Obama continues push against shady credit card business

It's about time Washington gets serious about this mess and of course, nothing was going to happen with the Republicans running the show. The credit card industry is looking at some tough times ahead thanks to their own poor business practices but they are going to be reformed whether they like it or not. Sure they will complain about heavy handed tactics but they should have been regulated years ago. This rapid push by Obama is definitely a good thing.

On Thursday, 14 CEOs of credit card divisions of major banks will be summoned to a White House meeting that reportedly will include President Barack Obama, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers. They are expected to demand that the credit card issuers do something to lower interest rates for vulnerable borrowers and increase disclosure of rates and what they mean.

Over the weekend, the administration signaled that it would support legislation on Capitol Hill that would reform credit card practices by, among other provisions, protecting consumers from arbitrary interest rate increases, prohibiting issuers from charging interest on debt that has already been repaid and protecting young consumers from aggressive credit card solicitations.

Read the rest of this post...

Hillary joins the fun

Why is anyone even listening to Dick Cheney? He's a loon who dragged the country into one of its worst periods in modern history. He deserves to be mocked and thankfully, Hillary wasn't shy today. Good for her. CNN:

In the latest sign that the war of words between the Obama administration and Dick Cheney isn't letting up, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday mocked the former vice president's call to release additional classified CIA documents.

As Clinton made her first appearance before Congress as the nation's top diplomat, California Republican Dana Rohrbacher asked if the administration planned to heed Cheney's call to release documents showing information gained as a result of the Bush administration's aggressive interrogation techniques.

"Well, it won't surprise you that I don't consider him to be a particularly reliable source of information," Clinton said, to laughter from many in the committee room.

Outside of the radical right lunatics, Cheney has zero credibility. The problem for the Republicans is that he is the GOP. Too bad the rest of the country despises him.

DailyKosTV has the video.
Read the rest of this post...

Supreme Court, for the first time in a long time, limits police powers

Almost missed this. There are actually Supreme Court justices who still think rights matter:

The Supreme Court put a new limit on police searches of cars Tuesday, saying that "countless individuals guilty of nothing more serious than a traffic violation" have had their vehicles searched in violation of their rights.

In a 5-4 decision, the justices set aside a 1981 opinion that had given police broad authority to search cars whenever they made an arrest.

Instead, the justices said that an arresting officer could search a vehicle only if weapons were potentially in reach of the suspect or if there was reason to believe that the car contained evidence related to the arrest. For example, if the driver was arrested in a drug crime, the car could be searched for drugs.

Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking for the court, said that merely arresting a driver does not "provide a police entitlement" to search the vehicle without a warrant.

Maybe the Fourth Amendment isn't obsolete after all. Read the rest of this post...

craigslist killer was a Republican, and a bigot

NY Daily News:

At college, he was a member of the College Republicans and was fairly unremarkable except for the occasional offensive comment, said ex-classmate Joe Coe.

"He was someone that had issues with people of color, had issues with women," Coe told CBS.

"He gave off a creepy vibe," said another SUNY classmate.

The religious right lost a future member. And remember, kids, hate does not lead to violence. So stop persecuting conservative bigots. They're just like you and me. Except some of them end up killing people. Read the rest of this post...

Would Roland Martin call it "honesty" if Miss California were for miscegenation laws?

CNN's Roland Martin:

[D]uring the April 21 edition of CNN's No Bias, No Bull, CNN contributor Roland Martin asserted: "I still can't get over Miss California getting raked over the coals for giving an honest answer to a direct question. She doesn't believe in same-sex marriage, and she said so. And it may have cost her the Miss USA crown."

"Now, look, I'm trying to figure out, what's the big deal with Miss California's answer to a question about same-sex marriage? Of course, she was asked, she answered. Miss California, Carrie Prejean, gave her honest opinion. So, is there no room for her honesty anymore?"

About as much room as there'd be had she come out against the mixing of the races. Read the rest of this post...

Morgan Stanley misses quarterly number

And it wasn't even close. This is the kind of news that will set off alarms ahead of the "stress test" reports coming out later this week. CNBC:

Analysts surveyed by ThomsonReuters had expected the bank to post a loss of just 8 cents a share in the first quarter. Morgan Stanley reported a net income of $1.26 per share in the first quarter last year.

