Snowdon is a dummy

I honestly don't get why CI and others don't get that the government is comprised of us, the people of the US.

I think what you and Frank have missed are all the times I've defended Obama - when I felt he deserved it, and explained why. Why you and Frank fail to see my opinions as 'balanced' is the most upsetting part of our discussions.

National Security
Independent review board says NSA phone data program is illegal and should end

Could the ‘Torture Report’ help spare the Guantanamo defendants?
Their lawyers hope so.
By Liz Goodwin and Olivier Knox
1 hour ago
Yahoo News
Defense attorneys in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are eagerly awaiting the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation program, hoping its revelations will help the accused terrorists they represent at military commissions on the island.

Obama: Senate report will show ‘we tortured some folks’ Yahoo News
U.S. Senate report to suggest harsh CIA interrogations were unnecessary: officials Reuters

President Barack Obama said bluntly earlier this month that the CIA “tortured some folks,” and the long-awaited report is expected to describe that torture in detail. That could be good news for the five men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks and one accused of the USS Cole bombing. All have been in pretrial proceedings for years now at Guantanamo and were in CIA custody before that.

“It’s going to have an effect on the way everything is perceived,” said James Harrington, who is representing accused 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.

The Guantanamo prosecution team decided back in 2006 not to use any evidence obtained while the detainees were in CIA custody and subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding. They believed they had enough evidence from other sources, including statements the detainees made to the FBI’s “clean team” of interrogators, who questioned the detainees — without the use of methods that meet international definitions of torture — after they were moved from secret "black sites" in foreign countries to Guantanamo.

But the report’s revelations could call into question the clean team’s findings, the lawyers believe. Harrington said he’s planning to argue that these interviews should be just as inadmissible as the CIA’s findings, since his client was too psychologically damaged by the earlier interrogations to be questioned fairly.

The report could also be useful to the defense if and when the lengthy proceedings — which have been stuck in pretrial motions for more than two years — get to the sentencing stage. Harrington plans to argue that the torture his client suffered is a mitigating circumstance that means he should not be put to death if found guilty.

View galleryGuantanamo retrospective
Members of the group "Witness Against Torture" dressed in orange prison jump suits protest against t …
Having an account of exactly what the CIA learned in its interrogations might also help the men's lawyers “draw a line” around certain pieces of evidence, said Ken Gude, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress think tank. The fact that a detainee said something during CIA custody might make that piece of information suspect even if he repeated it long after the torture had ended.

Attorneys for Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the USS Cole bombing, have already asked the judge for access to the complete report for this very reason. (The judge hasn’t yet ruled on the request.) While the government has admitted that al-Nashiri was waterboarded, the detainee has alleged that he was tortured in more extreme ways not deemed legal by Bush administration lawyers. If the report bears that out, al-Nashiri’s defense team hopes to use it as a shield against capital punishment.

“Putting it bluntly, after the United States tortures a person in violation of international law and domestic law, does the United States then get to kill him?” asked al-Nashiri’s lawyer, Rick Kammen.

What needs to be pounded into the minds of Americans is that we should be a country of laws based on our Constitution. When our government oversteps its bounds, and breaks the laws, it's up to people who knows better to challenge what our government has done and is doing that's wrong.
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Obama has the authority and approves the detention and torture of Americans he deems are terrorists. The president doesn't have that right based on our laws and our Constitution.

BECAUSE FREEDOM CAN'T PROTECT ITSELF

GITMO ON OBAMA'S WATCH:

Well over a decade has passed since the first prisoner arrived in Guantánamo Bay, making it the longest-standing war prison in U.S. history. Almost 800 men have passed through Guantánamo’s cells. Today, 155 men remain. Fashioned as an “island outside the law” where terrorism suspects could be detained without process and interrogated without restraint, Guantánamo has been a catastrophic failure on every front. It is long past time for this shameful episode in American history to be brought to a close.

Despite the danger of torture being used again in the near future, Obama is using rhetoric and drawing on the credibility he gained by opposing torture to present what the Bush administration did in more flattering terms than reality justifies, even as he continues letting the CIA repress much of the Senate torture report. When elected, he promised hope and change, not equivocation and whitewashing

Bolsters Claims of NDAA and AUMF Indefinite Detention Authority: The AUMF is the basis for the indefinite detention authority included in the NDAA that Congress passed nearly three years ago. Indefinite detention is wrong today and certainly cannot be sustained past the end of U.S. combat in the Afghan war. But passing a new Senate NDAA that relies on detention authority based on the AUMF, just as the U.S. combat role in the war is winding down, could be used by the government to bolster its claim that indefinite detention can just keep on going. Even when any actual U.S. combat is over.

Requires Report on Even More NDAA and AUMF Indefinite Detention Authority: As if the government didn't already have enough claims of indefinite detention authority, the Senate NDAA asks the administration to let Congress know what more indefinite detention authority it wants.

Tries to Strip Federal Courts of Ability to Decide Challenges to Harmful Conditions: In a stunning provision, the Senate NDAA tries to strip federal courts of their ability to "hear or consider" any challenge related to harmful treatment or conditions by detainees brought to the United States. This provision tries to gut our system of checks and balances by cutting out the courts.

