The Greenwood Community Council is meeting Tuesday night to discuss a possible rezone of areas adjacent to the proposed Fred Meyer redevelopment on 85th Street. The meeting is at 7 p.m. at the Greenwood Library, 8016 Greenwood Ave. N.

Dwight Eisenhower tiptoed around Joe McCarthy. Obama reminded an audience in Colorado that opponents of Social Security in the 1930s "said that everybody was going to have to wear dog tags and that this was a plot for the government to keep track of everybody ... These struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear." True enough. There was McCarthyism in the 1950s, the John Birch Society in the 1960s. But there was a difference in those times: the crazies were a faction — often a powerful faction — of the Republican Party, but they didn't run it.

We all know that there's no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we're paying for them. There's no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don't be confused -- what we're talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living. You want to "fix things in China," well, it's gonna cost you.

It sounds great in the movies, but when you try to do it, it’s not that easy,” a former intelligence official said. “Where do you base them? What do they look like? Are they going to be sitting around at headquarters on 24-hour alert waiting to be called?

The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody

Great write up of the Chamber of Commerce mixer which featured the Fred Meyer / Urban village. They have pictures, check it out.

My blog post on the meeting this morning

(Reuters) - The U.S. Army paid $83.4 million in bonuses to KBR Inc. (KBR.N), its biggest contractor in Iraq, despite accusations its wiring work has been linked to the electrocution of at least four soldiers and one contractor, a congressional investigative panel said on Wednesday.

Former NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem reports that the vice president’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner who was suspected of knowing about a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam.

At least four operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being ‘tortured.’ Those claims came during their hearings in the spring of 2007 at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”

Soufan also described in detail the process of interrogating Abu Zubaydah, which he was involved in. He said that when he and CIA officers used legal techniques, they quickly learned valuable information, including that KSM masterminded the 9/11 attacks. But when a contractor came in and started torturing Zubaydah, he quickly clammed up. Overall, said Soufan, the use of torture was "harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaeda."

A former CIA high-value detainee, who provided bogus information that was cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war, has died in a Libyan prison, an apparent suicide, according to a Libyan newspaper.

September 2002 CIA briefing that Nancy Pelosi received about enhanced interrogation techniques, it seems clear that she was given enough information to conclude that we either had already conducted waterboarding and other harsh techniques, or that we very well might in the near future.

So the more important question, which seems to be getting less attention today, is what Pelosi did in response. And the short answer appears to be: very little.

This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

"It's impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we?

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

CIA interrogators used waterboarding at least 266 times on two top al Qaeda suspects, according to a Bush-era Justice Department memo released by the Obama administration.

Hello! We are mySociety – we run most of the UK’s best known democracy websites.

Using our services, 200,000 people have written to their MP for the first time, over 8,000 potholes and other broken things have been fixed, nearly 9,000,000 signatures have been left on petitions to the Prime Minister, and at least 77 tiny hats have been knitted for charity.

But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the "state secrets" privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim of breathtaking scope -- never before advanced even by the Bush administration -- that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is "willful disclosure" of the illegally intercepted communications.

House and Senate candidates would raise a large number of small contributions from their home states in order to qualify for enough Fair Elections funding to run a competitive race. After qualifying, small donations, up to $100, would be matched on a four-to-one basis, up to a ceiling at which matching funds would no longer be dispersed. Candidates would be permitted to collect an unlimited number of $100 contributions from individuals. The proposal covers both primary and general elections. The funding for the proposal comes from a small fee assessed on companies receiving sizable government contracts.

So last night I asked for another couple of billion from the great unwashed masses and Obama said "no". He didn't like that joke of a business plan I submitted to him - who knew he'd actually read it?!