Convoy of civilians, including 4 Americans, hijacked in Iraq

Another day in paradise. Man, I feel safer. Read More......

ACLU says UCLA taser cops are guilty of "illegal assault" on bystanders

The cops threatened, on video, to taser innocent student bystanders who simply asked for the cops' name and badge numbers. The ACLU says that's an illegal assault. I hope the UCLA students who were threatened by the police are filing charges against the cops.

"It is a real mistake to treat a Taser as some benign thing that painlessly brings people under control," said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.

"The Taser can be incredibly violent and result in death," Eliasberg said.

According to an ACLU report, 148 people in the United States and Canada have died as a result of the use of Tasers since 1999.

During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would "get Tased too." At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.

Such a threat of the use of force by a law enforcement officer in response to a request for a badge number is an "illegal assault," Eliasberg said.

"It is absolutely illegal to threaten anyone who asks for a badge [number]," that's assault," he said.

Read More......

Mark Foley case now a full-fledged criminal investigation

More from NewsChannel 5 in Florida. Read More......

Someone needs to demand the videos immediately from UCLA

I happen to know for a fact that every inch of the Powell Library at UCLA (other than the bathrooms) is covered by security cams. There isn't anywhere in that library that a security camera isn't recording everything that happens. That means that the entire incident that took place there last night, where the student was tasered repeatedly by the university cops, is on film and the university has it in their possession. Time for someone at UCLA, or in the media, to get on this immediately and demand a copy before the evidence goes poof. It's possible the system is set to tape over every 24 hours, that means there may be only a few hours left to get the tapes. Read More......

Video shows police officer telling second student to leave or "you're gonna get tased too"

I just watched the video again, and at the very end, about 6 minutes and 40 seconds into the video, a short-haired white cop with brown hair tells a student in a white t-shirt, who appears to be doing nothing at all, to get "back" somewhere "or you're gonna get tased too."

It's clear as day on the tape. There is no question whatsoever. You can watch the video in the post below - click and give it a second to download completely, then scroll ahead to around 6 minutes 30 seconds and listen closely when it gets to 6:40. Read More......

Tasered UCLA student appears to be of Irani descent, i.e., Muslim

The story gets a whole lot more interesting if the student is Muslim, and he was tased for simply refusing to stand up (while brown). In America, even being an asshole isn't sufficient justification for the authorities to use violence against you. At least it wasn't until just lately. This incident isn't just about a student at UCLA, it's about what's happened to our country over the past six years and what it means, anymore, to be American.

I'm going to be writing a much longer piece about this later. In the meantime, if you haven't watched the video of this student being tased last night in the UCLA library, someone recorded it on their cell phone (amazingly enough), you need to watch this. It's about 5 minutes long, and you should watch the entire thing. It's horrific, and needs to be seen, and shared. You can share this video with others by emailing them this Web address:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs

Read More......

Bush re-appoints crony despite cloud of corruption

I think someone is in line to get a medal.

A report by the State Department's inspector general, released Aug. 29, said Tomlinson misused government funds for two years as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Tomlinson disputed the allegations in the report.

The U.S. attorney's office in Washington concluded that a criminal investigation was not warranted, according to the State Department report. At the same time, the report said a civil investigation related to charges that he had hired a friend as a contractor was pending....

Tomlinson signed invoices worth about $245,000 for a friend without the knowledge of other board members or staff, used the board's office resources to support his private horse racing operation and overbilled the organization for his time, according to the report. On a few occasions, the report said, he billed for the same time worked on both the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, on whose board he was a member until resigning in November 2005.

Read More......

Please call UCLA about student being taser-ed

Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams
Telephone: 310-825-2151
Fax: 310-206-6030
Email: chancellor@conet.ucla.edu

We posted the video of the student being tasered last night, below. It's horrendous. At one point they tase him simply because he wouldn't, or couldn't, stand up after they tased him the first time. At worst, that counts as civil disobedience. You don't get to tase someone because they refuse to stand up. You can simply put them in handcuffs and drag them out. A student reports that she was threatened with a taser for simply asking one of the cops for his name and badge number.

This is on film. There were dozens of students watching. There is very little question as to what really happened. These cops need to be fired. This was absolutely vicious.

There's more from the Los Angeles Times, and the student paper here, and there is a protest at UCLA tomorrow (Friday). Read More......

Hoyer and Pelosi

UPDATE: The pro-Murtha lobby is reminding me that Murtha now claims that he didn't say that Pelosi's ethics reform package was "total crap," rather he claims he said "it's total crap, the idea we have to deal with an issue like this [i.e., ethics]." Yeah, that's nice. That "total crap" issue is the one we just won an election on because we said it was the number one issue in Washington. Yes, Murtha looks much less the jackass now. I stand corrected.

