In a series of posts, I will be reviewing a series of disagreements that have arisen between he and I (from the legality, to the effectivness to the respect for the rule of law and many others, note also my apology for unfairly questioning Mr. Taylor's integrity) regarding his most recent article in the National Journal on torture (I wrote about that article here and other articles he authored or coauthored (see here and here) on this issues pertinent to the discussion. I want to start by praising Mr. Taylor, not burying him. In his most recent article, Taylor wrote that:

[President Obama] should commission an expert review of what interrogators learned from the high-value detainees both before and after using brutal methods and whether those methods appear to have saved lives. He should also foster a better-informed public debate by declassifying as much of the relevant evidence as possible, as former Vice President Cheney and other Republicans have urged.”

I am not sure that that is precisely what Vice President Cheney urged (Cheney wants certain documents HE selected declassified.) But to Taylor's credit, he wants it all declassified. As do I. Kudos to Mr. Taylor for his call for a Truth Commission. I'll explore other issues raised by Mr. Taylor in subsequent posts.

Speaking for me only

Kudos to Palm Beach County Judge Laura Johnson, who recognized what voters in Riviera Beach did not: fashion statements are in fact statements, messages about who we are, definitions of our personal autonomy. And frankly, notwithstanding the desire of 72 percent of Riviera Beach's voters for fashion conformity, it ain't none of their darn business if (presumably younger) city residents want to wear saggy pants.

The judge overturned Riviera Beach's saggy pants ordinance, which had prohibited anyone from wearing pants below the waist exposing skin or underwear. ... Offenders were cited with a $150 fine for the first offense and $300 for the second offense, considered a misdemeanor.

The ordinance was enforced only about 20 times (including the arrest of Julius Hart, whose public defender challenged the ordinance after his client spent the night in jail), which suggests that the police weren't ticketing plumbers. Do we really want to give the police discretion to decide whose below-the-waist skin is offensive? More to the point, do we really want fashion-sensitive voters deciding how we can or can't dress? How would Riviera Beach residents like it if the government banned those ridiculously huge wrap-around sunglasses that seniors love to wear?

While torture apologists like Stuart Taylor and, sadly, Obama Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, "know" that torture worked, it turns out the CIA never evaluated the efficacy of its torture techniques:

The CIA used an arsenal of severe interrogation techniques on imprisoned Al Qaeda suspects for nearly seven years without seeking a rigorous assessment of whether the methods were effective or necessary, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The failure to conduct a comprehensive examination occurred despite calls to do so as early as 2003. That year, the agency's inspector general circulated drafts of a report that raised deep concerns about waterboarding and other methods, and recommended a study by outside experts on whether they worked.

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Stuart Taylor, professional right wing shill masquerading as a "centrist," says:

[T]here is a body of evidence suggesting that brutal interrogation methods may indeed have saved lives, perhaps a great many lives -- and that renouncing those methods may someday end up costing many, many more.

Of course Taylor is lying. And when I say he is lying, I mean he is telling a deliberate falsehood. But he has been doing that for a long time. Here's the trouble - Obama Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has told the same lie. What do we do about Blair?

Speaking for me only

Protesters clashed with police officers outside World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington this morning. As usual, the police got the better of it.

Authorities used batons and pepper spray when activists tried to march onto a prohibited street, and several people were pushed to the ground by police. ... "This was very excessive," said the Rev. Don Thompson, 73, who was observing the protest on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild. "They didn't give us a warning to get off the street."

Police say they were "unexpectedly swarmed" by protesters. Perhaps the officers weren't paying attention to the direction the protesters were walking.

It seems more likely than ever that the campaign against Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) that we have seen unfold, day after day, principally in the publication CQ, is emanating from former CIA Director Porter Goss and his acolytes. Today Goss goes public with his campaign, and adds Speaker Pelosi to his list of targets. (See also Marcy Wheeler.) And now is revealed one of his principal motives - defending torture and his involvement in it. Goss writes:

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

What nonsense from Goss. I wonder if there was a line item in the budget for "torture" in the CIA budget? Could Goss point that line item out for us please? More . . .

While most people will focus on Dick Cheney being proven wrong, again, my concern is with the guy in office now, Obama Administration Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who strangely (or not so strangely) gets a pass from the Left blogs (see Greg Sargent, Steve Benen and Media Matters on the subject) for his statements about the effectiveness (and, in the "dark days after 9/11," as opposed to the "lear days of April 2009," the understandability of ordering torture - who could "find fault" for what was done then asks Blair) Imagine if Jane Harman had said what Blair said? They'd be hanging her from a sour apple tree. In any event, both Dennis Blair and Dick Cheney are proven wrong (and Jane Harman right) by this report:

The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

Cheney will continue to lie about this. Will Dennis Blair? Will anyone on the Left ask about what Dennis Blair thinks of this?

Speaking for me only

Paul Krugman:

[T]he only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible. . . [T]he fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.

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Glenn Greenwald writes:

Bush-defending opponents of investigations and prosecutions think they've discovered a trump card: the claim that Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller and Jane Harman were briefed on the torture programs and assented to them.

An inconvenient truth to both Republicans and Harman hating liberals - Harman opposed torture (see also Marcy Wheeler):

President Obama continues his zigging and zagging on the torture issue - now joined by Senate Democratic leadership:

Senate Democratic leaders, joining forces with the Obama White House, said they would resist efforts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats to create a special commission to investigate the harsh interrogation methods that the Bush administration approved for terrorism suspects. At a meeting of top Democrats at the White House Wednesday night, President Obama told Congressional leaders that he did not want a special inquiry, which he said would potentially steal time and energy from his ambitious policy priorities, and could mushroom into a wider distraction by looking back at other aspects of the Bush years.

Emphasis supplied.) Just yesterday, Obama said the opposite:

President Obama today said he is not opposed to some sort of "further accounting of what took place during this period" . . .

Who knows what Obama thinks on these issues anymore. Every day brings a new position.

Speaking for me only

What I find particularly disturbing about the reaction in some quarters to the Jane Harman incident is their inability to separate their disdain for Harman with the merits of what appears to have occurred. Consider this reporting from The Hill:

“This appears to have been by-the-book,” said Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation [. . .]

Apparently Bankston thinks the selective leaking information gleaned through wiretaps is "by the book." A less vindictive civil libertarian disagrees:

What happens to the children of the undocumented arrested in workplace immigration raids like the one in Carthage, MO?

The New York Times reports they are being given away to foster families.

One of the 136 illegal immigrants detained in the raid was Carlos’s mother, Encarnación Bail Romero, a Guatemalan. A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.

Truly a depressing story. [More...]