Desert Beacon: “It is extremely hard to have a rational discussion with a person who sincerely believes that if something can be imagined by a screenwriter it must necessarily be within the realm of possibility.”
Category Archives: Crime
Probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve read today
“We ask that you regard our long silence as a sign of the shock that your fate caused in us.”
In Our Name
“Gitmo will never close. That is a fantasy,” Begg said in a phone interview from his home in London. “I’ve stopped wishing for it. Even if it closes its doors, it will be only symbolic. The detainees who are still there will go somewhere else to be held and be treated possibly worse, and still not get their time in court. And Gitmo, in a way, will always be open. It will be in my memory, in my head, just like everyone else who experienced that hell.”
Freed detainee: ‘Gitmo will never close’
Honestly, there are days when I wish I could change my citizenship. I don’t recognize my country any more.
Protecting the brand
Thanks to Gidget Commando over at RQ’s place for this. Charles Pierce: The Brutal Truth about Penn State
There’s nothing that can happen to the university, or to the people sunk up to their eyeballs in this incredible moral quagmire, that’s worse than what happened to the children who got raped at Penn State. Good Lord, people, get up off your knees and get over yourselves.
There is something to be said, however, for looking at how it happened. Which is not the same thing as trying to figure out how it “could” have happened. The wonder is that it doesn’t happen more often.
(How many football coaches out there work with “at-risk” kids? How many shoes are there still to drop? Unfair? Ask one Bernard Law, once cardinal archbishop of Boston, if you can pry him out of his current position at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Clean Getaway in Rome.)
It happens because institutions lie. And today, our major institutions lie because of a culture in which loyalty to “the company,” and protection of “the brand” — that noxious business-school shibboleth that turns employees into brainlocked elements of sales and marketing campaigns — trumps conventional morality, traditional ethics, civil liberties, and even adherence to the rule of law. It is better to protect “the brand” than it is to protect free speech, the right to privacy, or even to protect children.
Go read it all.
The demon of error
It amazes me that the same people who have absolutely no trust in government to regulate businesses, collect taxes, provide services, etc, have absolute faith that government always gets it right when it comes to applying the death penalty. I oppose the death penalty because getting it wrong means never, ever, being able to get a do-over.
Further, the truly guilty should spend the rest of their natural lives behind bars. No visitors, no perqs, nada. True social banishment. Let’em wake up every morning remembering why they’re in that cell.
“[I am] haunted by the demon of error – error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.” -George Ryan, former Illinois Governor
Um, yeah, it does. All the damned time.
“This happens in third-world countries, not here,” Swagler said.
Has this guy been living on another planet? This shit is all too common in our “first-world” country.
My heart is breaking for my Carson City peeps.
When you’ve got no other excuse
Deflect by blaming the dirty fucking hippies.
Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.
What a crock of shit.
Not MY basic standards
I have Obama’s answer to my letter.
H/T emptywheel
With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.
Our basic standards?
You do not speak for me, Mr. Obama. This does not meet my basic standards.
From The American Conservative, for chrissake.
It doesn’t seem like the degrading treatment Pfc. Bradley Manning is being subjected to is improving. Antiwar.com’s Jason Ditz reports:
In the wake of announcing 22 additional charges against him, Pfc. Bradley Manning’s clothing was seized by the guards at the US Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, leaving him naked in his cell.
The seizure of Manning’s clothing was revealed by his lawyer, David E. Coombs, who said Manning’s clothing was seized at 5:00 AM and he was ordered to stand naked outside of his cell. Reports indicate his clothes weren’t returned for at least 7 hours.
Brig officials have confirmed that nightly forced nudity will continue indefinitely.
For more background on the inhumane conditions of Manning’s confinement, see this Glenn Greenwald post from December 15. Manning has now been held in solitary confinement for more than seven months. He is not permitted to exercise in his cell, and he is not allowed a pillow or sheets for his bed.
Where do I turn in my USA membership card? I don’t want to be a part of this club any more.
Twenty Years
That’s how long Clarence Thomas has been breaking the law. Now he thinks, and is probably correct in doing so, that taking a mulligan is all he needs to do. After all, have you heard a peep of objection from any of our so-called leaders, Left or Right? FSM forbid, they might be accused of conducting a “high tech lynching” again. And we know how well that worked the first time.
(via JohnWSmart)
If you, or I, or anyone else we know hid upwards of a million dollars in income like this, we would have already been hauled before a grand jury. But now that the whistle has been blown, and his corruption and lying have been exposed, Thomas thinks he can just amend all these perjured declarations like it’s no big deal, claiming he “misunderstood” the filing instructions. (PDF link)
We have long known that Thomas was totally unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court. And at a minimum, for him to claim he cannot understand and truthfully complete a simple [legally required] disclosure form, this proves it. Immediate impeachment is the least we should expect.
[ . . . ]
Clarence Thomas is on the U.S. Supreme Court but he can’t understand filing instructions for a “legally required financial disclosure form”?
Can you imagine the caterwauling that would be coming from the Right if the Justice guilty of such were Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, or Elena Kagan? I thought so.
Here’s the deal, though: Impeachment proceedings for Supreme Court Justices must begin in the House of Representatives. You would think all those Republicans who’ve been calling all these years for “term limits” for SCOTUS would be right on this one.
Nah, they’re too busy with their noses between all the legs of the women in this country to be bothered.
And besides, IOKIYAR. Dumping him now would be risking the conservative majority on the court, and they will never allow that.
Seduction
I missed the memorial service last night. I arrived home to catch Sweetie watching the tail end of President and Mrs. Obama working the rope line.
I guess I’ve seen too many of these nationally televised keenings, and they’ve lost their allure for me. We moan and weep and then do absolutely nothing to make it better.
We are stunned by innocents gunned down in a Tucson shopping center, or at a local high school, or on a college campus, yet do not even blink at the carnage inflicted in our names halfway across the world.
You know, I, too, am horrified by what happened in Tucson and feel for the victims and their families. But I don’t want to lose sight of the forest because of some stylistic empathy offered up among the trees. Obama doesn’t walk the walk. I wish desperately he would, but he won’t.
Don’t be seduced by him or the magic box.