Check out those faces. Rahm looks like the cat who ate the canary, Nancy looks like she's saying between clenched teeth "get your hand off of me," Steny looks like he's giving Nancy bruises, and Murtha looks like someone just secretly videotaped him postponing a bribe from Arab sheiks.

So Steny Hoyer from Maryland is the new House Majority Leader and, well, we're relieved. We couldn't stand Murtha. It was Pelosi's call, and we were going to support whomever she chose (and as a result, we intentionally laid low the past few days pending the vote), but I can't say we're not pleased that Murtha lost. The guy is trouble. Saying yesterday that Pelosi's ethics reform package is "total crap"? That kind of hot-head, shoot from the lip, talk is downright quaint when he's the lone guy taking on Bush's failed Iraq policy, but as the Majority Leader in the House, on every other kind of issue, let alone ethics, it's cocky and creepy.

For Pelosi's sake, I wanted Murtha to win. He's a great counter-balance on paper - the war-hero war-hawk vs. the lady from San Francisco - but in reality, he's just too conservative, too little a team player, and in terms of the ethics issues raised about the guy, he doesn't exactly exude Mr. Clean. In the end, if Steny is willing to play nicely with Nancy, and vice versa, I think they'll make a great team. Read More......

OH MY GOD. UCLA student tased in library by uni police

UPDATE: More from a UCLA student blog.

You have to watch this video (story here). The student didn't show his ID, the cops didn't like how he was acting, so they tased him. Watch the entire video - after they've already tased him, the kid is ticked off, refuses to stand up (he collapsed to the floor), so they tase him again. Excuse me? He wasn't fighting, he refused to stand up. Just carry him away - that's called civil disobedience. You don't tase people for refusing to stand up.

Watch this. It is beyond outrageous.

Read More......

BREAKING: Hoyer elected as Democrat's House Majority Leader

CNN just reported that the House Democratic Caucus elected Steny Hoyer (D-MD) as Majority Leader by a margin of 149 -86.

These intra-caucus battles are the worst kinds of elections. They get very intense and very personal. But, it's over now. The Democrats have to move on to the real agenda now. There's a lot of work to do. And, the Republicans are sharpening their knives. It's going to get ugly, so we'll need unity.

Remember, we won. This was an election for Majority Leader. Our side is in power. Nancy Pelosi is going to be the Speaker. They've got their leadership team in place. Now, they have to produce. Read More......

CNN host asks newly-elected US congressman to "prove" that he's not working with our enemies, simply because he's Muslim

Fire this guy. This is beneath CNN. If we want to watch bigots on national TV, we can go to FOX. We don't need this kind of crap on a network that, in spite of what many of our commenters seem to feel, I still have a lot of respect for. And the idea that somehow this is simply "politically incorrect," which is what the CNN host, conservative shock-jock Glenn Beck, claimed (in an effort to make his racist question seem okay), is equally abhorrent. It is not "politically incorrect" to ask a Muslim-American to "prove" that he's not a terrorist simply because he's a Muslim. It's racism and bigotry and intolerance and prejudice. It's digusting and un-American. Calling it politically incorrect only further diminishes the offense.

I've been asked to go on Beck's show before, and I said no. I told his producer that the man is a pig and I don't do pigs. CNN needs to decide what kind of network it wants to be. But FOX News with a hood is hardly a goal anyone should aspire to, let alone a network that is better than this.

Here's the interview, and Media Matters has the video:

On the November 14 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck interviewed Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), who became the first Muslim ever elected to Congress on November 7, and asked Ellison if he could "have five minutes here where we're just politically incorrect and I play the cards up on the table." After Ellison agreed, Beck said: "I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.' " Beck added: "I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way."

Read More......

"I can't stand the thought of my party having as its three front-runners three open adulterers, Newt Gingrich, Giuliani, and McCain."

Former GOP congressman Bob Dornan (R-CA) is upset that his party has lost its family values. Duh. Read More......

Further confirmation that global warming is likely causing death of polar bears

On the way home from his Asia trip, George Bush should do a stop-over in Alaska. He needs to talk the people at the USGS Alaska Science Center about what global warming is doing to the state. Bush is averse to science, but maybe they could show him some pictures or some dead polar bear carcasses -- anything to get him to know global warming is real:

Polar bear cubs in Alaska's Beaufort Sea are much less likely to survive compared to about 20 years ago, probably due to melting sea ice caused by global warming, a study released on Wednesday said.

The study, published by the U.S. Geological Survey, estimated that only 43 percent of polar bear cubs in the southern Beaufort Sea survived their first year during the past five years, compared to a 65 percent survival rate in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

"The changes in survival of cubs are very dramatic," said the study's author Steven Amstrup, polar bear project leader for the USGS Alaska Science Center.

