Now, top Bush official who approved waterboarding says it isn't legal

The Bush legacy as a 21st century torturer is already cemented, but we've got a flip flop on waterboarding:

A senior Justice Department official says laws and other limits enacted since three terrorism suspects were waterboarded have eliminated the technique from what is now legally allowed.

"The set of interrogation methods authorized for current use is narrower than before, and it does not today include waterboarding," Steven G. Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, says in remarks prepared for his appearance Thursday before the House Judiciary Constitution subcommittee.

"There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law," he said.

More after the jump...

It is the first time the department has expressed such an opinion publicly. CIA Director Michael Hayden stopped short of making a similar statement in testimony about waterboarding before Congress last week.

Bradbury in 2005 signed two secret legal memos that authorized the CIA to use head slaps, freezing temperatures and waterboarding when questioning terror detainees. Because of that, Senate Democrats have opposed his nomination by President Bush to formally head the legal counsel's office.

So three years ago, this guy allowed torture, now he says it isn't legal. What changed? The law they claim but in reality it's because they got busted, that's what changed. Vintage Bush administration double speak. And, as we all know well, just because anyone in the Bush administration says something, it doesn't mean it's true.

How many times did Bush tell us the U.S. doesn't torture? He lied.

Why I Support Ron Paul

By Heath Calvert

I'd been walking around sharing the phrase "fire it up" for about three weeks, borrowing glittery talking points about the exciting race between the first possible female and the first possible African-American president, but I still felt like I didn't understand what changes these candidates were positing other than a replacement nameplate on the oval office desk. If you'd told me at the start of this presidential primary that I'd take off work and roadtrip to New Hampshire and South Carolina for the campaign of a pro-life republican from Texas, I'd have probably jump kicked you in the chest. In his defense, he's from Pittsburgh.

Who is this man, and how did I find him since you can't find him anywhere in television or print? I was sweeping my bedroom passively watching the Republican debates, when, somewhere between Romney's "I'd double the size of Guantanamo" and Guiliani's 37th invocation of 9-11, a soft spoken man you'd only know from C-SPAN2 started talking about the Constitution. He continued stating that we had armed Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, that we've been bombing Iraq since the end of the 1st Persian Gulf War, to remember that the CIA had overthrown Iran in the fifties, and that if we had followed the aforementioned Constitution perhaps we wouldn't have gotten ourselves into so much "mischief." I blurted out something that sounded like "wrudafuk." What presidential candidate uses CIA and the word "mischief" in the same sentence? Then he offers to give Rudy Guiliani a reading list, and "blowback" becomes a familiar word to a lot more people than those who read Chalmers Johnson or the latest National Intelligence Estimates. I become a fan of Dr. Ron Paul.

I began internet researching in my obsessive fashion and eventually discovered some Ron Paul videos on YouTube from rallies around the country. He talked about things like eliminating the IRS, our history of meddling in foreign governments, dissolving the Federal Reserve, ending the war on drugs, and pardoning all non-violent drug offenders. I had no idea what he was talking about, and neither does America.

Ron Paul is a paradox. He is a ten-term Texas congressman who voted against the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the Real ID Act, internet regulation, those acts last year that stripped Habeas Corpus and Posse Commitatis, plus this week's Democrat sponsored Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (a precursor to internet filtering and University monitoring by the Department of Homeland Security). Democrats shutdown when they see the letter "R" next to the word Texas, and Republicans can't say "he's not a republican" enough. He will quickly remind you that Republicans used to be the antiwar party, and in fact George Bush had been elected on a promise to stop policing the world. Republicans used to be the party of small government, fiscal responsibility, and sound money. Now sound money isn't a sexy topic, but those listening to Ron Paul are starting to wake up to the gravity of what threats can be brought by a steeply declining currency, ballooning debt, excessive militarism combined with over extension, and a government that seems more interested in collecting data on it's own citizenry and protecting corporate marketshare than preventing future attacks.

We can fundamentally change our idea of what our government should be, and return to constitutional principles. Ron Paul's position is that the government shouldn't coddle us from cradle to grave. Central bankers like the Federal Reserve, which isn't part of the federal government, shouldn't have the power to manipulate the worth of our currency and thus our way of life. His position is that we shouldn't police the world or unconstitutionally interfere through bureaucracies like the CIA. Only Congress has the power to declare war. Plus, we can't afford it anyway. We don't need the IRS harassing American citizens and taking our hard earned money and sending it out for destinations unknown. In fact, let's eliminate it. We'll pay for it by bringing home our soldiers from around the world, saving over a trillion dollars. While you're giving us our taxed dollars back, we'd also like you to return those civil liberties you've been whittling away at so you can give lucrative contracts to the homeland security/military industrial sector company you're going to quit the government to start, run, or lobby for.

