Here is some good news from the 9th circuit and some good news for the rule of law.

For you supporters of torture it is worth noting that several of these individuals who were kidnapped and tortured were released without charge.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In a victory for the rule of law and for victims of state-sponsored torture, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District in San Francisco, reinstated the ACLU’s landmark lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen DataPlan.

The civil lawsuit, Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen DataPlan, Inc., was filed in 2007 on behalf of five men who were kidnapped, forcibly disappeared and then secretly transferred to CIA “black sites” or into the clutches of allied intelligence services. The victims claim they were horribly tortured, subjects of what the Bush regime has termed “enhanced interrogation.”

The plaintiffs are Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident arrested in Pakistan with the complicity of the CIA, Britain’s MI5 and Pakistan’s notoriously corrupt Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). For eighteen months, Mohamed was secretly detained and tortured in Morocco. In 2004, he was blindfolded, stripped, shackled and flown by CIA agents on a flight organized by Jeppesen DataPlan to the secret U.S. detention facility in Kabul, Afghanistan known as the “Dark Prison.” In Afghanistan, Mohamed was repeatedly tortured before his transfer to the Guantánamo Bay gulag. He was released earlier this year without charge.

Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian citizen kidnapped in Sweden where he was applying for asylum. In December 2001, Agiza was chained, shackled and drugged by the CIA and flown to Egypt where he was severely abused and tortured; he remains imprisoned today.

Abu Britel, an Italian of Moroccan descent captured in Pakistan. In May 2002, Britel was handcuffed, blindfolded, stripped, dressed in a diaper and secretly flown by the CIA to Morocco on a Jeppesen DataPlan flight. Once in the hands of the Moroccan intelligence service he was severely tortured; Britel remains incarcerated in Morocco on unspecified charges.

Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi living in Britain with permanent resident status was kidnapped in November 2002 while visiting Gambia. After his detention in the African nation, he was secretly flown by the CIA to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned, interrogated and tortured at two separate CIA secret prisons before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay in February 2003. After four years of illegal detention, al-Rawi was released without charge and returned to Britain.

Ahmed Bashmilah, a Yemeni citizen disappeared while visiting his ailing mother in Jordan. In October 2003, Bashmilah was detained by Jordan’s notorious General Intelligence Department. He was interrogated and tortured for days. In late October 2003, he was turned over to U.S. agents who beat, kicked, hooded and handcuffed the prisoner and then secretly transported him to the U.S. Air Force Base in Bagram, Afghanistan. Freed in March 2006, Bashmilah was never charged with any crime relating to “terrorism.”

As a corporate entity directly profiting from the CIA’s torture program by planning and facilitating Agency ghost flights, Jeppesen bears equal responsibility for serious breeches of U.S. and international law. As a co-conspirator with the CIA, Jeppesen was complicitous in the Agency’s illegal kidnapping and disappearance of “terrorism” suspects into CIA black sites across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. As the Council of Europe reported:

The aviation services provider customarily used by the CIA, Jeppesen International Trip Planning, filed multiple “dummy” flight plans for many of these flights. The “dummy” plans filed by Jeppesen–specifically, for the N379P aircraft–often featured an airport of departure (ADEP) and/or an airport of destination (ADES) that the aircraft never actually intended to visit. If Poland was mentioned at all in these plans, it was usually only by mention of Warsaw as an alternate, or back-up airport, on a route involving Prague or Budapest, for example. Thus the eventual flight paths for N379P registered in Eurocontrol’s records were inaccurate and often incoherent, bearing little relation to the actual routes flown and almost never mentioning the name of the Polish airport where the aircraft actually landed–Szymany. (Council of Europe, “Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report,” Rapporteur: **** Marty, 11 June 2007, p. 36)

Marty documented that “the full extent of my proof, however, goes beyond merely the number of confirmed flights into Szymany and their concordance with suspected dates of HVD [high value detainee] transfers. Through our careful analysis of hundreds of pages of raw aeronautical ‘data strings,’ we can now demonstrate that in the majority of cases these CIA flights were deliberately disguised so that their actual movements would not be tracked or recorded–either ‘live’ or after the fact–by the supranational air safety agency Eurocontrol. The system of cover-up entailed several different steps involving both American and Polish collaborators.” (p. 36)

The Council further documented how Jeppesen coordinated fictitious flight plans and facilitated a “systematic cover-up in collaboration with the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA) throughout the rendition process.” The Polish agency “navigated all of these flights through Polish airspace, exercising control over the aircraft through each of its flight phases.” Indeed, PANSA did so “in the majority of these cases without a legitimate and complete flight plan having been filed for the route flown.”