Read More......

Next Congress needs to finish the job on election reform

Last week's elections had many examples of voting problems -- none more glaring than the serious issues in Florida's 13th Congressional District with 18,000+ not showing up. There is legislation to address the problem and it already has enough support to pass in the House. The Democrats should include this bill (HR 550) in the first 100 hours plan, or at least the 2nd 100 hours. Let the GOP be on the wrong side of clean elections if they don't like it:

Wexler and Holt hope the new leadership in Congress and the latest Florida example will prompt passage of their legislation, which has 218 co-sponsors.

The legislation would require states, cities and counties to provide a verifiable paper audit system. The new system would require random audits of voting machines, with software available for inspection to prevent tampering.

"Because we don't have it, Florida once again finds itself electorally up in the air," Holt said.

"There's no way to capture what the voters' intentions were in race after race," he said, citing evidence of at least one machine in New Jersey that counted votes twice and of machines in Pennsylvania that reportedly changed the candidates that were selected by voters.

I've only voted on a touch screen once. I found it really disconcerting. No record. Nothing. I just pushed the button and had to believe that my vote would be counted.

Today's NY Times has an editorial, "Counting the Votes, Badly" on the subject of election reform. Read More......

US death toll continues to mount -- 10 soldiers killed in past 2 days

Bush is still in charge. We're still staying the course. The carnage and deaths continue. There's still no plan:

Four more U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, the U.S. military said on Thursday, bringing to at least 10 the number killed over the past two days in gun battles and roadside bomb blasts around the country.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed and two wounded in the eastern province of Diyala north of Baghdad, home to a volatile mix of Shi'ites, Kurds and Shi'ites, when a bomb hit their vehicle during combat operations on Wednesday, the military said.

A third soldier was shot dead in an operation in the same province, the U.S. military said. It was not clear whether the incidents were linked.

Another U.S. soldier was shot dead in Baghdad on Tuesday, the military said, bringing to seven the number killed that day.

At least 44 U.S. soldiers have been killed this month, half of them in the western Anbar province, heartland of the three-year-old Sunni Muslim insurgency.

Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Today's the election in the House Democratic caucus for Majority Leader. Hoyer v. Murtha. We'll know in a couple hours.

Clear sign of the GOP desperation is the return of Trent Lott. Four years ago, Lott was so damaged because of his blatant racism, they deposed him. Now, he's the savior.

Never a dull moment up there on Capitol Hill.

What are you hearing? Read More......

Romney hires race-baiting, extremist ad consultant

With the GOP going back to their old ways with race baiting and the promotion of the tainted Trent Lott, we can see pretty clearly that many in the party are itching to turn the clock back again. So much for their efforts to reach out to African-American voters. Romney may quickly become the darling of the crazy wing in the GOP with this move.

"The truest spots, most factual spots, are the negative and comparative," he said. "They inform the voters much more than a bunch of fluffy positives often do."

In 1990, Castellanos produced a controversial ad blasting Helms's Democratic challenger, Harvey Gantt, who is black, for his support of racial quotas. The ad depicted a pair of white hands ripping up a rejection letter from an employer. "You needed that job and you were the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority," the narrator says.

Castellanos also produced an infamous television ad for Bush against Vice President Al Gore in 2000, in which the word rats was superimposed over attacks on Gore's prescription drug plan. Castellanos said at the time that it was unintentional and merely a video editing quirk, but Democrats accused him -- and, by extension, Bush -- of using a subliminal derogatory message.

Despite Castellanos' best effort this year, his firm failed miserably in their efforts for the Republican Governors Association. Maybe America just doesn't respond as well to his throw-back style any longer. Read More......

"Politics of fear to mask failure"

It is always so hard to tell whether someone is talking about Bush or Blair, but this time, the charge is against the Poodle. Opposition leader David Cameron went on the attack yesterday in Parliament and Blair fought back, with about what you would expect from him...or Bush. Blair dredged up the politics of a dozen years ago (think Clinton bashing by the GOP) and then did his best to ride the fear wave over and over and over. When are they going to show him the door?

He told MPs: "There is a big dividing line in British politics today, between hope and fear. This was the Prime Minister's last chance to offer hope for a better society, instead he chose fear to try to cover up his failures; the politics of fear from a government of failure."

Read More......

It's le beaujolais nouveau day

Sure I know it's a gimmick and sure it's often terrible and of course, it not very serious and it probably tarnishes the reputation of the truly pleasant wines of the Beaujolais that are meant to be enjoyed with a cervelas or some other regional specialty...but it's still fun to pop a few corks of the nouveau with friends. Why not? It's not like we don't have plenty to celebrate this November. Read More......

Open thread

Late night edition. Read More......