Whitehouse and the Corpus Delicti Leading to Cheney
A number of you have pointed to this article, where Sheldon Whitehouse speaks of the corpus delicti that justifies an investigation.
The prosecutor is often first presented with a case as a "corpus delicti" — a bullet-riddled body in the street, for instance. That ordinarily is enough to justify investigation. Through investigation, the evidence may prove that there was not in fact a crime (it was a suicide or an accident) or that the fatal acts were privileged or enjoy a legal defense (self-defense or justifiable shooting by an officer of the law). But one begins by investigation.
Here he is on KO tying the dead bodies of torture right to Dick Cheney.
As he says,
If you don’t have anything to hide, you don’t often spend a great deal of time trying to hide it.
Ah jeebus. I checked that twice.
But apparently not the all-important third time.
Thanks.
My sucky eyesight is contagious.
It must be the eyesight that comes from blogging while watching football and tennis at the same time?
Aye. But what football??
Whatever the NFL channel is playing: Stillers v. Bills. correct me if I’m wrong–but isn’t TO on that team?
TO has a sore toe.
Roger Federer and Brady’s sore shoulder…
see, when you go to his senate page to send a quick note, it’s ’send a note to Sheldon,’ not ’send a note to Senator Whitehouse.’
all i did was say ‘i agree. and thank you.’
that sheldon is some rare bird.
sounds like a lawyer laying out an argument.
and whitehouse is a former prosecutor.
how odd to read something like this coming from a member of the united states senate – the world’s most deliberative back-scratching body.
like whitehouse, i have noted what a LOT of effort cheney (and little cheney) have been going to
to protect a guy who has nothing to hide.
p.s. if you are cheney and worried and active now,
then one might infer that you knew “then” that what you were ordering and supporting was illegal.
that would be WHY you chose john yoo to tailor a legal opinion at the u.s. doj.
and that would be why you would work diligently nowadays, publicly and surreptitiously, to see that no investigation occurred.
I do sincerely hope that Whitehouse is able to move things along in Cheney’s direction. There is not enough popcorn in the world for the replays of that perp walk…
Bmaz, what do you think about Whitehouse for the Supremes? I know we need him in the Senate, but…
He would be okay, I think there are better choices including some of the ones discussed on the earlier thread, but Sheldon would be good. Rather keep him in the Senate though.
There’s always Erwin.
But that is just a dream.
A client of mine attended a dinner a while back, and he was guest speaker. The swooning was evident weeks after the event.
hm. this is a point i’ve made a couple of times in the past few days here: the dick sure has been making an awful lot of noise about this matter, noise you probably wouldn’t make if you were innocent. and moreover, the only time he makes noise is when something happens on this topic of torture (release of documents, etc.).
like i said, wethinks he doth protest way too much.
So does babydick. She again said that waterboarding isn’t torture. On what authority is she getting all these tv appearances?
ain’t that the truth? that exchange with donaldson was horrendous. i was at first shocked that no one besides donaldson tried to stand up to her, but she’s a damn bulldozer.
no doubt takes after her father, that one.
oh, and wrt to all those tv appearances, i find myself wondering if the dicks are cashing in on some kind of favors, or worse, some kind of threats. her appearances are unseemly, and then the talk about running for office, and then the noise about dick for prez after his love fest with chris last weekend, gag. i have to stop; my lunch is making an unfortunate comeback.
An article, linked here I think, dated from before the 2004 election said that baby dick was born 9 months and 3 days after the Gov announced they would start drafting married men without children to ‘nam.
Guess that means she was conceived in fear, panic, or what ever a sociopath feels.
Nice to see you, JohnJ.
Did you happen to see her (via Crooks&Liars) recently? I find it appalling that none of the teevee hosts/hostesses state BabyDick’s supervision of $120 m/year budgets for ‘the Near East’ in her old State Dept role. You’d think the hosts would offer it as a qualilfication; instead, a normal viewer would have no clue how much money Liz Cheney was overseeing in
black ops‘democracy building’ in the Near East while her dad was VP.Thanks, I’m always here…just late usually.
C&L and EW are my only 2 news bookmarks.
He’s creating his own reality. His very own reality. The reality that no one but him believes.
unfortunately, way too many others do believe his reality. like chris wallace, just for starters.
oh, and in my comment on dick’s overboard protesting, i noted that his voice seemed particularly strained. and he seemed thinner. did anyone else notice that?
