What a Saturday: all village elders have predicted Sarah Palin was the force to be reckoned with for the 2012 Republican nomination and that Barack Obama was in trouble.

Arrrrr. Thats right matey, teh pirates be back. It was just last April that US flagged ship the Maersk Alabama was seized by Somali pirates causing a five day standoff finally resolved when Navy snipers took out the pirates which by then had the Maersk captain hostage in a lifeboat. The Maersk, its captain, crew and cargo were all intact and saved. That was then, this is now.

When the government possesses videotape evidence of the torture of subjects under its dominion and control, there is only one reason to destroy the tapes. U.S. District Judge Richard Dorr understood this and dealt with such a case effectively; yet we wait and wait for Special Prosecutor John Durham to do the same in the case of other destroyed torture tapes.

Cook County Illinois is the gift that keeps on giving. From the aggressive G-Men of the Roaring Twenties to the Red Squads to the original Richard Daley Machine to the Burge Torture Scandals, Chicago and Cook County have a certain reputation for political corruption, police brutality and and prosecutorial misconduct.

Newsweek enables South Carolina's Gov. Mark Sanford's need for attention, spotting him as Sanford attempts to pull a double-pretzel of logic. But will Sanford stick the landing as he performs this gymnastic feat, making credible Ayn Rand's dull and fictional lectures on morality and immorality? Oh sure - and Argentina is at the end of the Appalachian Trail...

Jeffrey S. White, judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, has entered a new order denying the government's request for a stay pending appeal in the telecommunications companies' documents FOIA case brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its efforts to investigate the government's warrantless wiretapping. And Judge White did it before the government ever really asked for a stay!

In a sea of subterfuge, secrecy and flat out dishonesty spanning not only the Administration of George W. Bush, but, sadly, that of Barack Obama as well, one blockbuster voluntary governmental release of foundational documents in the critical war on terror legal areas of the torture and warrantless wiretapping programs stands out. The April 16, 2009 disclosure by the Obama Administration of the never-before-seen secret memos describing, in graphic detail, the brutal interrogation techniques used by the CIA, their contractors and other govenmental and quasi-governmental actors under the Bush administration’s “war on terror.”

The case against convicted Lockerbie/Pan Am 103 bombing suspect Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was always thin, at best. Now there is evidence of a concealed collusion of the Scottish Crowne prosecution team and US authorities to effectively buy Shopkeeper Gauchi's testimony against Megrahi.