1115.org

We’ve had occasion before to remark on the strangely close relationship between John McCain and Joe Lieberman.

Lieberman fueled that unhealthy speculation with his odd (queer?) remarks today:

I just want to report that this morning I personally checked John McCain’s bearings. He has not lost any of them. They are all in really great shape.

Those would be ball-bearings, presumably?

(1)
Someone forgot to give Guantánamo tribunal judge Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III the memo about how his job is just to quietly produce convictions. Either that, or someone did a lousy job of vetting him before they made him a Guantánamo judge. Because he really doesn’t seem to like performing to the Bush administration’s script:

A military judge in the trial of Canadian captive Omar Khadr threatened Thursday to suspend the terror trial unless the prison camp releases a detailed log of Khadr’s treatment in more than five years of detention as an alleged al Qaeda terrorist.

Khadr, 21, is accused of throwing a hand grenade in a July 2002 firefight between U.S. forces and al Qaeda suspects in Afghanistan. A Special Forces medic, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., died of his wounds. Khadr was 15.

His attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, wants the log in a pretrial effort to limit the scope of evidence given to a jury of U.S. military officers at his upcoming trial, expected in late summer. He argues the circumstances of some interrogations would exclude some of his statements from the trial.

Thursday morning, the military judge, Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III, agreed with the defense that it should get copies of the log entries from the prison camp’s Detainee Information Management System, or DIMS.

Brownback is believed to be the first war court judge to threaten to ”abate” the proceedings if the prison camp’s command staff does not turn over the evidence.

Brownback must enjoy deeply discomfiting the Bush administration, because he’s been there and done that before. (Or maybe he just has a quaint, quixotic belief in the principles of American justice that is thoroughly at odds with our prevailing Guantánamo philosophy?)

Back in June 2007, Brownback was one of two military judges who decided that they had no option but to dismiss all charges against the first two men to be tried under The Military Commissions Act that was hurriedly passed by Congress at Bush’s insistence. (The reason was the tribunals are empowered only to try “unlawful enemy combatants”, and the Guantánamo detainees had all been designated — very formally, and with great pomp and ceremony — as “enemy combatants”.)

After the hearing, Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a military commissions legal expert, said there has been no abatement so far at the war court, which is now receiving pretrial motions in six cases and has charge sheets for seven more in the wings.

”If you can’t get discovery, you can’t go forward,” Crawford said.

Brownback’s ultimate remedy after abatement, she said, would be to dismiss the charges entirely.

And that, of course, will have not just Bush but several other ranking Bushies jumping up and down in apoplectic rage.

So it looks like the government is fixing to comply with the order to turn over the log. In their own inimitable way:

A statement Thursday evening from the prison camps command staff, called the Joint Task Force, or JTF, said the commanders were “working closely with the prosecutors to redact the records for release.”
[…]
”This entails a significant effort to redact information which would put JTF personnel at risk,” the statement added, without elaborating on the nature of the risk.

It isn’t exactly clear why any redaction is necessary:

Brownback noted that Khadr’s defense attorneys — Kuebler and Rebecca Snyder, a civilian Pentagon lawyer — are cleared to see any sensitive national security information that might be included in the log.

Maybe it’s just habit by now, or maybe JTF command staff get penalized if they don’t drag their heels when cooperating with requests like these? Funny how Brownback seems to have anticipated heel-dragging.

(2)
One of the issues that Brownback is going to have to rule on if the trial continues is whether statements made by Khadr to interrogators, both at Bagram air base in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo, were obtained by coercion or torture. The entire TWAT chain of command is surely looking forward to that ruling. Brownback sounds like just the judge they would hand-pick to draw the dividing line between coercion and torture.

According to Khadr’s defense lawyers, a criminal investigation by the U.S. army into allegations that Khadr was abused at Bagram was halted in October 2006, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Khadr’s lawyers “are accusing the U.S. government of a cover-up”:

“It appears that the government killed that investigation precisely to keep the allegations or the evidence of Omar’s abuse at Bagram from coming to light,” U.S. Navy Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler told reporters after the hearing.
[…]
Khadr was 15 years old when he was brought to the U.S. base camp at Bagram, Afghanistan, after his capture in a firefight on July 27, 2002. He had been shot twice in the back by U.S. forces.

