There are.. some problems with Goldsmith’s little mea non culpa. What the CIA had been doing is torture pure and simple, and nothing that Levin said, or George Bush says, can change that fact. You can call the sky a floor if you want, but that won’t make it one, and you can call waterboarding a friendly gesture if you want, but that won’t make it something other than torture.

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
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... to not know that prisoners were being transferred for torture, Goldsmith would have had to be living under a rock during his time at DOD and must have completely failed to read pertinent OLC torture memos ...None of this seemed plausible and now, thanks to Goldsmith’s own book, we know he read and was horrified by torture memos after he was put in charge of OLC and long before he wrote the transfer memo.

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes

any lawyer in private practice who tortured law or ignored fact to give support and cover to a client’s gravely illegal conduct would be subject to disbarment, subject to criminal prosecution, and disqualified from being on any respectable law school faculty. How or why it should be different for lawyers who did such things to facilitate the gravest governmental misconduct, conduct which involved torture and sometimes murder, is something that escapes me.

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes

It is also obvious that Bush is going to leave to his successor the awful question of what to do with terrorists whom we’ve tortured, held incommunicado, detained indefinitely. These people can’t be convicted in civilian courts...Then too it is again obvious that the Democrats aren’t going to force Bush to bring home the troops by cutting off funds for the war. They have neither the brains nor the guts to cut our losses (the way a smart business cuts its losses).

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes

Michigan has joined Harvard as the victims of what likely are the two greatest upsets in college football history. And now Michigan, as a fellow victim, has finally achieved its many, many decades’ old desire to be the Harvard of the West.

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes

Yesterday a posting here said we need a new kind of candidate instead of the typical amicable mediocrities who go from door to door or state to state for months or years on end in order to be elected...Today, by freak fortuity, I turned on CSpan II for a few minutes, and saw Bloomberg making a speech at Brookings on efforts to reduce poverty. To my personal amazement, he seemed to be the kind of person who met the vision offered in yesterday’s posting.

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes

It does not seem likely to me that one can comfortably rely on either of the current two major parties to overthrow the ultimately-disaster-producing national security state. ...Only a new party dedicated to fundamentally different ideas about America and the world will, in reality, be able to end the national security state. (Or do you really expect the Democrats to do it, if elected?)

This is the audio version of Dean Lawrence R. Velvel's blog, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.com
For more information on The Massachusetts School of Law, log on to www.mslaw.edu
And to hear (and see!) the history of MSL, please visit "Against the Tide" on www.podiobooks.com or in the podcast section of iTunes