Let me pretend to be optimistic....

And the 4th continues....

The 4th in the time of trump....

Happy 4th.... i guess.

From our Friends Down Under at Justinian.....

It's bad enough that Gina Haspel, ex-commandant of the CIA's Thai torture camp, is the agency's new chief (although she is currently at risk of German arrest). Sadly, a leading member of the "dirty dozen" - the torture-counselling lawyers who greased the way for Gina's torture regime - will be general counsel at the Department of Transportation.  

Stephen Bradbury is arguably the most culpable of all George Bush's "torture memo" men.  


Roger Fitch has much more to say about my corrupt government..... read the rest here.

This is not good.....UPDATED

As my friend The Talking Dog points out in this updated post- we cannot look away for even a moment. These are dangerous times in this here U.S. of A .--with the lunatic at the helm.

And speaking of torture......

OK- so I wasn't speaking of torture (this time) but I am now.... It seems we just can't stop doing the torture thing. Now it is Yemen, and it sounds like alot of the same things that went on at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and a miriad of other places that we invaded and tortured men and women.

Read more here.

ILLEGAL RECORDINGS OF ATTORNEY CLIENT MEETINGS APPARENTLY CONTINUE

This has long been a concern to those of us who are representing men at Guantanamo- is the military/government listening to our conversations with our clients? There are very few rights that our clients have- they cannot see the evidence against them (if it is classified); they cannot confront witnesses; they cannot participate in their habeas hearings; even our fucking notes from meeting with our clients are reviewed. But at least we can pick and choose what to put in our notes and we were promised (sigh) that our conversations would not be recorded. In fact, it wasn't just a naive dream that the government would not listen in to our conversations, the promise was recorded in a court order. Ahh, but as I learned during my very first visit to Guantanamo almost eleven years ago to the day- "Court orders don't work here--- we consider those advisory."

So it seems the military apparently decided not to take the "advice" of the judges. Will the judges do anything about this?
Probably not- I mean why would the judges in DC start caring about this sort of thing at this point??

Read more here.

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS....

So far nothing has changed at Guantanamo under Trump- except one major change-- no one is leaving.
Carol Rosenberg updates us on her take of things at our Gulag under Trump...

Read about it here.

YOU CAN SAY YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST...

IT JUST FEELS LIKE THAT KIND OF DAY....

PRESIDENTIAL COPIES OF TORTURE REPORT BEING GIVEN BACK TO THE SENATE

It is looking more and more like the full Ttorture Report will never see the light of day... Several copies of the report were in the hands of Obama but of course he never sought the public release of the report. Now the Trump people are giving the copies of the report back to the republican held senate. You can bet those will be locked away forever....
You can read more here.

Memorial Day 2017

last night on the "justice department" building....

My Tinpot leader...

As my good friend The Talking Dog said to me the other day "...we are condemned to live in interesting times." Indeed we are. I naively thought that Guantanamo would be the grand symbol of the demise of our democracy but truth be told we should never under estimate the American people. 
Read More from The Talking Dog and follow his rant:

I'm coming into the party a bit late, so I'll jump in with this piece noting that top Congressional Democrats are calling for a report on Jeff Sessions role in the clusterfuck known as the Jim Comey firing. Thing is, right now we not only have Dick Nixon, without the brains or experience, but on coke, in the Oval Office, but an entire party of treasonous enablers whose sole concern is that they can get right wing judges and policies and more tax cuts for the rich. They (Paul and Mitch, and your committee chairmen, I mean YOU) don't give two shits about the fact that a hostile foreign power has undertaken to interfere in the entire gigantic project known as democracy in the West, through the simple expedient of computer hacking and other activity designed to selectively disrupt elections (though, fortunately, so far at least, only English speaking countries have been stupid enough to actually fall for it.)

And so here we are. This President, thus far, has sacked three high profile officials (former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara and now former FBI Director James Comey) whose portfolios included investigation of his own campaign, its officials (including presumably himself) and their involvement- up to and including deliberate collusion- with Russia and its operatives in order to at least disrupt and quite possibly to change the outcome of the recent national election. And Comey was ignominiously sacked for made up cause, notwithstanding that Comey's own actions probably handed Trump the presidency.Even still it seems, Comey was taken aback by a demand for a pledge of personal loyalty, not to the Constitution, but to der Führer. The relevant movie, it seems, not being All the President's Men, but simply, The Godfather, as nothing short of kissing the Don's (funny that) ring would suffice.

WTF indeed---- THE REST IS HERE.

Want to follow the dog? His tweet is here.

And for more on the Tinpot Leader go to Intercept here.

And for you young kids, "What is a tinpot dictator?" According to wikipedia

1. An autocratic ruler with little political credibility, but with self-delusions of grandeur.