, is also a remarkable read.