Khadr claims that during the three months he was imprisoned at Bagram he was interrogated more than 40 times – sometimes brought for questioning on a stretcher.

Kuebler told reporters that before the army investigation stopped, the findings corroborated some of Khadr’s allegations of abuse, including the fact that it was standard policy to chain detainees by their wrists to the top of the cells.

“Picture a 15-year-old boy with those types of injuries being forced with his arms chained like this for extended period of time in Bagram, and think about the effect that would have on him and his willingness to co-operate with interrogators,” Kuebler said.

Two months after Khadr was transferred, Sgt. Joshua Claus, who was Khadr’s chief interrogator at Bagram, was charged and convicted in the death of an Afghan taxi driver while in custody.

Claus, who spent five months in jail for the man’s death, denied allegations of abuse concerning Khadr.

In a sworn affidavit, Khadr also said he was threatened with rape and left short-shackled to a bolt in the floor for as long as six hours at Guantanamo. He says he was so scared that he told interrogators what they wanted to hear.

For the record, just to charge a 15-year old with war crimes — as we have done — violates the Geneva conventions. The treatment he was subjected to at Bagram, where he was brought in on a stretcher, wounded so badly that it was unbelievable he was still alive, is just icing on the cake. Add to that the fact that his chief interrogator was convicted of torturing a prisoner to death, and “plead guilty to playing a role in the routine abuse of captives held in extrajudicial detention in the Bagram Theatre Detention Facility in 2002″. Brownback will rule how he rules on the coercion versus torture issue. But it’s surely a little ironic in light of our treatment of Khadr that we are charging him with war crimes?

If you happen to see Hillary Clinton pushing pins into the groin region of a voodoo doll that looks suspiciously like Jimmy Carter, this would be why:

Meanwhile, former President Carter said Wednesday that delegates from Florida and Michigan should not be counted at the Democratic National Convention because they “disqualified themselves.” He warned of a disaster if party insiders try to wrest the nomination from the candidate with the largest number of votes and state victories.

An attempt by so-called Democratic superdelegates to override the popular vote “would be an almost unacceptable thing,” Carter told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show.”

If a candidate has a clear edge in votes, state-by-state wins and delegates claimed at caucuses and primaries, “I can’t imagine that the superdelegates would go against them,” Carter said. “It would be a catastrophe for the party.”

The Pentagon is busy trying to make political capital out of the fact that a detainee who was released from Guantanamo in 2005 carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq yesterday:

A suicide bomber in Iraq was identified yesterday as a former Taliban fighter who was held for more than three years at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before he was handed over to authorities in his native Kuwait in 2005 and subsequently released.

… Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi, 29, had driven a car bomb into an Iraqi police patrol …
[…]
… Pentagon officials yesterday said Ajmi, who was among more than 500 former Guantanamo inmates who have been released or transferred to other countries, was a dramatic reminder of the danger in releasing those who are avowed terrorists - even to US allies who promise to ensure they will not pose a future threat.

The Pentagon press office yesterday listed a dozen former Guantanamo inmates who it contends returned to fight against the United States and its allies upon their release. Several were recaptured or killed in Afghanistan, and others were arrested for planning attacks in countries ranging from Russia to Turkey.

US military officials said Ajmi, known as “Captive 220″ during his 3 1/2 years of detention in Guantanamo, helped carry out a triple suicide car bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on April 26, killing seven Iraqis and wounding 28. They said he had recently traveled to Iraq through Syria, a popular entry point for foreign militants.

His photo appeared yesterday on a jihadist website that hailed him as a hero.

“There is an implied future risk to US and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo,” said Navy Commander Jeff Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. “Our reports indicate that a number of former [Guantanamo] detainees have taken part in anticoalition militant activities after leaving US detention. Some have subsequently been killed in combat and participated in suicide bomber attacks.”

The Defense Intelligence Agency, meanwhile, estimates that as many as 37 former inmates have been “confirmed or suspected” of returning to terrorist activities, according to Pentagon officials who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak about intelligence matters.

So the Pentagon would like you to believe that military authorities somehow, very much against their will, regularly agree to release Guantanamo detainees who they regard as avowed terrorists? They they somehow agree to release them because U.S. allies say “Pretty please?”, and promise that they’ll never ever be naughty again.

