Where's the Outrage?

I have been reviewing some of Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points because I think they are pure garbage. I don’t think that O’Reilly can get through one without making a major error – a lie. He depends on his audience to be passive and not look up his lies. Tonight C&L does the honors for me.

For some time now, Bill O’Reilly has been so desperate to prove that the Bush administration’s use of extreme tactics in the “war on terror” — including torturing detainees and killing civilians — that he’s even been willing to smear the memories of American veterans of World War II to make that point. Last night on his Fox News show, he added Winston Churchill to the list of smear victims.

We all remember the Malmedy smear, for which O’Reilly has never either apologized or corrected the record:

In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed and they shot them dead, you know that. That’s on the record. And documented.”

O’Reilly in fact had it completely reversed: At Malmedy, it was American troops who were massacred by SS guards, not the other way around.

Not only did O’Reilly never correct the insulting gaffe, a year later he repeated it:

In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air, and they were unarmed, and they shot them down. You know that. That’s on the record, been documented. In Iwo Jima, the same thing occurred. Japanese attempted to surrender, and they were burned in their caves.

As Robert Parry observes:

O’Reilly also engages in historical revisionism with his explanation that the small number of Japanese POWs at Iwo Jima and other Pacific battles is proof that U.S. Marines committed systematic murder. According to most historical accounts, the Americans wanted the Japanese soldiers to surrender but they chose to fight to the death.

So last night he wandered into the same waters, claiming that Winston Churchill was likely a war criminal under the standards “the far left” wants to impose on the Bush administration. What started all this was President Obama citing Winston Churchill’s views on torture:

O’Reilly: And since then, the Factor has been investigating Winston Churchill’s position on waging war and interrogating the enemy. Via Boston University professor Cathal Nolan, we have found out the following:

Churchill actually wanted to use poison gas on the Germans in violation of the Geneva Convention, but was stopped by the British War Cabinet.

The Royal Air Force killed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of civilians by targeting non-military sites.

And the British operated a number of military interrogation centers during and after World War II, including one called the “London Cage,” where German prisoners were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with death.

Another center was opened in Bad Nenndorf on German soil after Churchill left power. It was almost like a concentration camp. British government documents detailed terrible torture inflicted on the Germans. Some of the inmates were branded human skeletons.

Well, is O’Reilly right? Er, as you might expect given his track record — No.

It’s not as egregious a smear as the Malmedy/Iwo Jima claims, but close.

Let’s run through these:

– Yes, the RAF targeted civilian areas. So did the United States — see, most notoriously, not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also the firebombings of Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo, which actually resulted in more civilian casualties. Yet the fact is that this is not a war crime. Is Bill O’Reilly suggesting that it is — and that American troops, by extension, are also war criminals? Need we even mention the word “Vietnam” in the context of this matter?

– Was Churchill responsible for the “London Cage” abuses? Probably not. ABC’s Political Punch has a reasonably good rundown, duly noting that President Obama’s Churchill quote that sparked this O’Reilly rant was probably overdrawn. As for Churchill’s war-crimes culpability, there’s this:

“We don’t know what detail he knew about what was happening in interrogation centers,” Cobain said. “Clearly, he would have known there were interrogation centers. There’s no evidence that Churchill knew that people were being tortured there. And of course, Churchill was himself a prisoner of war, and during the Boer War, and wrote at length about his horror of war and his horror of imprisonment.”

– What about Bad Nenndorf? Well, first: Churchill had no responsibility for it. Second: It was in fact widely viewed as criminal, and was dealt with as such: “Four of the camp’s officers were brought before courts-martial in 1948 and one of the four was convicted on charges of neglect.”

Indeed, Churchill after the war penned this observation in response to the Bad Nenndorff scandal:

“The use of instruments of torture can never be regarded by any decent person as synonymous with justice.”

In other words, O’Reilly is smearing yet another hero of World War II just so he can claim that it was OK for Bush to create a torture regime because hey, Churchill did it too.

Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens have more.

Tags: Bush Administration, Party Politics, Torture by ecthompson md
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Glenn nails this one:

There’s been a major editorial breach at The New York Times today, in this obituary of an American fighter pilot who was captured by the Chinese:

Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83. . . .

From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.