Bragging of the firm’s good fortune at landing a lucrative contract with the CIA, Bob Overby, the managing director of Jeppesen International Trip Planning, said during a breakfast for new employees in San Jose, Calif., “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights–you know, the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.”

Sean Belcher, a technical writer hired by Jeppesen in 2006 blew the whistle on the firm to New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer. Belcher recalled Overby also said, extemporaneously extolling the virtues of the corporatist bottom line to new hires: “It certainly pays well. They”–the CIA–”spare no expense. They have absolutely no worry about cost. What they have to get done, they get done.”

Belcher told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007, he quit his job five days later.

As the CIA’s booking agent, Jeppesen worked with tiny charter airlines that were little more than CIA cut-outs. As investigative journalists Trevor Paglen and A. C. Thompson documented,

A curious quirk of the CIA’s fleet of aircraft is that they are civilian, rather than military, planes. Owing to U.S. law and the CIA’s status as a civilian agency, the planes are owned by front-companies and operated by a handful of aviation charter companies. One of the consequences of this is that each of these civilian companies leave a long and voluminous paper trail…

As we look more closely at the corporate documents and aviation filings we’ve gotten hold of, a landscape begins to emerge. This particular landscape isn’t “over there,” on the many battlefields of the “war on terror.” Rather, the landscape we see depicted in these documents is stealthily and subtly woven into the fabric of everyday life in the United States. (Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights, Hoboken, NJ: Melville House Publishing, 2006, pp. 45-46)

The case was sent back to San Jose U.S. District Court Judge James Ware for further proceedings. Ware, knuckling under to the specious arguments of the Bush and Obama administrations, had dismissed the suit last year alleging that litigation over CIA ghost flights could prompt the disclosure of “state secrets.”

As I reported in February, “as predictably as night follows day,” Obama’s purported “change” administration “defended the CIA’s practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ (kidnapping) of suspected ‘terrorists’ to third countries where they are subject to ‘enhanced interrogation’ (torture) by allied security services.”

Echoing, indeed expanding, the former Bush regime’s odious invocation of the state secrets privilege, U.S. Attorney Douglas N. Letter had argued before the Ninth Circuit in a thinly-veiled threat to the Court that “judges shouldn’t play with fire,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Warning that once the judges had privately examined the state’s evidence, Letter said “you will see that this case cannot be litigated.”

A unanimous three-judge panel vehemently begged to differ with the U.S. Attorney.

The San Jose Mercury News reported that Judge Michael Daly Hawkins wrote for the Court, “According to the government’s theory, the Judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law.”

If the Court had capitulated to the Obama administration’s fallacious arguments it would have represented a further retrenchment behind a cloak of secrecy and presidential prerogatives, based not on the lawful norms and procedures of a democracy but rather, on the thinnest of reeds designed to buttress an imperial Executive Branch.

Hawkins continued, were the government permitted to shield its conduct from judicial review simply because classified information is involved it “would … perversely encourage the president to classify politically embarrassing information simply to place it beyond the reach of judicial process.”

Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project said in an April 28 press release by the civil liberties’ group:

“This historic decision marks the beginning, not the end, of this litigation. Our clients, who are among the hundreds of victims of torture under the Bush administration, have waited for years just to get a foot in the courthouse door. Now, at long last, they will have their day in court. Today’s ruling demolishes once and for all the legal fiction, advanced by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration, that facts known throughout the world could be deemed ’secrets’ in a court of law.” (American Civil Liberties Union, “Federal court permits landmark ACLU rendition case to go forward,” Press Release, April 28, 2009)

While the Ninth Circuit did not specifically address the plaintiffs’ allegations they had been illegally detained, kidnapped and tortured, Hawkins, citing language from a 2004 Supreme Court decision, said: “As the founders of this nation knew well, arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstances is a ‘gross and notorious … act of despotism.’”