That, of course, is as big a lie as any that the Bush administration ever used to conflate the Iraq war with TWAT, or sell the Iraq war to the American people. An easily proven lie, too. Just the story of Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany, is enough to prove the lie. (I guess lying to the American public about terrorism is a habit that’s hard to break. Of course, there’s no evidence that the Bush administration has even tried.)

Here’s the short version of Kurnaz’s story:
• He was detained in Pakistan in October 2001 and taken to Guantanamo a few months later on suspicion that he was a supporter of al-Qaeda.
• By early 2002, both U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement authorities had largely concluded there was no information linking Kurnaz to al-Qaeda or terrorist activities.
• A military tribunal at Guantanamo nevertheless concluded that he should remain in prison.
• In January 2005, U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green criticized the military for ignoring evidence in Kurnaz’s favor, ruled that his detention was illegal, and ordered him to be released.
• The government appealed, of course.
• He was finally released only in August 2006.
• U.S. officials asked Germany to place Kurnaz under surveillance and open a criminal investigation of him as a condition of his release, but relented in the end (because German officials told U.S. officials to go climb a tree, or something to that effect).
• We put him on a plane, kept him shackled and blindfolded all the way home, and told the German authorities to treat him humanely.

This is how we treat detainees who are clearly not guilty of anything. And the Pentagon, with their usual straight face, would like you to believe that we have been reluctantly agreeing to release dozens of detainees who we just knew were avowed terrorists who would constitute an implied future risk to US and allied interests?

The position the Pentagon is now pushing is clearly that it’s a huge mistake to release anyone from Guantanamo at all (”There is an implied future risk to US and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo”). When they say that, they are only channeling Pol Pot, who is said to have subscribed to the view that “it is better that ten innocent men suffer than one guilty man escape”. That has practically been the Bush administration’s guiding principle in TWAT, especially when it comes to Guantanamo.

The Pentagon also wants you to blindly believe that every released detainee who returns to fight against the United States and its allies after his release does so because he was a hardened terrorist before he entered Guantanamo. The thought that our charming detention practices at Guantanamo may possibly drive innocent men to become confirmed America-haters, and to act on that newly hatched hate, has apparently never occurred to the Pentagon, and so it shouldn’t occur to you either.

Consumers mark tax rebates for bills and savings - Reuters (5/7/08):

Consumers like Cindy Shea, 45, a single mother from Edmond, Oklahoma, say they have big plans for their rebates.

“I’m excited about my rebate check,” Shea said. “It will make a huge difference. I’ll be using the money for home improvements.”

We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see if people will spend, save or pay down debt with their stimulus checks. All indications and surveys point to saving/debt service, but people sometimes say things to make themselves look better to pollsters. And even though Reuters did try to present the case that the stimulative effect of the checks will be minor, including this quote is just he-said-she-said-ism, balance for the sake of balance.

I get that $600 might seem like a lot of money to some people, but not when it comes to home improvement, even when you do it yourself. (Ask Sac, he can’t even afford to pay me on the 2 $5 bets we had.) And between food and energy inflation, just because Ms. Shea thinks she’s spending her check at Home Depot, doesn’t make it so; she’ll end up spending much more than that at the supermarket and the gas station.

Paulson says markets emerging from crunch - Reuters (5/7/08):

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said U.S. financial markets are emerging from the credit crunch that many economists believe has pushed the country to the brink of recession, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“I do believe that the worst is likely to be behind us,” Paulson told the newspaper in an interview.

On Monday I noted that when President Bush assured everyone that his administration had been nothing but “clear and candid” about the economy, it seemed as if he was almost certainly excepting Paulson.

Looking at the calendar, I see that it’s been just over a year since Paulson’s notorious bottom call on housing:

“All the signs I look at” show “the housing market is at or near the bottom,” Paulson said. The U.S. economy is “very healthy” and “robust,” he said

I wonder if Paulson would entertain a little wager. If he’s right, I’ll have his current quote tattooed on my forehead. If I’m right, he gets his April 2007 quote tattooed on his forehead.

For a long time now, the writing has been on the wall. But Hillary Clinton, for some reason, has proved unable to read it. If it’s not myopic dyslexia that she suffers from, then it must be dyslexic myopia. She’s been stupidly stubbornly shortsighted.

