Is this your America?

The long saught DoJ "Torture Memo" written by John Yoo, offering a defense to George W. Bush and his sadistic friends to order the torture, and even killing, of detainees, has finally been made available. Not by the DoJ to Congress as they'd long sought, but to the ACLU via a FOIA request. (Thank you, ACLU!)

Yoo's document is some 80 pages long, offering what he feels --- or what the Administration wanted him to feel --- is a reasonable legal defense for the use of torture, even where it is explicitly disallowed by international treaties to which the U.S. has signed on.

Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker, who offers his own summary on all of this, has posted one of the more remarkable sections here.

In short, that 7-page section amounts to:

That's "one small step for freedom of speech," our friend Jesse Dyen writes to us this afternoon.

Dyen was arrested, along with a number of other freedom fighters who had the temerity to show up near Bush's "brush ranch" in Crawford, Texas, several years ago to protest against the war, only to be arrested (twice) by police enforcing an ordinance, passed by the locals after Cindy Sheehan's original stand there in the Summer of 2005, that no such protests on public lands were to be allowed.

Today, he writes to let us know that the guilty charges were overturned by an appellate court that decided [PDF] in favor of the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment, and other quaint old notions such as those.

See below for Dyen's missive explaining what happened back then, and in the court decision today, to the courageous arrested "Prairie Dogs" (who happened to include legendary "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, as well as a number of other notables), and a video made from one of our favorite songs, as written by Dyen, during the original historic tipping point moment in Crawford back in the Summer of 2005…

Apparently, it's just fine to break the law, as long as the economy is seen as being bad...

Seriously, we must remember to speak with Hoyer and Pelosi about this terrific bridge we've got for sale. We're certain they'd be interested.

And while there seems to be confusion in the Kucinich camp concerning the Election "Recount" in NH (more soon on that, hopefully), at least there's no confusion for Kucinich when it comes to what's going on in either the White House, or among his party's "leadership," according to the New York Times:

Yes, a lie. Some 935 of them to be exact-ish, on just one aspect of what the Kucinich Impeachment articles will detail.

As we reported last December, Kucinich has been preparing, for some time, to file Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush. While the Democratic "Leadership" may not like the notion, it should come as welcome news to the country's few remaining admirers of the U.S. Constitution.

The Reno Gazette Journal reports on Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH) announcement that he intends to file Articles of Impeachment very shortly against George W. Bush...

The BRAD BLOG can confirm recent efforts by Kucinich's office to prepare such a document. We cannot yet confirm when it will be filed in the U.S. House, but we're told it may be quite soon.

In the meantime, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) demonstrated that he understands both the U.S. Constitution and American politics, by offering this lesson to his fellow Democrats at a speech last week in Florida. (RAW STORY has the short video):

Wexler is, of course, correct on all points.

IN RELATED NEWS: Congress and the courts review the Bush Administration's unprecedented extra-Constitutional use of the "states secrets privilege." The same one used to keep FBI translator/whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' allegations of criminal misconduct from seeing the light of day for 5 years now and counting.

(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG toon sherpa, Pokey Anderson!)

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Are bloggers journalists? More importantly, should bloggers receive the same privileges the government bestows upon “professional” journalists including, in most states, protection from the forced disclosure of confidential sources of information by way of journalist shield laws?

These are some of the questions congress has been considering over the last month as part of the “Free Flow of Information Act of 2007.” As The BRAD BLOG often relies on confidential and whistleblower sources we have been tracking the issue closely.

With this backdrop, The BRAD BLOG jumped at the opportunity to interview the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject, D.C. constitutional law attorney Scott Gant. Released in June, We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age, has enjoyed favorable reviews and led to appearances by Gant on C-Span's BookTV and The McLaughlin Group, where the host commented that the book was “A great read, an easy read and it breaks new ground, quite groundbreaking.”