Sounds like Sheldon’s skeptical, to say the least.
Really could use more reporting in the mainstream media on the assassination squads, wish that one of the outlets would focus on this. It would keep Cheney knocked back on his heels, making it far more difficult for him to argue the benefits of both assassinations as policy and torture as policy. At some point the remaining paid sycophantic punditry would have to cut Deadeye loose.
Kind of like Glenn Beck’s advertisers.
No one cares about assassinations any more. The drone attacks in Pak are all assassinations, and everyone’s cool with that.
Assassination is the targeted killing of a public figure.
I would say run of the mill “leaders” of thugs with arms are not public figures.
We don’t target recognized officials.
Nobody of importance cares about them. 99.9% of the population doesn’t care about them. They are fringe “leaders” who get a fringe following to take up arms and then… …They no longe are.
Well, then murder. Nobody in the U.S. cares if the U.S. govt murders people.
Added on edit to make sure my point is clear. I always thought that murder was illegal, but apparently not for the U.S. govt.
I suspect you don’t try to understand the difference between kill, and murder.
Kill, to cause the death of.
Murder, as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent (or malice aforethought), and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide.
and yet, they are referred to as “assassination” squads.
somehow i think that was for a reason. maybe not assassination of really high up public officials, but pretty high up, um, inconvenient non-officials, as in resisters to “american interests.”
but yeah, murder by any other name still blows.
April 14, 2008
Obama would ask his AG to “immediately review” potential of crimes in Bush White House.
Is this immediate Obama response?
excuse me
but would y’all sports fans please take your damn noisy sports talk to another post and let the rest of us talk about stuff WE really consider serious.
remember
all it takes is a new post.
how hard can that be?
what i’m flagging is a situation similar to having to listen to some loudmouth talk on his/her cellphone in an airport waiting area.
Citizen OrionATL:
In case yer not real familiar with a real “people’s forum” let me inform ya…the folks here at FDL speak to each other and respect the honest efforts of all. If ya can’t handle that, I suggest you take a couple a pills, hop into bed, assume the prenatal position and turn the electric blanket up to “10″ but don’t be tellin’ regular folks what they ken talk about.
Amen
norskeflamethrower @26
dear thor,
try not to make such an embarrassing ass of yourself the next time you decide to take a shit here.
It’s too early in the week for another trash talk thread, and dang near every blog has at least one thread get a little OT.
You might could want to tone your complaints down a bit, since a lot of us can discuss more than one thing at a time.
Also, that was pretty restrained, for Norske.
and yet, they are referred to as “assassination” squads.
By whom and where? Not in the article above or in the linked story, as far as I could find on a quick search.
I guess you could be refered to as an x, y, z. But that doesn’t make you one.
Probably.
um, sy hersh, for starters.
http://www.minnpost.com/ericbl…..ation_ring
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/….._0311.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..31655.html
http://emptywheel.firedoglake……on-squads/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake……-findings/
Good to see Whitehouse stepping up.
pjevans @30
thanks for the advice.
i have the feeling i’ve run across your complaints and illogic before.
this is interesting though:
“You might could want to tone your complaints down a bit, since a lot of us can discuss more than one thing at a time.
Also, that was pretty restrained, for Norske.”
why should i tone down my compliant? did you read my comment? apparently not.
it was a simple, polite, and reasonable request to buzz off with respect to sports.
there were being discussed, and interrupted,
did you notice that pj evans?
some matters of national interest and importance.
the post was interrupted by folks chatting abouts sports – which i happen to follow avidly in the case of football.
my request was perfectly reasonable and your defense of the moron norske “that was pretty tame for norske…” was vapid – and irrelevant.
i notice, pjevans, you are not among those folks who have commented about the whitehouse article.
do you have an opinion?
or are you some sort of fdl enforcer sent to protect thor when commenters are not docile?
my question again, specifically: are you some sort of fdl enforcer?
if so, please acknowledge that.
my question again: do you have opinion about the sheldon whitehouse issue?
if so, please post that opinion above.