After a short mock trial in Beijing on May 24, 1955, Captain Fischer and the other pilots — Lt. Col. Edwin L. Heller, First Lt. Lyle W. Cameron and First Lt. Roland W. Parks — were found guilty of violating Chinese territory by flying across the border while on missions over North Korea. Under duress, Captain Fischer had falsely confessed to participating in germ warfare.

So that’s torture now? To use the prevailing American mindset: a room that doesn’t meet the standards of a Hilton and some whistling in the background is torture? My neighbor whistles all the time; does that mean he’s torturing me? It’s not as though Fischer had his eyes poked out by hot irons or was placed in a coffin-like box with bugs or was handcuffed to the ceiling.

Also, using the editorial standards of America’s journalistic institutions — as explained recently by the NYT Public Editor — shouldn’t this be called “torture” rather than torture — or “harsh tactics some critics decry as torture”? Why are the much less brutal methods used by the Chinese on Fischer called torture by the NYT, whereas much harsher methods used by Americans do not merit that term? Here we find what is clearly the single most predominant fact shaping our political and media discourse: everything is different, and better, when we do it. In fact, it is that exact mentality that was and continues to be the primary justification for our torture regime and so much else that we do.
(more…)

Also Andrew Sullivan tackles this subject:

You will notice how the NYT defines torture when it comes to foreign governments – isolation, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation. Much milder than anything the US did to one of its own citizens, Jose Padilla. But the parallel is almost perfect: these are, after all, the exact Chinese Communist techniques that were reverse engineered from the SERE program. So you have a perfect demonstration of the NYT’s double-standard. If Chinese do it to Americans, it’s torture; if Americans do it to an American, it’s “harsh interrogation.” Does Jill Abramson really expect us to take this lying down?

You will also notice the quality of the intelligence procured through methods milder than the Bush administration’s:

“He wanted me to admit that I had been ordered to cross the Manchurian border,” Captain Fischer told Life magazine. “I was grilled day and night, over and over, week in and week out, and in the end, to get Chong and his gang off my back, I confessed to both charges. The charges, of course, were ridiculous. I never participated in germ warfare and neither did anyone else. I was never ordered to cross the Yalu. We had strict Air Force orders not to cross the border.”

“I will regret what I did in that cell the rest of my life,” the captain continued. “But let me say this: it was not really me — not Harold E. Fischer Jr. — who signed that paper. It was a mentality reduced to putty.”

Dick Cheney believes that a “mentality reduced to putty” is the best source of reliable intelligence; that methods designed to give you false confessions should be the basis for national security assessments. (more… )

Hypocrisy revealed.

Tags: Bush Administration, Obama administration, Torture by ecthompson md
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Again? More fire in California.

From LAT:

At 9 a.m. Thursday, three men met on the ridge and studied the mountainside above their homes.

The worst looked to be over. White smoke rose in listless little spirals from blackened earth. The air was still. The mourning doves did their usual dirge from the overhead lines. Sprinklers swish-swished.

But Santa Barbara’s endemic twist on the Santa Ana — the “sundowner” wind — is as cagey as it is ferocious.

The winds rush out of the canyons without warning, often around sundown (but not predictably so). They can turn cool days into sweltering nights and, when there’s a fire, drive it straight out of the mountains and to the city’s northern edge.

And then before dawn, they retreat. The fire wanders back into the hills, like some nocturnal predator. Morning breaks peacefully — and the restless waiting begins. (more… )

Tags: California Wildfires by ecthompson md
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This is funny and makes an important point.

Watch the video:

Tags: Domestic Issues by ecthompson md
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For reasons that are unclear (my friend sent me a link) I opened an article of Thomas Sowell’s.  If I haven’t taken my medicine (Pepto-Bismol and Prilosec), I try not to read his work.  His writing is almost indistinguishable from whatever the Republican party line is.  So, today the party line is “Empathy” versus Law.

When you start from this position, you can’t find any place that’s reasonable.  His premise is that it is impossible to be empathetic and follow the law at the same time.  I completely reject that premise. Just because you have empathy for someone or some cause does not mean that they’re necessarily right or that they’ve necessarily follow the law.  The definition of empathy according to Merriam — Webster is the “action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.”  Nowhere in that definition does it say to ignore the law.

