The {Obama} administration first sought to change FOIA in June, shortly after deciding to contest a ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered the photos’ release. The resulting bill, championed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), was specifically designed to nullify the effect of the appeals court’s ruling. Since the court had ruled that the photos couldn’t be withheld under an existing FOIA exemption, the Obama administration simply asked Congress to carve out a new exemption. Despite objections from liberal members of the House, Congress obliged.

The new exemption’s requirements are stunningly lax. In order to withhold the photos, Gates simply had to certify, as he did in the court filing, that “public disclosure of these photographs would endanger citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces, or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.” In other words, their release had to endanger someone, somewhere. And in the unlikely event that Gates had to stretch the truth to make that certification, it wouldn’t matter, since there’s no provision in the law that allows any court to review Gates’ determination or rule on whether it was truthful.

This isn’t just a few photos. Gates’ block could apply to a far larger group of images than the 44 that are at issue in the ACLU’s lawsuit. “The photographs include but are not limited to the 44 photographs” in the suit, Gates wrote in his certification.

[snip]

Now it appears that Gates has blocked the release of a large number-perhaps all-of the extant photos depicting abuse during the period from September 11th until the end of the Bush administration.

But anyway, he’s Obama, and this is change you can believe in. Is our children learning yet? And he’s got three more years to go. Sigh. Were you surprised?

The Soviet war in Afghanistan, also known as the Soviet-Afghan War, was a nine-year conflict involving Soviet forces supporting the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the Mujahideen resistance.

In 1989, ten years after a little more time, a lot more money, and a lot more lives lost, the USSR finally was forced to give up it’s dreams of domination of Afghanistan and withdrew… and collapsed.

Mikhail Gorbachev had a few words of caution for Barack Obama in the wake of indications that Obama is planning another escalation of 20-35,000 troops to Afghanistan

HuffPo on Sunday:

The former president of the Soviet Union spoke to CNN’s John King Sunday on State Of The Union and after talking about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev suggested that the US revisit the Kremlin’s efforts to control Afghanistan as the US plans its next move.

“I think that what’s needed is not additional forces,” said Gorbachev. “This is something that we discussed, too, years ago, and we decided not to do it. And I think our experience deserves attention.” McClatchy has reported that President Obama is leaning toward sending as many as 34,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. The Soviet Union fought for nine years in Afghanistan in a war to support Afghanistan’s then-communist government. The USSR ultimately lost the war and 13,000 of its soldiers died.

Gorbachev concluded that for the US, “withdrawal from Afghanistan should be the goal.”

Muriel Kane had the story at RawStory Friday night:

Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo attempted to argue against Democratic plans for health care reform on Friday by claiming veterans were dissatisfied with their government-run health care. He was confronted by blogger Markos Moutlitsas, who unlike Tancredo is a veteran himself, and reacted by stalking off the set of MSNBC’s The Ed Show where both men were guests.

Tancredo had begun by pointing to what he sees as problems with the Medicare system when host David Schuster interrupted him to ask, “So how about the Veterans Administration? The Veterans Administration is a single-payer system. … That’s also a threat to our freedom?”

“Every veterans groups I ever went and talked to complained about the Veterans Administration and the way it was a bureaucratically-run program that didn’t serve their needs,” Tancredo told Schuster. “They would much rather have vouchers that would allow them to go out and buy their insurance in a private marketplace.”

Moulitsas, founder of The Daily Kos, began laughing as Tancredo was speaking. “Tom, I’m a veteran,” he told Tancredo. “I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight in a war that I supported in Vietnam.”

This was a slightly garbled reference to Tancredo’s having obtained 1-Y status in 1970, after his student deferments ran out, on the grounds that he had been “diagnosed with depression when he was 16 or 17 and received medication for five years for panic attacks and bouts of anxiety and depression.” Tancredo was 24 at the time.

Moulitsas and Tancredo then began speaking over one another, but Tancredo finally managed to say, “You’re not going to try to insult me that way and then pretend like we’re just going on and talking about that. You either apologize or I’m off.”

“I’m not pretending anything,” Moulitsas replied. “I told you straight up.” At that point, Tancredo ripped off his earpiece and microphone and left the set.

“This is a threat to Republicans,” Markos commented after Tancredo was gone. “They’ve built an entire ideology predicated on telling people that government does not work. They are terrified of government programs that work, because then people will realize that government’s not the enemy.”

Tancredo, who left Congress last winter after a failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, is best known for his opposition to immigration, but he has also been identified with conservative causes in general.

Prior to his confrontation with Moutlitsas, Tancredo had agreed with House Minority Leader John Boehner’s claims that health care reform is a “very scary threat” and had insisted to Schuster that it was perfectly appropriate for health reform protesters to use an image of concentration camp victims at Dachau because when it comes to protests, “It’s all ugly.”

This video is from MSNBC’s The Ed Show, November 6, 2009.