The Internet Does Change Everything

Now if only this guy had left a video.....
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http://www.onepaper.com/stthomasvi/?v=d&i=&s=News:Local&p=1223617745
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http://www.onepaper.com/stthomasvi/?v=d&i=&s=News:Local&p=1223617823
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OT, but why is the media so obsessed with whether or not Nancy Pelosi was told about waterboarding back in 2002?
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What difference does it make if the House Minority Leader was told what the Bush administration was doing? How does sharing information about committing an illegal act change anything about that illegal act? If I'm going to kill someone, but I tell a co-worker first, does that mean I get off scott free?
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If she knew, fine, line her up with the rest of them and prosecute them all. But for the main issue -- why in God's name does it matter?
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And for the media -- why is it Pelosi who's up there getting grilled by reporters about what she knew? Why not, say, the actual people who authorized and instituted the torture?

OT kevin, in this case Pelosi is both the shiny object distracting from the question of actual torture and a way to continue to trash her. If it had been Steny Hoyer in the exact same position, the noise wouldn't be nearly so loud.
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No one in the press mentions that when the Intelligence Committee is briefed, they are forbidden from taking notes, having any staff along, and from mentioning anything they are told to anyone. So she should have told and gone to jail? She is small potatoes in the real case.

Because [some in] the media think that our concerns about torture reduce to a partisan "desire for vengeance."
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If torture was bipartisan, they think, investigations are off the table.

What's worse about Pelosi diversion, is that idiots like Scarborough and Mika are saying that the Pelosi story means that health care reform cannot be discussed.
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MSM feels incapable of dealing with more than one issue at a time.
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I am amazed that democracy survives despite our lazy press corps.

MS, tried to click the boingboing link, but it crashed my browser. Probably too much traffic for them at the moment. Curious to see the FB and Twitter info. Had heard about the story on NPR.

MSM feels incapable of dealing with more than one issue at a time
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Well you have to admit, anytime someone starts a fresh thread here, we immediately go right back to talking torture.....

PD, Yikes! Agree that I wish the judge had left a video!

I read the Time Story - I love how it glosses over the 36 years of unrest and the history of political killings. Not surprisingly, there is no mention of the history of U.S.involvement in the country. Darn our "liberal media!"

The internet does change everything - Anyone who is interested in finding out about our illustrious history can google it.

@mccainfluffer, let's not forget the Reagan government's culpability and shameful actions regarding the refugees the unrest created (which coincidentally is my dissertation topic)

YouTube, Facebook and Twitter – glad there's nothing going on today at the White House to get in the way of MS's internet fixation.
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And see, here's the problem with this sort of video "evidence" – it's prediction, not observation. Just as with the recent Illinois evidence statute, it completely denies the accused any opportunity to test the truth of the assertion. President Colom may be a completely corrupt slimeball murderer, but if everyone with a personal grudge were to make such an accusatory video a lot of innocent people would be placed at risk. Of course, that alternative doesn't make for such an interesting (albeit unconfirmable) story.

Off topic but I wanted to pass along this link from the SCOTUS blog about Judge Sonia Sotomayor
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http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/judge-sotomayors-appellate-opinions-in-civil-cases/

Speaking of the Internet, Joe Klein's filthy pictures are already out. The Obama administration could have gotten in front of this but now they are complicit in the crimes of Bush/Cheney. BTW, Pelosi's excuse that she speaking out wouldn't have changed Bush policy is simply incredible, and reminiscent of what a lot of people said during the Holocaust.
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If a crime is being committed and you know about it and don't speak up, then you are a moral coward who has no business being in public life. We recoil in horror when someone is getting mugged in a crowded city and no one comes to aid them. How is this crime any different?
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Here is the link, it isn't for the squeamish:
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5325444/New-prisoner-abuse-photographs-emerge-despite-US-bid-to-block-publication.html
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One picture showed a prisoner hung up upside down while another showed a naked man smeared in excrement standing in a corridor with a guard standing menacingly in front of him. Another prisoner is handcuffed to the window frame of his cell with underpants pulled over his head.
Others yet to be released reportedly show military guards threatening to sexually assault a detainee with a broomstick and hooded prisoners on transport planes with Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps.
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Joe, your job is to report the facts, not self-censor. If we can't get full and accurate information from you there is a world of journalists worldwide who are happy to do that job for you.

