Replies to post #300836 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[tinner]

Bring it on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Domestic spying inquiry restarted at DoJ By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer
12 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into the government's warrantless wiretapping program, a major policy shift only days into the tenure of Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

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The investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility was shut down last year, after the investigators were denied security clearances. Gonzales told Congress that President Bush, not he, denied the clearances.

"We recently received the necessary security clearances and are now able to proceed with our investigation," H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the OPR, wrote to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y. A copy of the letter, dated Tuesday, was obtained by The Associated Press.

Hinchey and other Democrats have long sought an investigation into the spying program to see if it complies with the law. Efforts to investigate the program have been rebuffed by the Bush administration.

"I am happily surprised," Hinchey said. "It now seems because we have a new attorney general the situation has changed. Maybe this attorney general understands that his obligation is not to be the private counsel to the president but the chief law enforcement officer for the entire country."

The OPR investigation was begun in February 2006 but was shut down a few months later when the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the security clearances to ask questions about the program. Justice Department officials said Gonzales recommended Bush approve the clearances, but the president said no.

White House officials referred questions to the Justice Department.

The investigation "will focus on whether the DOJ attorneys who were involved complied with their ethical obligations of providing competent legal advice to their client and of adhering to their duty of candor to the court. Because this matter involves a pending inquiry, I can't comment further," Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said in a statement.

The Office of Professional Responsibility was created to ensure that Justice Department lawyers do not violate ethical rules. It is not authorized to investigate activities of the National Security Agency.

Bush's decision to authorize the spy agency to monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated a host of questions about the program's legal justification.

The administration has vehemently defended the eavesdropping, saying the NSA's activities were narrowly targeted to intercept international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the U.S. with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terror network.

A separate Justice Department internal investigation was opened last year by the agency's inspector general. Those investigators received their security clearances around the same time the OPR investigators' were denied, and their probe is ongoing.

Democrats have complained in the past that neither probe reviews whether the surveillance program violates the Constitution, the kind of decision usually reserved for the courts.

News of the reborn investigation comes a day before the first formal ceremony marking Mukasey's new post as head of the Justice Department.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the ceremonial oath to Mukasey, a retired federal judge who has promised to enforce laws fairly and keep the Justice Department free of political pressure from the White House.

Bush is scheduled to speak at the ceremony, set for 10:10 a.m. EST, after which Mukasey will address his employees for the first time.

Mukasey was sworn in last Friday in a brief, private ceremony that allowed him to start receiving daily classified briefings from his national security aides.

Mukasey, the third attorney general of the Bush administration, has 14 months until the president's term is up to turn around the beleaguered department. Gonzales resigned in September amid charges that he allowed politics to illegally interfere with personnel decisions and lied to Congress about national security programs.

A department investigation also is looking at last year's firings of nine U.S. attorneys — and whether at least one of them was dismissed because he refused to target Democratic candidates shortly before the 2006 elections.

Mukasey, nominated by Bush the day Gonzales left the department, is a retired chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

His confirmation by the Senate hit a brief — but serious — snag after he refused to say point-blank that he considered a harsh interrogation tactic known as waterboarding to be torture.

The Senate narrowly confirmed him late Thursday, 53-40. Critics noted that marked the slimmest margin by which an attorney general was confirmed in more than 50 years.

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Coming to a movie theater near you. Movies of Yogi's "No Torture claims"!

CIA admits to recording interrogations of top al Qaida captives
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 email | print tool nameclose
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WASHINGTON — The CIA has three video and audio recordings of interrogations of senior al Qaida captives but misled federal judges about the evidence during the case against terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, federal prosecutors revealed in a Nov. 9 court filing that was made public Tuesday.

The disclosure is unlikely to undo Moussaoui's conviction because the agency said the material on the tapes doesn't pertain to his case.

However, the disclosure that the government taped some interrogations of high-value detainees could invite fresh scrutiny of the CIA's treatment of so-called "enemy combatants" who were held at secret prisons or U.S. bases overseas.

