Update -- thank you to srkp23 on dKos -- who now has a much more detailed write-up and hat-tips our heads-up. Check it out.

From the New York Times via Mercury News, Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane report that the FBI tried to fight detainee abuse at Guatanamo Bay -- to the point where they even kept a growing file detailing abuses marked "War Crimes File" up until a senior FBI official ordered the file shut down some time in 2003.

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"Beyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don't know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these enemy prisoners of war," Bowman wrote in an e-mail message to top FBI officials in July 2003.

Many of the abuses the report describes have previously been disclosed, but it was not known that FBI agents had gone so far as to document accusations of abuse in a "war crimes file" at Guantánamo. The report does not say how many incidents were included in the file after it was started in 2002, but the "war crimes" label showed just how seriously FBI agents took the accusations.

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War crimes. Committed by United States citizens.

Thank you, George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld. Thank you, Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and Stephen Hadley. Thank you, John Bolton and Harriet Miers, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell. And thank you, 109th Congress, specifically Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert, Mel Martinez and Mitch McConnell, and all your little friends out there who went ape over Dick Durbin's comments when he first brought this abomination to light on the floor of the Congress in 2005. Your Republican majority and salivation over the prospect of a permanent Republican majority (HA! -- sorry, Karl!) led you to be known as the Rubberstamp Congress, and you upheld the title with foolish, arrogant pride.

You should all be so proud.

Your efforts have helped protect the Bush Administration -- and yourselves -- from the investigation of war crimes that you enabled and prolonged through this day and until the foreseeable future, at least until the last of your complicit supporters and obstructors of justice are dragged from the halls of Congress and replaced by lawful, upstanding citizens.

History will remember your names, your actions and your roles for many years to come.

originally posted 2008-03-09 12:04:24 -0500

This is material on some of the different ways in which people are approaching the question of how to deal with the fall out from the housing and mortgage crisis. There's quite a few links here, and not so much comment. I hope you have time to work through the links

Scott Horton - No Comment:

So why is it harmless when Dick Cheney talks about the CIA’s use of waterboarding, but a violation of national security concerns when Kiriakou does? The answer to that is fairly obvious. If you disclose things classified as “secret” for purposes of advancing the political agenda of the Bush Administration, things are fine. If you disclose things classified as “secret” and articulate even the slightest criticism, then you’re obviously a criminal. We call this using the criminal justice system to attack perceived political adversaries. A Bush Justice Department specialty.

[Also see: Jonathan Landay's article in the Miami Herald.]

The good ol' days:
. . . several agents contended that military interrogators impersonated FBI agents, suggesting that the ruse was aimed in part at avoiding blame for any subsequent public allegations of abuse, according to memos between FBI officials. [Dan Eggan+Jeffrey Smith/WP:
FBI Agents Allege Abuse of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay, 30 Dec 2004.]
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Paul Rincon/BBC: Black hole 'bully' blasts galaxy
"Black holes are famous for wreaking havoc on their environment. This particular black hole is disrupting its local region by dining on matter that wanders too close . . it is like a black hole bully, punching the nose of a passing galaxy."
[Image: BBC/Nasa]
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Scott Horton: Obligations Ignored (18 Dec '07):
Remember that young man with the alcohol and coke habit who totaled two cars in the course of a single year before being sent off to Alabama to dry out? He’s now in the White House. And he seems to have found a new drug: raw political power.
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Joe Hanel/DurangoHerald: State disallows some voting machines
DENVER - Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified voting machines used across the state Monday, but most of Southwest Colorado's machines passed the test. . . Only Premier (Diebold) Election Systems passed all of Coffman's tests.
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Dave Dilegge/SWJ: Zinni's Considerations Revisited
General Zinni offers basic, common-sense guidelines here. Unfortunately, many of these guidelines are left behind at our military think-tanks and schoolhouses once the first round goes downrange. [On guidelines written by Zinni in February 2003.]