Jeppesen declined to comment and the Justice Department said it was “reviewing the decision.” The company or the Obama administration could seek further review from a larger Appeal’s Court panel or from the U.S. Supreme Court itself.

If they seek a review from the full Appeal’s Court, one Judge will have to recuse himself: Judge Jay Bybee, co-author of the Bush regime’s infamous Torture Memorandums during his tenure as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel.

In 2002, Bybee signed-off on two memoranda that empowered the Bush administration’s push for “enhanced interrogation” (torture) techniques such as waterboarding, involuntary drugging, sleep deprivation, forced isolation as well as other horrific methods drawn from the CIA’s 1963 torture manual, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation.

While prominent constitutional scholars and civil liberties’ advocates have called for Bybee’s impeachment and removal from the bench, The New York Times reported Bybee as saying, “The central question for lawyers was a narrow one; locate, under the statutory definition, the thin line between harsh treatment of a high-ranking Al Qaeda terrorist that is not torture and harsh treatment that is. I believed at the time, and continue to believe today, that the conclusions were legally correct.”

Tell that to the victims who underwent the CIA’s tender ministrations by being confined in a coffin in which insects were placed or those doled out by the Agency’s Moroccan counterparts who routinely tortured Binyam Mohamed by incising his body with a razor, including his penis. Undoubtedly, they would have another opinion on whether or not Judge Bybee and other Bushist miscreants such as John Yoo and David Addington gave “our our best, honest advice, based on our good-faith analysis of the law.”

Or for that matter, is that what Boeing means when it says on its website, “From Aachen to Zhengzhou, King Airs to 747s, Jeppesen has done it all”?

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily and Pacific Free Press. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press. Read other articles by Tom, or visit Tom's website.

This article was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 9:05am

More disgusting news.

by Eric Ruder / April 23rd, 2009

The jailers of the 19th century — even in the pre-Civil War South — largely abandoned the practice of imprisoning people for falling into debt as counterproductive and ultimately barbaric. In the 1970s and ’80s, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that incarcerating people who can’t pay fines because of poverty violates the U.S. Constitution.

Apparently, though, some states and county jails never got the memo. Welcome to the debtors’ prisons of the 21st century.

“Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son,” the New York Times wrote in an editorial.

“When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which helped get her out last week after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments. That is both barbaric and unconstitutional.”

The details of Nowlin’s case are even more alarming than the Times editorial suggests. Not only was Nowlin under orders to pay a fine stemming from someone else’s actions, but she had been laid off from work and lost her home at the time she was ordered to “reimburse” the county for her son’s detention.

Despite her inability to pay, she was held in contempt of court and ordered to serve a 30-day sentence. On March 6, three days after she was incarcerated, she was released for one day to work. She also picked up her paycheck, in the amount of $178.53. This, she thought, could be used to pay the $104, and she would be released from jail.

But when she got back to the jail, the sheriff told her to sign her check over to the county — to pay $120 for her own room and board, and $22 for a drug test and booking fee.

Even more absurd, Nowlin requested but was denied a court-appointed lawyer. So because she was too poor to afford a lawyer and denied her constitutional right to have the court provide one for her, she couldn’t fight the contempt charge that stemmed from her poverty. And her contempt conviction only added to her poverty, as the fines and fees she was obligated to pay now multiplied.

“Like many people in these desperate economic times, Ms. Nowlin was laid off from work, lost her home and is destitute,” said Michael Steinberg, legal director of the Michigan ACLU. “Jailing her because of her poverty is not only unconstitutional, it’s unconscionable and a shameful waste of resources. It is not a crime to be poor in this country, and the government must stop resurrecting debtor’s prisons from the dustbin of history.”

Michigan isn’t the only place where you can be imprisoned for the crime of involuntary poverty. The same Catch-22 ensnares poor defendants daily in courtrooms across the country.

In 2006, the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) filed a suit on behalf of Ora Lee Hurley, who couldn’t get out of prison until she had enough money to pay a $705 fine. But she couldn’t pay the fine because she had to pay the Georgia Department of Corrections $600 a month for room and board, and spend $76 a month on public transportation, laundry and food.