It is 2009.  The Supreme Court is made up of seven old White men, one Black man (who hates the fact that he is indeed Black) and one old White woman.  How does this Court represent America?  As these nine Americans deliberate on everything from civil rights to civil liberties to torture to property rights, would the decisions of this Court change if there were five women and four men (which would be much more representative of the population of the United States?) Thomas Sowell argues to consider such things as race and gender proves that we have “strayed from the purpose of law.”  Really?  How?  If I’m looking at five qualified candidates (use whatever definition of qualified you want to use) and four of them are White males and one of them is a White female shouldn’t gender be discussed? If not, why not?  It would be different if we lived in an equal society where women and minorities have been treated equally for hundreds of years, but that’s not the case.  We live in a society where everybody is not equal;  therefore, women and minorities may see a situation differently. They will view some laws differently than White males. It is this diversity which makes America great.  Shouldn’t we try to get this same type of diversity on the Supreme Court?  The answer is, of course, that we should.

The fact that this columnist decided to lower himself by comparing Barack Obama’s oratory skills to that of Hitler’s makes me want to vomit. The comparison debases his argument.

Sowell then launches into the danger of picking someone who doesn’t understand the Constitution.  So the fear is that Barack Obama will choose Beyoncé or Jennifer Lopez to be on the Supreme Court?  Where’s my emesis basin? What did Thomas Sowell write about Samuel Alito? Justice Alito wrote an extensive paper on the Unitary Executive back in 2000.  There’s no mention of such a thing in the Constitution.  As a matter of fact, the founding fathers were very much aware of King George and his dictatorial ways.  The Constitution was written in order to prevent one person from wielding all the power.  That was the purpose of three, dare I say it — co-equal — branches of government.  Yet, Samuel Alito supports such a radical idea.  A quick literature search finds that Mr. Sowell did write about Samuel Alito but never mentioned that unitary executive theory.  I wonder why. Maybe because it wasn’t in his talking points script that he was given that day.

Tags: Party Politics, Supreme court by ecthompson md
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U.S. Human Cases of H1N1 Flu Infection
(As of May 5, 2009, 11:00 AM ET)

States	# of laboratory confirmed cases	Deaths
Alabama	4
Arizona	17
California	49
Colorado	6
Connecticut	2
Delaware	20
Florida	5
Georgia	1
Idaho	1
Illinois	82
Indiana	3
Iowa	1
Kansas	2
Kentucky*	1
Louisiana	7
Maine	1
Maryland	4
Massachusetts	6
Michigan	2
Minnesota	1
Missouri	1
Nebraska	1
Nevada	1
New Hampshire	1
New Jersey	6
New Mexico	1
New York	90
North Carolina	1
Ohio	3
Oregon	15
Pennsylvania	1
Rhode Island	1
South Carolina	16
Tennessee	2
Texas	41	1
Utah	1
Virginia	3
Wisconsin	3
TOTAL (38)	403 cases	1 death
International Human Cases of Swine Flu Infection See: World Health Organization *Case is resident of KY but currently hospitalized in GA.

It is good that the virus hasn’t spread as fast as originally thought. I think that our government response has been excellent. We need to keep up the good work for another 10 days or so and we are officially out of the woods.

Here’s a link to yesterday’s CDC press briefing.

New worldwide cases can be found here.

There has been another death in the US.  This is a relatively young woman who had been in the hospital for several weeks.  She is the first US citizen to die with the N1H1 virus.  She had reportedly had several chronic illnesses.  It is unclear whether she died because of her illnesses or because of the virus.

Finally, it seems that Health Officials have asked over 700 schools to re-open.

Tags: Healthcare, Obama administration by ecthompson md
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No one could tell this story better than Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a mother and associate professor at Princeton. Michelle Obama’s greatness (yes, I said greatness) lies in her ability not to outshine her husband, Barack. She is easily as bright, if not brighter, than Barack is. Yet she has held back. Think of the uproar that would occur if Michelle Obama began to take the lead on any issue. The Right would go nuts.

From The Nation:

With Mother’s Day approaching I want think about Michelle Obama’s assertion that her primary role as First Lady is “Mom-in-Chief.”

Many progressive feminists were distressed with Michelle’s assertion of motherhood as her primary role. They hoped she would seek a more aggressive policy agenda. After all Michelle Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She spent her career as an effective advocate for urban communities in their fraught relationship with powerful institutions. She is smart, capable, and independent. She maintained her own career and ambitions throughout Barack’s early political career and even during his election to the U.S. Senate.

Truth is, some of us who were in the orbit of the Obamas ten years ago believed Michelle, not Barack, was the real star of the couple. So while I don’t think anyone expected her to commute to a 9-to-5 job in D.C; many hoped that she would take on an independent political role in the Obama administration.

