A transcript should be up here at some point tomorrow.

But here’s what the lawyers think:

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From the Desk of Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director, ACLU
Just as we’re in court challenging the government’s use of the “state secrets” doctrine, we must also confront the doctrine on Capitol Hill.
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=46PjOWEpAqQ-RD0Wck4BXw
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Dear ACLU Supporter,

Yesterday, ACLU lawyers encountered a recurring — and troubling –obstacle in our lawsuit seeking justice for torture victims caught up in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. But this time, the objections were not coming from the Bush administration.

To our surprise and disappointment, the new Justice Department urged a federal appeals court to dismiss our lawsuit charging a Boeing subsidiary with providing critical support for the CIA’s rendition program based on the same “state secrets” claim that the Bush administration had repeatedly invoked to avoid any judicial scrutiny of its actions. During the course of the argument, one judge asked twice if the change in administration had any bearing on the Justice Department’s position. The attorney for the government said that its position remained the same.

This isn’t the kind of change we need if we want an America we can be proud of again.

If the judges rule in the government’s favor, our clients — who were tortured as part of the government’s rendition program –will never get their day in court.

We’re still hoping the court will rule in our favor and allow our case to move forward. But, in the meantime, we must do everything we can to end the abuse of the “state secrets” doctrine both in the courts and on Capitol Hill.

Senators Kennedy, Leahy, Specter and Representative Nadler introduced legislation in 2008 to narrow the scope of the state secrets privilege — and open the courthouse doors to people who have suffered real and legitimate harm by the government. Clearly, this legislation is needed now more than ever.

Send a message to these members of Congress to let them know you support the State Secrets Protection Act. http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=4ZCCyt9qoeR3O5xPyJOmeA

This crucial civil liberties bill recognizes the need to take precautions when it comes to national security. But, it also acknowledges that courts have been competently managing the balance between the security of classified information and the right to a fair trial in criminal cases for years. And, most important of all, it makes it much more difficult for the government to abuse the state secrets doctrine to escape accountability for illegal behavior.

We can’t allow any administration to invoke state secrets to hide a reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations.

Send a message to support the State Secrets Protection Act. http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=RM5mjfeVNW98tsG2xLz5aA

Yesterday, the Obama administration had an opportunity to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition. But, instead, the Justice Department opted to stay the course.

Now, we must hope that the court will assert its independence, reject the government’s false claims of state secrets, and allow victims of torture and rendition their day in court.

Thanks for standing with us as we work to pursue justice on this critical civil liberties issue.

Sincerely,

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
ACLU

P.S. The ACLU has been working on this case for years. To learn more about rendition and the people impacted, watch our short video. http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=y7U5EBGwWSZLgZNf9A9rCA

© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004

And here’s another ACLU spokesperson on the Rachel Maddow Show tonight. (It’s preceded by Rachel and Kent Jones doing a little silly bit of “comedy” on the issue, which in my opinion was inappropriate for the seriousness of the problem, and not funny. But it’s the only video I could find posted this soon after the show.)

Debra Sweet from World Can’t Wait is also sounding the alarm:

Why Should the U.S. Government’s Right to Secrecy Trump the Right of People Not to be Tortured?

Binyam Mohamed is no longer a non-person, even though he’s still in Guantanamo.  After being flown around the world by the CIA, and tortured in both Pakistan and Morocco, he’s fighting the torture.  Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have direct testimony of torture from the five who were transported in CIA sponsored flights by Jeppesen Datalan, a subsidiary of Boeing, and testimony to show that employees of Jeppesen knew they were planning flights in what has become known infamously as the “Torture Taxi.”

Yesterday, the ACLU represented Mohamed and 4 other men who were tortured and “rendered” by the CIA in the US Court of Appeals, 9th District in San Francisco.  The Bush administration had gotten a judge to throw out the men’s lawsuit against “extraordinary rendition.”  The ACLU and others hoped that the Obama administration would not stand on “national security” and let the suit go forward.

But no.  The New York Times reports today, “the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the Bush administration.”  The ACLU provided testimony from Mohamed that, “he was routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.”

The World Can’t Wait continues to demand an end to torture carried on directly by the United States or its allies; the overturning of the Military Commissions Act and “enhanced” interrogation whether carried out by U.S. military, CIA, private contractors, or allied governments’ the closure of Guantanamo, Bagram and other indefinite detention facilities controlled by the United States. It believes that the rights of the people to be free of government spying supersede the secrecy rights of the government.  FULL statement here

And to repeat the action part from ACLU:

Send a message to support the State Secrets Protection Act. http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=4ZCCyt9qoeR3O5xPyJOmeA

Finally Rachel broke it down for Leslie — who has spent too many years in Washington to know up from down — and I can imagine she spoke especially slowly and clearly so that the long-time Villager (© Atrios) could understand:

LESLEY: But everybody thinks MSNBC is moving in that direction. That that’s exactly what the shift is — where you are — that people there are trying to make you into the un-Fox network, the liberal place to go.

RACHEL: Well, if you think about the way that Fox was founded, though – Fox was founded by Roger Ailes. It was created from his perspective as a political operative. His background was as a Republican activist of the highest order. There’s no equivalent on MSNBC. I think MSNBC is trying to find hit shows.

LESLEY: Everybody they hire to anchor their shows is distinctly liberal and encouraged to express themselves that way, wouldn’t you say?

RACHEL: At MSNBC?

LESLEY: Yes.

RACHEL: Well, I wouldn’t call David Shuster a liberal. I would barely call Chris Matthews a liberal. He voted for Bush. And I certainly wouldn’t call Joe Scarborough a liberal.

