In 2009, Mr. Lady and 21 CIA operatives were tried and convicted in absentia by an Italian court for the February 2003 abduction of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in broad daylight on a Milan street, as he was walking to a nearby mosque for prayers.

An appeals court upheld those convictions in September 2012, and then sentenced Lady earlier this year to nine years imprisonment for his part in the extraordinary rendition of Nasr out of Italy, first to Germany and then to Egypt, where the cleric alleged he was tortured before eventually being released.

Lady was first indicted by Italy in 2007. While he had initially claimed diplomatic immunity at the time of the 2003 abduction of Mr. Nasr, which initially prevented his arrest, Italian prosecutors have steadfastly maintained that he forfeited his immunity upon his 2005 retirement from the CIA.

lentinel: "It's not the America I once thought I knew either."

... was a counterinsurgency specialist directly involved first in the September 1961 overthrow of Prime minister Patrice Lumumba in the former Belgian Congo, and later in the November 1963 overthrow of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem -- both of whom were subsequently and conveniently killed, by the way -- I'd offer that you know damned well that the America you claim you once thought you knew never really existed in the first place.

So, given your history of never wasting an opportunity to bash this country, please make your otherwise perfectly valid point without leaving us awash in your disingenuous sentiment for the place, because it rings both cheesy and false -- not unlike smothering a good steak with melted Velveeta.

When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.

Like millions of other Americans, our members are front-line workers in the American economy. We have been strong supporters of the notion that all Americans should have access to quality, affordable health care. We have also been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision.

Now this vision has come back to haunt us.

By the time Liz Cheney challenges Hillary Clinton's reelection campaign, there will be signs at the rallies declaring "Don't let the government get its hands on Obamacare!

Yes, the "carpetbagger" cries have started.

The funny thing is, living in Jackson Hole, she is in the most Democratic part of the state, and she really has no contacts or base there.

LINK

Unrelated. Rolling Stone:

In the eight years since the passage of Stand Your Ground, self-defense killings have more than tripled in Florida, and prosecutors sometimes have little choice but to accept the shooter's story: The only other witness is in the morgue. And like most of the gun amendments incubated in Florida, this one quickly went viral. It's now the law of the land in more than 20 states. Has it reduced violent crime, the stated goal of the law? Certainly not, according to study after study; homicides are up in SYG states, though they're down almost everywhere else. More than 500 people are dead from such shootings. And the prime victims of these crimes, according to one 2012 Georgia State University study? White males, or precisely the sort of men whom SYG was built to protect. But that's what guns do: They backfire and kill.