Incremental progress: 1
Headlong dash to the past: 0

Sorry, Mssrs. R, no lovely parting gifts nor a home version for playing.

The Sun is sunnier, the sky bluer, the birds chirpier today.

Because ‘an empty vessel makes the most noise’ is still a truism.

Because the Power Point Presidency has left the building.

Because the attempted hostile takeover of the United States of America has been thwarted.

In a decision that could ban the military’s favorite methods of prosecuting Guantanamo Bay detainees, a federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned the 2008 military commission conviction of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote for a three-judge DC Circuit panel that Hamdan could not be prosecuted for acts that were not crimes at the time they were committed. That’s because the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing laws ex post facto—after the fact. The government cannot make something a crime after you’ve already done it and then charge you for doing it. But that’s exactly what Congress seemed to do in 2006 when it made “material support for terrorism” a war crime and encouraged the military to prosecute Gitmo detainees—who had already been imprisoned for years—for committing it.

“This is a massive blow to the legitimacy of the military commissions system,” says Zachary Katznelson, a senior attorney at the ACLU. The commissions “have been trying people for years for something that isn’t even a war crime.”

[snip]

“Not only did the president sign the legislation knowing there wasn’t a legal basis for this charge,” Katznelson says, “but his administration then prosecuted people for something that was not a war crime at all.” Source

Worst thing of the entire program was to witness Jim Lehrer morphing from news media patriarch and éminence grise to Captain Dunsel in the span of the first 15 minutes.

Mr. Obama had a ready, if rote, grasp of facts and figures, but few flickers of fire.

As for Mr. Romney, he gave a creditable audition for the role of hyped-up Harold Hill in The Music Man, but little more.

All three people on the stage essentially were lost in the weeds for the bulk of the time allotted.

All the meat is hidden by the denseness of the upper crust, which releases hot air.

Swedish people believe today that the worst scandal suffered by their country in the last 20 years occurred in 2001, when the Government was involved in the controversial program to torture and illegally transfer persons detained by the CIA.

According to a poll conducted by Channel 5, the scandal arising from the CIA’s secret flights was number one, ahead of poor governance in the face of the 2004 tsunami in Asia, that endangered 10,000 Swedish citizens who were in Thailand.

Meanwhile, third place went to the controversial support and participation of Stockholm in the construction of a weapons factory in Saudi Arabia, a situation that drove the resignation in March of the Defense Minister, Sten Tolgfors. Source

With the slow-burning but tenacious investigation of the CIA ‘black site’ in Poland, the floodgates of truth are being incrementally pried open more and more.

Cloistered inside government offices, surrounded by classified documents, Polish prosecutors are building a case that could result in criminal charges against the nation’s former spy chief and even, some say, against former senior political leaders. Evidence that a foreign power was allowed to conduct illicit activities on Polish soil has deeply shaken many Poles’ faith in the United States and in Poland’s sense of itself as a successful democracy born from the ashes of the Cold War.

[…]

“It’s the kind of thing we expect from Soviet Russia. We remember the Soviet occupation; we remember the German occupation,” said attorney Mikolaj Pietrzak, who represents one of the Islamist men allegedly held and questioned in Poland. “The fact that this beacon of liberty which is America would allow this — it’s a great disappointment in the United States as the land of the free.”

Poland is not the only country in Europe where the U.S. allegedly operated a secret detention facility with at least tacit permission from somewhere within the host government. Black sites are also thought to have existed in Romania and Lithuania, two other developing democracies, as well as in countries in North Africa and Asia.

But Poland is alone among the European nations in having launched an official investigation of the matter.Source

Some more on the case in Poland here.

Wagyu beef tongue topped with Ass cheese and gold leaf between slices of the world’s most expensive bread.

Pepto-Bismol , natch, an extra charge.

As head of Bain Capital, an enterprise whose raison d’etre is the buying and selling of corporate entities for profit, W.M. Romney was, by his own words, actively dealing in the buying and selling of people.

Buying and selling people is slave-trading.

Applying his self-expressed parameters, W.M. Romney trafficked in (and profited handsomely from) slavery.

“There was a signing of papers of receivership that gave Iraq custody of the base effective today,” [U.S. military spokesman Col. Barry] Johnson said. “It’s quite nostalgic. It was the center of gravity for what we were doing here for all these years,” he added.  Source

Officially, the second “I” and the “O” in the term IIO used as a title here incessantly over the years may be retired. The leading “I” can never be expunged.

Update December 19: In on a lie, and out on a lie.

For security reasons, the last soldiers made no time for goodbyes to Iraqis with whom they had become acquainted. To keep details of the final trip secret from insurgents, interpreters for the last unit to leave the base called local tribal sheiks and government leaders on Saturday morning and conveyed that business would go on as usual, not letting on that all the Americans would soon be gone. Citation

Shock and awe that there exists such a thing as a declared end. Dismal, simply dismal.

U.S. Admiral James W. Stavridis, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, also expressed regrets in a letter read at the ceremony. He “there were hopes to continue the mission beyond 2011 ” and added: “We are concluding earlier than we had hoped.” Source

There you have it — indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial.  Source

Congress, then.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.  Source

Congress, now.  (More)

•  Replace “support” with “subvert”

•  Replace “defend” with “overturn”

•  Amend “against all enemies” to read “regarding enemies (proven, alleged, suspected or arbitrarily designated)”

•  Replace “true” with “fungible”

•  Amend “to the same” to read “to the same when expedient”

•  Replace “freely” with “lightly”

•  Amend “office on which I am about to enter” to read “office on which I am about to enter, unless inconvenient”

In the late Senator Teddy’s case, with the solace of readily available government-paid end of life aid and assistance.

Edward Kennedy was a Senator who understood and extolled the service part of the phrase public service and who worked to make conspicuous and to never forgo the concept, responsibility and utilization of benevolence in government.