dennis kucinich, the man who would be president

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If he were not Dennis Kuchinich.

Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who voted against the measure in 2001, released a statement Monday calling Tuesday's House vote "the tea party's first test."

"The 112th Congress began with a historic reading of the U.S. Constitution," Kucinich said. "Will anyone subscribe to the First and Fourth Amendments tomorrow when the PATRIOT Act is up for a vote? I am hopeful that members of the Tea Party who came to Congress to defend the Constitution will join me in challenging the reauthorization." ...

The White House on Tuesday said in a statement that it "does not object" to extending the three Patriot Act provisions until December 2011 although it "would strongly prefer" an extension until December 2013, noting that the longer timeline "provides the necessary certainty and predictability" that law enforcement agencies require while at the same time ensuring congressional oversight by maintaining a sunset.

In addition to the House legislation, the Senate is considering three competing timelines, including proposals that would permanently extend the three provisions or extend them through 2013. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), both of whom have introduced competing proposals, said Monday that committee members continue to work toward an agreement but declined to speculate as to the end result.

"We're working on that this week," Leahy said. "It's got to be done. ... I don't want it to be a situation where none of them go through."

You just wait. This will turn out like the bailout. The House nixes it, and it goes through anyway.

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love, 99
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a second judge goes all american on us

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Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void. This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications....

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love, 99
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does this mean piglips now supports wikileaks?

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Or is this a lot of hooey someone wrote for her to come off as ingenuous?

NB: I in no way hold Sarah Palin accountable for the massacre in Tucson. She had the very most to lose by it of any politician, and so did the Tea Party—both Libertarian and Koch-Rubes factions—and, as Christina's father has pointed out in a number of interviews, this is the price we pay for freedom. I wish we'd get a little more actual freedom for all our paying, but, back in the country he and I thought we were growing up in, we suffer this stuff instead of crack down on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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love, 99
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makes me so sick

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Just unspeakable.

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Today's show is all about WikiLeaks, with Daniel Ellsberg and Julian Assange.

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love, 99
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good 'morning' to you

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I do not believe Bradley Manning did it. I think the whole Manning/Lamo/Wired thing was a scam.

The Glenn Greenwald / Kevin Poulsen exchanges this week have centred around a dispute over the alleged Bradley Manning / Adrian Lamo chat logs that form the sole evidence currently implicating Manning in leaking classified information.

As a little more background into Lamo's reliability at the time the chat logs were published, here is a thread on Fairfax Underground where someone posted another leaked chat log involving Lamo's wife and Nadim, a person Lamo refers to as a "disgruntled fan".

The original poster also includes the portion of the chat logs which Lamo claims he leaked to Wikileaks, further claiming they then "outed" him as their source. This thread is discussed in an article in DailyTech which contains an update at the end when they discovered that Lamo had actually outed himself "in the form of a podcast interview Lamo gave to an Australian blog site".

All of the evidence into the mental state and reliability of the sole informant in this case raises the question of why chat logs, in the hands of a self proclaimed hacker, passed on to a journalist who professes great respect for the hacking skills of this source, are being treated as reliable legal evidence. In what format were they provided to Wired (and the DoJ)? Was there third party monitoring? Why did Wired believe these logs, knowing their source? Why should anyone?

No one should.

NO ONE.

If Lamo had outed himself as a WikiLeaker, so much the more suspect his being dragged off to the bin against his will and coming back to immediately begin engaging in "online chats" with Bradley Manning that would end up, incredibly, making Manning confess to a total stranger in an insecure environment, when he was supposedly freaking that he would get busted, that he'd done this huge thing.

BULLSHIT.

It was someone much bigger, and they either can't figure out who, or who's so big they don't want it public. And if the whole thing was set up to get out to the public some information they WANT us to think, it was something they are too terrified to tell us straight out, NOT some Zionist plot against their enemies, and not even some NWO ruse to take away the intertubes. No way in hell they would have parted with those OCEANS of material to do either of those things.

They are either trying to flush out a high level leaker, or trying to get out information to cripple VERY bad people. I'd say, oddly, that the latter is somewhat likely, because it explains why certain people have been calling for Assange's hide and why Holder is limping along with this BLATANTLY unAmerican crap. I don't think they'd go quite this far if it was only to flush someone out.

