How Many Fathers Are Spending Fathers Day Praying For Their Stolen Children?

Michael Hayden was an Air Force 4 star general who George W. Bush appointed to head the CIA. The picture he posted on his twitter account this morning is Auschwitz.

On Saturday, CNN reported that Senor Trumpanzee is using the outrageous and savage tactic of separating children from parents as a bargaining chip. He suggested the policy is "a negotiating tool to get Democrats to cave on his immigration demands, which include funding for a border wall, curbing legal immigration into the US, and tightening the rules for border enforcement.

Trump again falsely blamed Democrats for his administration's actions, and said they could put a stop to the family separations by working with Republicans in Congress. Nearly 2,000 immigrant children were separated from parents over a period of about six weeks in April and May, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

"Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change!" Trump wrote in a tweet.

According to reporting by the Washington Post, White House officials said President Donald Trump has calculated he will gain leverage in congressional negotiations by enforcing a policy he claims to hate.

"I hate the children being taken away," Trump said Friday morning. But Trump suggested Friday in an interview on Fox News' Fox and Friends he would not reverse his administration's policy unless Democrats agreed to his longstanding immigration priorities.

If you didn't guess the man behind the stealing children from their parents was psychotic Santa Monica neo-Nazi was Stephen Miller you haven't been paying close enough attention. This morning the NY Times reported that he was the man you persuaded Trump to separate fazmalies and blame it on the Democrats. Miller: "No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement… The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law."

Meanwhile the United Methodist Church zeroed in on one of their own: Jeff Sessions. In a statement, A shocking violation of the spirit of the Gospel the Church explicitly calls out Sessions as a "fellow United Methodist" and asks him to reverse the Trump administration’s decision to split up migrant families after he claimed the Bible justified it.

In recent weeks, we have watched with horror at the implementation of policies from the Department of Justice regarding the treatment of people migrating to the United States.

In early May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy resulting in de facto family separation: children are immediately removed from their parents as they are apprehended after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. And three days ago, the Attorney General also announced a policy reversing protections for asylum seekers fleeing domestic abuse and gang violence. Neither threat of violence is now considered grounds for asylum.

Furthermore-- and in response to the ardent opposition from a wide array of faith communities-- the officials responsible for these policies have recently used Christian scripture to justify their actions.

To argue that these policies are consistent with Christian teaching is unsound, a flawed interpretation, and a shocking violation of the spirit of the Gospel.

Administration officials have used the Christian text of Paul’s Letter to the Romans-- his first and weightiest epistle-- to justify their actions. The ethical teachings of Romans 12-16 describe that consecrated Christian life requires the duties of love and hospitality. The commandment in Chapter 13 to “be subject to the governing authorities” is bracketed by preceding and following passages containing the command to “love.”

Earlier verses detail what love looks like:

Let love be genuine, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord…extend hospitality to strangers. (Romans 12: 9-11, 13 NRSV, emphasis added)

Subsequent verses further clarify the centrality of love and its comprehensive nature, stating that all the

commandment[s] are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13: 9-10 NRSV, emphasis added)

We are reminded by Paul that love is the way.

Jesus is our way, our truth, our life. The Christ we follow would have no part in ripping children from their mothers’ arms or shunning those fleeing violence. It is unimaginable that faith leaders even have to say that these policies are antithetical to the teachings of Christ.

Christian sacred texts should never be used to justify policies that oppress or harm children and families.

Those using the Bible to justify these horrific policies, should also read the prophet Isaiah:

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. (Isaiah 10: 1-3 NIV)

The Trump Administration implemented these policies. They have the power to stop these horrific actions. Join me in calling on the Department of Justice, and especially on our fellow United Methodist, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to immediately reverse these decisions.

When you reach out, be sure to share with them the Social Principles of our United Methodist Church, which uphold the rights of immigrants, oppose family separation, and demand protections for women, children and men from violence.

Like Hitler, Trump and Miller have no religion-- other than Satanism and Mammon-- so this kind of argument will have no impact in and of itself... only if Christians and other men and women of good faith rise up in disgust against them. Let's not forget this in November when Trump's congressional enablers are up for election.

Military Industrial Complex Threatening A Coup If Herr Trumpf Wins?

A couple days ago we looked briefly at Herr Trumpf's threat to chuck the constitutional prohibition on churches and religions openly endorsing candidates. Will we see a big TV spectacular on Inauguration Day featuring a bonfire with slimy little Eric Trumpf burning copies of the Constitution while Ivanka, dressed as Tzeitel, does a scintillating dance to the Kushner family anthem? Not likely, but God only knows what U.S. military officers will be thinking if that unlikely day ever comes to pass-- the Trumpf inauguration, not the Ivanka dance.

Watch the Bill Maher interview Friday (above) with former NSA and CIA head Michael Hayden. This is beyond shocking. Who knew the Wall Street Journal watches Maher! Damian Paletta reported Saturday evening on the extraordinary Hayden statement about how the military "would likely refuse to follow certain orders."

