Top Bush adviser defends using nuclear weapons on civilians

(RawStory) – The senior Justice Department legal adviser to President Bush who made the legal case for the Bush Administration’s use of torture tactics on terror suspects defended comments that the president could unilaterally “massacre” civilians in wartime in a newly released interview.

Conspiracy to engage in aggressive and illegal war – Yoo, Bybee, and Disinformation

(DavidSwanson) – Everything you’re reading about torture lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee getting off the hook is wrong. They are not torture lawyers, they are not off the hook, there never was any hook, they may not be lawyers for long, impeachment and indictment are on the agenda, and you have a role to play.

Yoo Called Civilian Slaughter OK

(ConsortiumNews) – Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo argued that President George W. Bush’s commander-in-chief powers were so sweeping that he could willfully order the massacre of civilians, yet Yoo’s culpability in Bush administration abuses was deemed “poor judgment,” not a violation of “professional standards.”

CIA Has Program to Assassinate U.S. Citizens

(TheNewAmerican) – The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has maintained an assassination list of U.S. citizens for the last eight year and has actually assassinated Americans, according to January 27 Washington Post story.

MSM: John Yoo – Obama Is A Continuation Of Bush On Executive Powers

(HuffingtonPost) – In his new book, former Bush administration attorney and infamous torture memo collaborator John Yoo favorably argues that President Barack Obama is wielding executive powers in the same manner as his White House predecessor.

Obama bags Peace Prize while his lawyers are ‘gutting’ Nuremberg

(RawStory) – The Obama administration has asked the Department of Justice to dismiss a lawsuit brought by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla against torture memo author John Yoo, asserting that Yoo cannot be sued for legal opinions he offered in the course of advising then-President Bush on national security matters.

Bush torture ‘architect’ sits on court that will rule on another torture ‘architect’

John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer who gained notoriety for penning a number of the so-called “torture memos” justifying the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects, has filed an appeal of a lawsuit against him with a court on whose bench sits another torture “architect” from the Bush administration.

“Emergency Control” of the Internet

You have to hand it to congressional Democrats. Mendacious grifters whose national security agenda is virtually indistinguishable from Bushist Republicans, when it comes to rearranging proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic, the party of “change” is second to none in the “all terrorism all the time” department.

50 Top U.S. War Criminals

Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals.

Cheney pressed Bush to test Constitutional limits by using military force on US soil

According to a story in Friday’s New York Times, Vice-President Cheney advocated in 2002 for the Bush administration to send military troops to Buffalo to arrest the so-called Lackawanna Six as enemy combatants.

New reports of massive spying, criminality by US government

Reports in the American press on Friday and Saturday reveal massive illegality in the US government and intelligence apparatus. They demonstrate not only routine violations of democratic rights through illegal spying and wiretapping both at home and abroad, but also disregard for legally required reports to Congress.

The CIA’s Rogue Operation

Everyone is playing the guessing game regarding the secret program which the CIA hid from Congress.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein is guessing that it is Cheney’s executive assassination squad. Yesterday, I guessed it might have been continuity of government plans.

Making Illegal Spying Legal – Holder Refuses to Call Warrantless Spying Illegal

In probably the most disturbing testimony to hit Capitol Hill since Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in May and refused to rule out lawless detention or to agree that government officials can sometimes be prosecuted for their crimes, on Wednesday Holder appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and, among much else, refused five times to agree that warrantless spying is illegal and unconstitutional.

America’s Nightmare: The Obama Dystopia – Manipulation, propaganda, imagery & PR wizardry

After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the “Great Black Hope” in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.

Torture of Detainees under CIA Custody: Damning Exposé of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

On March 12, Mark Danner, in a New York Times op-ed and The New York Review of Books, wrote about the ICRC’s revelations of “US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites.” He said George Bush (in 2007) “informed the world that the United States had created a dark and secret universe to hold and interrogate captured ‘terrorists,’ ” – at locations outside America, Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Blueprints for a Police State

Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide “legal” rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.

Terror Memos Reveal Total Destruction Of U.S. Constitutional Freedoms

By releasing internal Justice Department memos showing how the Bush fronted Neocons systematically destroyed civil liberties in America after 9/11, the Obama administration has sought to distance itself from such practices. However, closer inspection of the actions of the new regime, reveal no deviation from such policies in the war on terror.