I wish they'd given everything to ME. I'd damn well read and not stop until I found the needle in that haystack.

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love, 99
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ya think?

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I miss the McClelletron 2000, don't you?

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love, 99
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nice way to start my day

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I may just pile up links in this post today. I've been doing that a lot lately... so all you unconcerned types on the feed are probably missing many bits... including all the times I go back to make something clearer or flesh out the scene after I've gotten more coffee, amassed more brain cells, or the winds of inspiration blow back through. These are the hazards of just letting the cyber gods deliver up your content. I just think you oughta remember to stop and smell the roses every so often.

Phil left me this song in comments in the middle of the night, and so it was here for me when I got up. This is amazing because Phil is so totally into head banger heavy metal blast yer brains out music. I have to try to put eardrum warnings on his stuff... but this, now this is the kind of music we should all be listening to around the clock, and since it's Festivus, et cetera, I let you in on it.

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Dump BofA....

No... really... do you want a BANK ACCOUNT where they dictate how you spend
YOUR money? It's like I said when my mother first told me you had to put money in
to get money out: That's the craziest thing I ever heard.

This is a GOOD thing....

Senate Republicans on Saturday doomed an effort that would
have given hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants a path to legal status
if they enrolled in college or joined the military.
It would have given them a limitless supply of cannon fodder for
conquering the world.
[I know, I know, they've got it anyway, but THERE AREN'T ANY JOBS and the continued lure
for more immigrants keeps driving wages ever lower.
IT'S ONLY DRIVING US ALL FURTHER DOWN.
Come up with a better idea. The whole world is turning third.
Wrong direction.]

Got out of the tub just in time....

"The repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' will be implemented in a common sense way,"
said Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich. "Our military leaders have assured Congress
that our troops will engage in training and address relevant issues before instituting this policy change."
This sensitivity training for hardened old Marines ought to be loaded with giggles.
My formal congratulations to queers everywhere! You are nearing "normal" at last.

Latest update on the perennial Biden vs. Biden thing....

Antiwar's antiwar Horton holds forth....

Heavily-recommended listening for all too frightened proto-flakes....

Florida definitely seems to get the most visits from space aliens....

[That would be about Jebby for sure.]

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

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Do not help them. Do not support them. Do not spend your energy and passion and intellect on earnest analyses of the twists and turns of their political fates. They are doing evil. Do not be part of it. Support instead those who try to speak the truth. Stand with them. It is their fate — not the fate of the petty, brutal power-seekers — which will determine the meaning of our times and the future of our species.

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love, 99
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i've had to resort to ibuprofen

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My head is right in the middle of liftoff. The house is full of rocket fuel fumes. Don't click that image unless you are a Zen master or your IQ is SO low you can't understand.

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love, 99
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i'm getting into my not-a-tub

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Try not to think about it....

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No. Really.

Officials: US drops demand for settlement freeze
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press – Tue Dec 7, 5:38 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has abandoned attempts to persuade Israel to slow West Bank settlement activity, officials said Tuesday, dealing a major blow to the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and one of the president's top foreign policy initiatives.

After months of trying to broker a formula under which Israel would impose a new, temporary settlement freeze in return for U.S. promises and incentives, two American officials said the administration has concluded that course won't work. The decision was expected to be announced later Tuesday.

Talks stalled in September, barely a month after they started. The Palestinians refused to return to direct negotiations until a new freeze was in place following the expiration of an earlier, 10-month Israeli slowdown in settlement expansion.

Now, said the U.S. officials, American pressure for a three-month moratorium and the U.S. incentives package, which included political, diplomatic and security assurances for Israel, are off the table. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The White House's bid for a Middle East peace settlement was a longshot from the start, but its apparent breakdown comes at a time when the administration is struggling on a number of fronts abroad. There is slow progress in the Afghan war, increasing friction with China and the embarrassing deluge of confidential diplomatic cables released by the website WikiLeaks.

The U.S. officials said the administration was not giving up efforts to broker a peace deal and noted that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will visit Washington next week for consultations.

The U.S. will be talking with both sides in the coming days, one of the officials said, while Arab states and other interested countries also will be consulted.

However, the administration's decision to drop support for the Palestinians' key demand could mean the end of the moribund peace process.

