DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalSenate Report Concludes No Evidence From Torture Helped Hunt For Bin Laden
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRADLEY KLAPPER – MARCH 31, 2014, 6:25 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — A hotly disputed Senate torture report concludes that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods provided no key evidence in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to congressional aides and outside experts familiar with the investigation.
The CIA still disputes that conclusion.
From the moment of bin Laden's death almost three years ago in what was America's biggest counterterrorism success, former Bush administration and some senior CIA officials have cited the evidence trail leading to the al-Qaida mastermind's compound in Pakistan as vindicating the "enhanced interrogation techniques" they authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
But Democratic and some Republican senators have disputed that account. They described simulated drownings, sleep deprivation and other such practices as cruel and ineffective. With the release edging closer for the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on interrogations, renditions and detentions, they hope to make a persuasive case.
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/senate-torture-report-examines-bin-laden-hunt
Former Bush Strategist Rips GOPers For 'Kissing The Ring' Of Sheldon Adelson
CATHERINE THOMPSON – MARCH 31, 2014, 6:59 AM EDT
Matthew Dowd, the former George W. Bush strategist, chided Republican presidential contenders for "kissing the ring" of super donor Sheldon Adelson at a Las Vegas confab the billionaire casino magnate hosted this weekend.
“I think it’s ridiculous that these candidates for president are trumping out to Las Vegas to kiss the ring of a billionaire casino owner, and they think that’s somehow going help them get elected president,” Dowd said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
“Well the money is going to help them, isn't it?” host George Stephanopoulos cut in.
“I think money matters so much less than your own capacity as a candidate,” Dowd said. “What is your message, what is your vision for the country. They'd much better off spending time back where they live instead of flying to Las Vegas, and figuring out what's their message and what's their vision and how to convey that to the American public.”
more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/matthew-dowd-chides-gopers-kissing-the-ring-sheldon-adelson
SC Lt. Gov. upset that NAACP fails to ‘mutually respect’ the valor of slave-owning Confederates
By Scott Kaufman
Friday, March 28, 2014 12:45 EDT
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), South Carolina Lieutenant Governor — and incoming president of the College of Charleston — Glenn McConnell has made a career capitalizing on the legacy of the Confederacy.
In 2007, for example, he appeared on a white nationalist radio program — The Political Cesspool — that ranks among its guests former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke. The show’s mission statement states that it espouses “a philosophy that is pro-White” and is dedicated to “reviving the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.”
On the program, Lt. Gov. McConnell spoke to host James Edwards about Confederate history and Southern heritage month. The interview begins with Edwards praising McConnell’s “distinct and distinguished Charleston accent.” They then begin to discuss the role of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in a 2001 debate about the flying of the Confederate flag.
“Nobody had a problem with it until all of a sudden, I believe it was in the 1980s, the NAACP discovered that they were offended by it,” McConnell said. “In the year of 2001, we agreed to remove the flag from the top of the capitol.”
McConnell claimed that he “had biracial and bipartisan support for that, and everybody was happy, but the NAACP,” but that for “all fair-minded people the controversy was resolved long ago, in the year 2001.”
“What you have is some people returning to the trough of controversy, they’re trying to feed on passions, they’re appealing to prejudice and they’re trying to inflame constituents and citizens across our state.”
“What’s sad about that,” he continued, “is that irresponsible grandstanding threatens to unravel the fabric of mutual respect and to divide our state for decades to come.”
“What we did is, we sealed our state together by mutual respect, and let me explain that: first we went to a soldier’s flag, so we could truly say that we respected the valor of the soldiers that left their homes and family to answer the call of the government,” he concluded.
“And most of them didn’t own slaves.”
He did not, however, indicate how the NAACP should have “mutually respected” the valor of those that did.