She was released five days a week to work at the K&K Soul Food restaurant, where she earned $6.50 an hour, which netted her about $700 a month after taxes. Hurley was trapped in prison for eight months beyond her initial 120-day sentence until the Southern Center intervened. Over the course of her incarceration, she earned about $7,000, but she never had enough at one time to pay off her $705 fine.

“This is a situation where if this woman was able to write a check for the amount of the fine, she would be out of there,” Sarah Geraghty, a SCHR lawyer, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution while Hurley was still imprisoned. “And because she can’t, she’s still in custody. It’s as simple as that.”

Georgia also lets for-profit probation companies prey on people too poor to pay their traffic violations and court fees. According to a 2008 SCHR report entitled “Profiting from the poor”:

In courts around Georgia, people who are charged with misdemeanors and cannot pay their fines that day in court are placed on probation under the supervision of private, for-profit companies until they pay off their fines. On probation, they must pay these companies substantial monthly “supervision fees” that may double or triple the amount that a person of means would pay for the same offense.

For example, a person of means may pay $200 for a traffic ticket on the day of court and be done with it, while a person too poor to pay that day is placed on probation and ends up paying $500 or more for the same offense.

The privatization of misdemeanor probation has placed unprecedented law enforcement authority in the hands of for-profit companies that act essentially as collection agencies. These companies, focused on profit rather than public safety or rehabilitation, are not designed to supervise people or connect them to services and jobs. Rather, they charge exorbitant monthly fees and use the threat of imprisonment and a variety of bullying tactics to squeeze money out of the men and women under their supervision.

For too many poor people convicted of misdemeanors, our state is not living up to the constitutional promise of equal justice under law.

In Gulfport, Miss., the municipal court started a “fine collection task force” to crack down on people who owed fees for misdemeanors. According to the SCHR Web site:

The task force trolled through predominantly African American neighborhoods, rounding up people who had outstanding court fines. After arresting and jailing them, the City of Gulfport processed these people through a court proceeding at which no defense attorney was present or even offered.

Many people were jailed for months after hearings lasting just seconds. While the city collected money, it also packed the jail with hundreds of people who couldn’t pay, including people who were sick, physically disabled and/or limited by mental disabilities.

The disregard of the justice system for the rights of poor people to equal protection and due process is cause for outrage. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise in an era when the government spends billions bailing out banks while letting foreclosures and unemployment ruin the lives of working people.

We need to build a movement, like the working-class struggles of the 1930s, that can demand an end to the inhuman practice of incarcerating people for no other crime than finding themselves at the bottom of the social ladder.

Released into the US does not mean let out on main street.

It's important to keep in mind that there are many that think these two are true American patriots.

You know...those people who say they are pro-life and advocate the shootings of doctors, the blowing up of clinics, armed over throw of the government and the execution of liberals?

Kinda makes you ill doesn't it?

Here's a real eye opener. Just a thought? Employ some of the unemployed here to work on these programs?


Food Stamps Create Jobs… in India
Several States With High Unemployment Are Outsourcing Food Stamp Services
By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
ABC NEWS Business Unit
April 29, 2009

Michele Brown has seen Americans' struggles with jobs first hand. She lives in hard-hit Florida, spent 20 years in the real estate business and recently had her days as a nanny cut back after her boss had his own hours reduced.

But nothing prepared her for what happened one day when she called a toll-free line to inquire about her food stamps.

"The woman who answered the phone -- it's not like she wasn't nice or anything -- but it was kind of evident that she wasn't in the States," Brown said.

It turns out the woman was at a JP Morgan Chase call center in India.

"That really put me over the edge," said Brown, 52, of Jupiter, Fla. "It's not right because we need the work here. People are in a bad way here."

The trouble here is that evidence that could be used to locate and prosecute these bastards is not being properly analyzed or used.

A rape kit not processed until after the statute of limitations has expired?

That is obscene!

Apparently this rat bastards life is pretty difficult behind bars?

Sorry, no sympathy here.

I like this bit. To support his claim he has statements by the pro-life terrorist Eric Rudolph. Creates an interesting mental picture doesn't it?

Terry Nichols a militia member and domestic terrorist comparing the state of his ass with the pro-life domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph? One shudders to think what their quiet moments together are like.

