GOP Master Debate 2011

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The man in the back said everyone attack and it turned into a ball room blitz

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Tonight at 6pm Pacific (9pm Zuccotti) FOX is airing what is allegedly the final GOP debate of 2011. For that we can be truly thankful. If you want a pretty good preview, go here.

I’m not going to live-blog it because it’s too much work and I don’t plan to stay sober that long watch the whole thing. I’ll be flipping back and forth between the debate and White Christmas.

The debate is on FOX, so no one can complain about the librul media playing gotcha. But FOX represents the GOP establishment, so Newt better watch his back.

The conventional wisdom is that Newt is dropping in the polls. That’s not surprising considering the all-out attack that’s been taking place the past week or so. Newt and Ron Paul have been around all year and now at the last minute people are remembering why they are bad candidates. I wonder why?

The fact is this whole year has been kabuki – a staged race with Mitt Romney the prearranged winner. That’s why TPTB worked so hard to keep Sarah out.

The problem is nobody likes Mitt except TPTB.

I’m voting for Captain Spaulding.

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Bradley Manning Pre-Trial Hearing Tomorrow

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The Article 32 hearing tomorrow is the equivalent of a civilian preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to hold a trial. I’ll be shocked if the court rules there isn’t enough evidence. On the other hand I won’t be surprised if a plea bargain is reached. If an Article 32 hearing is like a civilian prelim then the defense won’t have much opportunity to present evidence or cross examine witnesses. That’s what trials are for.

Manning has been in custody since May 2010 and is facing a lot more years in Fort Leavenworth if he is convicted. I have yet to hear anyone claim he is innocent of turning over classified documents to Wikileaks, only that his actions were justified.

That defense is unlikely to fly in a court-martial where the judge and jury are all career military personnel. In fact, the judge might exclude evidence of his motives, because under the law they are irrelevant. If such evidence is allowed it may be contradicted by evidence that Manning was merely a disgruntled soldier seeking to retaliate for the way he was being treated.

Manning was originally held in maximum security at Quantico, but was transferred to medium security at Fort Leavenworth earlier this year.

(h/t Verum Serum)

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Martial Law in the USA, Gitmo-style

Levin, McCain, and the sharpie that redacted habeas corpus

Maybe this belong on Tinfoil Tuesday, but I better post it now before my email addy gets submitted to the Obama campaign and I win all-expense vacay to sunny Gitmo.

So, a year before 2012 elections, a few months after Dems were “joking” about canceling Congressional elections, and just when Obama is saying he didn’t know how bad things were and therefore he needs more time to fix everything, Senate passes a law that legalizes locking up American citizens on US Soil indefinitely.

How bad is it? According to Greenwald, this is what it does:

(1) mandates that all accused Terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military rather than in the civilian court system; it also unquestionably permits (but does not mandate) that even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil accused of Terrorism be held by the military rather than charged in the civilian court system (Sec. 1032);

(2) renews the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) with more expansive language: to allow force (and military detention) against not only those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and countries which harbored them, but also anyone who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” (Sec. 1031); and,

(3) imposes new restrictions on the U.S. Government’s ability to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo (Secs. 1033-35).

So, if you are accused of being a terrorist, supporting a terrorist, or looking like a terrorist, the military is required to lock you up. Indefinitely. And if they happen to throw you in Gitmo, good luck getting even a sympathetic congress critter to get you out.

And as anyone who has been through airport security recently knows, the TSA has shown us who these suspected American terrorists are – 80 year old grannies in walkers, six year old kids, and anyone in between.

This is a law so bad that all the people who really fight terrorism are against it:

In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.

So why did it pass? It is typical of the party in power to keep grabbing more power, but what explains the GOP support? Are they just automatically hawkish beyond all common sense? Is it true that Darth Cheney lobbied for it? And will they let me tweet from my Gitmo cell?

 

Cold and dark open thread

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It’s cold and dark and I just barely woke up.

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