FO, only public event on the White House schedule today was Obama meeting the championship Phillies. They presented him with a #44 team jersey. (I learned that from Mark Knoller's tweets about the event he covered.)

choska Says:
Friday, May 15, 2009 at 12:38 pm
"Speaking of the Internet, Joe Klein's filthy pictures are already out..."
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Hijacking a thread, isn't that what I have heard on here before as the epitomy of a "Troll".
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And they dare call me one. How hypocritcal. How democrat. How liberal extremists who do not have "human rights" as their concern, but who they can lynch in the next political primaries.
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If it wasn't for the ACLU, MoveOn.Orgies and Daily Kos's of the world, where would you people get all of your jollies? The local porn store?

Ivy – Once upon a time there was a profession called "reporter," whose practitioners actually made independent effort to find and disseminate actual news from primary sources, rather than just serve as a conduit. "Public events" require only a camera operator.

The topic of the thread was how the Internet's ability to spread information was having a profound impact on politics.
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My post was an illustration of how the Internet was spreading information from Australia to Britain to the US in less than a day, despite the effort of the Obama administration and the mainstream media/drive by media in the US to suppress that information. Maybe you call that "hijacking" a thread, but it seems like I was nothing but on topic.
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As for lynching people in primaries, I only want my political leaders to tell me the truth. And if you read my post you'll see that I very explicitly condemned Obama and Pelosi for refusing to be square with us. If wanting people to be honest and intellectually consistent makes me a "liberal extremist," then I guess I'll plead guilty as charged.
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I understand that people don't want these pictures out. We had a long discussion about this yesterday. But the problem was that they were ALWAYS going to come out. We live in the age of the Internet. If it is digital, it is on the web. It took 24 hours for this stuff to emerge.
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I don't like that we tortured people. The "liberal extremists" were the ones shouting from the rooftops that if we did it would have profoundly negative consequences for our troops, some of whom include my family members. But the Cheney administration went ahead with the torture, and now the crap is hitting the fan.
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Now, we can either close our eyes and pretend we didn't torture people, even though the rest of the world has photographic proof that we did, or we can act like grown ups and deal with the fact that we committed crimes. We're either a nation of grown ups who can own up to our mistakes and lawbreaking, or we aren't.
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I'm not getting any jollies from this, but let's be clear why we have to get this in the open. The Cheney administration tortured people. Lots of people in the administration warned that (a) torturing people would eventually have a huge blowback against our troops in the field, (b) the truth would come out eventually, (c) it is against the law, and (d) it doesn't work.
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The Cheney people deliberately chose to torture people, and that decision has placed our troops in harms way, damaged the reputation of the US, broke the law, and didn't do any good anyway. So, yes, I want them and everyone else in government including the Democrats, held accountable in either a court of law or the court of public opinion.

FO, I understand. Simply pointing out that apart from that event there is nothing going on at "the White House" today. Don't disagree with you that there is an opportunity for that old fashioned reporting -- for example, after that, tweets from Knoller discussed the military commissions statement.

Ivy – I take your point, but I'm guessing the executive offices are still staffed and doing business. The absence of public events at the WH is not synonymous with an absence of news available to a diligent and competent journalist. Unfortunately, much of the WH press corps seems to believe otherwise, or is unwilling to make that effort. To many, the job is nothing more than a game of "gotcha" predicated on editorialized reformulation or outright regurgitation of what they've been handed by axe-grinders.
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Case in point: at today's press briefing Ed Henry went on and on about why the administration was now advocating "the same Bush tribunals" even as he was repeatedly told about numerous major changes (no coerced testimony, radical restrictions on hearsay, etc.) Obama will require. Henry was asking in essence "Aren't they the same even though they're different?" He came off every bit as clueless as when Obama demolished him at the earlier presser, but I'm sure he'll be operating at the same dismal level next week.
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Sorry for the rant, but I miss the days when most journalists (as opposed to "journos") worried about something besides on-air time and haircuts.