Are US-trained forces in Iraq executing Sunnis?

Looks that way according to the NY Times. Ironic that this is all coming out on the day that Saddam's trial started -- or was supposed to start:

As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni males have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

And, by the way, this is your tax dollars at work:

American officials, who are overseeing the training of the Iraqi Army and the police, acknowledge that police officers and Iraqi soldiers, and the militias with which they are associated, may indeed be carrying out killings and abductions in Sunni communities, without direct American knowledge.

Is this the "noble mission" of which Bush so frequently speaks? Read the rest of this post...

Wilkerson BLASTS Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld

Very tough criticism from Powell's former Chief of Staff. This is one scary administration. It's as bad -- if not worse -- then we all thought:

A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees arose from White House and Pentagon officials who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful" and the Geneva Conventions irrelevant.

In an Associated Press interview, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning. Underlings exploited Bush's detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

Read the whole article. It's worth it. Read the rest of this post...

Far-right religious fanatics trying to ban Maya Angelou, other famous books

But this isn't like when the Nazis banned and burned books because, uh, the Nazis were, uh, German.

Here are the books America's Taliban are trying to ban:

1. All the Pretty Horses
2. Animal Dreams
3. The Awakening
4. The Bean Trees
5. Beloved
6. Black Boy
7. Fallen Angels
8. The Hot Zone
9. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
10. Lords of Discipline
11. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
12. Song of Solomon
13. Stotan
14. This Boy’s Life Read the rest of this post...

Supreme Court Crumbling - Literally

Maybe the gods are finally taking notice of what's going on in America today? From Reuters:

A chunk of marble fell from near the roof of the U.S. Supreme Court onto the stairs in the front of the building but no one was injured, a court spokeswoman said on Monday.
...
The marble was above the inscription near the top of the building saying, "Equal Justice Under Law" and above the allegorical figure representing "Order," one of nine sculptured figures on the pediment.

This is more than irony... Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Busy week and it's only Monday. Read the rest of this post...

Ocean County, New Jersey. Homophobia capital of America

Sickening.

When lung cancer finally kills Laurel Hester -- and it will, in a matter of months -- she wants to know that her domestic partner, Stacie Andree, won't lose their home in Point Pleasant.

That legacy, however, is in doubt.

Ocean County's freeholders have refused to act on a request from Hester, an investigator for 23 years in the county prosecutor's office, to provide domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian employees under a state law enacted last year. Without a resolution by the freeholders, her pension benefits cannot go to Andree.

"That's not what I hoped for with the legislation," said Sen. John Adler (D-Camden), a prime sponsor. "It's a missed opportunity for Ocean County to show that it respects families. ... It's a crummy, cold decision."

The surviving spouse benefit amounts to about $13,000 a year and would be paid from the state pension fund. For Andree, an auto mechanic, the money would "mean the difference in whether or not she can stay in the house," Hester said.

More on this here. Read the rest of this post...

Please consider making a contribution to AMERICAblog

It's that time again, our once-a-month AMERICAblog-athon where we ask you to consider making a not-tax-deductible contribution to the blog, using the yellow boxes at the top of the screen.

For any of you who are relatively new to the blog, this is a full-time job for me. I gave up 99% of my political consulting work to do the blog full-time starting this past February (during the Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert White House journalist/prostitute story). Since that time, I've relied almost wholly on your donations to pay my salary, and to pay for the upkeep of the blog.

There's good news, in that regard. My goal is to eventually make the blog self-sufficient - in the future, I want the ads to pay 100% for the maintenance of the blog (tech costs, monthly bandwidth, salary, etc.). At that point, I want to only seek contributions for specific advocacy projects, such as raising money for candidates, for specific causes, for an ad campaign, i.e., for some specific "I gotcha" moment we want to take advantage of immediately and for which we need a few bucks to do it. I.e., we could pay an organizer to raise some hell, send Kyle on more trips to trouble spots (wouldn't it be cool to send someone to cover Camp Casey?). I also think it would be cool to consider doing some kind of "up and coming blogger" scholarships - i.e., raising some cash to help smaller bloggers (who already kick ass) for whom a couple hundred or a couple thousands bucks could make a world of difference in the work they do. These are all just in the planning stage, but that's the kind of cool stuff we can do when we become totally self-sufficent via the ads.

As for now, there are the technical costs of running a big blog. As many of you know, we're in the process of moving to our own dedicated server. We've pretty much grown too large for the Blogger system we now use (it's free) - we're getting a lot of traffic, have incredibly large archives, and Blogger is extremely limiting in the functionality it offers, though it's a great system and I'd recommend it for new bloggers.

