jrtom

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/04/america/04interrogate.php

A few years ago, this would have been news.

Sadly, now it's to the point that a lot of people will say "it's all lies" or "it's irrelevant", and many more will say "yeah, we knew that already".

Where has our goddamned sense of outrage gone?

via http://boingboing.net : Loyalty Day

Somehow, this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't even think that it really has much to do with Bush--although this does feel like a political ploy. I think that it has something to do with the implication that we need to be told to be loyal...and perhaps it does have something to do with Bush, as arguably some of the worst things in his administration could not have happened but for the loyalty of various people to him (which he is now repaying in kind by stubbornly refusing to admit that they might have engaged in any wrongdoing). Plus Bush, I think, does not define "loyalty" as I do.

On a not-exactly-related note, clicking on 'Executive Orders' in the sidebar turns this gem up which makes a whole raft of changes to how military courts-martial proceed:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070418-2.html

It allows for witnesses that aren't physically present...which may be reasonable in some cases...but then moves on to permitting the accused to not be physically present...and then makes it clear that such remote connections can be audio-only (all sorts of fun possibilities there).

Then it goes on (search for "119a") to, as far as I can tell, lay the groundwork for criminalizing abortion. (Essentially, it sets things up so that if a fetus is killed or harmed in the course of some other crime, some charge with code number I don't know is added to those of which the defendant is accused. To be fair, it does explicitly exempt legal abortions...and again, maybe it's just the known biases of Bush in this regard...but it makes me nervous.)

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