The International Committee for the Red Cross says since August 2009 U.S. authorities have been providing the names of prisoners in a separate facility at Bagram Air Base, the BBC reports.
Nine former prisoners have told the BBC they were held in a separate building and subjected to abuse.
Now, aside from mentioning sleep deprivation, this short article doesn't mention specific abuses at Bagram. Nor does it say clearly that these abuses are ongoing, or ended with Obama's January 2009 order.
But the implication here is that Barack Obama has actively continued the Bush administration policy of torture, his own rhetoric notwithstanding. We do know that he explicitly blocked Bagram prisoners from seeking legal recourse such as writ of habeas corpus. We also know that Obama has actively and aggressively blocked any and all attempts to hold torturers and those who ordered torture accountable for their actions. This article does not quite come out and say that Obama has deliberately continued torture... but it does NOT look good for the President.
The fact that Obama has nominated a second Supreme Court justice who believes the President should be all-powerful and unrestricted makes it look even less good, quite frankly. I still say Obama is in all essentials a Republican president.
On this point the Kagan choice probably reflects the perspective of the man who made it, Barack Obama: not the Obama of the 2008 presidential campaign but rather the Obama who has governed since January 20, 2009—broadly continuing the strong executive posture of the Bush team in national security matters.
(BTW, Kagan supports late-term abortion bans- just so you know.)
More on Kagan from Andrew Sullivan:
Her life, so far as one can tell, is her career, and her career has been built by avoiding any tough or difficult political or moral positions, eschewing any rigorous intellectual debate in which she takes a clear stand one way or the other, pleasing every single authority figure she has encountered, and reveling in the approval of the First Class Car Acela Corridor elite. The NYT profile - which is superb apart from its editorial decision to excise any account of any non-trivial private life (she smokes cigars!) since high school - is chilling in its assessment of a human soul in steady, determined pursuit of approval and power.
. . .
Kagan strikes me as the Democratic elite's elitist: free of any conviction that is not caged in a web of Clintonian caution, punctiliously diligent in every aspect of her career, motivated by a desire never to offend those with power, and rewarded in turn by the protection and praise of these elites.
So, yeah. But enough of our Republican President Obama...
The pro-choice candidate for Bart Stupak's Congressional seat has been forced out of the race by the Democratic Party machine.
Democrat Connie Saltonstall, the abortion-rights advocate who challenged retiring Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) after he resisted a health-care overhaul because of his antiabortion stance, ended her campaign Monday after the party establishment closed ranks around another candidate.
. . .
"I am forced to do this because it has become apparent to my campaign that the leadership of the Michigan Democratic Party has preemptively anointed Gary McDowell as their Democratic candidate," Saltonstall said. "They are replacing Bart Stupak with another Upper Peninsula, anti-choice, anti-women's health-care rights candidate."
Want to know the difference between Democrats and Republicans? Republicans take a firm and unyielding stance defending things that are absolutely EVIL; Democrats refuse to take any stance to defend anything GOOD, preferring instead to pursue power for its own sake. The Democratic Party stands for NOTHING- especially not democracy, since they want to deny Yoopers of a choice of Democratic options in the primary.
And finally, evidence that Republican anti-drug and anti-gay positions are based solely on hate: a medical marijuana dispensary in Montana was firebombed, and a Republican state legislator in Iowa wants to deny "family" status to same-sex families using state camping parks.
I probably could- and should- make a long essay on each of these links... but, collectively, they're so depressing that I just don't have the words to do it.
God, but we need something besides the two corrupt parties (and multitude of incompetent third parties) we have now.
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