“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that Candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” Gen. Hayden said during an interview will Bill Maher on Friday.

Mr. Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP primary, has vowed to use torture techniques against suspected terrorists if he wins the White House, going beyond waterboarding and doing things he described as a “hell of a lot worse.”

He has also suggested he would order U.S. forces to kill the family members of terrorists, a charge that some have alleged would be in violation of the Geneva Convention.

Gen. Hayden, who had been an adviser to the presidential campaign of Jeb Bush, said the military would be required to refuse to obey these orders if Mr. Trump handed them down from the White House.

“You are required not to follow an unlawful order,” Gen. Hayden said. Some of Mr. Trump’s proposals “would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict.”

Hayden is a retired 4-star Air Force general, a former director of the NSA for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and, later, Bush's and (for one day) Obama's CIA director. Hayden is now a principle at a bastion of spooky neocon shadow government, The Chertoff Group. He may look like a friendly old clown on the Real Time clip... but he's not. This is a very dangerous guy and represents very dangerous people and institutions. A showdown between these people and a crackpot President Trumpf could only end very badly for the American people and for our country.

Will There Ever Be Accountability For The CIA? Don't Be Silly

The redacted, but still horrifying, Torture Report that the Senate Intelligence Committee released Tuesday, isn't the same as the stunning revelations that Senator Mark Udall made on the Senate floor yesterday. The disclosure of portions of an internal CIA review, the so-called Panetta Review, by Udall was absolutely riveting-- and stunning. The review backs up the Senate report and puts to the lie all the Cheney, Yoo, Hayden apologist palaver dominating corporate media since the release Tuesday. This is the document-- which Udall called a "smoking gun"-- the CIA was trying to steal when it illegally hacked into Senate computers in January.

The CIA has insisted the Panetta Review stay secret, since it contradicts all the blatant, calculated lies propagated and systematically spread by the John Brennan and the other avatars of the Surveillance State. What disturbs these people most is that the Panetta Review clearly shows that the CIA and Brennan consistently and consciously lied to Congress, the president, and the public on the efficacy of its coercive techniques and it identifies dozens of documents based on these lies that were used to justify torture. Timelines make it clear that the use of torture wasn't useful in helping the CIA acquire any actionable information and it shows that the CIA was torturing people willy-nilly, including innocent people with no information whatsoever. "Director Brennan and the CIA today," intoned Udall, "are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture. In other words, the CIA is lying." He reiterated his demand that Brennan resign or be fired.

To date, there has been no accountability for the CIA’s actions or for Director Brennan’s failure of leadership. Despite the facts presented, the president has expressed his “full confidence” in Director Brennan, and demonstrated that trust by making no effort at all to rein him in. The president stated that it wasn’t “appropriate” for him to wade into the issues between the Committee and the CIA.

The White House has not led on this issue in the manner we expected when we heard the president’s campaign speeches in 2008 and read the executive order he issued in January 2009. To CIA employees in April 2009, President Obama said, “What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard-- not just when it’s easy; even when we are afraid and under threat-- not just when it’s expedient to do so. That’s what makes us different.”

This tough, principled talk set an important tone for the beginning of his presidency. However, fast forward to this year, after so much has come to light about the CIA’s barbaric programs, and President Obama’s response was that we “crossed a line” as a nation, and that, quote, “hopefully, we don’t do it again in the future.”

That’s not good enough. We need to be better than that. There can be no cover-up. There can be no excuses. If there is no moral leadership from the White House helping the public understand that the CIA’s torture program wasn’t necessary and didn’t save lives or disrupt terrorist plots, then what’s to stop the next White House and CIA Director from supporting torture?

To students of history this should all sound very, very familiar-- nauseatingly so. In his new book, The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein wrote extensively about both the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House delving into the same kind of CIA malfeasance 40 years ago. Does this sound vaguely familiar? It's what Church appended to his committee's report and was basically most of what the media covered about that report:

"The committee does not believe that the acts which it has examined represent the real American character... They do not reflect the ideals which have given the people of this country and of the world hope for a better, fuller, fairer life. We regard the assassination plots as aberrations." (He did not note that the "aberrations" spanned two decades and spanned four presidential administrations.) "The United States," he continued, "must not adopt the tactics of the enemy." He concluded, "Despite our distaste for what we have seen, we have great faith in this country. The story is sad, but this country has the strength to hear this story and to learn from it. We must remain a people who confront our mistakes and resolve not to repeat them. If we do not, we will decline, but if we do, our future will be worthy of the best of our past."

There was no accountability and America ignored-- or discredited-- the revelations rather than confronting them. The CIA denied everything and, according to Walter Mondale (D-MN), used a system "clearly designed for fog-- to hide responsibility and prevent anyone from ever being called to account." Today the criminals don't even bother to hide. Cheney and his crew are front and center, still lying, still strutting around proud of their work... still not called to account.