Instead, Michelle has crafted a more traditional role for herself. She is highly visible, but she has taken on relatively safe issues like childhood literacy, advocacy for women and girls, and support of military families. Even her White House garden is framed more as an initiative for healthy eating and quality family meals than as a statement of commitment to local foods as an effort against global climate change. (more… )

Tags: Domestic Issues by ecthompson md
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Classic Bill O’Reilly was on display last night for his Talking Points segment: Don’t Trust the Media! O’Reilly then proceeded to tell us several reasons why we should not trust the media. Now let’s think about this. A media personality looks square in the camera and, without noting a hint of irony, tells us not to trust the media. Doesn’t this sound like a Saturday Night Live skit?

Many of our founding fathers despised the press, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson among them. As David McCullough notes in his best-selling book, John Adams, Mr. Adams was probably overly sensitive to criticism, of which he received a lot while president. The Alien and Sedition Acts were a group of four separate laws passed to quell opposition to John Adams specifically (while he was president) and the Federalists in general. I’m unable to find any evidence that Thomas Jefferson despised the press. (If you’re able to find any of this evidence, please let me know in the comments below.) As a matter of fact, I would say that Thomas Jefferson wrote extensively on freedom of press. “No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will.” Alexander Hamilton wrote about the necessity of a free press in Federalist paper number 84. Finally, I would add that John Adams loved to read and had an extensive library. I think, as usual, Bill O’Reilly is blowing smoke.

He does go on to say that the press is largely corrupt, but gives no evidence to support this.

Newspapers are dying. I must congratulate Bill O’Reilly, frankly, for getting a fact correct. The reasons that newspapers are dying are complex. I think the Internet does have a large part in this, but newspapers were dying long before the explosion of the Internet in the late 1990s. I think that the invention of 24-hour news also has had a lot to do with it. The morning paper is giving you information that you are ready know.

Now Bill O’Reilly is going to give us two excellent examples of why we should not trust the press.

Swine Flu. Bill O’Reilly states that he can’t find out what’s true and what’s hype. Why? He has a whole staff of investigative reporters. Why can he not find out what’s going on? Is he too lazy? He then goes on to say that reports this week state that the swine flu (we’ve been asked to call it Influenza A H1N1) is not as bad as first thought, says O’Reilly, but he can’t verify that either. Why not? The Centers for Disease Control has an extensive amount of information on their website. Bill O’Reilly and Fox can call several states. Every state has a department of epidemiology. I’m really confused about why he can’t verify the number of cases throughout the nation. The CDC has a number of confirmed cases. Why is this so difficult?

It really isn’t difficult. Instead, Bill O’Reilly is trying to paint himself as a thoughtful broadcaster who is not caught up in the hype. Instead, he has not covered a major story at all. In my opinion, I think the precautions that have been taken have helped curb the spread of this disease. Also, it may be that this disease is not as contagious as we first thought. O’Reilly has his agenda and he is sticking to it.

Tent City. Bill O’Reilly then tears into his most “damning” story. Stories about a tent city around Sacramento beginning to spring up in early to mid-March.  In what is a particularly huge piece of irony, O’Reilly quotes a story out of The Economist (a periodical written in Great Britain). O’Reilly claims that the story is bogus, which it is not at all. The short article in the Economist states that, “There may have been a foreclosed homeowner or two among its denizens…” Please watch the following video (below). It’s the same video featured in Bill O’Reilly’s tirade. Although the reporter implies that many if not all of the people of this tent city are there because of the economic downturn they never really say that.

Moreover, if you read some of the articles that were written, they clearly point out that everyone in the tent city is not there because of the economic downturn. Instead, most of them were there before the economic downturn. Reading… what a concept! This concept is clearly wasted on Bill O’Reilly. From the Mercury News: “Although a sliver of the roughly 200 Tent City residents are recently middle class people who lost their homes, the overwhelming majority — 80 to 90 percent by several estimates — have been homeless for years, even decades.” From the opening paragraph of a LA Times story, “The capital’s tent city sprawls messily on a grassed-over landfill beneath power lines, home to some 200 men and women with nowhere else to go. It has been here for more than a year, but in the last three weeks it has transformed into a vivid symbol of a financial crisis otherwise invisible to most Americans.” Just as the Today Show probably reported only half the story, it appears that Bill O’Reilly is doing exactly the same thing.