Part 1 (7:32) of our interview above covers all things related to the shield law. Part 2 (8:30) of the interview above concentrates on access privileges and other benefits that journalists receive from the government that may be important to bloggers. Both follow below...

NOTE: While the above toon's suggestion, that the Constitution is protected each night from Dick Cheney, may be a joke, the part about powerful hydraulics lowering it into the ground each night is actually true. The company who made the high-tech security system, custom built to protect our nation's most important document: Diebold, Inc.

Yes, that Diebold, Inc.

(Hat-tip for the toon to BRAD BLOG's comic sherpa, Pokey Anderson)

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

From Larisa Alexandrovna of RAW STORY:

UN report a 'moral indictment' of US

Anybody surprised? I didn't think so.

I can't quote the whole article but I can encourage you to read it!

From Charlie Savage in today's Boston Globe...

I began to try and pick and choose a few grafs to highlight from this extensive article. Upon reading it in full, however, I was generally so sickened I had no idea where to start.

Suffice to say, that --- unless someone can offer some alternative view to the situation about which Savage adeptly reports --- those so-called "Bush Haters" who've been saying for years that we are on a clear trajectory, hurling towards full-blown tyranny and/or fascism and/or dictatorship, were far more correct than I'd ever given them credit for.

Without some mitigating information in reply to Savage's work, the article suggests we are in a gravely serious Constitutional Crisis in this country. Far above and beyond what I believe has generally been understood. At least by me.

Please read the full article...

(A non-registration-required version here.)

Guest blogged by David Edwards

The New York Times reports that in 2004 Deputy Attorney General James Comey refused to sign off on renewal of Bush's warrantless NSA spying program. Instead of addressing Comey's concerns, Bush Administration officials took the desperate move of actually visiting Attorney General Ashcroft in the hospital to get his authorization for renewal of the program. Ashcroft was, at the time, in intensive care recovering from pancreatitis.

Comey refused to approve renewal of the program based on concerns over "whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation."

In light of these new revelations, Senator Charles Schumer, appearing on Fox News Sunday, demanded that Bush Administration officials testify before congress.

Mitch McConnel, who appeared along with Schumer, chastised The Times for continuing to report on details of the wiretap program. While Schumer said that any investigation should consider a possible whistle-blower status for anyone who leaked this information, Senator McConnel was more interested in punishing the whistleblower.

Because the NSA shared the wiretap information with many federal agencies, it will be very difficult to assign blame to a specific leaker.

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Guest blogged by David Edwards

A year after the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, Ed Helms investigates to find out if the critics' worst fears have come true. Has gay marriage ruined Massachusetts?

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Wow...that Alan Keyes interview where he called lesbian Veep daughter Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist" for her lifestyle, along, presumably with any other heterosexual couple who can't, or chose not to mate, is even more astounding than just the quotes I gave you earlier.

He had more to say about loving couples that God has made incapable of having children together: "They cannot mate. They are not made to do so. Therefore the idea of marriage for two such individuals is an absurdity."

He then objected "to the notion" that we refer to two partners who cannot mate as having "sexual relations because it is nothing of the kind". Rather, he said, "It is the mutual pursuit of pleasure through the stimulation of the organs intended for procreation, but it has nothing to do with sexuality."

Here's the full transcript, and a copy of the audio, courtesy of AMERICABlog.

Wow. Finally, someone who's willing to stand up and publicly support the GOP Platform!

With that, I might have finally voted Republican, except for my fear that they might "mutually pursue pleasure through the stimulation of the organs intended for procreation" me!

Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for input on the issue of "Same-Sex Marriage".

Call the Governator's Hotline at (916) 445-2841, then hit -5- for "Hot Issues", -1- to choose "Same-Sex Marriage", and then --- hopefully --- -1- to express SUPPORT for equal civil rights in America!

I don't have much to add here, but with everything else going on, somehow this AP story seems to have gotten overlooked today. And yet it's quite notable, so here it is...

At least something is still going right in this country and even the Supremes didn't screw this one up! Yet.