Net revenue at Morgan Stanley was $3 billion in the first quarter, 62 percent below last year's similar period and lower than analyst estimates of about $5 billion.

The results were negatively impacted by a $1.5 billion decrease in net revenue related to the tightening of its credit spreads on certain of its long-term debt, the bank said in a statement. It also said it had net losses of $1 billion on investments in real estate.

Read the rest of this post...

How the Bush administration waterboarded a low-level operative, who was brain-damaged, 83 times

Last Saturday, Marcy Wheeler broke the news about the extensive waterboarding of two captured terror suspects:

I've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Note, the information comes from the CIA IG report which, in the case of Abu Zubaydah, is based on having viewed the torture tapes as well as other materials. So this is presumably a number that was once backed up by video evidence.

Last month, the Washington Post provided this backgroud on Abu Zubaydah:

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Moreover, within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.

Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda, according to a portrait of the man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement and military sources. Rather, he was a "fixer" for radical Muslim ideologues, and he ended up working directly with al-Qaeda only after Sept. 11 -- and that was because the United States stood ready to invade Afghanistan.

And, that article included this tidbit:

He was seriously wounded by shrapnel from a mortar blast in 1992, sustaining head injuries that left him with severe memory problems, which still linger.

Yes, he was low-level and brain-damaged. The CIA knew that and waterboarded him 83 times anyway -- because Bush wanted answers.

Author Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent Solution, gave the background on Zubaydah. I read that book and found the info. on Zubaydah, who Bush often invoked, just jaw-dropping. Here's a synopsis:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.

Bush, with an assist from Alberto Gonzales, allowed the execution of a "mentally retarded" man. It's wasn't a big leap to torturing a brain-injured suspect. They should be really proud of this one. Read the rest of this post...

The Right to Kill

I've written before about the religious right's newest cause celebre, the Right to Kill. Extreme right fundamentalist Christian leaders are demanding that American civil rights laws provide an exemption for their "right" to kill their political opponents, or any other American they disprove of, provided they claim the murder was inspired by their faith.

(We tend to avoid the usually-overplayed Nazi comparison, here at AMERICAblog. But in this case, the notion of protecting the majority's right to murder and incite violence against minorities is historically troubling.)

It's not entirely clear why the religious right, which professes to care so much about "life," especially when its coffers are running dry, is now suddenly interested in the right to kill. Have there been a rash of religious right murders of gays, blacks, women and other minorities that they've historically oppressed? Or is the religious right planning, or hoping, to incite violence against those groups and others in American society? (And they wonder why Homeland Security is interested in their more violent members.)

The religious right's main legislative effort surrounding their right to kill is centered around the hate crimes amendment being debated in the House this week. As Joe wrote earlier, the hate crimes amendment takes the current US hate crimes law, that has been on the books for decades, and applies it to everyone.

Under the existing law, only violence inspired by the hatred of some classes of Americans is covered - some might even say that those classes, which include Christian fundamentalists, have been granted "special rights" under the law, since only some groups, and not others, are included in the current law. Already included in the current law is violence motivated by the race, religion or national origin of the victim. The hate crimes amendment being debated today would add gender, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity to the already-existing law.

Regardless of your views on the propriety of hate crimes laws, if America is going to have such a law on the books - and we already do - shouldn't it protect everyone? If not, then the very nightmare that hate crimes law opponents predict - a world in which some classes of people have more legal protections than others - will not only be a reality, it will remain our current reality.

Of course, isn't that what this is all about? The religious right is desperate to protect its special rights. Thus, they viciously attack a law that secretly already protects them, in order to ensure that no other classes of Americans receive similar protection. They invoke their right to kill, in order to defeat a law that is intended to stop the killing. If the religious right were truly opposed to hate crimes laws, they would be agitating to repeal America's current hate crimes law, the one protecting them. But they're not. Read the rest of this post...

TARP freeloaders continue to use handouts for lobbying

These companies really are revolting. Is it asking too much for Timmy Geithner to at least borrow a spine from someone and put an end to this? They do not have the money to spend doing anything other than getting their books in order so quit using federal money to figure out how to screw the federal government in new ways.