Finally, Bill O’Reilly took the opportunity to bash MSNBC once again. First, let me state that it is clear that Fox news has led in the ratings and has done so for some time. As a matter of fact, both Fox news and MSNBC increased market share during the first quarter of this year. So, Bill O’Reilly is being disingenuous by stating the viewership for MSNBC has plummeted. That is simply false.

Tags: Economy, Healthcare, Media by ecthompson md
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This is a first hand account of how Blue Gal from C&L saw Kent State:

Well, if this doesn’t paint Blue Gal as an aging hippie, nothing will.
Today is the 39th anniversary of the anti-war protests at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. For those of you under 40, May4.org has the history recap here.

Although I was in the first grade on May 4, 1970, I can’t forget what happened in Kent, Ohio on that day.

I was there.

Not on campus, I was in first grade. In Kent, Ohio. My father and my mother’s father were both faculty members at Kent. By 1970 my grandfather had retired from the Math Department. When he retired in 1968 he was the only math professor on record as opposing the War in Vietnam.

My dad, on the other hand, was in the Art Department. Nuff said.

We were rushed home from school that day in a panic of police sirens, smoke, and confusion.

When I got home, my mother had the front door locked for the first time in my life. “Mommy, what is happening?” “I don’t know, dear.” Mom not knowing, being visibly scared and shaken. Another first.

But she had the TV on and Walter Cronkite was talking about Kent. That was exciting to my six-year-old heart. I didn’t see the consequences, had no idea what death was, let alone that four college students had been shot to death that day in my hometown. Their only crime was protesting their government’s illegal, unilateral invasion of Cambodia.

I know, it’s hard to believe a Republican president invaded a far away country based on lies and innuendo. (/snark)

The sad irony of Kent State, and what made it so explosive in terms of the “silent majority” of Americans, was that those Americans who could afford it avoided the military draft and the dangers of Vietnam by enrolling their children full-time in college and graduate school. All four students killed on May 4 were full-time students. If the war was going to kill sons (and daughters!) in OHIO? Many who were not outspoken before May 4, now said it was time to stop the war once and for all. (more…)

Tags: Domestic Issues by ecthompson md
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Now I remember when this song came out. It was a good song. Then the song appeared in the great movie Risky Business. Bob Seger and Old Time Rock and Roll blew up.

Artist: Bob Seger
Tune: Old Time Rock and Roll

Tags: Music by ecthompson md
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What a great post by Devilstower. S/he did a great job getting information together.  Three disasters gave us regulations, regulations that the conservatives hate. This is long, but more than worth a read.

From DK:

On Halloween night, 1948, a fog rolled in to blanket the town of Donora, Pennsylvania. What came from that cloud wasn’t the ghosts of vengeful pirates, or horror movie zombies. It was worse.

This wasn’t the first time the industrial town of 13,000 had been socked in by a brown, pollution tinged smog. But this time the air had a peculiar, acrid smell. Those who breathed the fog felt as if they were breathing fire. It scorched their eyes, their throat, their lungs. Still, Donora was a mill town. Workers squinted against the bitter air and went on to their jobs. That night, as people were walking back to their houses, some of them began to die.

Soon doctors’ offices were overrun and the hospital was filled with the sick and the dying. The fog held on the next day. And the next. A local hotel was pressed into service as an extension to the hospital, with volunteers serving as nurses. As bodies piled up at local funeral homes, the ground floor of that hotel became a makeshift morgue. Within five days, twenty people had died. Hundreds more were seriously injured with damage that would shorten their lives or affect their ability to work. A decade later, local papers still told the story of lives cut short.

The villain in Donora was the a toxic stew spit out by a local zinc refinery. It wasn’t the first time the plant’s fumes had turned the air around the town toxic, but this time a temperature inversion capped the smog. In the midst of the crisis, suspicion about the cause brought town officials to the zinc works, where they asked that the plant’s operations be reduced until the weather changed. The plant operators refused. After five days, the inversion layer broke and the brown fog blew away. Eleven of those who died did so on that final day. A local doctor estimated that if the weather had held another day, the death toll would have been in the hundreds, rather than the tens.

That Sunday, as the sky broke and rains came, the zinc works finally agreed to reduce operations. They went back to normal the next day.