Don't forget these fine examples of the militia movement, the extreme right wing and pro-life American patriots have a right to a hemorrhoid free life too!!

(CBS) The Smoking Gun Web site reports on a lawsuit against his jailers filed by Terry Nichols, the domestic terrorist who teamed up with Timothy McVeigh to murder 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

According to the court documents on the Smoking Gun Web site, Terry Nichols, 54, says the low-fiber prison diet has given him "chronic constipation, bleeding, hemorrhoids."

This week, a federal judge rejected Nichols's bid for a preliminary injunction against the Bureau of Prisons. A lawsuit filed last month by Nichols is pending.

To support his claim, Nichols solicited testimonials from other high-profile inmates including Eric Rudolph, whose bombs killed victims at abortion clinics and the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Rudolph agrees with Nichols, saying "refined and highly processed" food served to killers like him causes "constipation, gas, and stomach cramps."

A truck loaded with 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil tore the face off the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, and also caused millions of dollars in damage to other structures in parts of downtown Oklahoma City.

Timothy McVeigh and Nichols were convicted of the bomb plot, which prosecutors said was a twisted attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people in the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.

McVeigh was convicted on federal murder charges and executed in 2001. Nichols is serving multiple life sentences on federal and state convictions.

A national disgrace.

What about crime labs in your your state? Are they in a similar state? In an age of budget cuts and tax revolts just what should your tax dollars pay for?

Sometimes justice delayed is justice denied.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 29, 2009

When a woman reports a rape, her body is a crime scene. She is typically asked to undress over a large sheet of white paper to collect hairs or fibers, and then her body is examined with an ultraviolet light, photographed and thoroughly swabbed for the rapist’s DNA.

It’s a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested.

Stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).

So while we have breakthrough DNA technologies to find culprits and exculpate innocent suspects, we aren’t using them properly — and those who work in this field believe the reason is an underlying doubt about the seriousness of some rape cases. In short, this isn’t justice; it’s indifference.

Solomon Moore, a colleague of mine at The Times, last year wrote about a 43-year-old legal secretary who was raped repeatedly in her home in Los Angeles as her son slept in another room. The attacker forced the woman to clean herself in an attempt to destroy the evidence.

Tim Marcia, the detective on the case, thought this meant that the perpetrator was a habitual offender who would strike again. Mr. Marcia rushed the rape kit to the crime lab but was told to expect a delay of more than one year.

So Mr. Marcia personally drove the kit 350 miles to deliver it to the state lab in Sacramento. Even there, the backlog resulted in a four-month delay — but then it produced a “cold hit,” a match in a database of the DNA of previous offenders.

Yet in the months while the rape kit sat on a shelf, the suspect had allegedly struck twice more. Police said he broke into the homes of a pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl, sexually assaulting each of them.

“The criminal justice system is still ill equipped to deal with rape and not that good at moving rape cases forward,” notes Sarah Tofte, who just wrote a devastating report for Human Rights Watch about the rape-kit backlog. The report found that in Los Angeles County, there were at last count 12,669 rape kits sitting in police storage facilities. More than 450 of these kits had sat around for more than 10 years, and in many cases, the statute of limitations had expired.

There are no good national figures, and one measure of the indifference is that no one even bothers to count the number of rape kits sitting around untested.

Why don’t police departments treat rape kits with urgency? One reason is probably expense — each kit can cost up to $1,500 to test — but there also seems to be a broad distaste for rape cases as murky, ambiguous and difficult to prosecute, particularly when they involve (as they often do) alcohol or acquaintance rape.

“They talk about the victims’ credibility in a way that they don’t talk about the credibility of victims of other crimes,” Ms. Tofte said.

Charlie Beck, a deputy police chief of Los Angeles, said that there was no excuse for the failure to test rape kits, but he noted that integrating a new technology into police work is complex and involves a learning curve. Since Human Rights Watch began its investigation, he said, the department had resolved to test rape kits routinely — and as a result, cold hits have doubled.

While the backlog and desultory handling of rape kits are nationwide problems, there is one shining exception: New York City has made a concerted effort over the last decade to test every kit that comes in. The result has been at least 2,000 cold hits in rape cases, and the arrest rate for reported cases of rape in New York City rose from 40 percent to 70 percent, according to Human Rights Watch.

