CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (June 26) - A millionaire who inflicted years of abuse
     on two Indonesian housekeepers held as virtual slaves in her Long Island
     mansion was sentenced Thursday. The victims testified that they were
     beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, and forced to
     climb stairs and take freezing showers as punishment. One victim was
     forced to eat chili peppers against her will, and then was forced to eat
     her own vomit when she couldn't keep the peppers down, prosecutors said.

Through the years McCain has surrounded himself with yes people
so he has grown lazy and arrogant which is why he is always off balance. He seems surprised when people disagree or challenge him.
It's as if he expects us to just accept it.

Drilling for Oil in Florida, Alaska, and else where,
Continuing the war,
Supporting George W,
Hiring former lobbiest Charlie Black as his chief strategist (not an aide) "an attack on America would be good for McCain"
Overturning Roe vs Wade

Bush and his crew of criminals have transformed America to such an extent that I hardly recognize it. Secret prisons, Torture,
Big Brother policies just to name a few. McCain wants to continue
this "legacy" of war and manipulation. Charlie Black and McCain believe if people are scared enough this will help his campaign.
Fear is helping Senator Obama now because we all fear one thing.
A third Bush term.

I'm sure McCain will inherit the 23% approval rating our current president has but not too much more. McCain and Bush represent all that is bad about the Republican party. Bush and McCain want to control the media and a woman's body. Really George W and McCain have made the Republican party what it is today PATHETIC! Is it any wonder that people want a change from all this? McCain is such a "Maverick" he has nothing to stand on but quicksand. Thank you Karl Rove you have created such a negative legacy that your party will reap it's just "rewards". You were "Brilliant" and President Obama and the Democratic party Thank you.

P.S. Help Obama pay off Senator Clinton's debt.

The idea that we, as a nation, engaged in torture, and that this could make our leaders potential war criminals for their decisions to abrogate the Geneva Conventions, set up after the depracations of the Nazis, this presents us with some confounding choices to make.

We can, and will, and have, bashed the Bush Admininstration for it's excesses. The reporting on the run up to and during the past 7 years has been pretty clear.

So, now we can truly, righteously go on decrying the actions of these Others...

When I was a freshman in college, I was given the once-in-an-American-lifetime chance of visiting Cuba on a cultural exchange tour with my choir. Between the art, the food and the music, I spent the entire week entranced by the vividness of Cuban life. But I will also never forget being invited into the home of a local Havana woman to take part in a Santeria ritual. I was touched by how the Cuban people could welcome Americans into their lives, while also despising the practices of our government.

The cloud that the U.S.'s maligned reputation had cast over our trip was especially palpable when we traveled around the city of Guantanamo. Here was a structure, a prison, which stood to represent American-branded justice, yet its very existence went against everything our country stood for: the right to a fair trial, the notion of innocent until proven guilty, and protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

In a speech that demonstrated both President Bush's clinging to a retrograde ideology of McCarthy-era scapegoating, and his blatant lack of self-awareness, Bush yesterday gave a speech admonishing Cuban leadership for violations of human rights and international law. Wait a second, don't we know someone else who is guilty of these?

Back on April 1, we asked our readers what they would ask Barack Obama if given the chance to ask any question.  After being disappointed by the last televised debate, the MOMOcrats (of which my wife is a contributing writer) came up with a list of questions that the MOMocrats and our readers wished that ABC had asked, and sent them off to Obama and Clinton campaign HQ (they even offered them up to the McCain campaign.  

The only candidate to take the time was Barack Obama, who replied with answers to five of their questions on poverty, the credit crisis, torture, childcare, and maternity leave, all answered exclusively for MOMocrats.

http://momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats/2 008/05/momocrats-exclu.html#more

Karl Rove once said, "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." As backwards as this statement is, it has been embraced by the Right to attack educated progressives and to make "liberal" into a dirty word. Conservatives have long been proponents of denying public access to information about how their policies just don't work.

As you may already know, John Ashcroft addressed the subject of whether waterboarding is torture at Knox College on Tuesday.  Although most of his defenses were tripe, he actually had a valid point with this remark:

Congress has defined it [torture], the law has the definition.  I don't believe the law has been violated--and if the law needs to be changed, you should talk to your congressman, not to me.

It's worth thinking about.  Why has Congress done nothing to stop Ashcroft and his ilk?  And why haven't we stepped up to the plate and forced our legislature to do their job?

I got a lot of emails and comments yesterday from people who wished they could have done what I did.  To all of them, I say this: you and I together can do something better.  We can make waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation" explicitly illegal once and for all.

We can pass Senate Bill 1943.