Listen to audio from Lt. Gov. McConnell’s appearance on The Political Cesspool via the SPLC below.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/28/sc-lt-gov-upset-that-naacp-fails-to-mutually-respect-the-valor-of-slave-owning-confederates/
###
Posted with permission
Christian radio hosts: Michelle Obama is ‘Hitlerian’ for supporting local health centers
By Arturo Garcia
Friday, March 28, 2014 19:52 EDT
Christian radio hosts Matt Barber and Mat Staver took offense to First Lady Michelle Obama’s recent visit to a Florida clinic to promote the Affordable Care Act, likening it to Nazi rhetoric, Right Wing Watch reported on Friday.
“This is evil,” Barber said on the duo’s show on Friday. “It’s evil. And Michelle Obama, anybody who could say that, is an evil human being. Those are evil words, that’s an evil sentiment, and I cannot believe that Michelle Obama would say that ‘you’re doing God’s work’ by dismembering alive innocent pre-born children. It is Hitlerian.”
Barber and Staver were upset by Obama telling staffers at a Tampa, Florida community health center, “These places are not easy places to run, but you are doing God’s work” while encouraging younger residents to enroll for health insurance coverage under the new law, commonly known as Obamacare.
“This is reminiscent of going back to Hitler,” Staver complained. “You’re doing God’s work? To what? To put people in these plans that actually kill children? That force employers to fund abortion and take innocent human lives? That’s God’s work? This is perverted. This is a perverted administration and a perverted president.”
Contrary to the duo’s allegations, however, one person who attended Obama’s appearance, Allan Zullinger, expressed satisfaction with his coverage, which costs $40 a month after government subsidies were factored in.
“I’m leaving myself out to dry not having insurance,” said Zullinger, who signed up for coverage after being hit by a car in December 2013. “It doesn’t matter how good I eat, how much I work out, how smart I think I am. I’m not smarter than a car. If something like that happens, I’m in bad shape physically and fiscally.”
Listen to Barber and Staver’s protestations over Obama’s remarks, as posted by Right Wing Watch, below.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/28/christian-radio-hosts-michelle-obama-is-hitlerian-for-supporting-local-health-centers/
###
GOP Rep. Who Defended Russia Is Sad Putin Hasn't Thanked Him Yet
IGOR BOBIC – MARCH 28, 2014, 2:24 PM EDT
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) feels like he deserves more gratitude from Vladimir Putin for defending Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea.
“I kind of wish I would get some sort of word back,” he told the New York Times on Thursday. “But I haven’t even gotten so much as a thank you.”
The Cold War veteran, who once had a drunken arm-wrestling match with Putin when he was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, said Tuesday that Crimeans had every right to "self-determination" and that the U.S. should be happy about the bloodless transfer of power.
"Yet we have to go and condemn the Russians, of course, when no one lost their life in an attempt to make sure the people of Crimea had a right to control their own destiny and their own self-determination," he said.
more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rohrabacher-russia-putin
Putin Seeks Diplomatic Solution to Crimea Crisis, White House Says
Source: New York Times
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called President Obama on Friday to discuss a proposal by Mr. Obama for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Ukraine and the two leaders agreed that diplomats for both should meet soon to discuss it, the White House said.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/world/europe/putin-calls-obama-on-Ukraine.html?emc=edit_na_20140328
Creationists Stall Eight-Year-Old Girl’s Idea for State Fossil for South Carolina
Eight-year-old Olivia McConnell’s idea to have the woolly mammoth become the state fossil of South Carolina is being blocked by two senators, who want to amend the proposed bill to emphasize God created all creatures.When eight-year-old Olivia McConnell was perusing a menu at a restaurant that features all 50 of the official symbols of her home state of South Carolina, she noticed a glaring vacancy. South Carolina has a State American Folk Dance, a State Grass, a State Opera, even a State Lowcountry Handcraft, but—no offense to square dancing, Indian grass, Porgy and Bess, or sweet grass baskets intended—McConnell thought something was missing: a state fossil.
