shock my conscience ?!?!? my dear Swopa, I can’t even read most of this material. I’ve been a zombie all day after reading about the “ghost detainee”

And I send mad props to all who can and utilize their intestinal fortitude towards justice

This may not only be the best way to bring about torture prosecutions, but also will help solve the underlying problem of letting moral lepers be elected in the first place

my prediction;

[rove to bush/cheney];

have no fear, shiny object to the rescue

to which we will all be shocked and it will distract us from this long enough to lose site of what needs to be done

mark those words

I think we should start having candle light vigils for the tortured and maimed.

I won’t read the memos, just as I won’t go to violent movies, if I can help it. I hope that the people who are able to wade through these circles of hell are so outraged that we end up with a special prosecutor that brings these goons to justice. If nothing happens, then shame on us.

p.s.

about an hour ago, Congressman Jerrold Nadler called on POTUS to appoint a Special Prosecutor.

this Big Orange diary covers it w/ a statement from Congressman Conyers.

link

Something will happen. One way or another.

we keep on talking about the failure of morality in the GOP.. Have we considered the possibility that these twisted fracks actually believe that the torture of people they consider to be enemies of the state is actually a moral mandate, just as some Islamic fundamentalists might believe that beheadings and surgical mutilation are demanded by religious sanction? I think we might be giving them too much credit when we say that they lack a moral compass. More likely their compass just points in the wrong direction, and their sense of morality actually mandates cruelty, war and theft. There’s every indication that Pinochet genuinely thought that torturing people to root out communism was service to the patrimony of Chile.

Impeach
Bybee
Now

No need to wait for a special prosecutor, or Spanish War Crimes trials. Just impeach him and get him off the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Now.

At the very least, make those who shamefully support his position stand up and proclaim why.

How does one go about impeaching a federal judge? Who does it?

The House impeaches and the Senate convicts.

Sounds like W’s WH cronies watched to much ‘Fear Factor’. Too bad for bush/cheney that it wasn’t just a tv show but real life with real consequences.

More here:

“Article III federal judges” (as opposed to judges of some courts with special jurisdictions) serve “during good behavior” (often paraphrased as appointed “for life”). Judges hold their seats until they resign, die, or are removed from office. Although the legal orthodoxy is that judges cannot be removed from office except by impeachment by the House of Representatives followed by conviction by the Senate, several legal scholars, including William Rehnquist, Saikrishna Prakash and Steven D. Smith, have argued that the Good Behaviour Clause may, in theory, permit removal by way of a writ of scire facias filed before a federal court, without resort to impeachment.

Since the impeachment process requires a trial by the United States Senate, and since the constitutional provision concerning federal judges’ tenure cannot be changed without the ratifications of three-fourths of the states, federal judges have perhaps the best job security available in the United States. Moreover, the Constitution forbids Congress to diminish a federal judge’s salary. Twentieth-century experience suggests that Congress is generally unwilling to take time out of its busy schedule to impeach and try a federal judge until, after criminal conviction, he or she is already in prison and still drawing a salary, which cannot otherwise be taken away (see Nixon v. United States, a key Supreme Court case about Congress’s discretion in impeaching and trying federal judges).

So the same group that needs to grow a pair on prosecuting torture is who would do the impeaching. How do we start the groundswell?

(((((Teddy)))))

We are the ground swell. Many people are ready to move. This is the tipping point.
If not now, when?

You’re right, IMO.

My daughter married into a Hispanic family (Mexican, 2nd gen). One of her brothers in-law, whom I respect quite a bit (worked his way through College & making good bucks), got into an argument with me about torture a couple of months ago. His attitude was do what ever is necessary to protect the US & if innocents get hurt, killed or murdered he doesn’t care. In other respects he’s quite liberal. It’s a hard row to hoe, trying to get people worked up over torture; guess they think it only happens to others and so what.

I’m old enough to remember any TV shows that featured anything approaching torture was committed by the Bad Guys.

Example: Mission Impossible. The Barbara Bain character is captured and questioned with a lie detector. The Bad Guys determine that she is claustrophobic and they put her into some really narrow tunnel with a huge spider (I think). I could be wrong about teh spider but it still creeped me out.