Obama had made Israeli-Palestinian peace a major goal of his administration, appointing seasoned peace negotiator George Mitchell as his special Mideast envoy on his second day in office.

Mitchell made dozens of trips to the region to get the parties to agree to direct talks. In early September, with the expiration of the initial slowdown looming, Obama brought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas along with the leaders of Jordan and Egypt to launch the face-to-face discussions, which failed.

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials would comment on the developments in Washington before their official announcement.

Earlier Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the U.S. had halted talks with Israel on settlement activity because Washington was distracted by the WikiLeaks release of secret documents.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley responded by saying that Israel may have been preoccupied with putting out a huge forest fire that burned until Sunday.

The U.S. had been pressing Israel to renew a moratorium on new settlement construction in exchange for security guarantees and diplomatic assurances of support. Israel wanted those in writing, as well as a pledge that east Jerusalem would be exempt from the moratorium.

The Palestinians refused to return to the peace talks unless Israel halted all building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — lands they want for part of their future state.

Peace talks began in September but ground to a halt three weeks later after Israel's original moratorium on new West Bank construction expired.

Netanyahu returned from a November trip to the U.S. with a list of guarantees, including 20 next-generation stealth fighter planes and U.S. pledges to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, according to Israeli officials.

In exchange, Israel was asked to renew the expired limits on settlement construction.

Days later the deal snagged after members of Netanyahu's Cabinet demanded a written pledge from the U.S. that the moratorium would exclude east Jerusalem. Such a pledge never materialized.

The U.S. had wanted a moratorium in the hopes that it would allow Israel and the Palestinians to make enough progress in drawing their future borders to make the settlement question irrelevant.

With borders determined, Israel could resume building on any territories it would expect to keep under a final peace deal.

But Israeli officials said Tuesday that short of an understanding on borders, a crisis could erupt if Israel agreed to the freeze sought by the U.S.

Now, said Israeli officials, insisting on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the contacts, the U.S. and Israel have agreed on a statement that "in the coming days and weeks, efforts will continue toward finding ways to renew the direct negotiations in order to reach a framework that would lead in the end to an agreement between the two sides."

I can barely move for the wrath shooting ice crystals through my veins!

Mister North has NOT come through with my barn loft and clawfoot tub. I'm probably going to be dead first.

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I think I will look at it this way: Maybe it will get the anti-Israel profiteers to stop masturbating on Julian Assange.

I have to look for the silver lining. Maybe that will crash JP Morgan too.

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love, 99
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today in that hopey changey thing not working out for us

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Of course we already knew all this, right?

Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe
by David Corn
Wed Dec. 1, 2010 2:47 PM PST

A WikiLeaks cable shows that when Spain considered a criminal case against ex-Bush officials, the Obama White House and Republicans got really bipartisan.

In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. An April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.

The previous month, a Spanish human rights group called the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had requested that Spain's National Court indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. The human rights group contended that Spain had a duty to open an investigation under the nation's "universal jurisdiction" law, which permits its legal system to prosecute overseas human rights crimes involving Spanish citizens and residents. Five Guantanamo detainees, the group maintained, fit that criteria.

Soon after the request was made, the US embassy in Madrid began tracking the matter. On April 1, embassy officials spoke with chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza, who indicated that he was not pleased to have been handed this case, but he believed that the complaint appeared to be well-documented and he'd have to pursue it. Around that time, the acting deputy chief of the US embassy talked to the chief of staff for Spain's foreign minister and a senior official in the Spanish Ministry of Justice to convey, as the cable says, "that this was a very serious matter for the USG." The two Spaniards "expressed their concern at the case but stressed the independence of the Spanish judiciary."

Two weeks later, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and the embassy's charge d'affaires "raised the issue" with another official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The next day, Zaragoza informed the US embassy that the complaint might not be legally sound. He noted he would ask Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Spain's attorney general, to review whether Spain had jurisdiction.

On April 15, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who'd recently been chairman of the Republican Party, and the US embassy's charge d'affaires met with the acting Spanish foreign minister, Angel Lossada. The Americans, according to this cable, "underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the US and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship" between Spain and the United States. Here was a former head of the GOP and a representative of a new Democratic administration (headed by a president who had decried the Bush-Cheney administration's use of torture) jointly applying pressure on Spain to kill the investigation of the former Bush officials. Lossada replied that the independence of the Spanish judiciary had to be respected, but he added that the government would send a message to the attorney general that it did not favor prosecuting this case.

