If you thought Guantanamo was likely to close soon, think again. Camp 6, a permanent prison, is set to open in September.

....Camp 6, a state-of-the-art maximum-security jail built by a Halliburton subsidiary, will be able to hold 200 prisoners. Commander Robert Durand, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said the $30m, two-storey block was due to open at the end of September. He added: "Camp 6 is designed to improve the quality of life for the detainees and provide greater protection for the people working in the facility."

Amnesty International responds:

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Mel Gibson has issued an apology of sorts. He acknowledges he said "despicable" things to a Sheriff's deputy and that he has been battling alcoholism all his life. [Background here and here.]

An investigation is underway in L.A. to determine whether he received preferential treatment by not including his allegedly anti-semitic comments in the first official report released to the media. The Sheriff's office says:

"There is no cover-up," [Sheriff Lee Baca] said. "Our job is not to [focus] on what he said. It's to establish his blood-alcohol level when he was driving and proceed with the case.

But Gibson has donated in the past to a charity spearheaded by Baca and provided other support to the Sheriff's department:

He served in 2002 as a "celebrity representative" for the L.A. Sheriff's Department's Star Organization, a group that provides scholarships and aid for the
children of slain sheriff's deputies. Gibson donated $10,000 to the stepdaughter of
a deputy shot and killed in the line of duty and filmed public service announcements for Baca's relief committee dressed in a sheriff's uniform.

From Gibson's statement:

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The New York Times today endorsed Ned Lamont. The Hartford Courant endorsed Lieberman.

The papers agree on one thing: Lieberman's stance on Iraq has put him in this mess. While other Democrats also voted for the Iraq War, most have come around since by calling for withdrawal of our troops at the earliest opportunity, whether by a timetable or not. As the latest Gallup poll points out, this is the wish of most Americans...in fact, as many Americans now want us out of Iraq as wanted us out of Vietnam in 1969. Lieberman, though, has refused to acknowledge this. He stubbornly clings to the Bush agenda on the war.

Even the Courant has good things to say about Ned Lamont. The major negative is his "relative inexperience." I'll take a pol with bright ideas, high ideals, enthusiasm and vision any day over an entrenched pol who thinks by virtue of his longevity he owns the seat.

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If Mel Gibson doesn't become a pariah, I'll be amazed. On the one hand, there have been reports for years that the actor and creator of Passion of the Christ is anti-semitic. On the other, if the following police report is accurate, now there's evidence of it straight from his own mouth.

TMZ has obtained the unredacted copy (pdf) of Gibson's DUI arrest report, handwritten by the officer.

Once inside the car, ....the report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

I may never watch Tequilla Sunrise again.

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(by TChris)

More deception from the Bush administration:

The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money bq. In Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.

"Released late Friday" for obvious reasons. Let's hope the networks still view government fraud as newsworthy come Monday.

One of the contractors responsible the cost overruns is well connected to the Bush administration: Bechtel.

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Here comes NATO.

NATO's expansion into southern Afghanistan will target drug warlords who are the root cause of growing violence, the force's commander said on Saturday.

NATO will embark on the biggest mission in its history on Monday when it takes over security from the U.S.-led coalition in six southern provinces, extending its authority to almost all of the country.

Related: In the "picture that speaks 1,000 category":

An Afghan girl holds her brother as they take a break from searching for items to recycle in Kabul July 29, 2006. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood, larger version here.

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Crooks and Liars has the video of David Letterman's spoof last night on the Hardball diatribe of the she-pundit with long blond hair in which she postulates that Bill Clinton has latent homosexual tendencies.

In case you're not familiar with the story behind it, Media Matters has the details.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is now in Israel where she will attempt to sell Bush's new peace plan. From Reuters:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Jerusalem on Saturday for talks on ending the war in Lebanon as Israel signaled it would not demand the immediate disarming of Hizbollah as part of any deal. Accusing Rice of serving only Israel's interests, Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed more attacks on Israel's cities if it did not end an offensive launched after the guerrilla group captured two soldiers in a raid on July 12.

Israel rejected as unnecessary a United Nations plea for a three-day truce to aid civilians trapped by fighting as its forces pulled out of the Lebanese border town of Bint Jbeil, scene of fierce fighting in recent days.

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President Bush has submitted a new plan for detaining terror suspects under which U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts.

According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."

Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda.

Drug War Rant connects the dots.

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Via Sentencing Law and Policy: WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers lost his appeal today. His 25 year sentence stands. The court opinion is here. (pdf)

Among the grounds Bernie lost on: the unfairness of the use of snitch testimony when the government gets to pick who to immunize and refuses to immunize defense witnesses.

On appeal, Ebbers principally contends that the district court erred in permitting the government to introduce testimony by immunized witnesses while denying immunity to potential defense witnesses who were rendered unavailable to Ebbers by their invocation of the privilege against self-incrimination. He also claims that the court should not have given a conscious avoidance instruction and that the government should have been required to allege and prove violations of Generally Accepted Acounting Principles ("GAAP"). Finally, he challenges his sentence as based on an inaccurate calculation of losses to investors, as significantly greater than those imposed on his co-conspirators, and as unreasonable in length.

The court also upheld a two level enhancement for Ebbers "for obstruction of justice on the basis of Ebbers' having testified contrary to the jury's verdict."

Just another reason most defendants don't take the stand. You might be telling the truth, but if the jury doesn't agree, you get a longer sentence.

As for cooperators, the Court gives it stamp of approval to the disparity between Scott Sullivan who got 5 years notwithstanding he was the chief architect of the Worldcom scheme, and Ebbers who got 25 years.

by TChris

Intent on circumventing the Supreme Court's pronouncement that detainees are entitled to meaningful trials, the Bush administration is drafting legislation that would rig the trials in the government's favor. Hearsay would be acceptable proof and defendants could be excluded from their own trials. Coerced confessions would be admissible unless the judge thought they were "unreliable."

Rather than requiring a speedy trial for enemy combatants, the draft proposal says they "may be tried and punished at any time without limitations." Defendants could be held until hostilities are completed, even if found not guilty by a commission.

In other words, the administration wants to continue business as usual: indefinite detentions that may eventually lead to a secret trial with no right to confront an accuser.

by TChris

The ACLU has appealed the dismissal of a lawsuit it brought on behalf of Khaled el-Masri (TalkLeft background collected here).

Kuwaiti-born Masri says he was abducted in Macedonia in December 2001, then drugged, beaten and flown by the CIA to Afghanistan, where he was held as a terrorism suspect for five months.

The government persuaded the judge that allowing the case to move forward would jeopardize national security -- a convenient defense that shields government actors from accountability for their monstrous misbehavior.

"If this decision stands, the government will have a blank check to shield even its most shameful conduct from accountability,'' said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner.

Update: While the "state's secrets" defense was rejected (at least for now) in this lawsuit accusing AT&T of helping the government conduct illegal eavesdropping, the defense prevailed in a different suit against AT&T that was dismissed today.