I couldn’t imagine our guys doing that to anyone.

IMO, the same people that support torture will NEVER accept accountability/blame when it blows back on our service men & women.
Our collective job is clear – demand accountability and hang this around their necks like a dead chicken wired to an egg-suck dog.

It is not just about torture. It is about how they justified torture. They simply redefined it. They redefined the entire government. Someone is going to have to rebuild this democracy from the ground(swell) up.

We need to be worried about people like those two young women captured by the North Koreans. Why shouldn’t they feel free to torture our prisoners. They know that the Bushies would have done theirs in had we had any.

if ######### get hurt, killed or murdered he doesn’t care.

That’s just selfish.

Sorry. If people don’t have respect for human life and are happy to declare that, then I have no use for them.

I think the Senate Democrats should start a rumor – that Senate Republicans, led by Cornyn, are using the cloakroom to float a proclamation exonerating all Japanese who were convicted of war crimes after WWII.

Sorry if I missed an earlier discussion…is Obama basically leaving it all up to the Spaniards to convict any US citizens for war crimes??? Perhaps this is why the memos were released?

Am I being too generous?

I think the Spaniards are backing off their prosecutions.

Bush famously said out loud, in public at a press conference.

“Shocks the conscience, I mean what does that mean?”

That explains it all…a fish rots from the head down.

Compassionate conservatism in action.

-G

i DUGG IT

SO CAN YOU!

really? why? the banking crisis? some other unknown leverage?

You mean a shock like when your best childhood pal/sister dies at very young age and you’re only seven and then your parents decide to have another kid and it turns out to be a boy they love more than you? Is that a big deal?

Actually as I recall, The same action was taken by Spain against Pinocet , but the prosecution went forward despite the statement. It was in an earlier thread but will have to rely on another firepup to provide the link.
Obama can lean but the prosecution can go forward.

Guys, if the FOX Opinion blowhards and Far Right money machine can scare up 250,000 people to protest taxes that might not even exist, why can’t we motivate 2 million people to protest torture that we know needs to be prosecuted?

It’s one thing to sit here and type about it. We need to get out into the streets. We need to go to DC, get permits to gather in the Mall, protest as loud as possible to get Obama to WAKE UP AND GET THE JUSTICE DEPT TO START PROSECUTING CHENEY AND CO., and buy some ice cream at the local businesses for good measure. C’mon, let’s do this. I’m just one guy with a meager blog that gets seen by about 2-4 people a year. Can’t we get FDL, Kos, ObsidianWings, Andrew Sullivan, Greenwald, ThinkProgress, TPM, lord God all the other anti-torture advocates out there to JOIN UP and get a protest on? Hell, I’ll front the 50 bucks it takes to fill out the Permits form on the US Parks website.

C’mon, people. Let’s gather. Let’s protest. Let’s show the morality-blind GOP, the timid White House, and the whole world THAT THE UNITED STATES IS ALL ABOUT JUSTICE AGAIN. C’mon.

Saw something about that – Obama has talked with the Spanish President, possibly about leaning on the Judge.

it’s our patriotic duty to help brand them as the Party of Torture.

are you saying this is about partisan advantage and not about what kind of country we want to be?

hope not.

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3696

Hear, hear! Soonest.

dosido – when the torture info started coming out in 2002, i tried like hell to find people who cared about it. here in MA that meant talking mostly with Ds. i found no one who cared save people who were already active against the war in afghanistan

no one. family, work, neighbors…. no one.

edit to add: one childhood friend was the exception.

With Cornyn, this case may be more a propos:

From WaPo:
“In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners’ civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to “subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning.”

Have we considered the possibility that perhaps waterboarding is standard operating procedure in the prisons and police stations of his great state?

OK, wait – should the standard be that the truth is only the truth as long as political benefit (inadvertent or otherwise) does not result?

of course not. did you read the link?

Yes.
In anything resembling a realistic political scenario, do you imagine the husband of the Secretary of State being prosecuted?

Sounds like a plan to me. We need a date. We need a little time. Say five days. All we have to do is go back to our election networks and do it.