Some Americans used to argue that it was impossible to rape an unwilling woman. Few people say that today, or say publicly that a woman “asked for it” if she wore a short skirt. But the refusal to test rape kits seems a throwback to the same antediluvian skepticism about rape as a traumatic crime.

“If you’ve got stacks of physical evidence of a crime, and you’re not doing everything you can with the evidence, then you must be making a decision that this isn’t a very serious crime,” notes Polly Poskin, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

It’s what we might expect in Afghanistan, not in the United States.

Dog is my copilot?

I think that's grand. My dog knew more about love, kindness, loyalty and faithfulness than alot of people I have run across in my life.

Yes I know it's god backwards. I just don't think that's insulting to either God or dogs.

Now...everyone outta the gutter! You are crowding me!

Yep...people who blindly follow a mythical figure, who base their "spirituality" on fear of hell that is paired with a reward for being saved, who claim the Bible is the Word of God...

haha I could go on...

The point is these are sheeple who tend to believe, do and fear as they are told.

Idiots...

Where to start?

Torture does not produce reliable data.

Texas? Fry em? Yeah you do a fine job putting to death people who are likely innocent. Illinois has some interesting data on death penalty cases. The sate of "justice" in Texas is a national embarrassment. Fine job there Hoss!

Using torture makes us no better than those we vilify. It proves we are as monstrous as our enemies, creates martyrs and helps recruit others to hate us.

Torture ignores and erodes the rule of law.

Torturing ourselves leaves us with no moral ground or legal ground to stand on when our troops or civilians are tortured.

I could go on...but...

Agree there they both annoy me.

Lottery here is 181mil or so...I think I am going to buy a ticket and dedicate to Hannity.

Of course those folks who judge, fear others and who embrace violence are...

TADA...the ones who claim to be Christians....

Sheep...tell them to be afraid and they are!

Burn in hell? According to your own teachings...it's more likely than you think...for you!

hahah What would Jesus do?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
The Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture rallied on Capitol Hill in March 2008.

The Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture rallied on Capitol Hill in March 2008.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small. See results of the survey »

The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The survey asked: "Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?"
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Roughly half of all respondents -- 49 percent -- said it is often or sometimes justified. A quarter said it never is.

The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations -- such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians -- categorized as "mainline" Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals.

uhhh...

Please explain to me how that is liberal propaganda?

Umm by the way I am an unapologetic meat eater.

So, all murder is the same eh? No special circumstances should apply?

They already do after all and I don't see people trying to abolish those laws. Murder under special circumstances, murder in the commission of a crime, 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree murder, manslaughter, self defense, etc...

So, you say there is no need for special circumstances or charges? Is the murder of a child during the commission of a rape is the same as improperly maintaining your car, crashing and causing a death?

According to the logic of some posters it is.

Special circumstances allow prosecutors, jurors, the public and judges to more fully understand the scope, motivation and circumstances of a crime and therefor the correct or most fitting punishment for the crime.

Anyone so simple minded that they cannot understand that really ought to give the hell up and go live in a cave.

So does the artist luv Nazi propaganda or unconsciously channel it for this meat council ad?

http://totallylookslike.com/2009/04/21/meat-council-poster-totally-looks-like-ww2-nazi-propaganda/?

Humm whatcha think?

Texas Professor Condemns Porn in Talk
Graphic language, strong message draw mixed reaction from audience
Published On Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:52 AM
By LINDA M. LIAN
Contributing Writer

A University of Texas professor condemned pornography as the depraved and even apocalyptic embodiment of society’s ills at last night’s kick-off event for the annual “Take Back the Night” movement created to support survivors of sexual violence.

“Pornography is what the end of the world looks like,” said professor Robert W. Jensen, who blamed capitalism, white supremacy, and racism for the spread of increasingly violent heterosexual pornography.

Jensen said that pornography becomes increasingly violent, racially charged, and degrading towards women to increase profit by appealing to capitalist consumers.

The lecture—co-sponsored by the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response and several student groups—was billed as an effort to promote dialogue about sexual violence.

