Things You Must Read - Your Thursday Creepy Edition

Sometimes the comedy just writes itself.

The GOP has more email problems. My favorite quote: "Can we label the entire Republican Party as organized crime yet?"

Wired Danger Blog gives us a creepy "preview" of 9/11, and links to some even creepier things.

Congrats go out to JM Bell for his new (way cool and awesome!) temporary gig and a few other things, too.

GOP Disenfranchising Democratic voters, coming soon to a poll booth near you! (Hey, if you can't vote, they don't care that you wouldn't vote for them!)

George Bush doesn’t like the Constitution. In fact, he holds it in contempt.

That's it for now. I'm going to try to keep a post like this going almost daily.

Don't forget to Wear Orange tomorrow!

Just one more - I am waiting on a meeting and read this article from Kos. If you live in Michigan, or know Democrats or Independents in the state, go cause trouble for the Republicans, and some good for the Democrats at the same time. Brilliant!!!

Jose Padilla Verdict: Guilty

Jose Padilla was convicted on all 3 charges today.

I'm unsure about whether this is good, or bad. Jose Padilla was held (and tortured) without trial at Guantanamo Bay. He is a US citizen. Black and white - that was wrong.

Now he's had a trail, though given the mental illness that came as a result of his extended stay at Gitmo, he was unable to competently assist in his own defense.

If the charges are true, and he really was the terrorist that they'd have us believe, the sentence is too short. However, I'm not sure I do believe the stories. For example, the fingerprints they say they have - were "normal" procedures followed, as they would be in a US crime case? There are a million ways that those fingerprints could have made it on the paper. Was the jury sufficiently convinced that there was no doubt that he put them on the paper, or were they a victim of our current "Terror Regime", and had so much prejudice against an accused terrorist that true evidence was unnecessary?

I think he's probably guilty of something, but given the facts surrounding his stay at Gitmo, I don't think Jose Padilla is still the guy in Jose Padilla's body, and his guilt, or lack thereof, nor his punishment, matter much to him. But, it does to me. I'm a US citizen, and I just watched our president trample on our constitution.

Gitmo to Stay Open as Human Rights Sanctuary

From Derek, of Brilliant at Breakfast:

Spit take-inducing headline of the day

Put down that cup of coffee, unless you like a mess. Courtesy of TPM Muckraker:


Gitmo to Stay Open as Human Rights Sanctuary


Turns out it's more than just a catchy headline. The story is that the good ol' Bush administration wants to slim down the prisoner headcount at Gitmo from the current 360 to 150. So good news for 210 wrongfully-imprisoned and even-more-wrongfully tortured detainees? Actually, no. We've still got one more level of wrongful to go: there's nowhere to drop them off. Their home countries and all of the possible foster-home states that have been asked either won't take them, or won't take them without promising not to torture or kill them. So they get to stay in Guantánamo, where their human rights will be, uh, protected.

It only gets more absurd from there. Read on.