Crime And Punishment-- National Security Style… Forget Dostoevsky

Over the long 4th of July weekend many of us turned to The Guardian for news. An Edward Snowden/Hillary Clinton article from that paper got picked up by dozens of U.S. outlets all during the weekend. The gist of it was that Hillary thinks Snowden, who has been charged with three separate violations of the Espionage Act (which doesn't distinguish between a spy and a whistleblower) should return to the U.S. if he is serious in engaging in the debate. Hill: "If he wishes to return knowing he would be held accountable and also able to present a defence, that is his decision to make."

Is it? I doubt Hillary has read Michael Gurnow's book, The Edward Snowden Affair, the subtitle of which is "Exposing the Politics and Media Behind the NSA Scandal." Perhaps she should, or at least the second chapter, "How To Blow A Whistle," which goes a long way towards describing how disingenuous-- or just idiotic-- Hillary's responses to Snowden questions have been. You think she doesn't know what happens to whistleblowers, even whistleblowers who "go by the book?" Start by watching the 60 Minutes report up top-- and watch Hillary at the bottom… then make up your own mind if you want to see someone like her become President.

The world might not have ever heard of Edward Snowden if it hadn't been for Thomas Drake.

…Drake's contention was that then-NSA director General Michael Hayden had chosen a program called "Trailblazer" over another, titled "ThinThread." Both programs were designed to contend with monitoring the new and exponentially expanding World Wide Web and the advent and increased use of cell phones. Drake was part of a small but well-versed minority that believed ThinThread might have been able to detect and stop the 9/11 attacks had it not been discontinued three weeks prior (some reports claim it was never implemented). Remarkably Trailblazer was still theoretical on September 11, whereas ThinThread had been fully operational since the beginning of the year. Drake and his coalition had outlined that ThinThread was more effective in processing gross amounts of data, and unlike Trailblazer, it was mindful of Americans' pocketbooks and Fourth Amendment privacy rights. ThinThread cost $3 million; Trailblazer had a $1.2 billion price tag.

Following government protocol, Drake worked his way up the administrative grievance ladder. He appealed to his superiors, the NSA inspector general, the Defense Department inspector general, then the House and Senate. As a last resort, Drake-- along with the Republicans' staff expert on NSA's budget for the House Intelligence Committee, Diane Roark, and the lead designers of ThinThread, William Binney, Ed Loomis and J. Kirk Wiebe-- presented a book-length complain to the Department of Defense in 2002. Roark even went as far as contacting Dick Cheney's attorney, David Addington. What Roark didn't know was Addington had been the pen behind the Bush Administration's warrentless wiretapping program. The the Defense Department would eventually internally acknowledge that Drake and Co. had been correct in their assessment, the wasteful, ineffective and invasive programs [also very, very profitable for Bush-Cheney military-industrial complex campaign donors] continued.

There are three motivating factors that permitted the flawed system to persist. One, the government was reluctant to end any security project for fear of appearing unpatriotic. Two, the intelligence agency wanted the illicit data. These two are not mutually exclusive, because any politician labelled unpatriotic during this time risked reelection, and the biggest political donors were corporations who had a vested interest in personal data for marketing and advertising purposes. Three, Hayden was a lieutenant general closing in on retirement. He only had been director of the NSA for a few years and wanted to make a name for himself. He was made a full general a year before retiring in 2006.

No, Hayden is still not in prison. In fact, on May 8, Bush nominated him to be the director of the CIA and he was confirmed by the Senate, 78-15 less than 3 weeks later. Among those few with the sense of decency to vote no were Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, Ron Wyden, Tom Harkin, Dick Durbin, Maria Cantwell, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Today, instead of rotting in a prison cell, he's a senior partner at Michael Chertoff's security consulting firm and on the Board of Motorola. Ed Snowden, however, would disappear forever into a medieval prison cell if he ever follows Hillary Clinton's advise.




UPDATE: Amy Goodman Talks With Julian Assange

I don't understand why this interview hasn't gotten wider coverage by the media. It's certainly worth reading or watching, Maybe if Kim Kardashian had come along…

Goodman asked him about the new "letter that was written to Attorney General Eric Holder, signed by many organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Anthony Romero of the ACLU, Reporters Without Borders, World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters and many others, calling on the Justice Department to officially close all criminal investigations against WikiLeaks… and to stop harassment and other persecution of WikiLeaks for publishing in the public interest." Among other things, he replied with a statement that went right to a very uncomfortable aspect of what we've been talking about above:

[I]f you look at how the Espionage Act prosecutions have developed, there is now more investigations and prosecutions by the Obama administration of people under the Espionage Act-- principally, whistleblowers and journalists-- than all previous presidents combined, going back to 1917-- in fact, more than double. And people understand that it’s not just us. In fact, the precedent has been set that you can perhaps do this to almost anyone.