***

February 1972 was cold and rainy in West Virginia. Toward the end of the month, the last of winter’s wet snows melted down and for days rains fell almost continuously. The miners and shopkeepers around the little town of Saunders went to their jobs with rain sluicing from their hats, and the children splashed home on muddy streets. By the night of the 25th, the creek that ran alongside the town was running high and fast.

At 8AM on the morning of the 26th, folks in Saunders were seeing their kids off to school, making their way to work, and frowning at another morning of rain. They had only a moment to feel the rumble under their feet and hear the screaming roar that echoed through the town. Then a 20 foot high wall of midnight black water swept through the narrow valley. Buildings were crushed by the rushing wave as if they had be struck by God’s own hammer. Trees didn’t have time to be uprooted, they were simply snapped off at the ground. The water caromed from one side of the valley to the other and back again, sweeping down homes and gouging the valley walls. People were plucked from the streets before they could make sense of the thunderous sound. Others went tumbling as their homes were torn from around them. Cars, homes, sections of rail track, the shattered remains of stores, schools, and bodies — they all joined the wall as it roared downstream into the town of Pardee. And Lorado. And Craneco. And Stowe, Crites, Latrobe, Robinette, Amherstdale, Becco, Fanco, Braeholm, Accoville, Crown, and Kistler.

For minutes after the wall had passed, the cold February rain fell on a world that was silent except for the sound of water. No birds singing. No dogs barking. No people talking. There were only piles of debris and cold gray mud.

In a matter of minutes 125 were dead and 1,100 injured. 4,000 more were left homeless.

That wall of water had originated from a coal slurry dam, a rude impoundment of earth and stone built high in the valley of Buffalo Creek. On the night before, workers at the mine responsible for the dam had noticed that water was straining the limits of the impoundment, and the dam was sagging under the force. Officials of the company were notified. They sent no warning to the people below. Deputy sheriffs from the county came up the hill only hours before the dam burst, to ask if they should evacuate the towns. They were sent away.

***

It was almost the end of the work day for the young workers at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in New York City on March 26, 1911. Spring had been cool that year, and those getting ready to leave slid into coats and put on their hats. Most of the workers employed by the firm of Harris & Blanck worked a different shift and went home at noon, but there were still six hundred workers — 500 women and 100 men — packed into the top three floors of the factory. Most of them were immigrants from Italy, Germany, or Eastern Europe. The majority of them were under the age of 16. For ten hours or more a day they bent over tightly packed rows of sewing machines and worked with their fingers to make the factory’s signature product — shirtwaists. Their shift ended at 4:45.

At 4:40, someone noticed the first touch of smoke.

Within half an hour, flames consumed the top three floors of the “fire proof” building. Many of the workers on the eighth floor were able to escape down the steps, so were some of those working on nine. Students next door at New York University saw what was happening and helped to save hundreds who reached the roof. Then the flames cut off that route. Soon those that remained were huddled next to the windows of those top three floors. As the flames closed in on them, one after another, they jumped.

Along the sidewalks of Broadway, thousands cried and screamed in horror as the scorched bodies of women — girls, really — tore through inadequate fire safety nets, smashed though glass awnings, and thudded into the street. Sobbing children with their clothing and hair on fire leaped for safety ladders that stopped two stories below their windows.

Fueled by miles of hanging fabric, wooden tables, and machine oil, the fire that started five minutes before the end of the shift burned out almost before firemen could get inside. It left the building intact, the walls only scorched. The bodies left behind were barely recognizable as human. 141 people died, hundreds more were injured.

***

And that’s how we lost our freedom. Not our freedom of speech or any of our individual rights to assemble or worship as we please, to live where we want. That’s where we lost the freedom of the marketplace, the freedom of the Ayn Randian dream. Actually, it goes even further back than that. When the nation was formed, those founding fathers made the “the American compromise,” recognizing that the marketplace should advance under government supervision. This has always been a place where the government has stepped in to stop excess and address needs. And yes, conservatives have been whining from day one. [Read more →]

Tags: Corporate Wrongs, Domestic Issues by ecthompson md
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Lyndie England

Linda Monk is a Constitutional scholar and frequent guest on my show. She wrote a great op-ed in the Washington Post refuting a clueless column by David Broder. Linda Monk eloquently argues that David Broder has lost his senses and that torture is wrong for a number of reasons.This is a must read.

