Open Flame

Im feeling so off kilter. My “first day back” from being family-bound over the two week holiday… with both hub and kid home, I just get off my game. Havent even seen Keith or Rachel for a couple of weeks. I tend to “absorb” news items better from the tv vs net… it all seems really a-jumble to me right now.

anyway. Oh and have I mentioned how drafty and cold my house is and my feet!? The worst spot is standing in front of the sink doing dishes. meh. lol.

okay. hi.

Want to point to this blog entry by valtin. who, in turn points to worthington who has posted a 2010 update of his comprehensive exhaustive G’mo List. ugh.

As the eighth anniversary of the prison’s opening approaches, it remains imperative that those who oppose the existence of indefinite detention without charge or trial – and who call, instead, for the full reinstatement of the Geneva Conventions for prisoners of war, and federal court trials for terrorists – maintain the pressure to close Guantánamo, and to charge or release the prisoners held there, as swiftly as possible. ~AW

{crickets lately}

It’s the double triple… boomerang think thats driving me most crazy…. best discussed by Greenwald:

And, though Baker does not note this, Obama has also recently taken some potentially meaningful steps to increase government transparency.  But as Adam Serwer has explained, the most important point of Baker’s discussion is that there are very few real policy differences between the two administrations in these areas, and Dick Cheney’s embittered attacks on Obama (and the media’s obsession with them) have done a favor for the administration by casting the false appearance that there are.  

Indeed, as demonstrated by the progressive praise of Obama for “upholding the rule of law,” the most significant consequence of his first year in office, in the area of civil liberties, is that — with a few exceptions (most notably torture) — he has transformed what were once highly controversial Republican “assaults on the Constitution” into bipartisan consensus which both parties now embrace, thus ensuring — as Baker put it — “that much of the Bush security architecture is almost certain to remain part of the national fabric for some time to come, thanks to Obama.”

 Thus, a President who imprisons people with military commissions or even no charges at all — and constantly invokes secrecy claims to shield the Executive Branch from judicial review over allegations of lawbreaking — is now hailed — by progressives — as a stalwart defender of “the rule of law.”{emphasis mine}

Im pretty frustrated. Bamboozled.