[Peace] AOTA & the Ass-kissing Little Chickenshit

[C. G. Estabrook]

Tonight's AWARE ON THE AIR (UPTV cable channel 6 at 10pm and soon on FB)
includes the following reports:

--Ron Szoke, "Worshiping Mars & Mammon";

--Linda Weber, "The Costs of War"; and

--yr. obdt. servt. on the peculiar article on the front page of the NYT today.


For more information on that last, see

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/asskissinglittlechickenshit


Other important columns this week include


	55 Congressional Candidates Oppose War Spending
	Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2010-05-25

Fifty-five congressional candidates and 19 activist organizations are opposing
any more funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and inviting more
candidates, incumbents, and organizations to join them.  The candidates, from 21
different states, include 19 Democrats, 16 Libertarians, 15 Greens, 2
Independents, and 0 Republicans (and more may be added to the website by the
time you read this).  Forty-six are candidates for the U.S. House of
Representatives, and six for the Senate.

They do not all agree with each other on many topics, including their reasons
for opposing war spending.  But they all back this short statement:

"The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost Americans over $1 trillion in direct
costs, and over $3 trillion altogether.  At a time when our national debt
exceeds $13 trillion, we can no longer afford these wars.  It's time for
Congress to reject any funding except to bring all our troops safely home."

Full column at <http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/52562>.


	Glenn Greenwald
	Friday, May 21, 2010 13:22 ET
	Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does.
As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting
people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- and then
detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most
minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court.  Back in the day, this was
called "Bush's legal black hole."  In 2006, Congress codified that policy by
enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in
Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the
Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at
Guantanamo.  Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought
pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to
justify their detention.

Immediately following Boumediene, the Bush administration argued that the
decision was inapplicable to detainees at Bagram -- including even those
detained outside of Afghanistan but then flown to Afghanistan to be imprisoned.
  Amazingly, the Bush DOJ -- in a lawsuit brought by Bagram detainees seeking
habeas review of their detention -- contended that if they abduct someone and
ship them to Guantanamo, then that person (under Boumediene) has the right to a
habeas hearing, but if they instead ship them to Bagram, then the detainee has
no rights of any kind.  In other words, the detainee's Constitutional rights
depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged.  One of
the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil
libertarians was when, last February, as The New York Times put it, Obama
lawyers "told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no
legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of
former President Bush’s legal team"...

Full column at
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/21/bagram>.

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