From WaPo:

Not ‘Scapegoating,’ Simply Justice

It is dismaying that a man of David S. Broder’s wisdom and integrity would imply that a president is above the law ["Stop Scapegoating," op-ed, April 26]. We did not accept that argument for Richard Nixon, and neither should we for George W. Bush or Barack Obama. The main job description of the president is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” He does not have the discretion to turn his back on massive violations of the law.

The Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture are, under the Constitution, “the supreme law of the land” and require signatories to prosecute those who commit torture. Ronald Reagan endorsed the U.N. convention against torture enthusiastically, and our highest military officers support those standards. Lawyers, too, take an oath to “defend the Constitution of the United States” in their government service as well as in their admission to the bar. If anyone should be accountable for upholding legal standards, it is the lawyers in the Justice Department who are sworn to enforce the law, not just for their boss the president but for the American people, whom they represent. Those torture memos were not mere intellectual debates by academics; they were legal opinions rendered by practicing lawyers who are subject to the standards of the profession. It is just as illegal to advise someone to commit an unlawful act as it is to commit one.

The real scapegoats in this ugly scenario are soldiers such as then-Pvt. Lynndie R. England, who went to prison in 2005 for her role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, although, according to her lawyer, she suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome resulting in a below-average IQ. Now it is clear that Abu Ghraib was the predictable result, as some military lawyers warned at the time, of loosening standards for torture at Guantanamo. So why shouldn’t lawyers suffer the same consequences as the soldiers they imperil?

LINDA R. MONK

Tags: Bush Administration, Legal, Media, Obama administration, Torture by ecthompson md
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I saw this two weeks ago, but somehow I didn’t post it. Jackie is upset about the “tea parties.” He doesn’t understand why Republicans are acting like liberals… protesting and all. This is very funny. Enjoy.

Watch the video:

Tags: Media, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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U.S. Human Cases of H1N1 Flu Infection
(As of May 2, 2009, 11:00 AM ET)

States	# of laboratory confirmed cases	Deaths
Arizona	4
California	24
Colorado	2
Connecticut	1
Delaware	4
Florida	2
Illinois	3
Indiana	3
Kansas	2
Kentucky*	1
Massachusetts	8
Michigan	2
Minnesota	1
Missouri	1
Nevada	1
New Jersey	7
New York	50
Ohio	1
South Carolina	13
Texas	28	1
Virginia	2
TOTAL (21)	160 cases	1 death
International Human Cases of Swine Flu Infection See: World Health Organization *Case is resident of KY but currently hospitalized in GA.

From my standpoint the spread of this virus is not as fast as I thought it would be. Maybe it isn’t as contagious as we thought. I would remind everyone because of the relatively long incubation period (the time from exposure until symptoms are seen) it should be another 5 to 7 days before we get a clear picture of how this disease is acting in the United States.

New government web site.

HHS Secretary Sebelius and DHS Secretary Napolitano hosted a Webcast to answer questions from the American people regarding the H1N1 flu.

Tags: Healthcare by ecthompson md
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This is the time of year that Dallas is getting truly violent thunderstorms. If you have never been in the mid-west during April and May, you have missed one of the fascinating and terrifying display of nature. It is not unusual for these thunderstorms to come up almost out of nowhere. A deluge of rain can add up to more than an inch of rain per hour with wind gusts of up to 50 and 60 miles an hour. There is a lot of lightning and thunder. Then, as quickly as it came, it is gone. The sun is shining and the winds are calm again.

From Dallas Morning News:

The afternoon practice ended in horrifying fashion when the Cowboys’ indoor facility collapsed.

While a violent thunderstorm pounded rain down on the roof, the lights started shaking back and forth. Then chaos broke out, as the facility collapsed and players, coaches, reporters and team personnel scrambled for safety.

Several people were trapped under the wreckage. Police and emergency personnel have arrived on the scene.

UPDATE: Irving police and fire department and/or Cowboys officials are expected to hold a news conference soon.

Power was out for approximately 45 minutes at the complex. Several trees are down. Ambulances and medical personnel are still on the scene.

According to a Cowboys spokesman, at least four members of the team’s support staff are being taken to the hospital.

Cowboys coach Wade Phillips said that special-teams coach Joe DeCamillis sustained a neck inury, was stabilized and taken to an area by ambulance.

“He was moving his hands and he was talking,” Phillips said before leaving for the hospital.

