The decision was made long ago to give terrorists and brigands picked up in the wilds of Afghanistan and elsewhere the same rights as actual soldiers in a real army. Fine.

But did defense lawyers representing these jihadists go too far? It sure seems that way:

The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Investigators are looking into allegations that laws protecting classified information were breached when three lawyers showed their clients the photographs, the sources said. The lawyers were apparently attempting to identify CIA officers and contractors involved in the agency's interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in facilities outside the United States, where the agency employed harsh techniques.

What next? Giving these prisoners the CIA agents' home address and phone number?

Oh well. It's not like these jihadists in Gitmo are returning to the battlefield after they're released.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist....More >>

The Propagandist was launched as a reaction to the surging conquest of the public square by political extremists. That includes the over-the-top conservative movement we call The Tea Party in the USA. We're for "thinking conservatives", not lobotomized reactionaries.

When we criticize extremists and demagogues, we don't just mean those on the left who talk of a worker's paradise in Cuba and Venezuela. We don't just mean those who say that Iran not only has a right to build nuclear weapons, but actually needs to do so. It's not just the Che Guevera T-shirt wearing, Hezbollah-flag waving weirdos.

The political right is infiltrated by kooks as well. The Tea Party billboard shown above represents something rotten with the trend of conservatism in the American landscape. It ain't helpful to our struggle; it helps the other side smear all conservatives as unhinged whackos.

Sadly, few Tea Party activists will get the irony of their advertising slogan, "Radical Leaders Prey On The Fearful & Naive" accompanying US President Barack Obama sandwiched between Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin.

The nonplussed shrug-your-shoulders response of the Tea Party organizer in charge of the putting up the billboard shows how clueless he is about why...More >>

My lefty comrades may get their backs up at this one:

Respondents were first asked to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10, with 1 signifying “left-wing” and 10 signifying “right-wing”, to assess how they perceive their own political beliefs.

These perceptions were then compared with indicators of the respondents’ actual ideological position, which was established by asking them whether they believed wealth should be divided more equally.

Dr Rockey’s paper concluded: “Individuals either choose not to, or are unable to, locate their ideological positions reliably compared to those of the positions of their compatriots.

“This is further evidence not just that voters are far from fully informed, but that somehow voters consistently misperceive where they lie on the ideological spectrum."

Not sure about the scientific validity of the study. After all, you could argue that an inflated interest in "the common good" and a more equal division of wealth is in one's self-interest, even (or perhaps especially) for capitalists. And it's certainly possible to have a high net worth and be a socialist. Still, it's awfully amusing.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist...More >>