I just emailed someone in Sac who knows all of the progressive organizations. I am going to start getting in touch with people right now.

Yeah, sounds good. It also helps to have a major cable TV channel promoting it all day and all night for the total “spontaneous” thing to happen. /s

sorry. I know I’m being a buzzkill.

Frankly, I think many of the people who showed up to protest this week really are mad about some of the same things we are (like bank bailouts) and that outrage was redirected onto Obama…in addition to the total koolaid drinking koo koo for cocoa puffs whackjob with guns.

i don’t understand the relevance of that. the question i asked was on the claim that “it’s our patriotic duty to help brand them as the Party of Torture” when i consider it my patriotic duty instead to call for investigations into all evidence of gov sanctioned torture.

you rock!

April 20 is always a good date to speak out about torture etc.

sorry about my 42. just feeling pissy about this crap.

People did protest Gitmo and the war, etc. it didn’t get the full media amazement from MSM and that makes me just more than a little cranky.

Sounds good to me. Lets start.

The fact that you wouldn’t settle for one over the other is a personal choice. But you attached a partisan slant to Swopa’s point. And I don’t understand the relevance of that.

Maybe we can get Advil to sponsor a Day Against Torture.

advil for all your aches and pains…

bmaz front-paged!
BREAKING NEWS: Judge Vaughn Walker Keeps Al-Haramain Alive!

Reading the information in black and white, one may be sickened and disgusted. However, I don’t think anyone here is terribly surprised really, from what we knew about Dubya or Cheney.

Dubya was always a guy without a conscience. Cheney too. And we know that they and their cabal emulated Jack Bauer and 24. We know Cheney relished the idea of “going to the Dark Side”. We know that Dubya used to torture small animals. And that his parents, so queerly, shielded him from the death of his beloved sister. And his father – the murderous CIA operative. He, the wormy, browbeaten husband of Babs. She who can kill with a look from her lazer-beam eyes.

Bushco surrounded itself with creepy yes men on all sides.

And the inept Harry Reid and Chuck Shumer in our corner helped to appoint Bybee to high court.

i’m not fox news… but i’ve been trying to spread the word about this campaign:

100 Days to Close Guantanamo and End Torture

today is day 87.

april 30 will be day 100.

But you attached a partisan slant to Swopa’s point.

if a call to brand the GOP the party of torture isn’t partisan, then i don’t understand the meaning of the word “partisan”

i will add it to the list of words i don’t understand.

Not on everybody. The recipients are carefully chosed from selected minority groups.

Ask him if it was OK to torture Jesus Christ.
People who believe in him are supposed to emulate him, not his torturers.

I would say that making the GOP pay a political price for condoning torture will also solidify the victory within the Democratic party of those who oppose torture over those in the past who condoned it.

Thank you. While trying to say in 8 paragraphs what you just said in one, I gave up.

Why not throw the anvil at totalitarian-enablers like Pelosi, Reid, Feinstein, Rockefeller, etc. etc. etc.? It’s not much of a victory to shame Republicans who advocated torture loudly and clearly if Democrats who advocated it with a sly wink and a blind eye are still considered principled representatives of the American people.

Though the right is particularly noxious in their defense of torture, domestic spying and other actions that are characteristic of fascist states, the responsibility belongs to all in the ruling class that helped these programs along.

In short, selise @ 43 is right on the money, and Democrats crowing over their electees being slightly less tainted with the stink of tyranny are simply being childish. It makes me wonder even how much to trust principled progressives like Feingold and Kucinich who stay aligned with the Party of “Meh…?”

Plus:

That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with hanging the albatross of torture and totalitarianism around the necks of individuals, in government, politics, the media, etc., but making it a GOP/Democrats thing really doesn’t do anything to address the problem.

I don’t think I agree with that, Alex. Punishing individuals causes people to think the problem is gone when the individual leaves the scene.

When a party pays an ongoing price for the political actions of one or more individuals — for example, the GOP in California in the wake of Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant policies in the 1990s — that’s when those political actions stop.

And the rest of us are missing our Moral Marbles compass if there is no justice in this matter.