brucemaples dot com

I've not posted for a while, due to being slammed with work and life ... and now that I've got some time to write, there's just so much to talk about! So, rather than flood my many loyal readers with multiple posts all at once, I decided to do a single set of Sunday Night Quick Hits, touching on the following news items:

• Obama and Indefinite Detentions (an American Gulag?)
• Investigation into Afghan Massacre (was US involved?)
• Cheney and Lying ("go together like a horse and carriage")
• Young Republican Practice IOKIYAR (but it's really not)
• C-J Fights Obesity, Gets Even Thinner (Gannett == PhenFen)

OK, sports fans, let's get right to it.

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Indefinite Detention
When Obama spoke at the National Archives, laying out his philosophy and approach to national security, I was, overall, quite pleased. There was one plan he announced, however, that I considered an absolute Constitutional disaster: a program he called "Preventive Detention," otherwise known as "we won't try you, we'll just disappear you and keep you somewhere forever." No charges, no trial, no habeas corpus; just the US Government deciding you are a threat, and putting you away.

Now comes the news, via "Hardball," that the Obama administration has decided that since every Gitmo detainee can either be tried or released, they don't need this program. While it's not as good as Obama saying indefinite detention without trial is un-American, at least it's a step in the right direction.

Cheney, Addington, and the CIA
We heard last week that current CIA Director Leon Panetta learned on June 23 of a "secret intelligence program that had been hidden from Congress for 8 years." He ended the program, and briefed the two Congressional intelligence committees the next day. The question, of course, is who gave the order to keep the program from Congress? Today we find out it was -- guess who!! -- Dick Cheney.

And here's the kicker: when it came to deciding who got to be "in the know," that wasn't even done by Cheney. It was done by David Addington, the legal advisor for Secret Dick. So, we had someone nowhere near the chain of command deciding who was allowed to know what the CIA was doing -- and keeping it from the oversight committees charged with, well, oversight.

I hope AG Holder gets that independent investigation started soon. Might be nice to find out what else has been hidden for the past eight years, before all the evidence and Cheney disappear into a newly-constructed hidden bunker.

Afghan Massacre Investigation
James Risen of the NYT wrote a story last week about a 2001 massacre of Taliban prisoners by Afghan forces tied to an Afghan warlord. Apparently there have been attempts in the past to investigate the massacre and whether US forces were involved, but the investigations were thwarted by the Bush administration. When the story broke, the initial reaction of the Obama administration was that there was nothing they could do, as the incident happened on foreign soil. As you can imagine, there were widespread cries of Bullshit from all sides, especially from the Physicians for Human Rights, who have been trying to get to the bottom of this since January 2002, when they discovered the mass grave.

Now, in a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper (quoted in an AP story), President Obama has indicated that he will order his national security team to investigate these reports. "I think that, you know, there are responsibilities that all nations have even in war," Obama said during an interview at the end of a six-day trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana. "And if it appears that our conduct in some way supported violations of the laws of war, then I think that, you know, we have to know about that."

Good to see PBO override the earlier response of his staff and decide to get the facts. Also good to see him affirm that even in war, there are lines that shouldn't be crossed. This was a horrible affair -- 2,000 prisoners suffocated to death in container trucks and buried in a mass grave -- and as painful as it may be to learn the truth, it will show the world that once again America holds itself to the same standards it expects others to follow.

Young Republicans and IOKIYAR
The national Young Republicans held their annual convention last weekend and elected one Audra Shay as their new chair. (So how old can you be and still be a Young Republican?) Apparently they didn't have any trouble with their chair's racism and gay-hating, as noted in comments she made on her Facebook account.

Obviously, she can't stand Obama -- that's a given. And obviously, she throws out the standard GOP talking points, including the new epithet of "socialist" whenever she refers to the president. But when a FB friend talks about blacks as "coons" her only response is an online laugh and "you tell 'em Eric." When another person mentions Palin being hung in effigy, she wonders why Obama isn't in a noose as well. The next day she changes that to homosexuals in the noose.

This is apparently what passes for leadership in today's Republican party. Of course, IOKIYAR. (And for those of you unfamiliar with this initialism, try this.)

The New C-J Diet Plan
The Courier-Journal cut another 44 jobs last week. That's another 7% of its already-depleted workforce, following the cuts in December of 51 people. The publisher, Arnold Garson, said we "will not see any significant changes in The Courier-Journal as a result of the most recent cuts." Apparently, those 95 people just sat around, drinking coffee and shooting the shit, while the remaining 575 employees did all the work.

I'm working on a longer story about the C-J and Gannett, but for now let me just lay out a thesis: the problem with the C-J isn't the economy, or dying newspapers, or the changing media and news market -- it's Gannett itself. Any newspaper chain that expects to get at least 20% profit out of a property, and would rather have 30%, is obviously vying to be the dictionary picture for "blood-sucking." And that talk about not seeing any changes? Let's put it this way: if the C-J gets any thinner, you'll be able to read David Hawpe's ramblings without opening the front cover.

Want a different take on all this? Stroll over to the just-closed Gannett Blog and scan some of the entries. Some pretty interesting stuff there ... and it ain't Garson's happy-face crap either.

Here's wishing someone with some $$$ and a passion for newspapering would come along and buy the C-J. It's a damn shame to see a once-proud paper run into the ground by people who couldn't even say Louisville, much less care about it.

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Okay, folks, that's all for now. Drop me a note and tell me what's on your mind -- I got the itch to write, so tell me what's itching you!