Democratic politicians and their loyalists, who opportunistically pretended to care about such things when doing so produced partisan advantage (when there was a GOP President), but now ignore them because they no longer do (because there's a Democratic President).

Corruption.

MSNBC - "Enormous hypocrisy on the left."

I had hoped that Obama, as a law professor, would be able to wade into the Constitutional crisis created by the Bush administration and establish a functional framework.

No.

In typical Obama style, we've got the core of the Bush policy - indefinite detention without trial - with a few tweaks.

Apparently they've stopped torturing people. I feel like the real reason for that is because they've run out of people to torture. They're still detaining people forever without trial. In other words, there is no law. What protections exist in our system against the government seizing people off the street and torturing them and holding them indefinitely? I seriously don't see anything at this point.

Obama is keeping these people imprisoned without any charges, and then pointing to secret torture-obtained evidence to justify that imprisonment.  He's not even prosecuting them using torture-obtained evidence.  He's going beyond that:  he's imprisoning them without bothering to prosecute them, while his supporters publicly claim that we know they're guilty -- or "dangerous" -- by citing untested, unseen evidence that the government claims can't be used because it was coerced.

Greenwald persuasively argues that it would be better to present the evidence in these cases than to suppress is because it was obtained illegally. Allowing the evidence to be admitted won't reward the government for their illegal acts any more than not having a trial at all and just operating on a presumption of guilt does!

Perhaps the problem is of the other variety - that the evidence we have is a secret. We can't even show it to you.

Just trust us.

:-)

The "Bush-tortured" excuse for indefinite detention - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

We're like the creepy neighbors of the IT industry.

How I've Become One With The Rest Of The World - Darkreading

"You’ve crossed a line. This is wrong."

Manning’s Father Condemns Treatment of Imprisoned Son | Threat Level | Wired.com

A volunteer at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has discovered what is believed to be the first, and maybe the only, color photos of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire that nearly destroyed the city.

Stereo photographs of 1906 San Francisco Quake discovered - Boing Boing

Fears of a double dip in housing are giving away to a realization that the nation's mortgage markets are facing a much colder reality — something that will not so easily be named, but is nonetheless hanging around for a very long time.

Nameless, formless crisis enveloping nation's home price indices « HousingWire

...

Homeless robot begs for energy - Boing Boing

That same cash-filled briefcase could buy seven Ferrari 599s or every single 2009 model Mercedes. You could snap up a top-shelf Maybach and employ a chauffeur until well past the apocalypse. Hell, in this economy, $2.1 million is probably enough to make you a one-man special-interest group with some serious Washington clout.

But don’t. Buy a Grand Sport. Even if there were another 253-mph drop-top with more luxury appointments than a Bond villain’s boudoir, you wouldn’t want it. You’d want this exact car, because more than being a blast to drive, it is the greatest gasoline-powered vehicle that has ever been, or will ever be, built. Seriously.

This is, in fact, hillarious.

Peak Oil: Bugatti Makes a Car for the Ages | Product Reviews | Wired.com

The present XKCD pokes at a major pet peeve of mine - websites that try to be "helpful" by handing out a useless mobile compatible index page to mobile browsers that request a specific article - thereby making it impossible to locate and view the specific article that was desired.

Chances are quite good that my phone can render your article even if it wasn't designed to be viewed on a phone. Please stop trying to be smart and just give me what I requested!

xkcd: Server Attention Span

Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski:

The other major change in international affairs is that for the first time, in all of human history, mankind has been politically awakened. That is a total new reality – total new reality. It has not been so for most of human history until the last one hundred years. And in the course of the last one hundred years, the whole world has become politically awakened. And no matter where you go, politics is a matter of social engagement, and most people know what is generally going on –generally going on – in the world, and are consciously aware of global inequities, inequalities, lack of respect, exploitation. Mankind is now politically awakened and stirring. The combination of the two: the diversified global leadership, politically awakened masses, makes a much more difficult context for any major power including, currently, the leading world power: the United States.

Washington's Blog