I got to this set of articles from 2000 today, i thought this one was good

Who gets to tell a black story?

the cult of selfish fuckers

Warren County to Obama: Keep your ‘filthy money’

LEBANON — Warren County is saying “no thank you” to federal stimulus funds.

The county is the only one in the state that has rejected stimulus money for transportation improvements, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation.

Commissioners rejected $373,000 in stimulus money to buy three new transit buses and upgrade their fleet, citing their opposition of deficit spending for buses and vans.

“I’ll let Warren County go broke before taking any of Obama’s filthy money,” Commissioner Mike Kilburn said.

ODOT spokesman Scott Varner said the money was specifically for transit improvements in rural areas to improve transportation for disabled people, seniors and others needing access to health care and educational opportunities.

"I'm tired of paying for people who don't have," Kilburn said. "As Reagan said, 'Government is not the answer, it's the problem.'"MORE

I am not ignoring the torture news thats coming down. Its been overwhelming

and normally I would take some time to process it, get angry as hell, and then calm down and link it. The problem is that, well, every fucking day I turn around, the news gets worse and worse. And I don't want to miss anything. So I am linking to some of emptywheeel's astonishing yoeman's work on this fucking bullshit (and some from attackerman):


How The Torture Started

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month

Abu Zubaydah: Waterboarded 83 Times for 10 Pieces of Intelligence


The SASC Smoking Gun on Waterboarding


They tortured to get to their war of choice:Iraq

While We Were There A Large Part of the Time We Were Focused On Trying To Establish A Link Between Al Qaeda And Iraq And We Were Not Being Successful In Establishing A Link Between Al Qaeda And Iraq”

Debunking the Torture Apologists’ “Half the Intelligence” Claim


Breaking: Torture Architect John Rizzo Still Working at CIA

CIA Directors protecting themselves

The Torture Memos and the FBI-CIA Dispute



see also:
Nathaniel Raymond, Director of Physicians for Human Rights: The Role of Health Professionals in Bush-Era Torture


Rachel Maddow - former Rice confidant Philip Zelikow on the torture memos, part 1

Rachel Maddow - former Rice confidant Philip Zelikow on the torture memos, part 2

GUILTY.

GUILTY! We have a verdict in the Angie Zapata Hate Crime Murder Trial: GUILTY!

Update: Allen Ray Andrade is guilty 1st Degree Murder, and guilty of the bias motivated crime count. Guilty on vehicle theft and identity theft. At 4:0015 PM MDT, he will be was sentenced to life without parole.

What shemale said

in related news:

Washington's governor signs transgender hate crimes bill


and as usual, the GOP spews their usual hate: NH GOP chair Sununu: marriage equality and trans anti-discrimination bills 'garbage'

Digby sez:

Safe

...Regardless of whether we actually torture or not, they [torture apologists] think it is vitally important that the world believes the United States has no limits. And that is as big of a problem as the torture itself.

Aside from the moral dimension, which should be the most relevant, the premise that the world must believe the United States will stop at nothing is very, very dangerous. It confirms the world's darkest suspicions about us and validates many of the arguments made by our enemies. I honestly can't conceive of anything that makes the US less safe than that.

Torture is immoral. Any country that practices it (or even pretends to practice it) much less contrives an entire bureaucratic legal underpinning for it, is then, by definition, immoral. That's the kind of "exceptionalism" that turns countries into feared pariah states, veritably begging for mistrust among allies and the creation of new enemies. Unless we are prepared to do a lot more torturing, invading and occupying -- basically becoming a malevolent superpower holding on primarily by brutal force --- we have to repudiate this concept. The more powerful a country is, the more it needs to be seen as operating from a moral, ethical and responsible standpoint --- and the less chance it will be seen by others as a threat. Making the world recoil in disgust at their brutality is about the stupidest thing the leaders of an empire could do unless they plan to spend all their time fighting wars and fending off enemies.MORE

Jane Meyer adds:

By June 2002—again, months before the Department of Justice gave the legal green light for interrogations—an F.B.I. special agent on the scene of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah refused to participate in what he called “borderline torture,” according to a D.O.J. investigation cited in the Levin report. Soon after, F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller commanded his personnel to stay away from the C.I.A.’s coercive interrogations.
What did the F.B.I. see in the spring of 2002? And exactly who was involved? How high up was this activity authorized? Is it off-limits for criminal investigation?MORE

Digby sums up

Setting aside that larger question (for now) it seems to me that when it comes to interrogation, this is very simply addressed. The CIA simply has no business conducting them. Until the GWOT, it was always an FBI function. They have vast experience. They are used to operating within the legal framework and get very good results. The CIA should stick to what they do well which is cultivating sources and infiltrating foreign governments to gather information and then analyzing it. Their attempts at illegal and violent work to affect events is almost always counterproductive and usually ineffective.

This torture mess was the result of a bureaucratic turf war. We do not know if Cheney was the chicken or the egg, but we do know that he and his bloodthirsty henchmen were determined to "take the gloves off" and evidently felt that the FBI was too soft to get the job done.
MORE