Tags: Environment, Sports by ecthompson md
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Waterbaording is torture. It isn’t like hazing. Hazing is what your older brother did to you. If those things are the same, then you should call the police and discuss whatever your brother did. We tried and executed people for waterboarding. Ann Coulter continues to turn my stomach. I need some Pepto!

Just for fun (because Coulter thinks that this is a bunch of fun) I looked up torture in the US Codes:

§ 2340. Definitions

As used in this chapter—
(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.

§ 2340A. Torture

(a) Offense.— Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction.— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
(c) Conspiracy.— A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

§ 2340B. Exclusive remedies

Nothing in this chapter shall be construed as precluding the application of State or local laws on the same subject, nor shall anything in this chapter be construed as creating any substantive or procedural right enforceable by law by any party in any civil proceeding.

Tags: Media, Torture by ecthompson md
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From TP:

Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) asked President Obama to release several classified memos referenced in a recent interview by former Vice President Dick Cheney, claiming that the memos could show that the Bush administration’s torture program was effective in gathering intelligence.

Over the weekend, however, McClatchy reported that the CIA Inspector General (IG) found in a still-classified 2004 report “that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any ‘specific imminent attacks.’” The IG concluded that “waterboarding was riskier than officials claimed and reported that the CIA’s Office of Medical Services thought that the risk to the health of some prisoners outweighed any potential intelligence benefit.”

In response to the McClatchy piece, Greg Sargent asked Boehner’s office if the Minority Leader would be requesting that Obama also declassify the 2004 IG report. Boehner’s office responded by suggesting that such a request would be “cherry-picking for political purposes“:

Decisions about whether or not to release information regarding our bipartisan efforts to gather intelligence on the terrorist threat over the past eight years should be based on what’s best for our security, not cherry-picked for political purposes. The American people deserve to make their judgments based on the full set of facts.

In refusing to endorse releasing any documents that might demonstrate that his support for the Bush administration’s use of torture was misguided, Boehner is himself ensuring that Americans won’t be able to “make their judgments based on the full set of facts.”

More to the point, Boehner’s accusations of “cherry picking” come on the same day that he called for the CIA to release classified documents showing when and what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) knew about the Bush administration’s use of torture. As Glenn Thrush reports, in calling for the Pelosi details to be released, “[t]he GOP is hoping to spotlight the fact that Pelosi and other Democrats raised few objections when told about details of the Bush administration ‘enhanced interrogations’ of terror suspects.” In other words, Boehner wants to declassify the documents for the “political purposes” that Boehner’s spokesman decried earlier today.

To be sure, the public should know exactly what and when the congressional leadership knew about the Bush administration’s use of torture. But the public should also know what the CIA’s IG had to say about it as well. Anything less is not the “full set of facts.”

Tags: Congress, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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Reality is completely strange and unpredictable. President Barack Obama is juggling 10 or 15 major crises. Now there reports that Justice David H. Souter plans on retiring. At age 69, Souter is far from the oldest justice on the Supreme Court. Justice John Paul Stevens is 89. I thought Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who just underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer, would retire soon. She’s given no indication that she is planning on retiring any time in the near future.

To underscore how far the Republican Party has drifted to the right, David Souter was nominated by George H. W. Bush. David Souter is now thought of as a liberal.

It is clear that Barack Obama would choose a thoughtful, conscientious, pro-choice liberal to replace David Souter. There is speculation that he would choose a woman. Whatever liberal he chooses will not substantially change the balance of the court.

My question is: how hard will Republicans fight against a pro-choice nominee?  I think the fight will be to the death and extremely ugly.  Obama will have to choose someone who can stand up to 19 times the scrutiny that Harriet Miers got. The Fox News crowd will be apoplectic. On the liberal side, there are a lot of factions that would like to be appeased –civil rights activists, women’s rights activists, environmentalists and gay-rights activists are just a few of the groups that I can think of off the top of my head.

WaPo has more:

White House advisers have been drafting lists of potential replacements virtually since Obama took office, and the list is said to also include Stanford University law professor Kathleen M. Sullivan, Kim McLane Wardlaw of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm and Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears. Souter, who has been on the court since October 1990, was nominated by President George H.W. Bush on July 25, 1990, to a seat vacated by William J. Brennan Jr. He was confirmed by the Senate on Oct. 2, 1990. (more… )

Tags: Obama administration, Senate, Supreme court by ecthompson md
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