hey, that sounds like my job description
cept for the “official” thingy, an the stuff bout protectin thor
if my Muse wants to talk a little football trash in any thread, it’s all good. end o story, dude
and YES, I got an opinion on Whitehouse. I think he’s a really great guy who just said what I been dying to hear. (But I got issues with praising people for their positive actions. I just scream at them when they fuck up. I gotta work on that …)
but that ain’t the most interesting thing I got to say
to any other interested parties, I’m still alive. The dog is still alive. and Grandma is still alive, but she has a broken tailbone (is that “cash for grandmas” program still avaliable ???)
and if anybody is concerned about my total failure to patrol the site for trolls, I can only say that, in addition to my dream of joining procrastinators’ anonymous at some point in the near future, I also intend to join the Slacker’s Union at some point in the near future, and I needed to neglect some duties to build up street cred
and to other interested parties (You know who you are) the turtles are alive an doin fine
at least I think they’re doing fine
they said Whitehouse was cool with them too (but turtles like everybody so who could trust em)
PS, I hope long rambling barely topical replies don’t piss you off too
(wink)
HIGH EVERYBODY (wave at the screen, dude)
BOOMER SOONERS
Glad to see you back, fp. You don’t know me but I missed you anyway.
Good to hear about one and all doing better. Watch it with that Sooner stuff bucco; we do have standards as to the football we annoy people with around here you know!
Alright folks, here is the deal; the two people discussing sports were me and Marcy and the intrusion was certainly not flagrant. The question of whether it was allowable or not in this instance seems a little absurd. We are both sports nuts; every now and then it bleeds into a substantive thread briefly. That has always been the case, and likely will be again sometime in the future. If that is not your cup of tea, that is fine and what the scroll function is for.
Ain’t GUIs great? Love it — *scroll*. But I have to say, you had me checking the calendar, because it felt like Friday, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t.
Something big must be coming…I swear that every time this community gets itchy, a really big shoe drops.
Save your energy, gang. You’re going to need it.
Wow, do I ever hope you are correct!
And speaking of OT and shoes dropping, Cerberus ($24.3bn in assets) was faced with investors wanting $5.5 bn in withdrawals — which was reported earlier this week. Today’s news is that Cerberus is not allowing withdrawals from several of their funds.
But on topic: the financial structures that enabled Bu$hCheney to pay for all the black ops need to be investigated IMHO. Some of those black budgets need to be shut down.
Marci and you can talk about anything you want, that’s why some of us are hear, period. orianATL you must be new here.
In the primary the year that Whitehouse won, there was a more insurgent candidate that I was rooting for. He’s turning out to be the most pleasant of surprises, though.
Go, Senator Whitehouse!
Just hearing Whitehouse is like a breath of fresh air. I would like to see Whitehouse, Feingold, and Turley have a panel discussion on the subject of the Iraq War and whether an investigation and possibly charges can be brought forward. It seems to me there was a grand conspiracy with all the elements.
OT: This guy is scanning the classifieds when he comes across an ad:
Talking Dog, $50
He picks-up the phone, calls the number, and a cheery voice says, “Hello?”
“I’m calling about the ad for the talking dog,” the guy says.
After a slight pause, the voice says in an exasperated and sour tone, “Yeah, I got one. I keep him tied-up out back. You can come by and see him, if you like.”
So the guy drives over and meets the owner, who shows no affect at all, and together they go out back and walk over to a mangy, patchwork mutt, tied by a leash to a fence.
“How long have you had him?” the guy says.
“Too damn long,” the owner says.
“How did you get him?” the guy asks.
The dog sticks his paw up in the air and says, “Wait, I’ll take that one. I was born from a long line of security dogs, and my owner was a police officer. When he found out that I could talk, he realized that I’d make the best undercover police dog ever! And, so began a career of me ‘innocently’ befriending one bad guy after another – drug dealers, mobsters, crooked politicians, everyone. I’d sit in on their meetings, and listen to their plans, and then report it all to my handlers. It was all hush-hush, of course, but I rapidly became famous in the law enforcement community, and got promoted onto bigger and bigger cases, resulting in a wall full of medals and awards for bravery and daring. But, all good things must come to an end, I guess, and I eventually had to retire. When I did, I was placed in the Witness Protection Program, and, now, here I am!”
The guy looks over at the owner and says, “Fifty bucks? Why so low?”
The owner’s stony face breaks into a scowl, and he says, “He didn’t do any of that shit! He’s a liar!”
Heh heh heh!
Thanks for that.
