Good news on the judicial front as a federal judge orders the U.S. military to release more photographic evidence of the torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib:

"Judge Alvin Hellerstein, finding the public has a right to see the pictures, told the government Thursday he will sign an order requiring it to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyers said."

I found it interesting that the Bush administration has been forced through FOIA requests by the ACLU to release "36,000 pages of documents and the reports of 130 investigations, mostly from the FBI and Army, have been turned over to the ACLU. The group is seeking documents from the CIA and the Defense Department as well."

But given the amount of paperwork generated by those investigations Amnesty International has blasted Bush and his lackeys on the fact that the Guantanamo prison complex is "the gulag of our time", and in president of Center for Constitutional Rights Micheal Ratner's book, "Guantanamo: What the World Should Know", calls it a blatantly illegal interrogation camp. There is no mass movement to rectify this immoral and illegal abomination upon this nation.

Many learned people are puzzled by this seeming contradiction in which the principals of the Constitution and the shield for our freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights are ignored in this so-called war on terror.

I was in attendence at a talk by George Lakoff in Denver last Saturday. He summarized that any moral framework would triumph a social framework debate. The example he used was abortion. To wit the use of the words of "choice" versus "life" a person would go for the moral frame over the consumer frame because the words used are one of belief over consumerism.

What does this mean for the atrocities being committed in the name of "war on terror" which are against the Constitution and laws of this nation? One has to look at the psychological operations being utilized by Bush and his minons in use of fear to shackle the minds of a traumatized population immediately after 9/11. This shock to the nation's people produced a state of malleability which has led to this seeming "blindness" to these profoundly immoral and illegal doctrines by Bush and his lackeys because it is based upon the fear of death that people have.

As Lakoff stated last Saturday we, meaning progressives, liberals, and cultural creatives, have to take the linguistic frame to become the party of life and brand the opposition as the party of death.

Nothing more and nothing less will suffice.

There is a new group in Denver called Liberals and Progressives United, which is about bringing together disparate groups that have not had great sharing and communication between themselves.

The group was promoting itself at the Denver City Park Arts Festival that was well attended last Saturday.

Liberals and Progressives United will be sponsoring a mixer at the Mercury Cafe on July 16th. There have been a number of groups that have expressed interest including democrats.com and 3novembermovement.

Contact John: jjetao@yahoo.com for further information.

I've been busy helping to market the ACLU-Colorado's Liberty Run/Walk Festival of Rights on July 4th. It is a fundraiser for one of the frontline groups defending our freedoms against Bush's agenda to make a mockery of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I learned from the Denver Democrats:

June 25 -- ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR. TO SPEAK IN COLORADO

LAKEWOOD. Environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the son of the late Robert (“Bobby”) Kennedy, will appear in Colorado on June 25 as the keynote speaker capping a day of issues-oriented workshops sponsored by Be the Change USA, a political action committee. The events will be held at the Douglas County Events Center in Castle Rock.

The day will begin with a pancake breakfast, followed by a “Grassroots Organization Toolbox” workshop. After a box lunch, workshop participants will attend a session on health care issues followed by another workshop focusing on the environment.

In the evening, Be the Change USA will treat registrants to a catered barbeque supper. Entertainment will be provided by Carl Dixon and the Jazz Cats prior to the evening’s speeches. Educator and former U.S. Senate candidate Mike Miles will emcee the evening, and Colorado Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff will speak prior to Kennedy. Kennedy will be available for a book signing directly following his speech, and will end his day with a fundraising reception for Be the Change.

The cost for the entire slate of sessions including meals will be $70, $60 for seniors 65 or over and students with ID. For more information, those interested should visit the website, www.BTC-USA.org. Different rates are available for various subsets of the sessions.

Attendance at the workshops will be limited to 200 participants, so those wanting to attend the workshops should sign up early. Up to 3400 seats are available to hear Mr. Kennedy, Speaker Romanoff, and Mr. Miles. For the evening speaker part of the event only, beginning at 5:30 p.m., the cost is $35, $25 for seniors and students.

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Sounds like a definite to me.

Finally, I've come across a great idea on the DailyKos.com website which is the Yearly Kos Convention 2006: How Do You Eat An Elephant? One Byte at a Time. The convention is for activists and bloggers. Check out the website. It really looks like they have it all together.

It's time for people of conscience to display on their homes and cars the message: The smoking gun- Bush fixes facts to fit his war on Iraq. There should be a massive door to door campaign to spread the word that Americans were bamboozled into this war. The Blair memorandum should be in every mail box in America to let people read what Bush said before his war and the cold hard fact that it was a blatant hypocrisy.

There has been no denial on either side of the Atlantic ocean of the authenticity of the memo.

Where is the MSM on this issue which has cost 1,600+ American lives and upto 100,000 Iraqi lives? You can see that this story which should lead to a Congressional impeachment investigation was buried in the back pages of the "A" section in both the Washington Post and New York Times. Even the Denver Post had the story buried in the back of the "A" section.

The fourth estate of a free, investigative, muck raking press is now history it seems. The ground breaking stories by such reporters as Seymour Hersch are relegated to low circulation monthly magazines that simply do not have the reach of the major newspaper dailies or the heft of commerical or cable television audiences.

We, as citizens, have a duty to uphold and defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights from all enemies. As many other well known public figures have stated- the enemy is not from without but from within. As William Rivers Pitt and Micheal Ratner have eloquently written about the complete disregard of our two founding documents of America, of the laws of this nation, of the "rule of law" because of Bush's goals of imperial war and "war on terror".

This accounting of Abu Ghraib is like the Jerry Springer version:

To some, the grave misdeeds at Abu Ghraib, where the three soldiers worked for six months in 2003, have become a twisted symbol of the American military occupation of Iraq. But the scandal is also one rooted in the behavior of military reservists working at the prison, an environment that testimony has portrayed as more frat house than military prison, a place where inmates were routinely left naked and soldiers took pictures of one another simulating sex with fruit.
The reservists' treatment of Iraqi prisoners and their entanglements with one another - pieced together from documents, court testimony, e-mail and interviews - have produced a dark soap opera, one whose episodes have continued to play out in the months since the scandal erupted, and culminated in the Texas courtroom last week.

The reporter Kate Zernike has taken the White House and Pentagon line that it was not systemic because the torture tactics utilized, with the understanding and justification at the highest levels of civilian and military leadership, were the result of "a few bad apples".

The story by this reporter shows a deep and continuing misunderstanding of the reports by other journalists and other investigations including ICRC report, the Taguba Report, Fay Report, and the Schelsinger report.

It is dismissive of the fact that Abu Ghraib is permanently associated with America, the US military and specifically with Mr. Bush and his monumental hypocrisy about "getting to the bottom" of those who are "responsible".