This would be unbelievable, except that given the track record of this administration, it's totally believable.  The United States government has announced that it may hold Guatanamo detainees indefinitely, EVEN IF THEY'RE ACQUITTED BY A MILITARY TRIBUNAL!  Yes, you read that correctly.  Even if a jury of United States military officers, in a proceeding that has been highly tilted in favor of the prosecution, decides to acquit a detainee, our government nevertheless claims the right to keep him at Guantanamo (or presumably wherever else we decide to hold him) forever.

In a world in which animal rights are gaining ground, barbecue season should make me feel guilty. My hunch is that in a century or two, our descendants will look back on our factory farms with uncomprehending revulsion. But in the meantime, I love a good burger.

So begins a column entitled A Farm Boy Reflects.   It is today's NY Times offering by Nicholas Kristof, written from Yamhill OR, where he grew up on a family farm.  And his next paragraph explains WHY he is writing it:

This comes up because the most important election this November that you’ve never heard of is a referendum on animal rights in California, the vanguard state for social movements. Proposition 2 would ban factory farms from raising chickens, calves or hogs in small pens or cages.

  Perhaps it takes someone who eats meat but grew up on a family farm himself raising animals to be slaughtered for meat,  to take on the question of animal rights.

Please read his column.  Then perhaps come back to this diary.

    CNN says in Bush approves execution of Army private that

    President Bush has approved the Army's request to execute a soldier convicted of rape and murder, the White House announced Monday evening.
    Pvt. Ronald Gray has been on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since 1988. His execution would be the first for the U.S. military since 1961, but the White House said it expects further appeals before the sentence is carried out. ...
    Gray was convicted of raping and killing a female Army private and a civilian near his post at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was also convicted of the rape and attempted murder of another fellow soldier in her barracks at Fort Bragg. ...

    Gray seems like a loathsome human being, but I seem to remember reading about plenty of killings committed by U.S. soldiers, some being Iraq veterans. Why Gray, who seems to be an African American (from the CNN photo)? And why now?

    Could it be because of the election, and Barack Obama?

    (more below)

Spending a month away, among people who had a lot of questions about where the United States is heading, made me realize more than ever what a colossal, nearly impossible job the next president has. Not only have Bush and Cheney driven the country into a ditch, the wheels have pretty much come off the car. And we all know how expensive it will be to fill it with gas.

I'm a film critic and writer and thought I'd share my reviews, when it seemed appropriate to the site. Over the next few days, weeks, ...whatever... I'll be posting reviews of documetaries that tackle our current fiasco in the Middle East.

I thought I'd start with Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure.

But before we launch into that, I offer up a "Letter To The Editor" I recieved for my review. If you blanch at 'foul' language (though, I would argue there's no such thing as foul language --a post for another time?) I suggest seeking out another diary. Maybe one about kittens.

Letter and review on the flip...

Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Maher Arar’s lawsuit against John Ashcroft, Robert Mueller and others.  Arar sued these officials for kidnapping him at JFK airport and shipping him off to Syria to be tortured – a process known as extraordinary rendition.  My new book, Justice Across Borders (Cambridge University Press 2008) exposes efforts by victims like Arar to hold accountable those who violate fundamental human rights.  It demonstrates the heroic work of human rights advocates in pioneering new remedies for these victims and it demonstrates efforts by the Bush Administration and large corporations to eradicate these cases.  It all started with Filártiga v. Peña-Irala . . .

Perhaps an angel looks like everything
We have forgotten, I mean forgotten
Things that don't seem familiar when
We meet them again, lost beyond telling
Which were ours once. - John Ashbery, "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror"

On our final Independence Day with President Bush, we find ourselves in a place called Remembrance, with mouths full of oratory and eyes muted with grief.  And on our minds is patriotism and its irony : that here, in this nation and especially during this century, it has destroyed those who served it best and has been made to serve those who offer it nothing at all.  

Leanh Nguyen, PhD -- a Vietnam War refugee who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology -- explains in 60 seconds why she started chain-smoking.

The call for justice should never cease. While we hold slim hope of justice being done and BushCo and all the participants in the torture policy being held accountable, the call for justice should never fall silent.

The Center for Constitutional Rights keeps up the good fight, representing four former Abu Ghraib detainees in their suits against military contractors:

Four former Abu Ghraib detainees who were wrongly imprisoned, tortured and later released without charge are suing two U.S. military contractor corporations and three individual contractors, according to four separate lawsuits being filed today by their U.S. legal team.

This Youtube clip shows the questions asked off John Yoo and David Addington by Rep John Conyers - and it's not pretty.

Questions asked:

Can the President order that a suspects child be tortured?

Is there anything that the President could not order to be done to a suspect, if he  believed it neccesary for national defense?

Can the President order that someone be buried alive?

Was there a Principles meeting to approve interrogations techniques?

Do you believe that the Unitary Executive Theory allows the President to violate the law?

Questions answered:

None.

You are a liar.

Cross-posted by Will Bunch at my Philadelphia Daily News blog, Attytood. Like most newspaper blogs, sadly, a lot of right-wingers camp out there, so I urge you come to come over and join the battle.

That quote in the headline doesn't come from Michael Moore or some commenter on Democratic Underground or here at Daily Kos.

It comes from a retired major general of the U.S. Army, Antonio Taguba. It was Taguba, you may recall, that President Bush asked to investigate the original claims of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib back in 2004.

This is the second part of the liveblog on Carl Levin's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing investigating torture by the military.

   I looked but I did not see a diary up yet on this hearing. If there is one please let me know and I will delete. This one is important. Let's focus on what we hear today. What pose will Lieberman take? Will Lindsey Graham try to cover for them? Will Hillary be back?

Cross-posted by Will Bunch at my Philadelphia Daily News blog, Attytood. Like most newspaper blogs, sadly, a lot of right-wingers camp out there, so I urge you come to come over and join the battle.

Rush Limbaugh called me a "wacko" yesterday to his 20 million radio listeners.

I am truly honored and humbled.

The American public has been bamboozled to believe it's too late to impeach Bush/Cheney by the same corporate media shills and special interests who sold us the Iraq War.  They don't want us to impeach Bush & Cheney for two reasons:

1.  They want a war in Iran, for which Bush/Cheney/Media Talking Shill-heads have been setting the stage.

2.  The special interests don't want an investigation to uncover their hand in the crimes.

Not only have the special interests taken impeachment off the table via T.V., right wing radio talk shows, and the newspapers, which they largely control, but they have intimidated many of your Congressmen to defy his/her Oath of Office

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Over the past few days, we've gone over a history of dominionist prosyletisation efforts during the Gulf War and how they are endangering not only Christians but our own military to boot.

Today, we get into the real heart of why some of us are so worried about the "God Warrior" tendencies in neopentecostal dominionist groups.

Everyone who hasn't been completely isolated from the outside world knows by now about the revelations of torture and human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other facilities used for "extraordinary rendition" (or, more properly, gulags).

Not so well publicised is the fact that the very denomination responsible for the "Teen Challenge" chain of "kiddie gulags" is in fact at the very core of the torture scandals--and that the Assemblies' own chaplains were in fact ringleaders of torture.

My diary today is very short and to the point. Torture is going on with funding from our tax dollars, in our names, for no reason other than to destroy a nation and a people.