The Torture Memo Author- + Executive Power to Massacre- You've Never Heard Of

By GottaLaff

Recently, we were told that John Yoo and his band of merry torturers got the equivalent of a "bad dog" scolding for crafting the rules that allowed BushCo to legalize the brutalization of human beings into submission in order to get worthless testimony.

Good job, BushCo.

Now we discover that someone at OLC slipped under the radar.

Yes, there was another architect involved. Little Miss Sunshine aka Jennifer Koester, was young and new and bored and had a pile of spare time and must have been like, rilly rilly tired of posting on MySpace. What's a girl to do?

The Office of Legal Counsel remedied that. They closed their eyes, stuck out Mr. Pointer Finger, spun around, stopped, opened their eyes, and wham! Mr. Pointer was aimed directly at Lawyerette Jenny:

Though Koester was clearly the junior partner in the process, and appears to have had no authority to approve the final versions of the memos that went out from the department, it's notable nonetheless that OLC assigned the task of drafting what was essentially the government's position on the legality of torture to an attorney just two years out of law school, who appears to have been around 28 at the time. And that it did so in part because Koester, having just joined the unit, "had some time available," according to the report. It's also perhaps surprising -- given the intense level of scrutiny that Yoo has rightly received for his role in producing the memos -- that Koester has until now remained almost entirely under the radar. [...]

But the report also makes clear that, despite apparently having been given the assignment almost at random, Koester played a more active role in the process of producing the memos than perhaps anyone else at DOJ, with the possible exception of Yoo. [...]

Indeed, according to the report, it was Koester who drafted perhaps the most controversial section of the memos: the discussion of the "commander in chief" power, in which OLC essentially advises the government that the president, as commander in chief, can disregard any law he wants during wartime. "Koester also told us that she thinks she ended up writing the Commander-in-Chief section, with 'a lot of input' from Yoo and Philbin," writes OPR (p. 50).

Oh, but wait. That's not all. An internal Justice Department report released Friday revealed this little exchange:

Q: I guess the question I'm raising is, does this particular law really affect the President's war-making abilities ....

Yoo: Yes, certainly.

Q: What is your authority for that?

Yoo: Because this is an option that the President might use in war.

Q: What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? ... Is that a power that the president could legally--

Yoo: Yeah. Although, let me say this. So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief's power over tactical decisions.

Q: To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?

Yoo: Sure.

You read that correctly. Boy Georgie could order the extermination of entire villages. How WWII of them. Georgie, Yoo, and Lawyerette Jenny sure did think alike! They must have been BFF.

I wonder if Little Miss Sunshine came up with that gem, too. After all, she had more free time than everyone else did to slip in all kinds of innovative laws that rational people never would have been able to come up with.

After all, she did, per the report, draft the part of the memo that gave the "commander in chief power to disregard any law he wants during wartime."

And then, as all Lawyerettes do, she ate her P, B and J sammich, watched Barney, grabbed her blankie, and took a nap.

She slept very soundly and dreamed good dreams, because little boys and girls with no consciences never have nightmares about death and torture.

H/t: Gr8RDH

Justice Dept. OLC nominee Dawn Johnsen, still waits for confirmation, goes back to teaching

By GottaLaff

Remember Dawn Johnsen? Think back... wayyy back. The woman who could nail Bush, remember? I've posted numerous times about her impending confirmation and all the stalling. Ring a bell?

"Dawn Johnsen, whose nomination to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has stalled, reportedly has gone back to Indiana University's law school to teach a class there while Senate Democrats count and recount noses to see if they might be able to muster 60 votes for cloture. Gonna be a tough vote next month, though."
-- Al Kamen, in today's Washington Post "In the Loop" column

If you want an excellent rundown of all the nauseating details, go here

Dawn Johnsen's Nomination Stalls Thanks to Democrats

By GottaLaff

I've posted numerous times about Dawn Johnsen and all the stalling. Now we have this, directly from the Department of WTF:

Her biggest problem is that Harry Reid has not been able to muster enough Democrats to overcome a filibuster threat. [...]

Votes Against Johnsen: 37 Republicans

Votes for Johnsen: 57 Democrats plus Indiana Republican Richard Lugar

Undecideds: Republicans Olypmia Snowe and Susan Collins and Democrats Arlen Specter and Ben Nelson

Reid frames the issue by saying he needs a couple Republicans to cross the line before he has the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster. But as the numbers show, it's just as much an issue of Reid not being able to muster the entire Democratic caucus in support of Johnsen.