Top recipients of federal bailout money spent more than $10 million on political lobbying in the first three months of this year, including aggressive efforts aimed at blocking executive pay limits and tougher financial regulations, according to newly filed disclosure records.

The biggest spenders among major firms in the group included General Motors, which spent nearly $1 million a month on lobbying, and Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase, which together spent more than $2.5 million in their efforts to sway lawmakers and Obama administration officials on a wide range of financial issues. In all, major bailout recipients have spent more than $22 million on lobbying in the six months since the government began doling out rescue funds, Senate disclosure records show.

Read the rest of this post...

Gibbs on Cheney. Delicious.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Dick Cheney's disapproval of how the Obama administration is handling the torture issue:

"We've had a at least two-year policy disagreement with the [former] Vice President of the United States of America [Dick Cheney]. That policy disagreement is whether or not you can uphold the values in which this country was founded at the same time that you protect the citizens that live in that country," said Gibbs. "The President of the United States and this administration believes that you can. The Vice President [Cheney] has come to, in our opinion, a different conclusion."

Read the rest of this post...

GOP congressman confirms that Rush Limbaugh is a "leader of the conservative movement in America"

So much for the debate over whether the Democrats were simply making up the notion that Rush Limbaugh was the leader of the Republican party. A GOP congressman confirms today that even if Limbaugh is not "the" leader, he's one of the top leaders. Of course, the congressman confirms this in yet another "apology" for dissing the Great One. Read the rest of this post...

Meet the same old leaders of today's GOP: Gingrich, Rove and Cheney

Courtesy of the DNC:
Read the rest of this post...

New report: Bush admin. was determined to torture

Last week, the Obama administration released the Bush administration's legal memos, which authorized torture. This week, we've got a new Senate report on the subject of torture. It's still somewhat sad and extremely disturbing that we're talking about the United States of America permitting torture. But, that's what George Bush did to our country. My initial take on the Senate report on torture is that it confrms the Bush crew was hellbent on torturing any suspected terrorist -- even if it wasn't legal and didn't work. From the Washington Post:

Intelligence and military officials under the Bush administration began preparing to conduct harsh interrogations long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods -- and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect, Senate investigators have concluded.

Previously secret memos and interviews show CIA and Pentagon officials exploring ways to break Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees in early 2002, up to eight months before Justice Department lawyers approved the use of waterboarding and nine other harsh methods, investigators found.

The findings are contained in a Senate Armed Services Committee report scheduled for release today that also documents multiple warnings -- from legal and trained interrogation experts -- that the techniques could backfire and might violate U.S. and international law.

One Army lieutenant colonel who reviewed the program warned in 2002 that coercion "usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain," according to the Senate report. A second official, briefed on plans to use aggressive techniques on detainees, was quoted the same year as asking: "Wouldn't that be illegal?"

So, wouldn't work and was illegal. That should have thrown up a few red flags, but it didn't stop the torture program from moving forward.

This report does indeed add momentum to the push for an investigation of what happened and how. This is about the reputation of the United States. We can't let torturers go unpunished:

The new findings are expected to add further pressure on the White House to authorize an independent investigation of the Bush-era interrogation policies. President Obama for the first time yesterday refused to rule out the possibility of a probe to determine whether government lawyers acted illegally in approving interrogation practices. Obama said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. should determine whether they broke the law.

The government lawyers who broke the law would be a good start.

One of those lawyers, Jay Bybee, is now sitting as a federal appeals judge in the Ninth Circuit. There are growing calls for his impeachment. Yesterday, Senator Feingold said there are "grouds for impeachment can be made." Rep. Jerry Nadler is on board. And, he chairs the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Two important events today in the world of LGBT policy. The House Judiciary Committee is holding a mark-up on the Matthew Shepard Act, which will expand hate crimes protection from "race, color, religion or national origin" to include "gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability." In the last session of Congress, the bill passed both houses (even breaking a filibuster in the Senate), but Bush said he would veto it. This year, it should become law, because that last impediment is gone.