Violates Supreme Court Decision by Stripping Habeas Rights from Detainees Left at Guantánamo: In a classic example of why it is never a good idea for a committee to legislate behind closed doors, the Senate NDAA includes language inadvertently stripping habeas rights from any Guantánamo detainee who is not moved to the United States. Habeas is the very fundamental protection of being able to have a judge decide whether it is legal or illegal to hold someone in prison. While this is almost certainly the product of sloppy drafting, the result squarely contradicts the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush, in which the Court said Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas.

Obama: Senate report will show ‘we tortured some folks’ Yahoo News
U.S. Senate report to suggest harsh CIA interrogations were unnecessary: officials Reuters

President Barack Obama said bluntly earlier this month that the CIA “tortured some folks,” and the long-awaited report is expected to describe that torture in detail. That could be good news for the five men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks and one accused of the USS Cole bombing. All have been in pretrial proceedings for years now at Guantanamo and were in CIA custody before that.

She says Clinton advocated a more muscular, ideological policy than President Obama
Ghitis: Clinton would have aided Syrian rebels earlier and backed Israel more strongly
Editor's note: Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is the author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television." Follow her on Twitter @FridaGhitis. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) -- Yes, Hillary Clinton is running for president, and she is running away from President Barack Obama's record on foreign policy.
That's a very clear message from the interview just published in The Atlantic in which she drew sharp distinctions between her view of America's role in the world and those of the President, while also expressing significant disagreements with him over the right approach to ongoing crises in the
She says Clinton advocated a more muscular, ideological policy than President Obama
Ghitis: Clinton would have aided Syrian rebels earlier and backed Israel more strongly
Editor's note: Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is the author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television." Follow her on Twitter @FridaGhitis. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) -- Yes, Hillary Clinton is running for president, and she is running away from President Barack Obama's record on foreign policy.
That's a very clear message from the interview just published in The Atlantic in which she drew sharp distinctions between her view of America's role in the world and those of the President, while also expressing significant disagreements with him over the right approach to ongoing crises in the Middle East.

In a dramatic dismissal of the Obama administration's self-described foreign policy doctrine of "Don't do stupid stuff," Clinton declared, "Great nations need organizing principles and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."

Clinton clothed her criticism in respect of her "incredibly intelligent" former boss, but Obama may have clenched his jaw with irritation when he read the polite pummeling from his former secretary of state. Clinton promptly explained that even she didn't think that Obama really meant that is his foreign policy doctrine. (The name Obama used to describe the policy, incidentally, uses a four-letter word instead of "stuff.") She claimed that the catchy phrase was an effort to convey to Americans wary of U.S. misadventures in faraway lands that he was not about to do "something crazy."
Still, Clinton articulated a vision for a much more assertive U.S. role in the world, one that contrasts sharply with Obama's. In doing so, she brandished a lacerating analysis of the administration's foreign policy. Most troubling for Obama was her intimation that some of the most difficult, dangerous and deadly problems raging in the Middle East today might have been avoided if Obama had acted more promptly and less hesitantly.
In a dramatic dismissal of the Obama administration's self-described foreign policy doctrine of "Don't do stupid stuff," Clinton declared, "Great nations need organizing principles and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."
Clinton clothed her criticism in respect of her "incredibly intelligent" former boss, but Obama may have clenched his jaw with irritation when he read the polite pummeling from his former secretary of state. Clinton promptly explained that even she didn't think that Obama really meant that is his foreign policy doctrine. (The name Obama used to describe the policy, incidentally, uses a four-letter word instead of "stuff.") She claimed that the catchy phrase was an effort to convey to Americans wary of U.S. misadventures in faraway lands that he was not about to do "something crazy."
Still, Clinton articulated a vision for a much more assertive U.S. role in the world, one that contrasts sharply with Obama's. In doing so, she brandished a lacerating analysis of the administration's foreign policy. Most troubling for Obama was her intimation that some of the most difficult, dangerous and deadly problems raging in the Middle East today might have been avoided if Obama had acted more promptly and less hesitantly.

When elected, he promised hope and change, not equivocation and whitewashing.

(CNN) -- Yes, Hillary Clinton is running for president, and she is running away from President Barack Obama's record on foreign policy.
That's a very clear message from the interview just published in The Atlantic in which she drew sharp distinctions between her view of America's role in the world and those of the President, while also expressing significant disagreements with him over the right approach to ongoing crises in the
She says Clinton advocated a more muscular, ideological policy than President Obama
Ghitis: Clinton would have aided Syrian rebels earlier and backed Israel more strongly

What needs to be pounded into the minds of Americans is that we should be a country of laws based on our Constitution. When our government oversteps its bounds, and breaks the laws, it's up to people who knows better to challenge what our government has done and is doing that's wrong.

One way to look at the NSA program..... it's supposed to help deter another 9/11, and if its successful,

National Security
NSA phone record collection does little to prevent terrorist attacks, group says

By Ellen Nakashima January 12
An analysis of 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.”

M-i-T's and Frank's position is a bit difficult to understand for me - to be a "critical citizen" was thought to be one of the fundamentals of democracy ... But might be that I'm still mentally in 1968.