Miami thinker lays out a tough argument on torture and the Bush administration

Michael Froomkin, law professor at the University of Miami, has been writing extremely pointedly on torture for quite a while, and his argument now is honed to perfection. It’s on his superb blog, discourse.net, and here’s the first paragraph:

An important part of the war crimes defense strategy employed by US torturers has been to plead advice of counsel. This modern version of the ‘just following orders’ defense has had two strands. Both are unraveling.

Read it and become wise. Takes only a few minutes. Are the judges listening?

Did you see that? – objections to the torture memo were suppressed. As in Watergate, it’s the coverup that is fatal.

I’m reading this after having had my poor brain assaulted by Sean Hannity and Oliver North this evening. It was, as usual, via the car radio and I was driving, so I made no notes, and what follows is mere paraphrasing. Hannity let convicted felon North rip with raving: That what Obama is doing will be the absolute end of the United States, that this will lead to the collapse of the intelligence services and the military, and all morale will crumble, and on and on.

Any wingnut listening out there must hear the trumpets calling: Rise up, take arms. Don’t they understand the drive of their words? Violence.

A coup by John Stewart clobbers Palin, Rove, O'Reilly, Hannity, Morris, McCain adviser

Sorry I can't make the usual video image appear. Blogger software quite perverse today, but click on the link to see the coup.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

Thanks to Markos of DailyKos for showing this and also pointing out that Rove was wrong (actually, lying) to say Wasilla is second-largest in Alaska -- more like fourth.

Fox attacks countered

Your blogger is a sucker for these fine videos by Brave New Films that try to counter the ridiculous crap on Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity etc.

Fight the smears

This is part of our work in this election season. Fighting the smears. I am glad to report that the Obama campaign is not waiting for sometime close to the election to start confronting the lies that abound already on the internet and right-wing fulminatin' radio.

Click on this:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fightthesmearshome/

It takes you to where the truth will combat the lies.

And if you lose the link or forget, do a search for Obama and "fight the smears" and it will pop up.

I was moved into this by browsing a little in DailyKos this morning, where I happened upon this item about a Tennessee Democrat who's dubious about Obama.

Oh, yes, Sean Hannity is hammering on this. I've heard Hannity repeatedly nasaling this topic in recent weeks. It ascended from the Hannity depths to the point that Obama was asked about it during a debate in April, and our current ally Hillary Clinton wondered about it, too. So this is not just one Tennessee Democrat and Sean Hannity, this is up around the top of the media pyramid, and it will never go away. There, you read it here first. It will never go away.

I note that this isn't covered yet on Fight the Smears. It is a smear and it deserves a better response than what Obama said when asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulus if there was a problem in his knowing William Ayers, a onetime member of the Weather Underground.

His response, from one of many sources you will find if you Google this topic.

Obama replied that Ayers was a neighbor and acquaintance. "The notion that . . . me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense," he said.

This isn't a bad response; rather, since Obama is such a great speaker, his message-shapers should work on this topic and produce the ultimate sentence to put down this nonsense.

My feeling is that we can emerge from this approaching mud bath of a campaign in better shape and with some of our prejudices and ignorances wrestled to the ground and pinned to the point of surrender. "Uncle!" Sean Hannity will cry, but only if the force of reason has been applied to him like that headache remedy, and we all can see that these smears are mere vaporous distractions from the business of fixing this country.

UPDATE: Talk about smears! Take a look at the comments section after the Miami Herald finally published something about the Jefferson-Jackson dinner that rocked the Westin Diplomat Hotel on Saturday. I couldn't tell exactly when this story got on line, but the comments started early Sunday and were continuing Monday afternoon, and all the canards about Obama popped up here and there. It will not be easy to get through all this, but we must.

And I'm still looking in the printed Herald editions of Sunday and Monday for a report from the Jefferson-Jackson dinner. Nothing in the papers I got in Miami Beach. I couldn't find it online looking through the Herald's section called Political Currents. Finally, in the Naked Politics blog, I found the link in the paragraph above. Anyone else have trouble finding a report? I know the Herald is firing a ton of people (250 announced today) but I saw the Herald at the JJ.

Analysis of YearlyKos

Sorry for the break in posts to the blog. I'm on a road trip visiting friends and not always able to access the internet. Here in Ohio with rain on the roof and wireless access, some info is pouring in. Friends relayed this nugget from the Washington Post. I'll do some scoping around myself and hope to add other links here later to help analyze the YearlyKos meeting.

Meanwhile I can report from many more hours listening to the right wing on the car radio that their hatred of the blogosphere (which they now conflate with the Democratic Party, or perhaps vice versa) is not diminishing with the passage of a few days since the YearlyKos ended. We are accused of hating the United States, of "wanting to lose" this war. Hannity seems to be leading the charge on this, along with O'Reilly. No need to shut our mouths -- just be aware of incoming fire. It's further proof of the impact of the blogosphere.

And as to analyzing the impact of YearlyKos, what better than to see a report on the bar at the convention center hotel: hardly any beer left! With photographic evidence in this link. That's Markos himself in the photo. We had fun while upsetting the wingnuts.

UPDATE: One of the unexpected turns of YearlyKos, to my mind, was the strong link with the Teamsters Union that showed up on Saturday afternoon. Here's a link looking at that event and the next step that could be taken. Question: are our Miami-Dade schoolbus drivers unionized?