The nomination isn't dead yet, but with Reid trying to put the onus on the White House to shore up support for the beleaguered nominee and the White House staying mum about what it role in all this is, or should be, Johnsen's nomination isnt going anywhere fast.

The most high profile of these undecideds is Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) who, upon defecting from the Republican party, voiced brusque opposition to the Obama nominee. But his staff confirmed to me yesterday that he's now considering how he'll vote on cloture, which represents, at least rhetorically, a move away from his earlier position.

And then there's Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), who says he finds her nomination troubling. But he also seldom votes to filibuster presidential nominees--including, importantly, a number of controversial Bush administration officials. Several weeks ago, Nelson's spokesman Clay Westrope said Nelson hadn't decided how the Nebraska Democrat would vote on cloture, but that he usually votes yes because "he is against obstruction and believes it is important for each issue to get an up or down vote."[...]

On Thursday, Sam Stein reported that Nelson "appears to be the key obstacle to her confirmation."

Reid says he won't bring the nomination to the floor until the votes are there--and as you can see the votes aren't there. A Judiciary Committee source says it's leadership's responsibility to whip up the votes [...]

Johnsen served as acting OLC Chief under President Bill Clinton. Republicans say their opposition to her is rooted in her work and writings for NARAL, where she served as legal director from 1988 to 1993. [...] And the more recent, and more important subtext is that Johnsen was a vocal critic of the Bush-era OLC--the font of the administrations torture and wiretapping policies, which many believe should be investigated by the current justice department.

If the leadership vacuum isn't quickly filled, Johnsen may have to wait until Democrats seat Al Franken (not an easy task in and of itself) to get past the filibuster. In the meantime, Reid hasn't been able to nudge Nelson, or completely turn Specter, and the administration has made little progress getting the Snowe and Collins on board. And so Dawn Johnsen waits.

Thank you Norm Coleman and Tim Pawlenty.

My wall now has a brand new dent where my most recent head-banging event took place.

The Gitmo Diet: Limiting detainee food intake aided torture

By GottaLaff

(click on image to enlarge)

Hey ladies! Tired of weight loss programs that just don't work? Need a quick and effective way to shed pounds? Then try the Gitmo Diet!

According to a recently declassified Justice Department document, the CIA believed that so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques like sleep deprivation worked better when a detainee’s resistance was weakened from hunger. The agency, with the legal approval of the Justice Department, employed a regimen that sharply restricted the caloric intake of detainees in its custody — an intake distinctly below federal nutritional guidelines for inmates in U.S. prisons.

Steven Bradbury, chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in during George W. Bush’s second term, provided an overview of an authorized CIA technique to manipulate detainee’s diets in order to make them receptive to interrogation. [Laffy Note: Read above graphic] The restricted diet, according to Bradbury’s memo, would be subject to “frequent medical monitoring,” and a detainee would be measured “weekly” to ensure that he did not lose more than “10 percent of his body weight,” which would trigger termination of the diet.

That caloric intake would be unacceptable for the Justice Department to administer to an inmate in a federal prison. [...]

“It’s not starvation, but it’s problematic,” agreed Scott Allen, a Rhode Island-based doctor and medical adviser to Physicians for Human Rights. Allen said that his middle-aged male patients who exhibit an active lifestyle are often placed on a 2,000-calorie daily intake “as a weight loss diet.” [...]

Emily Siegel, a Baltimore-based nutritional counselor who works with trauma victims, said that while the detainees’ physical activity would not be high during interrogation, “the stress their bodies are under is tremendous,” requiring more calories than the CIA program allowed.

Orlando Ticon, a survivor of torture directed by former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, described what dietary manipulation feels like. “The main thing was you never knew when you were given food,” said Ticon, who now works with a torture survivors’ support group known as TASSC International. [...]

In the long term, Ticon said, torture survivors experience a lingering lack of appetite, associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. “Some survivors lose a taste for food because it’s identified for them with prison,” he said. “Like certain types of food, like dried bread, tea, things like that.” Torture survivors he has interviewed “don’t eat regularly and have no appetite for food.”

