OneNewsNow officially endorses torture

I think I speak for most born-again Christian Dems when I say that I am highly dismayed at the deafening silence--and in some cases, outright support--of our fellow believers regarding the torture of detainees at Gitmo. But unless I'm very wrong, I haven't seen anything that would imply an official endorsement of torture from a major fundie heavyweight.

Until today. Today, OneNewsNow has a so-called interview with a legal expert at the Heritage Foundation warning that Eric Holder's decision to appoint a special prosecutor is politically motivated.

So apparently, the American Family Association (OneNewsNow is the online newswire service of the AFA) thinks that investigating behavior such as this is "politically motivated":

A report by the CIA's inspector general in 2004 details how CIA officers staged mock executions and threatened at least one prisoner with a gun and a power drill. The inspector general had referred the cases to the Bush Justice Department, which decided not to prosecute.

The mind reels.

OneNewsNow interviewed the Heritage Foundation's Robert Alt, who claimed that Holder's actions as a deputy attorney general suggest political hackery.

"If you look at Holder's record from the Clinton administration, he took a number of positions which seemed to be very politically motivated," Alt contends, "whether it was the pardon of Mark Rich or the recommendation of the pardon of the Puerto Rican separatist terrorists, despite the fact that the individuals involved didn't even disclaim terrorist acts."

Apple, meet orange. Never mind that Holder himself said at his confirmation hearing that the Rich pardon was a mistake. Even without this to consider, Alt torpedoes any remaining credibility with yet another endorsement of torture.

Alt says mock executions could meet the definition of torture by "threatening a detainee with imminent death," and could potentially be deemed a prosecutable offense.

Alt--and apparently the AFA--don't get it. Torture is illegal and un-American. Period.

A loophole in the welfare system that needs to be closed

My girlfriend recently alerted me to something that makes it somewhat difficult for some people to put themselves through community college--you may end up losing your food stamps. She lives in Arkansas, and was told yesterday that since she doesn't work 20 hours, she might lose her food stamps in September even though she's a full-time student (she's currently training to be a teacher). She's not taking this lying down, however--she's got her state representative and state senator on the case, and she's pretty sure they can apply enough pressure that they'll change their minds.

This, however, highlights a major problem with the welfare system and with continuing education. Those who are on food stamps and want to go to school face the choice of having to either go part-time and take longer to get their degrees, or go full-time and risk being cut off.

Another close friend of mine faced the same dilemma; she told me that most welfare agencies think that a full-time student can work full-time--and economic conditions be damned.

The solution here is obvious--change the laws so full-time students on food stamps can keep them as long as they're in school. It only makes sense--if we're to break the cycle of dependency by moving people from welfare to work, why make it harder for people on food stamps who are trying to get off of them?

NYT: Palin's governorship started tanking after the calendar turned

If you're a fan of Sarah Palin, today's New York Times isn't the paper for you. It's got a front-page story--above the fold--which shows that Palin started royally failin' not long after she returned from the presidential campaign trail.

How bad did it get? Her fellow Republican governors tried to send help.

In late March, a senior official from the Republican Governors Association headed for Alaska on a secret mission. Sarah Palin was beset by such political and personal turmoil that some powerful supporters determined an intervention was needed to pull her governorship, and her national future, back from the brink.

The official, the association’s executive director, Nick Ayers, arrived with a memorandum containing firm counsel, according to several people who know its details: Make a long-term schedule and stick to it, have staff members set aside ample and inviolable family time to replenish your spirits, and build a coherent home-state agenda that creates jobs and ensures re-election.

But as you might expect from our favorite mavericky diva, Palin didn't listen--and instead kept proving why she was not even remotely ready for prime time.

It started when she came back to Alaska in January to be greeted by a raft of ethics complaints. While most of them were thrown out for want of merit, the NYT says that Palin became consumed by them--to the point her hair started thinning out, requiring an emergency visit to her hairdresser back in Wasilla.

The constant feuding over the ethics complaints and the David Letterman flap, among others, caused a lot of people who supported her to think she was losing focus. For instance, Republican state rep Nancy Dahlstrom, who worked for Palin's 2006 campaign, said that Palin seemed to think she was "all about adoration" rather than governing. Another state rep, John Coghill, thinks Palin misstepped by paying too much attention to the barbs being thrown at her.

The article also details some of Palin's missteps on the national stage. At one point, it seemed her left hand didn't know what her right hand was doing.

After the Conservative Political Action Conference, a meeting of the Republican Party’s evangelical base, announced that the governor would have a coveted speaking role at its annual gathering in February, she canceled, citing scheduling conflicts. Then, organizers of one of the most important Republican Congressional fund-raisers of the year said they had been assured by a political aide to Ms. Palin that she would be their headliner, only to have her Anchorage office announce that she knew nothing about it.

Those snafus particularly concerned one of her major backers, Fred Malek. He tried to tell Palin that she needed to get a better way to return calls. Palin's response? Wait for it--"What number are they calling?" No wonder John Coale, the Democratic lawyer who helped set up SarahPAC, thinks that there were times Palin didn't know what being on the national stage meant.

The NYT did manage to interview Palin for this story. It makes it sound like she was caught by surprise by all the heat she's faced lately. This seems to lend a bit of credence to Andrea Mitchell's report that she might be out of politics for good. For one thing, Palin said the seeds for her resignation were planted when she became McCain's running mate.