John Radsan, a former CIA assistant general counsel who teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., called the revelation of the tapes "huge" news.

"So far, there has been great mystery about what was actually done to the high-value detainees," he said. "A videotape is worth a thousand words."

New Attorney General Michael Mukasey's Senate confirmation last week was threatened for a time by his refusal to declare as illegal an interrogation tactic known as "waterboarding", in which a suspect is doused with water to create the sensation of drowning.

The government's letter said that "the CIA came into possession of the three recordings under unique circumstances involving separate national security matters," leaving unclear whether the tapes show CIA interrogations or possibly questioning by agents of another country. At least one senior al Qaida member, Ibn Sheikh al Libi, reportedly was turned over to Egyptian authorities for questioning in 2002, but much of what he allegedly confessed proved to be false.

Prosecutors revealed the existence of the tapes in a letter to Chief Judge Karen Williams of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., and to U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of Alexandria, Va., the trial judge in the tumultuous, 4{-year prosecution of Moussaoui.

In it, they said that the CIA didn't notify them until Sept. 13 that it had discovered a videotape and the transcript of an interrogation of an unidentified detainee. Prosecutors said they then asked the CIA to perform "an exhaustive review" for any other recordings of roughly a half dozen al Qaida captives whom Moussaoui had sought as defense witnesses, and a second videotape and a brief audio tape were discovered.

Among the prisoners whose testimony Moussaoui sought were Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who allegedly admitted masterminding the 9/11 attacks after he was waterboarded; Ramzi Binalshibh, a senior al Qaida member who allegedly coordinated the attacks; and financier Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi. Summaries of statements from those three and several others were read at his trial.

"The fact that audio/video recording of enemy combatant interrogations occurred, and that the United States was in possession of three of those recordings is, as noted, inconsistent with factual assertions in CIA declarations dated May 9, 2003 . . . and November 14, 2005," the prosecutors wrote.

"When the CIA discovered this material — and it was the CIA that found it — the agency brought the matter to the attention of the Department of Justice," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said. He emphasized that "there was no prejudicial impact on the defendant."

Edward MacMahon, a defense lawyer who represented Moussaoui in his death penalty trial last year, declined to comment. A new team of defense lawyers who're handling Moussaoui's attempt to persuade an appellate court to allow him to withdraw his 2005 guilty plea didn't return calls.

McClatchy Newspapers 2007

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Another big surprise! Send them to talk to Yogi! Come to find out they have the same problems that Yogi supporters do. LOL

Later Army test finds more mental health issues By Kristin Roberts
Tue Nov 13, 4:16 PM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers are significantly more likely to report mental health problems six months after returning home from combat than on initial assessments, Army researchers said on Tuesday.

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Soldiers reported greater concern about interpersonal conflicts, post-traumatic stress, depression and alcohol problems in the second mental health screening, the researchers said.

They also found that one in five active-duty soldiers and almost half of reserve soldiers were receiving or in need of mental health services after combat.

"The rates that we previously reported based on surveys taken immediately upon return from deployment substantially underestimate the mental health burden," the military authors wrote in the report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"This study suggests that the mental health problems identified by Veterans Affairs clinicians in more than a quarter of recent combat veterans may have already been present within months of returning from war," the researchers wrote.

Mental health problems and suicide rates have increased among U.S. troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a string of studies released this year.

Those studies, which include a Pentagon assessment, found the military has provided inadequate mental health resources to its service members.

The authors of the latest study said it points to the need for more resources for the Defense Department mental health system to help soldiers before they leave duty and transition to the Veterans Affairs Department's health system.

PROBLEMS BEING MISSED

The Army, the largest branch of the U.S. military and the one most strained by war, administers a mental health assessment just as soldiers return home from combat. It added a second one six months later after concerns that problems were being missed.

A check of results from the second screening given to more than 88,000 soldiers found that the mental health risk and the rate of referral for health services rose for active-duty and reserve soldiers between the first and second assessments.

For example, the study found some mental health risk among 27.1 percent of active-duty soldiers after the second assessment compared with 17 percent after the first.

