Another Link Salad: Impeachment, Cover-ups, and the Environment

Suddenly, Impeachment Hearings Are Looking Like a Strong Possibility

One indication of the change in the political climate in the House is the announcement by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a six-term congressman and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, that he will call for the Judiciary Committee to take up Kucinich’s impeachment [of VP Cheney] bill. This is significant because Wexler, no left-wing hothead, is not a co-signer of the Kucinich bill.

In an email message to constituents, Wexler said:

"I share your belief that Vice President Cheney must answer for his deceptive actions in office, particularly with regard to the preparations for the Iraq war and the revelation of the identity of covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of political retribution against her husband."

Boxer: Bush Administration Hiding Global Warming Data From Americans

On Wednesday’s Hardball Senator Barbara Boxer talked with Chris Matthews about testimony given to the Senate Environment Committee by CDC Director Julie Gerberding about global warming and related health issues. Boxer says that Gerberding admitted that her original testimony had been heavily redacted by the White House and much of that was information on the public health impact of Global Warming.

When a letter was sent to President Bush asking for clarification on the redacted portions of the testimony, Boxer claims she received a letter back from White House Counsel, Fred Fielding, refusing her request claiming….you guessed it — Executive Privilege.

And,

California sues US over car fumes

California is suing the US federal government over its failure to back the state's tough new anti-pollution laws regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

In lighter news,

Barbie Trabbed in Carbonite. Cool.

Link Salad, size: small

Public Lands, Recreational Opportunities, and Natural Resources Or, yes, Virginia, global warming is real, the EPA knows it, and it's having a dramatic effect on Alaska, my much-loved home, that will never be the same again, gods curse every damn polluting one of us.

Drivers stranded by car signals. See? This is why I want a damn *KEY*.

The Last Word on Waterboarding -- It's Torture, Pure & Simple

Waterboarding is Torture… Period, from Malcolm Nance at the Small Wars Journal.

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

Once at SERE and tasked to rewrite the Navy SERE program for the first time since the Vietnam War, we incorporated interrogation and torture techniques from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia into the curriculum. In the process, I studied hundreds of classified written reports, dozens of personal memoirs of American captives from the French-Indian Wars and the American Revolution to the Argentinean ‘Dirty War’ and Bosnia. There were endless hours of videotaped debriefings from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War POWs and interrogators. I devoured the hundreds of pages of debriefs and video reports including those of then Commander John McCain, Colonel Nick Rowe, Lt. Dieter Dengler and Admiral James Stockdale, the former Senior Ranking Officer of the Hanoi Hilton. All of them had been tortured by the Vietnamese, Pathet Lao or Cambodians. The minutiae of North Vietnamese torture techniques was discussed with our staff advisor and former Hanoi Hilton POW Doug Hegdahl as well as discussions with Admiral Stockdale himself. The waterboard was clearly one of the tools dictators and totalitarian regimes preferred.

It's torture, and the DOJ and White House know it because an Assistant Attorney General went out to assess it, had it inflicted it on himself to truly understand it, and concluded that yes, it's torture. Legally and ethically, it's torture. And he got fired for it.

Climate Wars

Climate Wars Threaten Billions

Retired JAG Officers on Mukasey, Waterboarding

Retired JAGs Send Letter to Leahy

While Bush says shit like this:

In a time of war, it is vital for the President to have a full national security team in place -- and the Attorney General is a key member of that team. The Attorney General is America's top law enforcement officer, with critical responsibilities for preventing terrorist attacks and protecting our Nation.

but doesn't mean it, since he wants the nation's top law enforcement officer to condone torture.