old sam pennybags
“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
-Two time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient, Major General Smedley D. Butler
hearts and minds
Let’s face it, most of what’s been politely referred to as ”broadcast journalism” has for the past decade or so been an insult to our collective intelligence, an abandonment of democratic principle, and the overt public corruption of a civic ideal. For all its pattycaking with government spin-meisters in the selling of the Iraq war, its integrity as a government watchdog is highly suspect. For its collective refusal to correct the institutional shortcomings that have left our country in its present condition, it is indictable. And for its reaction to The New York Times’ revelation that it has been infiltrated and willfully co-opted by the military political establishment, networks should have their broadcast licenses revoked and their “broadcast journalists” sentenced to life without a hair stylist.
[UPDATE] April 24, 2008: PBS Newshour featured a debate between Robert Zelnick and John Stauber on the Pentagon’s “info war.” Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC and the Pentagon declined to show for the segment.
[UPDATE] April 28, 2008: “Pentagon halts feeding of information to retired officers while issue is reviewed.” Full story here.
who loves yoo?
Mr. Yoo’s 2001 legal opinion was revealed last week thanks to a 2003 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU. The full memo, to which this is literally a footnote, is 81 pages in length and provides information on the detention and interrogation of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas. This footnote references a separate and still secret memo entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.” Read more about this little gem over at TPM and the Washington Post.
Interestingly, John Yoo is now teaching law at UC Berkeley. If one were interested in contacting the Dean, any of the Associate Deans, or Mr. Yoo’s colleagues for any reason, their email addresses are listed here.
[UPDATE] April 10, 2008: Today’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing featured an interesting exchange between Mukasey and Senator Feinstein regarding this very memo. The Attorney General had obvious dificulty answering a very pointed yes or no question: “Is the October 2001 OLC opinion still considered binding by the Department of Justice?”
[UPDATE] April 11, 2008: From The National Lawyer’s Guild “John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country’s premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal.”
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