The next day, April 16, 2009, Attorney General Conde-Pumpido publicly declared that he would not support the criminal complaint, calling it "fraudulent" and political. If the Bush officials had acted criminally, he said, then a case should be filed in the United States. On April 17, the prosecutors of the National Court filed a report asking that complaint be discontinued. In the April 17 cable, the American embassy in Madrid claimed some credit for Conde-Pumpido's opposition, noting that "Conde-Pumpido's public announcement follows outreach to [Government of Spain] officials to raise USG deep concerns on the implications of this case."

Still, this did not end the matter. It would still be up to investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón—a world-renowned jurist who had initiated previous prosecutions of war crimes and had publicly said that former President George W. Bush ought to be tried for war crimes—to decide whether to pursue the case against the six former Bush officials. That June—coincidentally or not—the Spanish Parliament passed legislation narrowing the use of "universal jurisdiction." Still, in September 2009, Judge Garzón pushed ahead with the case.

The case eventually came to be overseen by another judge who last spring asked the parties behind the complaint to explain why the investigation should continue. Several human rights groups filed a brief urging this judge to keep the case alive, citing the Obama administration's failure to prosecute the Bush officials. Since then, there's been no action. The Obama administration essentially got what it wanted. The case of the Bush Six went away.

Back when it seemed that this case could become a major international issue, during an April 14, 2009, White House briefing, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from the Spaniards for information and documents related to the Bush Six. He said, "I don't want to get involved in hypotheticals." What he didn't disclose was that the Obama administration, working with Republicans, was actively pressuring the Spaniards to drop the investigation. Those efforts apparently paid off, and, as this WikiLeaks-released cable shows, Gonzales, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, Addington, and Yoo owed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thank-you notes.

Spectacular.

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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making it look really good

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Those shifty Mossad guys are really pouring it on....

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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northcom

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Just in case you wanted to keep track.

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love, 99
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where's beach impeach?

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Hmmmmm?

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love, 99
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i'm sick of obama's ugly mug on my blog

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But my big question here is: How does this differ from the Dubya Administration? I'm trying to think. I might be able to give GP Yoo higher marks for patience and smoothness and innovation. Dub's gang totally flunked those. But these qualities are all being put in the service of a fascist police state, so these marks are SO nothing to brag about.

Dubya told Oprah he's proud he didn't sell his soul for the sake of popularity. GP Yoo very clearly did. Of course, Dub didn't have to because his father did it for him, but, still, he can be proud of that... being him....

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Plus, did you ever think we could have a worse Department of Justice than Dubya's? No? Well, we sure managed it lickety split, and if you go so far as to listen to the NPR report, keep a puke bag or well-lined waste basket handy. You're going to need it. When did we get a statute of limitations on TORTURE?

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love, 99
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yemenis vastly smarter than americans

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Al-Qa'eda IS a myth, and this poor guy is nothing more than their latest excuse to buy more drones. And, of course, once the drones are bought, they have to kill people or it would just look wrong, now wouldn't it? We have been screaming about Genghis Ponzi Yoo claiming the right to murder this guy without a trial for a long time now, and, er, if his purpose was to murder him for real, do you think it would have taken this long? No? Well, then, THINK! The guy is good for trillions of dollars in "defense" spending. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh-the-fuck-yeah. Mean-looking bastard, ain't he?

No, man, dig it, put it together, do the math, and MOURN over the claptrap coming via al-Jazeera. Jesus.

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love, 99
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read my lips: no more torture

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It's true. It's crystal clear that Obama's purpose was not to stop it, but to eliminate it as an issue.

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love, 99
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today in that hopey changey shit

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President Yoo's zombie fascism plods forward into the third millennium.

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love, 99
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a little teaser of justice after years and years

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Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Bagram, black sites, how many secret bases, Argentina, Central America, everywhere... what do we care?

US judge bans Guantanamo witness
Court delays start of the first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee citing irregularities with state witness.
Last Modified: 06 Oct 2010 16:04 GMT

The first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been delayed after a judge told prosecutors they cannot call their star witness.

Lewis A Kaplan, the US district judge, blocked the government on Wednesday from calling a man who authorities said, sold explosives to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the defendant.