Soldiers' worries about interpersonal conflict -- such as disputes with their spouses -- increased the most, the study showed. About 14 percent of active-duty soldiers reported those concerns after being home six months compared with 3.5 percent immediately upon return.

The increase was larger among National Guard and Army Reserve forces, in line with other studies that found greater mental health problems among those part-time troops.

Of the reserve force, 35.5 percent were at some mental health risk six months after returning home compared with 17.5 percent on the first assessment, for example.

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Another BIG suuprise! NOT Another of Yogi's policies seems to have bitten the dust! What has happened to his "Abstinence" policy"? LOL


U.S. sets record in sexual disease cases By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer
Tue Nov 13, 8:27 PM ET



ATLANTA - More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year — the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said Tuesday.

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Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they think better and more intensive screening accounts for much of the increase, but added that chlamydia was not the only sexually transmitted disease on the rise.

Gonorrhea rates are jumping again after hitting a record low, and an increasing number of cases are caused by a "superbug" version resistant to common antibiotics.

Syphilis is rising, too. The rate of congenital syphilis — which can deform or kill babies — rose for the first time in 15 years.

"Hopefully we will not see this turn into a trend," said Dr. Khalil Ghanem, an infectious diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins University's School of medicine.

The CDC releases a report each year on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, three diseases caused by sexually transmitted bacteria.

Chlamydia is the most common. Nearly 1,031,000 cases were reported last year, up from 976,000 the year before.

The count broke the single-year record for reported cases of a sexually transmitted disease, which was 1,013,436 cases of gonorrhea, set in 1978.

Putting those numbers into rates, there were about 348 cases of chlamydia per 100,000 people in 2006, up 5.6 percent from the 329 per 100,000 rate in 2005.

Since 1993, the CDC has recommended annual screening in sexually active women ages 15 to 25. Meanwhile, urine and swab tests for the bacteria are getting better and are used more often, for men as well as women, said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr., director of the CDC's Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention.

About three-quarters of women infected with chlamydia have no symptoms. Left untreated, the infection can spread and ultimately can lead to infertility. It's easily treated if caught early.

Health officials believe as many as 2.8 million new cases may actually be occurring each year, he added.

Chlamydia infection rates are more than seven times higher in black women then whites, and more than twice as high in black women than Hispanics. But it's a risk women of all races should consider, CDC officials said.

"If (health care) providers think young women in their practice don't have chlamydia, they should think again," said Dr. Stuart Berman, a CDC epidemiologist.

The gonorrhea story is somewhat different.

In 2004, the nation's gonorrhea rate fell to 112.4 cases per 100,000 people in 2004, the lowest level since the government started tracking cases in 1941.

But since then, health officials have seen two consecutive years of increases. The 2006 rate — about 121 per 100,000 — represents a 5.5 percent increase from 2005.

Health officials don't know exactly how many superbug cases there were among the more than 358,000 gonorrhea cases reported in 2006. But a surveillance project of 28 cities found that 14 percent were resistant to ciprofloxacin and other medicines in the fluoroquinolones class of antibiotics.

Similar samples found that 9 percent were resistant to those antibiotics in 2005, and 7 percent were resistant in 2004. The appearance of the superbug has been previously reported, and the CDC is April advised doctors to stop using those drugs against gonorrhea.

Douglas said it doesn't look like the superbugs are the reason for gonorrhea's escalating numbers overall, but they're not sure what is driving the increase.

Other doctors are worried. The superbug gonorrhea has been on the rise not only in California and Hawaii, where the problem has been most noticeable, but also in the South and parts of the Midwest.

"Suddenly we're starting to see the spread," Ghanem said.

Syphilis, a potentially deadly disease that first shows up as genital sores, has become relatively rare in the United States. About 9,800 cases of the most contagious forms or syphilis were reported in 2006, up from about 8,700 in 2005.

The rate rose from 2.9 cases per 100,000 people to 3.3, a 14 percent increase.

For congenital syphilis, in which babies get syphilis from their mothers, the rate rose only slightly from the previous year to 8.5 cases per 100,000 live births.