Much is said about the national constituency of Ron Paul, more often than not describing them as "young 9-11 truthers," or "hillbilly Libertarian whackos," but the campaign that Ron Paul has built is a revolution, and it is growing. Ron Paul, despite being ignored by mainstream press, trounced republican opponents with over 18 million in grassroots fundraising last quarter alone. Rudy Guiliani could drop out after coming in third in Florida. Mike Huckabee doesn't have the funds to finish. John McCain, despite a voting record similar to Clinton, will most likely lead the delegate count with Romney trailing close behind. What will be the interesting story is Ron Paul staying in the race (he leads in fundraising, he also leads in contributions from active military personnel), bringing a significant enough number of delegates to the convention to possibly decide who becomes nominee. After canvassing in New Hampshire and South Carolina, I'll tell you that most people are undecided and will vote for whomever the tv tells them to. Ask Ron Paul supporters and they'll tell you that Ron Paul's success may not be seen by him gaining the most votes in this election, but his ability to positively influence the Republican party's platform now and in the future.

Doctor Paul is indeed curing apathy. In fact, listening to him speak, at times, can be like receiving a medical diagnosis. I had never been active in the political process. Nor had most the people I'd met for that matter. They were all just curious to hear this man with so many seemingly common sense ideas that the establishment branded radical. What's so radical about our Constitution? The Constitution was written to restrict the government, not the people. Give me a choice between three lawyers and an ex-Air Force flight surgeon that's delivered four thousand babies. I'll take the doctor anyday.

Let them be heard

To many American voters - and almost all overseas observers - there are two names that will be largely unknown in the nomination contests unfolding among the Republican and Democratic parties.

They are Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, and Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic congressman from Ohio. Part of the reason is that both have failed to attract enough voters to have any hope of winning a state, let alone the ultimate prize.

But the second, and much more damaging, reason is that both candidates have been deliberately barred from recent debates. This has happened because the media and other candidates have clubbed together to either exclude them or simply to mock their views, no matter how relevant they might be. It is no coincidence that both Paul and Kucinich have radically different views from any of their rivals. Those views - on Iraq, the economy, civil liberties and corporate influence - are thus now also shut out or laughed out of the political discussion.

Which is a shame. Because, watching the debates and the election contest unfold, there is often little real difference between any of the candidates. Apart from a few sticking points like abortion and gay marriage, nearly all the focus is on personality and style.

Much is made of John McCain's testiness or Mitt Romney's business acumen, Hillary Clinton's lack of likeability or Barack Obama's inspiring oratory. There is no discussion of actual policy on either side, and when it does occur (such as when the Democrats talk about healthcare) the policies turn out to be almost the same. Thus each candidate in each party has now suddenly embraced "change" as their most prized mantra, yet none says exactly what needs changing or how they would do it. It is a barren victory of style over substance.

Except Kucinich and Paul. Both have some genuinely wacky ideas, like Paul's desire to return to the gold standard or Kucinich's aim of creating a federal department of peace. But both also question the fundamentals of what has happened in America over the past decade in a way unlike any other candidate. In the most recent Republican debate Paul (who was excluded from a previous Fox News debate in New Hampshire) raised the eminently sensible point as to why the US was giving billions of dollars of military aid to both Israel and the Arab countries that are its sworn enemies. Far better, he suggested, would be to give nothing to any of them, especially now that Israel has nukes and is thus more than capable of looking after itself. The response to Paul's suggestion was for all the other candidates to ridicule him. Not to debate him, but simply to laugh.

The same has been true of Kucinich. When it comes to Iraq, Kucinich has been anti-war from day one. He wants out, he has always wanted out and when he says out he means all American forces. He says so openly and without caveat, unlike any other Democrat. Given that many Americans actually agree with him, the response should have been at least to see his position as valid, or point out its flaws. But no. Instead Kucinich has mostly just been ridiculed by rivals and the media for once admitting he thought he had seen a UFO (another thing he has in common with many ordinary Americans but no other candidates). Then he was excluded from the debates.

The standard argument is that Paul and Kucinich are excluded, not because of their views, but because they attract no real support. This is misguided. Kucinich was excluded from the last Democratic debate in Las Vegas because MSNBC chose to invite only the three top-placed candidates after Iowa and New Hampshire. So, apparently the decisions of two small states out of a total of 50 is enough to decide who and what should be heard. Some "debate". And why is a television station making the decision anyway?

As for Paul, he has recently raised more money than almost all other Republicans and beaten Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson in several states. Yet no one sought to bar Giuliani or Thompson from the process. The key thing it seems is not to have genuine ideas or want radical change. It is to have the same policies as your rivals, just a different way of presenting them to a complicit media as "change". Then you get let into the same old club. One is reminded of the tragic Greek heroine Cassandra. Paul and Kucinich are similarly doomed to speak much truth, only to be scorned and laughed at, not actually heard. Now that is a real tragedy.