1) President Obama had a busy day yesterday.
From Dana Priest of the Washington Post….
The military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.
Elections have consequences. In the case of Obama's presidency following Bush's……elections have significant consequences. Obama did the right thing in closing American gulags and sh*tcanning "every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001".
Every order and opinion on interrogations since 9-11. That's a big wow.
2) jimmy james mentioned recently in a comment that perennial Villager Peggy Noonan, columnist for the Washington Post, and former speechwriter for Mr. Ronald Reagan, didn't think Barack Obama's Inaugural address was overly critical toward the outgoing George W. Bush. Here's part of jimmy's tongue in cheek comment…
"Rev, you are way off base here. I just heard Peggy Noonan say on The Television Machine that Obama's speech was not a repudiation of Bush." Link
From a New York Times column by Peter Baker reprinted in today's AB Journal….first, whining from Karen Hughes, George Bush's surrogate mother….
"There were a few sharp elbows that really rankled and I felt were not as magnanimous as the occasion called for," Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush confidant, said in an interview. "He really missed an opportunity to be as big as the occasion was and, frankly, as gracious as President Bush was as he left office."
Then this….
Dan Bartlett, another top adviser, used similar language. "It was a missed opportunity to bring some of the president's loyal supporters into the fold," he said. Marc Thiessen, the chief White House speechwriter until this week, added: "It was an ungracious inaugural. It was pretty clear he was taking shots." Link
"Pretty clear he was taking shots"…….shots Peggy Noonan did not hear nor recognize. The most loyal Bushies thought Obama's address was "ungracious", "a missed opportunity", Obama guilty of "taking shots" at the former president. The closest of Bush's confidants agree that The Reverend had it right all along.
3) For years I have been blogging about the extensive crimes of the Bush-Cheney administration, but specifically their blanket violation of the 4th amendment which protects Americans from government's spying on them without judicial approval.
It isn't news to me that the Bush administration had ordered the construction of a "mirror" AT&T communications hub in San Francisco years ago through which ALL American communications were being monitored. Not just, you know, Islamofascists…..like we were told….but ALL Americans…..and ALL communications. The worst part is that it all started BEFORE 9-11. Please consider this piece from last night's Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC…..
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Former NSA agent, Russell Tice, whom the Bush people have been stalking for awhile now, came out publicly Wednesday night on MSNBC's Countdown, followed by a second appearance last night. Those appearances can be seen here and here.
Tice gives firsthand information that the Bush administration, through the NSA's ongoing program of vacuuming up all American communications without judicial approval and in violation of FISA laws, specifically TARGETED U.S. news organizations and journalists.
This extensive criminal-spying behavior, when found out about in 2004 by Bush's own employees at the FBI and the Justice Department, resulted in threats of resignation by those same high level employees if the criminality wasn't stopped.
Enraged by all this, Bush went after whistleblower Thomas Tamm, the Justice Department lawyer who told the New York Times' James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who subsequently told Americans about Bush's illegal spying program. The NY Times and the journalists in question were, undoubtedly according to Tice's new revelation, already being targeted by the very Bush program the two journalists were blowing the whistle on.
This is only the beginning of what's sure to be an avalanche of details-to-come revealing the numerous and extensive crimes of the past administration.