The third grader at Carolina Academy wrote a letter to her state lawmakers, Rep. Robert Ridgeway and Sen. Kevin Johnson, in a bid to give the woolly mammoth that honor. Olivia has sound reasons behind her nomination: One of the first discoveries of a fossil in North America was that of a woolly mammoth’s teeth, dug up by slaves on a South Carolina plantation in 1725; all but seven states have an official state fossil; and, most adorably, “Fossils tell us about our past.”
Unfortunately for McConnell’s proposal, a pair of state senators with views as dusty as a mammoth’s bones is blocking her move to honor the furry fossil.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/28/creationists-block-eight-year-old-girl-s-idea-for-state-fossil-for-south-carolina.html
House GOP Pursues Benghazi 'Stand Down' Probe
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DONNA CASSATA – MARCH 28, 2014, 3:57 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — A House Republican chairman is doggedly pursuing the question of whether military personnel were told to "stand down" during the 2012 deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, despite the insistence of military leaders and other Republicans that it never happened.
Rep. Darrell Issa's Oversight and Government Reform Committee is pressing officials in a series of closed-door meetings about the instructions from military commanders in the chaotic hours after the first attack and whether they were told not to assist Americans under siege.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last June that personnel in Tripoli were never told to "stand down" and top Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee reported in February that no such order was given.
The panel's persistence on an issue the military considers settled underscore that Republicans have no plans to relent in their politically charged investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on President Barack Obama's watch.
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/house-gop-pursues-benghazi-probe
Mother Accused of Murdering 4-Year-Old Son Who “Walks and Talks” Gay
By J. Bryan LowderOutrage is growing today as news spreads of a truly horrific child-abuse case in Oregon: Jessica Durto, a mother of four, is standing trial in Portland facing charges of murder, murder by abuse, and second-degree assault in the 2012 death of her 4-year-old son, Zachary. According to reports, the boy died from blunt-force trauma to his abdomen causing intestinal punctures that went untreated for two days; Durto is accused of kicking her child in the stomach as what turned out to be the end of a pattern of abuse delivered, at least in part, because she believed Zachary to be gay.
The gay correction narrative emerged Wednesday when prosecutors won approval from Judge Don Letourneau to admit as evidence a Facebook message from Durto to her boyfriend Brian Canady, who has also pleaded guilty to manslaughter and assault charges relating to Zachary’s death. OregonLIve’s Emily E. Smith has the details:
In the message, Dutro told her boyfriend … that Zachary was “facing the wall” because he had made her mad.
Her son was going to be gay, she wrote, using a slur. “He walks and talks like it. Ugh. Canady would have to “work on” Zachary, she wrote.
Durto is also alleged to have administered “lickins” to her other children regularly, and, as Smith reports, she was previously “convicted of assaulting her mother’s foster son in Hawaii, where a judge ordered her to take parenting and anger management classes.” In a chilling detail, Smith notes that, on the day Zachary’s life support was terminated, Durto is said to have conducted computer searches for the terms “anger management” and “parenting classes.” Would that she had managed such feats of self-reflection before allegedly “working” her child out of existence.
###
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/03/28/jessica_durto_accused_of_murdering_4_year_old_son_because_he_appeared_gay.html?
Read the Largely Useless Bridgegate Internal Report That Exonerates Christie
By David WeigelSeems to be a classic example of shamparency, or sham transparency—an official-looking document that reveals basically nothing yet must be discussed. And here it is. The report reiterates a claim that David Wildstein had told Gov. Chris Christie of the lane closure scheme on Sept. 11, 2013, but elevates Christie's claim that he never remembered such a conversation. Michael Barbaro's quick read of the report (quicker than mine by far) finds that it captures the drama of Christie learning how badly he was let down—adding color to the story he's given from the minute the story broke. But neither David Wildstein nor Bridget Kelly, the heels of the story, cooperated with this investigation.
Gibson Dunn report on Fort Lee, N.J., lane closures
###
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/03/27/read_the_largely_useless_bridgegate_internal_report_that_exonerates_christie.html?
Profile Information
Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
Number of posts: 60,536