Anyway, we need to move to our own dedicated server, which will also entail redesigning the entire architecture of the blog. That's pretty cool, because AMERICAblog 2.0 will have a lot more functionality for us, and you, to do lots of cool things. Moving the blog over to our own server, redesigning it, creating the blogging software that will run the site, having a part-time tech guy on staff to keep things up and running, and hosting it for the first 12 months will cost around $34,000. (And please, don't send me emails telling me this cost estimate is too high, you have no idea what our bandwidth usage is - we used several hundred gigs in just the few weeks we posted those "dead Iraqis for war porn" photos.) I've already raised over half the money to help meet that cost and am hopeful over the next year we can raise the rest.

Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying "this is why I ask for your contributions."

As I've said before, if you'd consider buying a subscription to a print magazine or newspaper, or if you'd consider making a donation to your favorite advocacy group, then consider treating AMERICAblog the same way. We're part newspaper, magazine, advocacy group, and therapy all wrapped up in one.

Here's to bigger and better things in the year ahead :-)

JOHN Read the rest of this post...

GUILTY: Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA)

UPDATE: He resigned.

UPDATE 2: Video of resignation speech here. Click watch video to the right of the lead paragraph.

Another one bites the dust:

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and tax charges, admitting taking $2.4 million in bribes in a case that grew from an investigation into the sale of his home to a wide-ranging conspiracy involving payments in cash, vacations and antiques.

Read the rest of this post...

The 25th Amendment

There's increasing chatter that Bush may not longer be mentally fit for office. There is a way to remove a president from office that has nothing to do with impeachment. It's called the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Twenty-Fifth Amendment - Presidential Vacancy, Disability, and Inability

Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principle officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

The question is no longer whether Bush is an idiot. The question is whether he's mentally competent, or whether he's an unreformed alcoholic who is suffering from a massive depression combined with religious megalomania, all of which have made him totally detached from reality.

Say what you will about Bill Clinton, we never had to worry about whether he had gone crazy. Read the rest of this post...

For Lott, revenge is best served cold

In case you missed it this weekend, the NY Times had an article about the fun Trent Lott seems to be having with some of his GOP adversaries:

So Mr. Lott is taking aim where he will. When Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court, Mr. Lott, who had been openly critical of Ms. Miers, was practically gleeful. "In a month," Mr. Lott said, in an interview on the Fox News Channel, "who will remember the name Harriet Miers?"

The senator has also thrown darts in the direction of Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser. With Mr. Bush's poll ratings dropping, Mr. Lott has said the White House might consider "bringing in some new people" - a jab at Mr. Rove, who helped engineer Mr. Lott's departure as Republican leader.

The current majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, also seems to be in Mr. Lott's sights. In his book, "Herding Cats: A Life in Politics," published in August, Mr. Lott wrote that he considered Mr. Frist's leadership bid in 2002 "a personal betrayal."

Lott sat back and waited. It's actually entertaing to watch him play now. Read the rest of this post...

Bush and top staff are in denial, think everything is everyone else's fault

Just what we need during the middle of a war. A bunch of crazy people running the country. Read the rest of this post...

Why does the GOP hate the poor?

When it was a PR crisis we heard plenty of promises to help rebuild New Orleans but now that that crisis is over the poor can go screw themselves because the GOP is more worried about handing out corporate welfare for Big Oil and Big Pharma not to mention building bridges to nowhere and propping up support from the corporate farmers who have been solid voters for them in recent years. Keeping a close reign on spending is fine but how about a little balance and follow through with the promises? Why does the GOP want to give away everything to the wealthiest and block opportunity for improvement to the poor and middle class? Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

I need coffee. Read the rest of this post...

Hastert backpedaling on smear campaign against Murtha and Dems

Oh how the times have changed. Someone needs to remind Hastert that it is no longer 2001 or even 2004 when the GOP could walk away laughing after any outrageous smear against Democrats who were being critical of administration policies. How else could you characterize his smear against Murtha other than it was calling him a coward?

It said that America "must not cower" in fighting the war on terror and that Mr. Murtha and other Democrats "want us to wave the white flag of surrender."

I'll tell you who's waving the white flag now and it's not Murtha. The American public no longer believes Bush and the GOP when it comes to this war (and beyond) but many in the GOP have failed to accept this reality. Read the rest of this post...

Suu Kyi to remain under house arrest in Myanmar

As long as Big Oil continues pumping oil without any interruptions from do-gooders who worry about silly things like human rights abuses, Suu Kyi won't be leaving house arrest for a while. Lucky for the world we have leaders from the US, France and UK and other Big Oil countries who are not blinded by the silly requests by the people who actually want to see democratic results respected and enacted. Can you believe it? People want their vote to count? Oh well, maybe next century politicians will care and not worry about the oil money that finds its way into the political system.

In the mean time, Suu Kyi and her supporters can wonder why the world doesn't give a crap about freedom and democracy in Myanmar and the Myanmar government can continue its program of human rights abuses including torture, rape, slave labor and disappearing people. The West is going to have a lot of explaining to do one of these days. Read the rest of this post...