Darrell Issa wants an investigation every week, against Obama and the Democrats.  Isn’t turnabout fair play, especially since the law requires it.  By Constitution, treaties ratified by the Senate become US law.  Several require that all instances of torture be investigated, and every day we fail to do so is an insult to the world community.

The new U.N. torture expert urged the United States on Tuesday to conduct a full investigation into torture under the Bush administration and prosecute offenders as well as senior officials who ordered it.

Juan Ernesto Mendez told Reuters he also hoped to visit Iraq to probe a "very widespread practice of torture" of detainees with the help of coalition forces, revealed in confidential U.S. files issued by Wikileaks.

He will also try to visit the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo — on condition that he is granted private interviews with prisoners still being held by the Obama administration, he said in his first interview with an international media organisation since taking up the independent post two weeks ago.

"The United States has a duty to investigate every act of torture. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen much in the way of accountability," said Mendez, himself a former torture victim, in the wide-ranging interview at the United Nations in Geneva.

"There has to be a more serious inquiry into what happened and by whose orders… It doesn’t need to be seen to be partisan or vindictive, just an obligation to follow where the evidence leads," added Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture.

A previous investigation by a U.S. special prosecutor into torture allegations was limited in scope, and congressional inquiries focused on the Pentagon but not the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to Mendez.

"There is a lot more to the story than has been revealed. It is important to get to the bottom of what happened and under whose orders, and if necessary to bring charges," he added.

Mendez dismissed as "very disingenuous" comments by former President George W. Bush, who in his memoir "Decision Points" strongly defends the use of waterboarding as crucial to his efforts to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Bush’s approval of waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning condemned by human rights activists as torture, to try to wrench information from captured al Qaeda operatives, was among the most controversial decisions he made during eight years in the White House.

Amnesty International said last week that the United States must prosecute Bush for torture if his admission in the memoir that he authorised waterboarding holds true… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Common Dreams>

How can we expect to have any credibility, as long as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo and many more are made accountable for their crimes?

What’s happened to the news?  Most of the time, it comes in two flavors: infotainment and infoganda.  In my opinion, there are only three TV journalists who actually analyze the news without inventing their own facts in the process: Maddow, Olbermann, and Schultz, all on MSNBC.  Next we have the typical mainstream TV news that presents bland facts and opinions without analysis, leaving the reader to judge the truth of the various opinions.  Worst of all we have the Foxtopian branch of the Republican party, making up their facts as they go along and presenting only straw-man opinions representing the left, scripted to lose the arguments.  Here’s an example of such propaganda.

There are few members of the teaching profession who more symbolize the sacrifices that exemplary instructors make for their students than New Jersey teacher Alissa Ploshnick. In 1997, Ploshnick, upon seeing a runaway van about to strike a group of students, threw herself in front of the vehicle to save the students, landing herself in the hospital “with broken ribs, a fractured wrist, a badly bruised pelvis and glass cuts in her eyes.” Following the accident, President Bill Clinton sent her a letter thanking her for her act of courage, writing, “You are an example for all of us, and I applaud you for your sense of duty.”

Yet as the Shirley Sherrod scandal showed earlier this year, even exemplary public servants can fall prey to the antics of smear artists. Late last month, right-wing video activist James O’Keefe released a set of YouTube videos titled “Teachers Unions Gone Wild.” The videos feature various New Jersey teachers opining about Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), using crude language, and criticizing the state’s teachers unions.

In one segment, Ploshnick is recorded explaining an incident she witnessed as a teacher. She explained that she saw another teacher refer to a student as the n-word, and that the teacher was demoted, but was allowed to continue to teach. O’Keefe’s video crew then showed up at Ploshnick’s personal residence and tried to get her to repeat her story on video tape. She refused, understanding the repercussions that would come to a teacher who used that language on video. Watch it:

Following the release of the video, Ploshnick was suspended for seven days and denied a pay raise for being recorded using the n-word. Passaic Superintendent Robert Holster defended the decision to suspend her, explaining that they were “getting hammered” by local reaction to the video. “Politically correct is the theme of the day,’’ he went on to say, well aware that the teacher did not use the language to describe anyone else but rather to explain what another teacher had said.

Yet the truth is that Ploshnick never intended to use crude language in a public setting where she was being recorded. O’Keefe’s staff obtained the audio not by requesting an interview with her but by secretly recording a private conversation. The O’Keefe operative “hit on” Ploshnick at a local bar, buying her drinks and engaging in casual conversation. At one point, the conversation turned to Ploshnick’s job, which is when she relayed the anecdote about a fellow teacher using the n-word. At no point did she know the conversation was being recorded, so she did not see the need to truncate the use of the n-word in her anecdote. Yet the secret recording without Ploshnick’s consent is not presented as such — it appears that the teacher is using the crude language in a public way, well aware that it will be broadcast to thousands of people and will likely reach the ears of her students and their parents… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

That’s pure propaganda, and that’s what we can expect from Republican news.

The standard MSM is little better.  ABC, for example, even planned to use Andrew Breitbart as a commentator for their election night coverage.  The standard MSM frequently claim equivalence, that Fox is on the right, MSMBC is on the left, and that they are the “objective” ones in the middle.  Equivalence is hogwash.

In last night’s Special Comment, Keith Olbermann does a masterful job of analyzing the history of heroic broadcast newscasters and Republican attempts to muzzle them. Then he goes on to debunk equivalence.

The failure of the MSM to do their job is a prime cause of the sorry state our nation faces today.

There can be no doubt that President Barack Obama lacked sufficient influence to convince American voters earlier this month.  Common wisdom from media talking heads holds that voters rejected Democrats, because we are too liberal, and that Obama must move to the right.  A new poll demonstrates that common wisdom is, as is commonly the case, wrong.

Check these numbers out from CNN’s latest national survey (1,014 adults, Nov. 11-14, MoE +/- 3%):

(1) Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?

(2) (IF DISAPPROVE) Do you disapprove because you think his policies and actions since he became  president have been too liberal, or because you think his policies and actions have not been liberal enough?

Approve: 48%

Disapprove, too liberal: 38%

Disapprove, not liberal enough: 9%

Disapprove, unsure: 3%

The top-line numbers show that Obama’s approval rating is at 48% approve, 50% disapprove. But beyond the top-lines lurks an important part of the story.

Yes, most people who disapprove of President Obama’s performance think he’s too liberal. But a substantial share of his criticism is coming from the left: one-fifth of those who disapprove of President Obama don’t think he’s liberal enough… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

I examined the poll itself, and the only bias I could discover is that this data would not include cell phone users.

So if we add those who approve and those who disapprove because Obama is not liberal enough we have 57% who say stay the same or move to the left, opposed to only 38% who say move to the right.

Therefore the direction Obama and the Democrats must take is clear.