Detainees who had been subjected to the CIA’s detention program described being subjected to the regimen for weeks in a 2007 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, said he was not provided “with any solid food apart from on two occasions as a reward for perceived cooperation,” and fed only Ensure. “If he refused to drink then his mouth was forced open by a guard and the Ensure was poured down his throat,” the report states. Mohammed claimed to the Red Cross that his weight dropped from 78 kilograms, or 171 pounds, to 60 kilograms, or 132 pounds, after the month-long regimen of dietary restriction. If true, that would amount to a loss of about 23 percent of Mohammed’s body weight — more than twice the amount that, according to Bradbury’s memo, should have stopped the dietary-restriction regimen.

Just watch those pounds melt away. Before you know it, the New You will be revealed!

Whether you like it or not.

Senator Whitehouse will fight for Dawn Johnsen's confirmation

By GottaLaff

Hey boys and girls! It's time for your Daily Dose-O'-BuzzFlash! Today's episode:

GOP May Offer Fireworks, But Sheldon Whitehouse Will Lead the Senate Fight To Confirm Dawn Johnsen

You all remember Dawn, right? She's the one the Rushpublics fear. She's the one who could nail BushCo. Moving along:

When the U.S. Senate reconvenes after its Spring recess Monday, will partisan sparks fly, filibusters be mounted, and confirmation fights rage over President Obama's remaining appointments that have yet to get their up-or-down confirmation vote on the Senate floor? Maybe, in the case of the President's nominee to head the Office of Legal Council in the Department of Justice, Dawn E. Johnsen.

On a conference call Friday with BuzzFlash and other Internet-based reporters, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island indicated that, if it comes to that, the Democrats are ready. "If the Republicans really do decide they're going to filibuster this nomination, I think they're leading with their chins and that gives us the chance to go on the offense," he said.

Read the rest here.

The Woman Who Could Nail Bush

By GottaLaff

Fasten your seat belts. It's gonna be a bumpy ride:

Until recently, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, often considered the “brains” of the department, has been known mostly to legal experts. But for the past eight years it was the epicenter of allegations of political manipulation—and worse—the source of infamous memoranda on torture. In tapping Eric Holder as attorney general, President Obama has promised to restore standards of professionalism to the department. For Republicans this is tantamount to a declaration of partisan war. [...]

Republican leaders, it appears, are playing with the notion of making [Dawn] Johnsen the target of their first filibuster. [...]

The highly credentialed Johnsen is an improbable target, and OLC was long viewed as an obscure post. But Johnsen served as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. [...]

Johnsen is labeled a “radical, pro-abortion activist,” although her views on the abortion issue line up very closely with the mainstream. While the noise surrounding the Johnsen nomination appears on the surface to be about the abortion issue—over which her position at OLC would have very little influence—discussions with Republican stalwarts reveal that their main concerns lie elsewhere.

I'll say. Ready for revelations about the obvious?

The real reason for their vehement opposition is that Johnsen is committed to overturning the Bush administration’s policies on torture and warrantless surveillance that would clip the wings of the imperial presidency. Even more menacingly from their perspective, she is committed to disclosing some of the darkest skeletons of the Bush years. Already, publication of OLC memoranda authorizing torture, approving warrantless surveillance, and pronouncing the First and Fourth Amendments a dead letter in connection with domestic military operations has rocked the public. More memos, potentially even more disturbing, I have learned, are about to be made public soon. Yet these are difficult issues on which to attack Johnsen, other than through vague suggestions that she is “weak on national security.” Hence the steady stream of accusations linked to her largely irrelevant views about abortion rights. [...]

The Obama nominees, presenting the sharpest possible contrast, have drawn sputtering fire from Republicans in Congress and have come under broad attack from religious right leaders who previously had strong influence in Justice Department picks. Dawn Johnsen is an interesting test case. If the Republicans opt for filibuster or move to line up a unanimous G.O.P. vote in opposition, it will be a shot across the bow of the Obama Justice Department.

I want her in so badly I can taste it. As usual, it's uncanny how completely out of touch the Rushpublics are with the rest of America.

Go here for more. It's a good piece.

Quote-O'-The-Day: Jonathan Turley edition

By GottaLaff

Are you listening, President Obama, Congress, and anyone else who might be inclined to look the other way?

"We need a special prosecutor, not another commission."

--Jonathan Turley just now on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, re: those pesky BushCo Office of Legal Counsel memos