The unclassified version of a report on the war in Afghanistan was finally published for public viewing last Friday. The report is by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a seventeen-year Army veteran who just returned from his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. It asserts military leaders in Afghanistan have lost much of their integrity and have routinely distorted the truth of the war.

General Stanley McChrystal told journalist Michael Hastings that he wanted to be on the cover of Rolling Stone and so he was. The resulting story—describing an alcohol fueled dinner in Paris and the General’s staff mocking the Obama Administration—ended McChrystal’s tour as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan and his military career.

If the government authorizes the denial of contraceptives to the employees of particular institutions, then it’s the government denying that health care, not the institutions. Wavering Democrats and Republicans, too, should stop and think about that. Acting overtly to deny certain health care benefits to a subset of American citizens is immoral. It’s also stupid.

The US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is set to rehear a civil suit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today. The suit, brought by Donald Vance, a US navy veteran and former defense contractor, and Nathan Ertel, also a former defense contractor, alleges Rumsfeld is responsible for “intentional mistreatment” that occurred when they were tortured in an American-run prison in Iraq for nearly one hundred days. It’s one of several cases brought against Rumsfeld, all of which have been dismissed to avoid courts interfering with the “war on terror.”

What could possibly make a human being torture another human being?

That’s a question that, as a young boy, I recall asking my grandparents—Holocaust survivors—after they described to me in vivid detail the torture they and other members of my extended family were subjected to by the Nazis during World War II.

It’s a question I returned to earlier this year when I had the opportunity to interview a veteran of the US Army Reserves who was torn up about the torture he says he witnessed and participated in against some “war on terror” detainees while serving as a guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. [That guard, Pfc. Albert Melise, has since been barred from reenlistment for speaking to me.]

In commemorating World AIDS Day, it’s good to take a look at where we stand. A lot of releases are hitting my inbox today, including several from the White House. First, a frank look at the epidemic that airs on public TV today.

Oligarchs hate that financial transactions tax, and they have senior administration officials in high places to protect their wealth from any tax, no matter how small.

My avatar on this post reflects the fact that I’m one of those purported “Cheetos-stained pajamas-wearing bloggers living in a basement” people that earn the scorn in some quarters of the establishment LGBT world. You know, the folks that believe that citizen journalists apparently do nothing for the movement except but sit in our PJs on our plump @sses, and criticize fill-in-the-blank hard working people in the movement doing “real work” to advance equality. And it goes without saying that said bloggers just don’t know anything about doing deals inside the Beltway either. And when we do make a difference, it’s rarely acknowledged because it would mean we’re actually part of the movement.

Race infuses American politics and society in such toxic ways that we need more (and better) public engagement on the topic. But is criticism by progressives of Obama presumptively infused with at least some racism? Three essays.

Just a few years ago, the national debate over the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, indefinite detention, secret renditions and other legal elements of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror” happened openly in American courtrooms and in the daily newspapers. Increasingly, those debates have receded into the rearview mirror as we content ourselves with the illusion that these issues are no longer urgent, or no longer affect us. In his thoughtful new book, Habeas Corpus After 9/11, Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall University School of Law, reminds us that these and other legal innovations in the War on Terror are neither resolved, nor isolated, nor benign. We are still living in the legal universe that was constructed on the fly after 9/11. We just don’t want to admit it.