Also, the Maine Legislature is holding a hearing on the same-sex marriage bill. The hearing, which should last all day, was moved from the State House to the auditorium at the Augusta Civic Center to accommodate the crowds.

And, in other news, torture is the topic of the day. Lots of different stories and revelations.

Let's get it started... Read the rest of this post...

Old Europe investigates whether to pursue Bush officials on torture

Paybacks are, well, you know how it goes. Some of the EU countries may have to explain their own role in the Bush-era rendition policies but demanding that the US lives by the rule of law is what we should expect whether at home or abroad. Washington Post:

European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban on torture if they are not held legally accountable at home, according to U.N. officials and human rights lawyers.

Many European officials and civil liberties groups said they were disappointed by President Obama's opposition to trials of CIA interrogators who subjected terrorism suspects to waterboarding and other harsh tactics. They said the release last week of secret U.S. Justice Department memos authorizing the techniques will make it easier for foreign prosecutors to open probes if U.S. officials do not.

Read the rest of this post...

Zuma expected to win South African elections

The ANC - the party of liberation in South Africa - dominates the political system today so whoever is the ANC leader is also the leader of South Africa. In this particular case the ANC leader is Jacob Zuma so the public elections are almost an afterthought. Zuma will be taking over following a long run by Thabo Mbeki who has been in office since 1999. Mbeki was best known in the West because of his bizarre attitudes towards AIDS in a country where HIV/AIDS impacts millions. Zuma's name came to prominence a few years ago during a rape trial (he was acquitted) that involved a woman who was HIV positive. Despite being a supposed leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS, Zuma did not use protection. Later, he was charged with corruption though charges were dropped and most believe it was a politically motivated attack from his foe Mbeki.

Politically, Zuma is expected to be more of a leftist and populist than Mbeki though he's also pragmatic. Where Zuma will lead South Africa is anyone's guess, which is the modern story of South Africa.

The man widely expected to be South Africa's next president is looking beyond Wednesday's parliamentary elections, eager to set up a new government that he says will be responsive to the black majority's hopes for better lives.

Jacob Zuma's African National Congress party is expecting an overwhelming victory in the elections, which has generated an excitement not seen since the country's first multiracial vote in 1994.

Parliament elects South Africa's president, putting ANC leader Zuma in line for the post when the new assembly votes in May.

One common story that will be repeated is South Africa being a one party country. With around 70% of parliament coming from the ANC, it's easy to see that side of the argument. That said, the ANC is a relatively diverse party that for most represents liberation from apartheid. Inside the party there are many wings as the recent Mbeki-Zuma struggle showed. Being the party leader does not always mean easy acceptance of any programs. Look at the Democrats with the Blue Dog Democrats and how difficult it is even within the party to promote liberal policies. South Africa could benefit from more political diversity, but it's not quite as bad as some suggest. Read the rest of this post...

IMF report: global crisis to cost over $4 trillion, last another 18 months

There really isn't very much positive news in the new IMF report. The best I could find is that the US won't be the largest financial loser as Europe is expected to lose slightly more. The IMF still sees a lot more problems ahead and hundreds of billions more to be written down.

Should global writedowns hit $4.1 trillion, as the IMF expects, it would mark a staggering further slump over the next 18 months, according to analysts, who pointed out that, in the current meltdown so far, financial institutions have written off only $1.3 trillion. The IMF called for a "thorough cleansing of banks' balance sheets of impaired assets, accompanied by restructuring and, where needed, recapitalisation".

The half-yearly report from the IMF is closely studied by markets, and will be discussed by the Group of Seven and Group of 20 economies on Friday.

Peter Dixon, an economist at Commerzbank, said: "This is a bleak number and there is clearly still some way to go, and the banks face much more pain." He added, however: "This number is the worst-case scenario."

The problem is that we've been surpassing the "worst case scenario" time after time. Eventually this won't be a problem but it's important to avoid yet another worst case report. Read the rest of this post...

More video musical weirdness from Michael Gregory

You might recall that he did the great retooling of the vice presidential debates, putting them to music. Well, he has a new video out. It's quite fascinating stuff. Hard to explain. Just watch.

Read the rest of this post...