For a long time now it’s been abundantly clear that, given the numbers — and all the twaddle about Florida and Michigan delegates notwithstanding — the probability of Clinton overtaking Obama in terms of pledged delegates or total delegates or the popular vote was exactly zero.

Here’s the delegate math at this point: with 217 pledged delegates still up for grabs and 267 superdelegates still uncommitted, Obama leads 1588 to 1422 in terms of pledged delegates, and 1845 to 1693 in terms of total delegates. To take the pledged delegate lead, Clinton would need to win 192 of the remaining 217 delegates (88%). That couldn’t be happening even in Hillary Clinton’s dreams.

If we generously assume that Clinton and Obama split the remaining 217 pledged delegates (and go ahead and give the tie-breaker to Clinton), then Obama would need only 67 of the remaining 267 superdelegates (25%) to get to 2025 total delegates and clinch the nomination, while Clinton would need 218 (82%). Once again, that’s fantasyland for Clinton.

Until this morning, though, the media and non-partisan bloggers have largely been content to play along with the Clinton campaign, and refrain from pointing out that she really didn’t have a snowball’s hope in hell of taking the nomination. Not by fair means, not even by marginally foul means.

And while Obama won North Carolina by a bigger margin than expected (14.7% compared to the consensus forecast of 8%), and Clinton won Indiana by a smaller margin than expected (1.8% compared to the consensus forecast of 5%), last night’s results were broadly in line with expectations. Yet, somehow, these just-as-expected results have led to some very blunt talk about how Clinton is now done, even if she continues to cling to her myopic dyslexia. And this blunt talk has been surprisingly widespread.

There was Tim Russert on MSNBC last night:

We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it…
[…]
Their ability to raise money after the events of tonight - it’s going to be very difficult. As opposed to what happened after Pennsylvania, when money roared in, because people saw a realistic chance. That no longer exists. They know it, Obama knows it, and the voters … now know it, as well…. She has some real soul-searching to do. And those closest to her will give her a hard-headed analysis, and if they lay it all out, they’ll say, ‘What is the rationale? What do we say to the undeclared superdelegates tomorrow? Why do we tell them you’re staying in the race?’ Tonight, there’s no good answer for that.

There was the press release put out by Service Employees International Union (SEIU):

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

OBAMA: CLEARLY THE PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE

SEIU Calls for Democrats to Unite Around Obama
“Senator Obama’s commanding win in North Carolina and close showing in Indiana means he is clearly the Democratic nominee for President,” said Anna Burger, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer. “We’ve had a long process and the outcome is now clear. The Democratic Party should come together to focus on winning in November.”

There was the Clinton insider who told the WP:

We lost this thing in February. We’re doing everything we can now . . . but it’s just an uphill battle.

Here’s Mark Halperin’s summary of the media reaction:

ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “End of the Road”

NBC’s “Today”: “Is it Over?”

CBS’ “Early Show”: “Obama’s Big Night”

NBC: Russert repeated his Obama-is-the-nominee line, but hung it on “objective Democrats” rather than his own judgment. Of insiders, said “the obstacles are overwhelming, and they know it.” Russert suggested Obama would help Clinton retire her campaign debt (and pay off Mark Penn’s bills) as part of an exit deal.

Andrea Mitchell: “She is ready to give up.” Cited Ed Rendell as the kind of supporter who might ease her out.

ABC: Stephanopoulos said despite the race going on “this nomination fight is over,” Obama’s lead “can’t be overcome” in elected delegates. Says she’s depending on Oregon, seating full delegations of Michigan, Florida and a “revelation” on the scale of another Rev. Wright controversy to see any sort of comeback.

CBS: Schieffer said the race is “basically” over, question is whether this “demolition derby” continues where they are fighting each other. Suggested dream ticket as a solution. Said she’s meeting with advisers Wednesday, there will be increased pressure on her to drop out.

There’s no doubt that the media narrative has suddenly shifted. That can only make it harder for Clinton to go on ignoring the writing on the wall. Then there’s also the campaign’s money woes. Maybe the lady will end up making an exit after all. (I was about to say “graceful” exit, but after the campaign she has waged the last few weeks, it’s hard to attach the word graceful to expected campaign behavior by her.)

*** Update, 9:25 am ***

Americablog, last night:

We’ve just been told that General Wesley Clark, a strong Clinton supporter and fellow Arkansan, called Hillary tonight to tell her it’s over.