Defence lawyers say investigators only learned about the witness after Ghailani underwent harsh interrogation at a secret CIA-run camp overseas between 2004 and 2006.

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly," Kaplan wrote. "It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction."

The government immediately asked for a delay of the trial, which had been expected to begin with opening statements on Wednesday, so that it has time to appeal the ruling, should it decide to do so.

The judge sent a pool of 66 jurors home until Tuesday, but not before warning them to avoid following the case on the news or discussing it with anyone.

Ghailani is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa.

The attacks killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

The judge issued his written three-page ruling after a hearing three weeks ago in which Hussein Abebe, the witness, testified about his dealings with authorities.

"The government has failed to prove that Abebe's testimony is sufficiently attenuated from Ghailani's coerced statements to permit its receipt in evidence," Kaplan wrote.

The defence had asked the judge to exclude Abebe's testimony on the grounds that it would be the product of statements made by Ghailani to the CIA under duress.

On that point, Kaplan said, "Abebe was identified and located as a close and direct result of statements made by Ghailani while he was held by the CIA. The government has elected not to litigate the details of Ghailani's treatment while in CIA custody. It has sought to make this unnecessary by asking the court to assume in deciding this motion that everything Ghailani said while in CIA custody was coerced."

The judge noted that he had previously rejected defence motions to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that Ghailani was deprived of a speedy trial and that his treatment by the CIA was so outrageous as to require termination of the charges.

How much of this does it take?

I guess we can set our stopwatches on the prosecution's appeal.

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OR JUST WAIT FOR THEM TO COME FOR US....

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THEN try to stave it off....

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love, 99
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how many jackasses are hanging from split hairs?

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Oh, oh, so Obama is more judicious in his use of unconstitutional crap to continue to do unconstitutional crap, more suave about beating you down with his bullshit while remaining a murderating fuck of the first order, Peace Prize and all.

No. Really. Somebody estimate for me the number of brain amputees mollified by this smooth and intricate and soft-spoken EVIL they put right under our noses every day. I should be out learning how to tan hides and dig nutritious roots.

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I long to hear his version of the catapult-the-propaganda quip. Don't you?

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love, 99
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the obama years: don't you DARE protest our wars

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No problem reporting the straight dope when it will serve to terrify us:

FBI serves terrorism warrants in Minn., Chicago
By STEVE KARNOWSKI (AP) – 28 minutes ago

MINNEAPOLIS — The FBI said it searched eight homes in Minneapolis and Chicago as part of a terrorism investigation on Friday, and two subjects said the agency is targeting leaders of the anti-war movement.

FBI spokesman Steve Warfield told The Associated Press agents served six warrants in Minneapolis and two in Chicago.

"These were search warrants only," Warfield said. "We're not anticipating any arrests at this time. They're seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism."

The homes of Minneapolis anti-war activists Mick Kelly and Jess Sundin were among those searched, they told the AP.

"The FBI is harassing anti-war organizers and leaders, folks who opposed U.S. intervention in the Middle East and Latin America," Kelly said before agents confiscated his cell phone.

Sundin said she believes the searches are connected with the Minnesota Anti-War Committee's opposition to U.S. military aid to Colombia and Israel, as well as its opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It's kind of outrageous that citizens of the United States could be targeted like this," Sundin said.

Warfield said he couldn't comment on whose homes were searched or give details on why because it's an ongoing investigation. "There's no imminent threat to the community," he said.

The searches were first reported by the Star Tribune.

Both Sundin and Kelly were organizers of a mass march on the first day of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul two years ago, and recently appeared at a news conference to announce plans for another protest if Minneapolis is selected to hold the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

Police estimated the peaceful march drew 10,000 protesters; organizers put the figure at 30,000. Other protests were marked by destructive acts by anarchists. More than 800 people were arrested during the four days of the convention, including Sundin and Kelly.

The FBI's spokesman in Chicago, Ross Rice, would only say two searches were conducted Friday in Chicago and that there were no arrests. He declined comment further.

Asked about the reports, the U.S. Attorney's office spokesman in Chicago, Randy Samborn, confirmed warrants were served in the city "in connection with a law enforcement investigation." He also declined to provide details.

Fuck.

Wake up.

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love, 99
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