LESLEY: Chris Matthews is a liberal.

RACHEL: Well, Chris Matthews is a Democrat.

LESLEY: He’s a liberal.

RACHEL: Chris Matthews – well, you could interview him about it and find out. If Chris Matthews had an Air America radio show, he’d get torn apart by our listeners.

LESLEY: So he doesn’t go that far. I see. OK.

RACHEL: No. I wouldn’t put Chris and my politics in the same canoe.

While Matthews once in a blue moon talks sense about some policy and is at times on the right side of an issue (while still unable to discuss it sanely), he’s erratic, emotionally immature, in love with power of any kind, and thinks politics is just a game rather than about real people who can suffer as the result of bad policy, not to mention bad punditry.

Here is a prime example of how his very obvious sexual hangups destroy whatever shred of reason he wanders across in his cavernous brain, and why he most definitely is NOT a “liberal” and why real liberals and progressives loathe and distrust him more than almost any other TV news personality. (He has a special page on Media Matters dedicated to his wankery and has been named by the watchdog group as Misinformer of the Year in 2005. He also has prompted the creation of several blogs by netroots activists for the sole purpose of exposing and decrying his special brand of nonsense.)

Frankly, I was hoping that Chris Matthews was going to run for the Senate to replace Arlen Spector, something he was seriously exploring last year. That possibility got dashed when his MSNBC contract was renewed recently. Pity — I really think he would do less damage to the country there.

Finally, it is about over. Just two days, and we can watch watch his chickenhawk ass get out of our White House and our Capital City. Bush and his accomplices will continue to try to whitewash his “legacy” but they will fail. The best George W. Bush can hope from history is eternal ignominy. With an iota of justice applied, he will be tried and condemned to a life sentence for war crimes. But even that would not be all he deserves.

This is destined to be a classic: Mika Brzezenski defending Sarah Palin, Lawrence O’Donnell telling Pat Buchanan, who can’t stop fawning over Sarah Palin and lying about her impact on the ticket, that “yours is the party that celebrates ignorance” then asking if he believes in evolution. Then Pat’s head explodes. Monkeys! And Mika babbles in disbelief (okay, that last part happens all the time).

TV worth watching, I’m telling you!

She actually thought the president of France would call her to shoot the breeze and plan a hunting trip.

If she and her staff can’t vet a damn phone call, or know when they’re being played for a fool (which wasn’t hard to catch) how do you think they are going to keep this country safe from, like, actual bad guys who don’t throw out a hint every other second?

C’est la vie, indeed. Here’s political historian Lawrence O’Donnell on Rachel Maddow Show last night explaining how VP candidates have no future in national politics. Yay! I feel much better. Pertinent part starts about 3:30 in.

O’Donnell was just on MSNBC talking about this phone call and he said that Palin’s staff is the worst in modern political history. According to him, if Palin or anyone around her had “gotten out of town more” they would know what a fake French accent that was. Touché!

One of the snotty a-holes on the Morning Joe show went into Manhattan in McCain gear and got the business from the residents, thus proving, of course, that liberals are intolerant elitists who just don’t appreciate real Americans.

Have you ever seen that show? I don’t think any of them would have to be wearing or promoting anything in particular to get rejected by decent people anywhere.

I just sent them an email:

I DARE Willie (and the rest of you) to come to rural Oklahoma where I live and wear an Obama t-shirt. C’mon, Willie, Joe, Mika, hop on a plane this weekend and really prove your point. After all, it’s only Eastern liberals who are “closed-minded” and “hostile”. Right?

Get the shovel!
When MSNBC host/commentator Joe Scarborough was discussing positive developments in the John McCain campaign, fellow commentator Keith Olbermann was heard to say, “Jesus, Joe, why don’t you get a shovel?” When Olbermann opens his mouth, more than a shovel is needed — a backhoe, perhaps, or a front-end loader. Executives at NBC News/MSNBC finally came to their senses and yanked Olbermann and Chris Matthews as co-anchors of political coverage. The commentators were posing as newsmen on election nights and during the national political conventions. Fox News Network, which Olbermann frequently blasts, never used Bill O’Reilly in that capacity. In our view, Olbermann, Matthews and O’Reilly are all Cat 3 blowhards. They have their own shows and they shouldn’t be anchoring the news alongside Tom Brokaw or Brit Hume. With Olbermann on stage, NBC had become the “Nasty Broadcasting Network.” What took the execs so long to figure out it wasn’t appropriate for him to be an anchor?

Now, notice they didn’t mention exactly what it was that Joe was saying when Keith called him on it (inadvertently on mic or not). So let me help them, and you, out with this little video.

As usual, Joe Scarborough was reeling off the GOP talking points, which I guess is why the Oklahoman’s editorial board felt so at home with his commentary.

May I also point out again, that Joe Scarborough admitted to being a Republican tool with rare candor just the other day, which I diaried here.

MATTHEWS: [...] Two days from now — I want to ask you, what will we talk about two days from now?
SCARBOROUGH: Whatever the McCain campaign wants us to talk about, because the McCain campaign is assertive. [...]

I’m sure we won’t be reading about that MSNBC dustup in the Oklahoman, ever.

And as for calling MSNBC the “Nasty Broadcasting Network” because of Keith. (Catchy phrase, no?) Though they were careful to lump Fox’s O’Reilly in their list of “Cat 3 blowhards,” they never called Fox “nasty” or anything approximate, despite years of dispicable behavior. No, the name calling is reserved for all things liberal — that’s the one constant from all Republicans ever since Nixon got pardoned and (Fox News owner) Rupert Murdoch dumped journalism in the toilet.