U.S.: Female Iraqi Detainees Freed…. No Connection to Jill Carroll

The U.S. does or does not want to free journalist Jill carroll? Argue all you want, journalists in Iraq shouldn’t be martyred as heroes more than soldiers…

Truth, however – soldiers aren’t heroes because they dissappear, they do not return in flag-draped coffins as far as the public can see…

Sounds like Ms. Carroll did just fine on her own — why release Iraqi detainees and claim no connection to the still detained Carroll… is it a “negotiating with terrorists” taboo from the same government that gave birth to quasi-enemy Hamas???

Friday’s Guardian:

The US military freed five women detainees in Iraq yesterday, but officials denied any connection with the demands of kidnappers holding the American journalist Jill Carroll.

The women freed yesterday were among about 420 detainees due to be released after a US-Iraqi review panel decided there was no reason to hold them. “The case of the women detainees is a legal case and it has nothing to do with the case of the American journalist,” an Iraqi justice ministry official told al-Jazeera television.

Coverage of the NSA Scandal

A must read from retired first amendment litigator (and recipient of the 2005 best new blog award) Glenn Greenwald:

The media need not take sides in the NSA debate or in any other. But it is failing in its primary purpose if it continues to allow the Administration to blithely make false statements without informing their readers that the statements are false. Allowing the Government to make false statements is not neutrality; it is an abdication of the principal journalistic responsibility.

Read the whole thing here.

Wiretapping Lawsuits Filed; Dr. King Rolls Over

ACLU ad, Washington Post, Jan 16, 2006Eric Lichtblau reveals that two lawsuits are being filed in regards to President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program.

According to the article, in Tuesday’s New York Times, the two separate suits are being filed by the in Detroit, and the Center for Constitutional Rights in Manhattan, on behalf of Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, Guantanamo Action Network, oft-scrutinized journalist Christopher Hitchens and Tara McKelvey, senior editor of The American Prospect.

The full-page ACLU ad at left appeared in Monday’s Washington Post.

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Classes were not in session in the United States today, in observance of what would have been the 77th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but while it is honorable to celebrate the man, we certainly have not come far as a society in holding up his legacy as a civil rights visionary. Robin Shulman writes in Tuesday’s Guardian:

Millions of Americans marked Martin Luther King Day yesterday with tributes to the civil rights leader, despite a Harvard University report showing that racial segregation in schools has been increasing since the early 1990s, when the courts made a series of decisions to dissolve desegregation orders.

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Unless you were watching C-Span, you missed the very important speech (foreshadowed by The Nation’s John Nichols on Friday) given by former Vice President Al Gore.

In a midday speech memorializing Dr. Martin Luther King at Constitution Hall, Gore criticized the president for his careless and repeated constitutional breaches, and warned the public against “a gross and excessive power grab” by the Bush Administration.”

transcript – (Raw Story)
Audio (.mp3)

“Where was this Gore when we needed him?” queried a journalist seated next to The Tribune’s Frank James, according to his glowing review in the Trib Washington Bureau’s The Swamp blog. At any rate, it appears that Gore will not stand down.
Additional commentary at Digby’s Hullabaloo, The Left Coaster, and Susie was there and highlights tomorrow’s headlines, in which the media finally shows up for the bashing. Seems the much needed blast of new blood is being injected by the people’s president that never was? The “right blogosphere” is quick to juxtapose Gore’s rage against his policies as a VP, but libertarians tend to be on Al’s side when it comes to guarding against Constitutional transgressions.
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Also, Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, who remembers wiretapping Dr. King.