(Clark denied this and AmericaBlog updated their post. - Matt)

AP:

Former Sen. George McGovern, an early supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race and endorsed her rival, Barack Obama.

NYT: Pundits Declare the Race Over

Very early this morning, after many voters had already gone to sleep, the conventional wisdom of the elite political pundit class that resides on television shifted hard, and possibly irretrievably, against Senator Hillary Clinton’s continued viability as a presidential candidate.

So hard to tell in the Bush administration who the good guys are. Take U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch. Didn’t start out looking very much like a good guy. As Matt pointed out, when he started to get good press:

He’s actually a particularly odious Bush appointee and partisan Republican who was part of the “faith-based” nonsense and loves him some good, old-fashioned gay-bashing.

But the fact remains that in April 2007, he took on Karl Rove:

Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.

But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.
[…]
“We will take the evidence where it leads us,” Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. “We will not leave any stone unturned.”

Bloch declined to comment on who his investigators would interview, but he said the probe would be independent and uncoordinated with any other agency or government entity.

And then in June, he came down hard on GSA chief Lurita Doan:

The Office of Special Counsel, in a letter to President Bush released late Monday, said General Services Administrator Lurita Doan engaged in “the most pernicious of political activity” banned by the 1939 Hatch Act when she asked, at a meeting of General Services Administration political appointees, how they could help Republican candidates.

“I recommend that Administrator Doan be disciplined to the fullest extent for her serious violation of the Hatch Act and insensitivity to cooperating fully and honestly in the course of our investigation,” wrote Scott Bloch, special counsel for the independent investigative and prosecutorial agency.recommending that should be “punished to the fullest extent” for engaging in “the most pernicious of political activity” banned by the 1939 Hatch Act when she asked, at a meeting of GSA political appointees, how they could help Republican candidates.

So for a while, he made himself look pretty good, grabbed himself a lot of positive headlines. But what the press wasn’t talking about a whole lot was the unsavory side of Scott Bloch.

He has been on the hot seat since he took office in 2004, in part for closing hundreds of whistle-blower cases allegedly without investigating them.

“It’s like finding out that your town fire chief is an arsonist,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Protection, a whistle-blower group.

“It’s just sort of jaw-dropping how bizarre this entire episode has been.”

A group of current and former Office of Special Counsel workers filed a complaint against Bloch in 2005, accusing him of retaliating against those who opposed with his policies through intimidation and involuntary transfers. The employees also accused Bloch of refusing to protect federal workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Those charges are being investigated by the inspector general at the Office of Personnel Management.

In November 2007, Bloch seems to have decided to engage in some old-fashioned destruction of evidence in the middle of this investigation:

… Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination.

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

Bypassing his agency’s computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, the 49-year-old former labor-law litigator from Lawrence, Kan., confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer.

Except that the virus story doesn’t exactly seem to hold water:

Mr. Bloch had his computer’s hard disk completely cleansed using a “seven-level” wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency.
[…]
Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington’s Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. “We don’t do a seven-level wipe for a virus,” he said.

And now this whole untidy mess has boiled over very nicely:

Federal agents raided the office and home of U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch on Tuesday while investigating whether the nation’s top protector of whistle-blowers destroyed evidence potentially showing he retaliated against his own staff.

Computers and documents were seized during the raid on the special counsel’s downtown office, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry. At least 20 agents were still on the scene as of mid-afternoon Tuesday.

Bloch’s home, in a Virginia suburb of Washington, also was raided, the officials said.

This is, of course, a soap opera of unbelievably comic proportions:

Only with the Bush gang is this set of circumstances even possible — Bloch is ostensibly investigating the Justice Department for its political activities, and simultaneously the Justice Department sends the FBI to raid Bloch’s office and home. What’s more, everybody is probably guilty.

And so, for the second day in a row, I am forced to end a post by exclaiming: Only in George Bush’s administration!