With over 20 years of research on pornography to his name, Jensen—who focuses on male production and consumption of pornographic material—spoke candidly, frankly, and often humorously about the sensitive and potentially uncomfortable topic.

“Can all the men who masturbated to pornography in the last 48 hours please come down to the front,” Jensen joked at one point amid laughter.

“How about in the last ten minutes?” a male student quipped in response.

Jensen warned of potentially graphic descriptions in his lecture, but when he launched into the description of the top five most commonly produced “sexual acts,” many women and several men in the audience looked visibly shocked and disgusted. Four people left the lecture hall.

Jensen said that his message was not the rant of a “radical apocalyptic crazy man from Texas,” but some students had reservations.

“I don’t think I identified with many of Jensen’s points...I think some of his arguments were rather far fetched,” said Tarik Umar ’10, who nevertheless added that he found the lecture was “definitely interesting.”

Others said Jensen’s message was positive.

“I’m a new Christian, trying to live a pure life,” said Josue G. Ortiz-Santana ’11. “So I am trying to learn about why pornography is detrimental to both men and women.”

Ortiz-Santana also said he invited his teammates on the football team to view the event with him.

“I would like to open my teammates’ eyes to the struggles of women and why pornography is detrimental to those that view it,” he said, adding that none of his teammates were able to make the event.

OSAPR Director Sarah Rankin said Jensen brought an unusual and interesting perspective to the table in the effort to increase dialogue about sexual violence.

“It is interesting to hear a male talking about pornography from a feminist perspective, and to see the audience’s reaction,” she said.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=527655

I believe there is a difference between debating someone and a childish threat like the one in your reply on the hate crimes thread directed at me.

Perhaps the distinction isn't evident to you.

Something right!!

So far they have exonerated over ten individuals using DNA technology. Sadly, some who have been proven innocent still have criminal records because the governor has not yet signed their pardons. (But that's another story right?)

This is good stuff Maynard. I understand this program will be featured on the television network A&E.

Here is some info from the Dallas County District Attorney's Office.

Conviction Integrity Unit

Established by District Attorney Craig Watkins in July of 2007, the Conviction Integrity Unit oversees the post-conviction review of more than 400 DNA cases in conjunction with the Innocence Project of Texas (IPOT) and in accordance with the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Chapter 64 (Motion for Forensic DNA Testing). In addition to the IPOT project, the Conviction Integrity Unit investigates and prosecutes old cases (DNA and non-DNA related) where evidence identifies different or additional perpetrators. Special Field Bureau Chief Mike Ware supervises the Conviction Integrity Unit, the Appellate Division, the Public Integrity Division, the Federal Division and the Mental Health Unit, as well as public information, evidence destruction and expunctions at the District Attorney’s Office. The Conviction Integrity Unit is staffed by one assistant district attorney, one investigator and one legal assistant. This special division is the first of its kind in the United States.

http://www.dallasda.com/conviction-integrity.html

This is all about obeying the party and not your conscience I think.

But...when you are behind...any way the wind blows right? I mean didn't you just say that?

(CNN) – After Arlen Specter bolted the GOP Tuesday, Republicans like party chair Michael Steele attacked him as a "leftist" with a history of "left-wing" stands.

That was yesterday.

Twenty-four hours later, his former colleagues in the Senate GOP are rushing to embrace Specter's past in a new campaign designed to highlight the consistency of his Republican record.

"In light of Senator Specter's changing political party, we felt it was our civic duty to adequately inform Pennsylvania Democrat primary voters about their new Senator's record and his close relationship with our former President George W. Bush," National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson said in a Wednesday announcement.

The effort includes a Web page featuring YouTube clips of Specter's positive comments about conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, and criticism of Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. It also involves robocalls to Pennsylvania voters to "help you welcome your newest Democrat senator" that use audio from Specter's old campaign ads — audio featuring what the NRSC describes as "glowing support" from former President George W. Bush.

"I'm here to say it as plainly as I can, Arlen Specter is the right man for the United States Senate," says Bush in comments included in the new call. "I can count on this man — see, that's important. He's a firm ally when it matters most. I'm proud to tell you I think he's earned another term as the United States senator."

The remarks were made back in 2004, when the Bush's endorsement was widely credited with helping Specter eke out a narrow primary win over challenger Pat Toomey.