Jason Leopold has posted an incredible interview with David Hicks, formerly Detainee 002 at Guantanamo. In April 2007, Hicks, an Australian, was released from Guantanamo and sent back to serve nine months in jail in Australia, having been forced to plead guilty to “providing material support to terrorism.” This is his first interview, and Truthout has posted it along with an article by Leopold with more background on Hicks, which includes interviews with some of the guards who watched him.

In a pre-dawn raid, police in Bahrain have moved into Pearl Square where protesters have been gathering, with reports of at least one dead in a hail of bullets and tear gas.

So today (February 16) the current governor of the state in which I reside (there is no ef’fing way I’m going to lay any claim of ownership to this person and call him my governor) decided that he would follow in the footsteps of his fellow first term Republican governors of Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Jersey and reject federal rail funds for Florida.

Just as we learned that cutting taxes does not raise revenues and magically balance budgets, so we will learn (I know, many of us already know this) that cutting jobs and killing programs will not create more jobs.

A Congressional hearing last week detailed how JPMorgan Chase illegally foreclosed on service members while they served on active duty overseas, in violation of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. They also charged mortgage interest rates above the cap for active-duty military personnel.

The big bank went out of their way to fix the problem yesterday, knowing that abusing service members could get you in big trouble in this country, and lead to further scrutiny of their abusive practices.

The breaking news out of the California Supreme Court is that they WILL entertain a full merits consideration of the question certified to them by the 9th Circuit in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

We don’t have a deficit problem, we have a corruption problem that happens to increase our deficit.

Something truly incredible is happening in Wisconsin. Yesterday the protests against Governor Scott Walker’s bid to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights grew to about 13,000 before it was all done. The one public hearing on the bill lasted 17 hours, and Democrats picked it up again to continue to receive public comments. The Madison School District closed all schools because of what amounts to a wildcat strike by local teachers.

I just got word of the latest numbers. THIRTY THOUSAND people are out at the state capitol today.

During this recent debate about the deficit and cutting programs that help regular people, it is important to keep in mind that not only are the oil companies receiving massive tax subsidies directly from the government, but, thanks to lack oversight and bad lease agreements, the federal government is likely getting a far smaller share of the domestic oil revenue than it should.

One of the more glaring possible outcomes in the grand bargain would be a plan to “reform” Social Security for the long term.

Republicans want to hide behind the President in doing anything that cuts Social Security or Medicare. Surely they will turn right around the next election and accuse Democrats for implementing the cuts; consistency ain’t their strong suit. But it’s crucial to them that Democrats, not Republicans, kick off that conversation. The White House is basically resisting that push, and wants everybody to jump in the boat at the same time. This has been their longtime theory of governing – let Congress take the lead, say nothing definitive publicly, work behind the scenes. But the end result is exactly the same.