U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk.

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.

Wow. In fact, I think they are going to outlaw the very existence of people who have been tortured (or not or who will ever know?) Their existence is a threat to national security. They can't be trusted. Hell, we had to torture them to get them to talk!

HRC

The Clinton Referendum

Comedy picket lines

Stewart and Colbert to Return Without Writers

This kind of disappoints me, but it will enable us to answer the question of how good these guys are without the writers...

Karama is a behatch

Circuit City Loss Widens; Shares Plunge on Forecast

Circuit City, which cut 10 percent of its U.S. workforce this year and hired people willing to work for less, is losing market share to larger rival Best Buy Co. Sales in stores open at least 12 months fell 5.6 percent in the third quarter.

Apparently they didn't realize that when people are going in to buy big ticket items (tvs, etc.) that they like to talk to someone knowledgeable rather than a high school kid.

'08 Roundup

Filibluster

Republicns break filibuster record only halfway through the term.

Why this isn't a major news story shows how lame the Dems have been.

FISA (telecom immunity) bill pulled

Dodd wins... for now.

Home of the free

Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry

Two other AT&T employees who worked on the proposal discounted his claims, saying in interviews that the project had simply sought to improve the N.S.A.’s internal communications systems and was never designed to allow the agency access to outside communications. Michael Coe, a company spokesman, said: “AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers’ privacy. We do not comment on matters of national security.”

But lawyers for the plaintiffs say that if the suit were allowed to proceed, internal AT&T documents would verify the engineer’s account.

“What he saw,” said Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs along with Carl Mayer, “was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”

FISA and all tha crap has never been about 9/11.

Breaking Ranks

Lieberman endorses McCain

I can't wait until Lieberman no longer caucuses with the Democrats.

Snow

Millions of Canadians digging out from major storm

Nearly 35 centimetres of snow had fallen on Ottawa by 10 p.m. Sunday, Environment Canada said, with 29 centimetres across the Ottawa River in Gatineau, Que. Rural areas southeast of Ottawa saw closer to 50 centimetres as the system headed north and east from the United States into Ontario and Quebec.

Thats almost 14 inches.

I need to buy this, or at least this.

Good thing I shoveled after the first 6 inches...

Tree me

World Bank Fund Will Pay to Leave Forests Standing

The World Bank will establish a fund to compensate developing nations to protect forests, with the hope that preserving forests will slow climate change. 'The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility signals that the world cares about the global value of forests and is ready to pay for it,” said Robert Zoellick, World Bank president. Deforestation is responsible for about one fifth of total carbon emissions, yet was overlooked by the Kyoto Protocol, reports an article from the Environment News Service. Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland along with the Nature Conservancy have committed to contributing to the fund. A report from the Center for International Forestry Research suggests that deforestation has complex causes that can vary from nation to nation, and offers recommendations for protecting neighboring communities that depend on forests for their livelihoods. Property rights to forests are often murky, analysts suggests, and care must be taken to monitor forests and related economic activity, while preventing funds from going to corrupt government officials who look the other way as logging or burning continues.

I like the idea in theory, but how it will operate is the big question. But who the heck do they pay?

Dodd to filibuster

The FISA bill

What I want to know is, why are the Republicans essentially filibustering everything - without actually doing the filibustering, and when now Dodd has to actually do it?

One of the reasons:

Drama Prairie Dog

Mental reserves

keep brain agile

“Something must account for the disjunction between the degree of brain damage and its outcome,” the Columbia scientists deduced. And that something, they and others suggest, is “cognitive reserve.”

Cognitive reserve, in this theory, refers to the brain’s ability to develop and maintain extra neurons and connections between them via axons and dendrites. Later in life, these connections may help compensate for the rise in dementia-related brain pathology that accompanies normal aging.

...

Cognitive reserve is greater in people who complete higher levels of education. The more intellectual challenges to the brain early in life, the more neurons and connections the brain is likely to develop and perhaps maintain into later years. Several studies of normal aging have found that higher levels of educational attainment were associated with slower cognitive and functional decline.

Dr. Scarmeas and Dr. Stern suggest that cognitive reserve probably reflects an interconnection between genetic intelligence and education, since more intelligent people are likely to complete higher levels of education.

But brain stimulation does not have to stop with the diploma. Better-educated people may go on to choose more intellectually demanding occupations and pursue brain-stimulating hobbies, resulting in a form of lifelong learning. In researching her book, Ms. Ramin said she found that novelty was crucial to providing stimulation for the aging brain.

...

Long-term studies in other countries, including Sweden and China, have also found that continued social interactions helped protect against dementia. The more extensive an older person’s social network, the better the brain is likely to work, the research suggests. Especially helpful are productive or mentally stimulating activities pursued with other people, like community gardening, taking classes, volunteering or participating in a play-reading group.

...

Exercise may help by improving blood flow (and hence oxygen and nutrients) to the brain, reducing the risk of ministrokes and clogged blood vessels, and stimulating growth factors that promote the formation of new neurons and neuronal connections.

Gene ID cards

In China

call me a fuddy-duddy, but i don't want one of those. what the hell is the purpose except for facilitating potential abuses of power?

Mind and matter

All maximum performances are actually pseudo-maximum performances

Snap, tell us how you really feel

Fox propoganda

How Fox News covers the NIE — or in this case, doesn’t

Praise Cats - Shined On Me

Subprime

We love the world in so many ways

Besides not respecting the borders and laws of other countries (see post below), we also manage to spread the joy in so many ways: U.S. Credit Crisis Adds to Gloom in Arctic Norway

And these are our allies!!

I guess we rule the world

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.
...
He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be “honest about [his] position”.

Jones replied: “That is United States law.”

He cited the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a suspect who was abducted by the US government at his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1990. He was flown by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Texas for criminal prosecution.

Although there was an extradition treaty in place between America and Mexico at the time — as there currently is between the United States and Britain — the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that the Mexican had no legal remedy because of his abduction.

Somebody made a nice comment:

Cool, an infinite loop of kidnappings: The US kidnaps someone in England, breaking English law. So the UK should go to the US and kidnap the parties responsible, for prosecution in England. So the US goes to England and kidnaps the English kidnappers for prosecution in the US. So the English go to America and kidnap... ad infinitum.

I suspect that's why extradition treaties were established in the first place.

Jonathan Hendry, Cambridge, Massachusetts

CNN/YouTube GOP Debate