*** Update, 5:50 pm ***

Anyone who has followed Bloch’s story has probably wondered whether Bloch — who was very much considered “one of us” by the Bush administration when they appointed him as Special Counsel — cooked up his wide-ranging investigation of Karl Rove’s misdeeds just to create conflict of interest issues if the administration attempted to take action against him on the various charges that had already been leveled against him.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a government watchdog, is charging that that was exactly Bloch’s motivation. What they’re calling evidence is not all that clear-cut, but TPMMuckraker is pushing their claim:

Now government watchdog POGO says they’ve discovered evidence that Bloch’s apparent motivation for launching a very well publicized probe was to make himself invulnerable:

An extraordinary document obtained by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) from inside the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) reveals that Special Counsel Scott Bloch created a special task force to investigate sensitive and high-profile matters and then ignored virtually every recommendation made by it. The document lends support to POGO’s theory that Bloch used the task force to launch an investigation of the White House, issuing demands for documents termed by his own task force as “overly broad,” to create the appearance of a conflict of interest with an ongoing investigation into allegations that Bloch himself had engaged in misconduct.

“Created a special task force and then ignored virtually every recommendation made by it” doesn’t necessarily sound all that convincing. That, of course, doesn’t mean Bloch’s motivation wasn’t exactly what BOGO says it is.

Someone who played college football — or who understands the arcane stupidities of NCAA football rules for some other reason — will have to explain this WP story to me:

The Howard University football team was one of 218 Division I programs sanctioned by the NCAA yesterday for failing to meet academic standards. …

The NCAA yesterday unveiled the latest batch of Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores, which measure how well a team returns academically eligible athletes semester to semester, as well as the sanctions imposed on underachievers.
[…]
… Howard’s football team will lose 2.91 scholarships because of an APR score of 916 (the magic number you need to hit is 925, which “equates roughly to a 60 percent graduation rate”).

How exactly do you lose 2.91 scholarships? With your left hand you take away three scholarships, but with your right hand you give one 9% scholarship? (Or maybe NCAA rules require you to give three 3% scholarships?) Eric Prisbell, who wrote the WP story, spent a lot of time explaining a lot of other stuff, but he didn’t even try to address the non-integer scholarship. Not how the NCAA rocket scientists came up with 2.91 in the first place, not how this delightful penalty gets imposed in practice.

Thomas Insel is director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. A brave man, evidently. Or foolhardy, or about to retire, or he just doesn’t care about his job any more for some reason. He has come out with a startling assessment of just how badly the Bush administration has dropped the ball when it comes to veteran suicides:

The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government’s top psychiatric researcher said.
[…]
Insel echoed a Rand Corporation study published last month that found about 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post- traumatic stress disorder or depression, and only half of them receive treatment. About 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought in the two wars since October 2001, the report said. About 4,560 soldiers had died in the conflicts as of today, the Defense Department reported on its Web site.

Based on those figures and established suicide rates for similar patients who commonly develop substance abuse and other complications of post-traumatic stress disorder, “it’s quite possible that the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war could trump the combat deaths,’” Insel said.

Perhaps Insel’s assessment shouldn’t be regarded as so startling, after all? Remember how the Bush administration’s efforts to combat veteran suicides seem to have focused on shutting their eyes to the problem, and just lying about the number of suicide attempts (and suicides) among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans?

Two weeks ago, CBS News reported that Dr. Ira Katz, head of Mental Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs, had been caught red-handed lying about the number of suicide attempts among veterans.

In November, Katz told a CBS News reporter: “There is no epidemic in suicide in VA.”

But in this e-mail to his top media adviser, written two months ago, Katz appears to be saying something very different, stating: “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities.”

Katz’s e-mail was written shortly after the VA provided CBS News data showing there were only 790 attempted suicides in all 2007 - a fraction of Katz’s estimate.

“This 12,000 attempted suicides per year shows clearly, without a doubt, that there is an epidemic of suicide among veterans,” said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense.

And it appears that Katz went out of his way to conceal these numbers.

First, he titled his e-mail: “Not for the CBS News Interview Request.”

He opened it with “Shh!” - as in keep it quiet - before ending with
“Is this something we should (carefully) address … before someone stumbles on it?”

Why address the problem, and try to reduce the number of actual suicide attempts, when it’s so much easier to just perform a radical numerectomy on the official statistics? Especially when you can achieve much more dramatic results by number-fudging than you ever could through providing adequate mental health services.

This guy is surely the perfect combination of criminal negligence and criminally stupidity? What kind of mental defective do you have to be to a) think you can get away with claiming that attempted suicides are 15 times lower than they actually are, and b) to openly put it all in writing in an email like that?

And this guy has still not been fired. Only in George Bush’s administration!