“It began when we started really looking at the conditions that had so drastically changed on Aug. 29,” she said. “The hordes of opposition researchers came up here digging for dirt for political reasons, making crap up.”

Hmmm--that couldn't be because McCain himself didn't even bother to vet you, could it?

McCain owes Obama an apology

In light of revelations that Sarah Palin's "pals around with terrorists" line wasn't a rogue moment, but had been ordered by top McCain campaign operatives (h/t to Jed Lewinson at dKos), it's time for McCain to show some leadership and apologize to President Obama.

By remaining silent on this, McCain is at the very least condoning a vicious attack on someone else's patriotism. Last I checked, attacking one's patriotism is supposed to be a "third rail." Remember how careful we had to be to avoid the appearance that we were dissing McCain's service during the campaign?

If John McCain has even one iota of integrity left in him, he should apologize. Crash his Inbox--and if you live in Arizona, pester him here.

OneNewsNow has a hissy fit over government investigating Tiller murder

The Justice Department has made it known that Scott Roeder wasn't a lone nut and is determined to find out who else helped plan the murder of George Tiller. And OneNewsNow isn't the least bit happy about it. In an "interview" with Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, OneNewsNow suggests that there's something sinister about the government actually doing its job.

"This may be more of a nefarious effort than it appears on its face," she exclaims, "that in fact, the Department of Justice may be trying to smear pro-lifers, as if we all belong in the same camp, as if we all advocate violence, when it's [actually] just the opposite."

Wright then claims that Holder should devote as many resources to protecting military recruiting facilities as he apparently intends to devote to this investigation. There's a difference here, Wendy. You've got mainstream pro-life leaders issuing veiled calls for violence against abortion providers (see Engle, Lou). Not only that, but you've also got mainstream pro-life movements having in their top leadership people who have admitted to trying to bomb abortion clinics. If there's a parallel here, I don't see it.

My (ex-)pastor compared aborted babies to those who died for our country

As I mentioned back in February, when you're a charismatic/pentecostal Dem, you have to have a thick skin. On Sunday, however, I heard something that was way, way beyond my tolerance level. The pastor there actually compared aborted pregnancies to the men and women who died for our country.

No, folks, I'm not kidding. Midway through his sermon, the pastor picked up a piece of paper and read off the numbers of people who died during the Revolution, Civil War, both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. He then unrolled the paper and said every "X" on it represented a pregnancy that had been ended since Roe v. Wade--50 million in all, more than everyone who has died in our major wars.

Now you're wondering, "How come you didn't get up and leave?" Well, I was so shocked at hearing something so outrageous that I didn't know how to react. It wasn't until after I was getting ready to leave that it hit me just how outrageous this was. And this after we started our service by singing "God Bless America", and ended it with an encouragement to visit gravesites of dead veterans to remember what they did. After essentially spitting in their faces? What nerve!

I wanted to give the pastor both barrels as I left, but was still boiling as I left. I seriously thought about ripping him a new one in an email after I calmed down. But then I remembered. His nephew fought in Iraq. If he knew that and still made that comparison, there was really no point. Fortunately, at least one of my more conservative friends was appalled at what my now-ex pastor said.

I know that the old-school religious right is several miles out of touch--after all, a good-sized number of younger born-agains (like yours truly) have realized that abortion isn't the be-all, end-all to everything. But are the tail-enders so fixated that they're willing to cheapen the sacrifices of those who died for our country? If they are, then they deserve to be relegated to the same place as the Larouchies, where they rightly belong.

We need another moratorium on further proceedings with detainees

I'd been willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt regarding his plan for tribunals to try terrorist detainees, since he intends to include safeguards that would ensure due process and avoid the appearance of drumhead proceedings. After all, an argument can be made that these people are still at war with the United States and thus can't be tried in normal civilian courts.

However, the staggering revelation by Yvonne Bradley, attorney for former detainee Binyam Mohammed, that his entire case is based on evidence obtained through torture, changes the whole picture. No amount of safeguards are enough to alleviate the possibility that any statements made by the detainees regarding their crimes aren't legitimate. To my mind, the only justifiable course is a new moratorium on further proceedings against them. It would allow us time to determine whether there's enough credible evidence to even try them.

It's been argued here that we can't even try those against whom the evidence is overwhelming because we have forfeited the moral authority to seek justice. I disagree. If there's enough credible evidence left after we exclude what was obtained through torture, we should try them. It would be grossly irresponsible to do otherwise.

A moratorium would also allow us to look more into the circumstances of the extraordinary renditions. Did anyone know, or have reason to know, that the detainees were being sent to countries where they would be tortured? If they did, it's possible that the Geneva Conventions would demand that we release even those who are manifestly guilty. Even if they are "the worst of the worst," there is no defensible reason I can think of to knowingly send them off to be tortured.

I find myself thinking back to the Ted Stevens case. Stevens was manifestly guilty, but the prosecutorial misconduct was so egregious that to my mind, the only option was to effectively vacate the conviction. The discovery that the prosecution may have knowingly allowed the star witness to perjure himself, I believe, would have been enough to throw out Stevens' conviction on appeal. When Holder saw this, I believe he decided to cut his losses and dismiss the indictment.

Any releases that occurred after a moratorium, I believe, would shut up the inevitable criticism that Obama is letting out people who have said they will kill Americans again. He can say, "We've looked at this extensively, and have determined that we have no credible basis to continue holding them."

So this needs to be our next course--call for a moratorium. After all, going too fast is what got us into this mess in the first place.