He he! rfw @ 46, you can come to my house to tell jokes anytime!
BayStateLibrul, thanks for the link.
So that’s two things to be thankful for:
[1] the most lucid imaginable response to challenges to the idea of the investigation of the Dickquisition, and
[2] freep’s alive & kicking*
[* presumably not “the turtles”].
NYT editorial makes my day…
Superfuckinggood..
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09……html?_r=1
Thanks for the link. That was great.
h/t tjbs.
orionATL, I understand your concern. There are days I come to read and I am so very focused and time is short. There are other days, I am the guilty OT party of the thread. Here, bmaz and EW are great at banter, all in fun (and mostly sports and cars)– shared passions that serve as a mental mini vacation from the seriousness of all they research and write about in my estimation.
Mental ping-pong happens, even more so on a blog when exchanging ideas on serious national concerns. But we do manage to get back to the thread subject.
Please come back. Your comment @ 8 was a nice contribution. Since EW and bmaz are THE Wheel and EW is THE EW, I figure she’s the boss of the blog and well…her work product is award winning. So, the banter is a good thing for EW, it appears to me.
I know the threads over at the FDL have been getting highjacked quite a bit and it probably ups our frustration levels with OT’s. I just remind myself that usually means we are having an impact that “others” are trying to shut down.
Just a note. The subject of this thread was actually a result of a “related OT” comment by tjbs. In the end, the combined results of OT’s are Marthastewartesque — “a good thing.”(klynn triggers gag reflex! s/)
Back to the thread…Thanks for the KO link EW. I would have missed it. Sheldon’s logic is undeniable.
I have finally found my peeps, although I may not be as smart as uall.
Until now I,ve been raiding conserv sites whichs makes me paranoid someone is going to send me a virus.
What is a turtle?
Welcome !
A Turtle is A] One of my fav candies and B] Freep’s pet and companion, although he has more than one.
I think that the important thing about investigating waterboarding is this will lead to people(innocent) being tourtured to death in more cruel ways than waterboarding.
Rhode Island has a pretty kick ass Senate delegation. Reed and Whitehouse do a good job finding pressure points in the process instead of just putting their views out into the air and hoping things work out.
I want whitehouse running for president in four years
I sincerely hope not. Our democracy is teetering because of our obsessive fixation on the Presidency. I am not a fan of monarchs. I much prefer balanced separated powers. If it weren’t for the courts, our democracy would be lost by now. We need a much stronger and more independent Congress and it will take people like Senator Whitehouse to make that come to pass. We can ill afford to lose him as a member of Congress. I really really hope he stays where he is. As Teddy proved, Senators can have enormous influence. In the sweep of history, I suspect Senator Kennedy’s legacy will surpass that of President Kennedy. I hope several Senators take that into consideration when contemplating their career plans.
Nice comment.
Altogether.
DW
Absolutely agree with you … Whitehouse should stay in the Senate. He is the future Chair of SJC and will be great on the other Committees he is currently on.
From his site – He is a member of the Special Committee on Aging and the Budget Committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Select Committee on Intelligence. He chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts and the EPW Subcommittee on Oversight.
Given his family history and the number of Committees he is involved in, I’d say that Sheldon can choose to stay in the Senate and be another Ted Kennedy or run for POTUS. I hope he chooses the Senate.
Could Yoo, Jessen, or Mitchell just maybe be dumb enough to sue Whitehouse for defamation?
Wouldn’t trolling for such a suit be an excellent use of op-ed space?
Oh, we could only hope and pray that they are that stupid.
First, I seriously doubt that speaking as a Senator in his capacity as a key committee member, that Whitehouse could be held to account for statements borne out of investigative work they’ve done.
Second, any such suit would permit Whitehouse and any other potential defendant wide latitude for discovery.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! to borrow a celebratory phrase; just give us a crack at discovery, I beg.
bmaz @38
bmaz
i know you all talk sports here. usually it doesn’t bother me. upthread it did bother me and i reacted to my irritation with a critical comment.
this is perfectly normal human behavior.
i did not feel so strongly that i pursued the matter, nor do i intend to do so later.
but i made my point, rather reasonably, even cleverly, if i do say so myself (with the analogy to loud cell phone talk).
the fireworks started with a smart alec comment directed at me and my complaint comment.
note also that i let even this drop after two comments.
now, back to play-by-play