This is a big story.  I heard Ron Suskind being interviewed on NPR this morning. There's also a Rec List diary on this story and I invite you to read it.  Bombshell: White House ordered forged document to sell war

I have some more details on this story.  Author Ron Suskind appeared on the Today show and said that Bush ordered the CIA to forge a letter after the invasion linking Saddam Husein and al-Qaeda, in an effort to justify the invasion after the fact. His new book is "The Way of the World."

President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims.

msnbc.com; Today

I have more, including a link to video, after the fold,  

It's (almost) unbelievable that this could happen to anyone under American law.

The first person to be tried in a military tribunal at Guantanamo will remain incarcerated no matter the verdict. Concerns remain about the procedure's fairness.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 4, 2008

Clip of article is below the fold.

In the wake of improbable events, like the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, we should
Consider all possible explanations.
  Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction can illuminate truth.  Often the travels of fiction disappoint or outrage, but as Carly Haskins, President of the Carnegie Institution in 1963 said, "A society committed to the search for truth must give protection to, and set a high value upon, the independent and original mind, however angular, however rasping, however socially unpleasant it may be; for it is upon such minds, in large measure, that the effective search for truth depends."  
   The author of the story below would not presume to be an "original and independent mind". The story enclosed is it fiction?  Perhaps.  It is woven from news reports.  It can be seen as a means to view recent events, events that have held the stage as explanation for nearly every act, in a different light. Though to do so today is near treason, or brings on questions of one's sanity.  We have all the answers.  We do not need to deal with messy details. Our ideology demands a struggle between East and West.

The time is almost upon us, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm feeling a sense of urgency to start out shouting, out screaming and straight up kicking some rethugican butt...

With the loss of rational proof of God's existence, we now turn to Occam's Razor in an effort to rescue some sort of proof of God's existence. Occam's Razor, in a nutshell, states that, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. While we rejected the conventional rational proofs of God's existence, we left open the possibility that he still exists. And then comes Occam's Razor -- if all other things are equal, then the simplest explanation is usually the best -- and the simplest explanation is that God caused the Big Bang which caused the Universe to begin.

There is no doubt in the minds of even Sen. McCain’s supporters that most unfortunately and regrettably too this admired and veteran senator have recently set the all time record in approving the most lopsided, demeaning, unpatriotic, desperate and the most bizarre advertisement in the current political dispensation in which he attempts to characterize Sen. Obama, a fellow American and presidential rival to celebrities such as Paris and Britney.

I have been writing for months on the deaths of farm workers in California from the heat.

United Farm Workers Calls for Manslaughter Charges Against Company in Death of 17 Year Old  

How many Farmworkers must die before someone cares??

Please Tell Fallen Farm Worker's Family We Care

"How much is the life of a farm worker worth? Is it less than the life of any other human being?"

Another farm worker died from the heat today.  5 in the last three months.

Come around after the fold for the sad news and what we can and must do to prevent more deaths.

Courtesy of the good folk at Think Progress comes this story about the arraignment of the four Iowans who attempted to conduct a Citizen's arrest of Karl Rove back on July 25th.

UPDATED: Added link to the Think Progress story, not just TP.

Nietzsche talks about how Christian fundamentalism is outdated. And Bishop Spong goes even farther, arguing that theism is no longer a valid way of understanding God. In that regard, he carries on the meme first promoted by Nietzsche that God is Dead. But, that said, it is much harder to prove a negative than it is to prove a positive. The fact of the matter is that despite the advances of science and technology, the Big Bang that started it all is still shrouded in mystery.

Her face grabbed my attention immediately when I saw it.  So young she looked like any number of my daughter's friends or a cousin.  Why my very great grandmother was named Lavena Johnson.  What was she doing on the cover of the Huffington Post?  Do the jump thing.

I got an email today from Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films explaining that the House Judiciary Committee is about to vote Karl Rove in contempt of Congress. Greenwald is hosting a video and petition (with 108,579 signers already) to keep the pressure on the Committee to sent Rove to jail. You can help put Rove behind bars...

The Army has finally issued an apology to 28 black GI's wrongfully convicted of lynching an Italian prisoner of War in 1944.  Only two of those GI's convicted are still alive.  

Justice, 64 years later, 'Long-overdue vindication' comes for 28 black soldiers cleared in a 1944 lynching.

Despite their protests of innocence -- and the government's own secret investigation showing the prosecution's case was poisonously flawed -- the men were sentenced to hard labor and forfeiture of military pay and benefits, and were given dishonorable discharges.

Twenty-six of the men went to their graves with the stain of wartime dishonor still on their records. It wasn't until Saturday, in a low-key ceremony on a wide lawn at the Army base in Seattle, that history switched gears. A senior Army official handed out certificates setting aside the convictions and converting the discharges to honorable status, in recognition -- 64 years after the fact -- that prosecutors' "egregious error" had resulted in a trial that was "fundamentally unfair."

As the investigation into the Bush administration's use of torture continues and more and more details come out, I find myself becoming more and more disgusted and angry.

In the country I grew up in, these things don't happen.  In the country I grew up in, we treat people with respect, even our enemies.  In the country I grew up in, we publish a list of countries that have violated human rights, we don't do it ourselves.

So, where do we turn for justice and how do we find those responsible?

I've written in the past about the preventable death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and her unborn child.  California's Occupational Safety and Health Agency recently issued a $262,700 fine against the Central Valley farm labor contracting company that employed Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, the 17-year old farm worker who died of heat stroke because of the company's negligence in following the law.  That's not enough. United Farm Workers President, Arturo S. Rodriguez, thinks criminal prosecution is the only way to deter companies so that no more will die:

"This is a case of manslaughter - there is no difference between a driver killing someone while breaking our traffic laws and a labor contractor breaking the law and killing this beautiful young woman. Anything less than criminal prosecution is a desecration of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez' death."

UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez

More, after the fold.  

On last night's edition of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart and John Oliver talked about the recent testimonies by members of the Bush administration on Capitol Hill for numerous different scandals. As Stewart explains - some or refusing to testify while others are testifying and refusing to say anything. Oliver claims that this is an historic administration that one day will have their names retired in the rafters of the Capitol building. Fathers will one day be able to tell their sons that yes, they saw the greatest douches of all time.

Also, Lewis Black rants about the economy and the "End of an Empire Sale". I'll try not to spoil it but suffice it to say that Lewis Black is always funny. There is also a new segment of Obama Quest up as well.

Enjoy the video recap and chime in with your thoughts / comments:

My blood pressure is so high up at this moment. I just read an outrageous article by the AP.

NY priest pleads guilty to raping 3 teenage boys

A Franciscan priest admitted raping 3 boys in the 70s and 80s. BOSTON - A Franciscan priest from New York pleaded guilty to raping three teenage boys during overnight trips to Boston in the 1970s and 1980s and was ordered Tuesday to serve time on probation.

The Rev. Frank Genevieve avoided prison time as a Suffolk Superior Court judge sentenced him to a suspended sentence of eight to 10 years, with five years' probation.

Where is the fucking justice?

I recently read Richard Dawkins :The God Delusion," which has made me rethink some things.

Dale Leo Bishop is scheduled to be executed in Mississippi tomorrow at 6pm.  This would be a travesty.  Please help stop it...

(read on)

This afternoon, I was returning a rental car at the Hertz office on King David St. in Jerusalem, where I'm running a program for my American law students.  Suddenly, tens of police cars and motorcycles zoomed by, sirens blaring.  "Is this because of Obama's visit?" I asked the person at the desk.  "No," she replied in Hebrew.  "A terrorist attack."  What I didn't realize was that the attack was a block away.