Bush's top general quashed torture dissent

The former Air Force general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, helped quash dissent from across the U.S. military as the Bush administration first set up a brutal interrogation regime for terrorism suspects, according to newly public documents and testimony from an ongoing Senate probe. In late 2002, officials from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps all complained that harsh interrogation tactics under consideration for use at the prison in Guantánamo Bay might be against the law. Those military officials called for further legal scrutiny of the tactics. That scrutiny stopped when a top aide to Rumsfeld stepped in.

Salon.com reports

Rival Conferences for Anglican Church

Conservatives infuriated at the pro-gay marriage stance of the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada are boycotting the Lambeth Conference, the global Anglican Communion's once-a-decade gathering of bishops where theological decisions have been made for 150 years. Rather than participate, the conservative faction has launched its own conference in Jerusalem, asserting in an 89-page document, "The Way, The Truth and the Life": “We have arrived at a crossroads; it is, for us, the moment of truth.’’

Telegraph reports

Christian Right Courts Lou Dobbs

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, known for his anti-immigrant tirades, will address the Family Research Council-sponsored Values Voters Summit in September. Last fall, FRC senior fellow Christopher Gazek wrote, “The bundle of concerns that Dobbs and his audience have about globalization, trade, diminished American sovereignty and immigration will be ignored by politicians at their own peril.” Immigration hasn’t yet played a major role in the presidential campaign, but the Dobbs invite is further evidence that the Christian Right is embracing anti-immigrant nativism.

See Values Voters Summit invitation

Grand Juries: Latest Abortion Battlefield

An unusual Kansas law giving ordinary citizens the power to order a grand jury investigation of an alleged crime has provided the state’s anti-abortion movement with a new weapon. Abortion opponents gathered 7,000 petition signatures to demand an investigation of one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country. State Senator John L. Vratil, a Republican Judiciary Committee member, says the law is “being used in a political way to further a political cause, and that was never the purpose of the grand jury system in Kansas.”

New York Times reports

Military Ban Targets Lesbians More Then Gay Men

"Women make up fifteen percent of the armed forces, so to find they represent nearly fifty percent of Army and Air Force discharges under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' is shocking," says Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, commenting on statistics recently collected through a Freedom of Information request.

365Gay.com reports

Open Feud Over Domestic War on Terrorism

Is the terrorist threat coming from a Leaderless Jihad, which promotes local, grassroots terrorist groups (“bunches of guys”), as Marc Sageman argues in his new book? Or is Sageman understating the peril of the Al Qaeda-style hierarchical leadership structure, as Bruce Hoffman charges in a recent issue of Foreign Policy? More than an academic argument, the very way the next presidency will tackle the terrorist threat is at stake.

New York Times reports

Poll: Majority Support Same-Sex Marriage in California

More California voters approve than disapprove of same-sex marriage. In a survey completed May 17-26 among a random sample of 1,052 registered voters the idea of allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry is now approved by a 51% to 42% margin statewide.


The Field Research Corporation reports

Katha Pollitt Castigates South Dakota Pro-Choice Strategy

South Dakotans have rolled out a new initiative, Measure 11, banning abortion with loopholes, in theory, for rape and incest victims who report the crime to law enforcement and allow collection of their DNA and that of the fetus, as well as to women "at serious risk of a substantial and irreversible impairment of the functioning of a major bodily organ or system." In this fight, the antichoicers have the vision, the grassroots energy and the political momentum (as well as the Catholic and evangelical churches and key legislators in both parties), while the prochoicers are left with abstract arguments and the fall-back position that the ban, if passed, will be enjoined by the courts and eventually found unconstitutional.

Katha Pollitt reports

Social Scientists Object to Pentagon Research Program

Even as the American Anthropology Association issued a formal letter opposing a social science research program led by the Pentagon, the Department of Defense says it might put the Minerva program in the hands of the National Science Foundation. Minerva would spend millions on university consortiums to study "political Islam," create an archive on "Chinese military and technology studies," and examine captured Iraqi documents for "The Iraqi and Terrorist Perspectives Project."


Insidehighered.com reports

Anchors Concede Weak Reporting in War Run Up

"I was in Kuwait for the build-up to the war, and, yes, we heard from the Pentagon, on my cell phone, the minute they heard us report something that they didn't like. The tone of that time was quite extraordinary," said Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News on the Today Show, when he was appearing with the other major network anchors to promote a the September simulcast of "Stand Up To Cancer" event. "I do think we were remiss in not asking some of the right questions," said CBS News' Katie Couric. Charles Gibson of ABC disagreed.


MSNBC.com reports