Andy Worthington on Press TV's "The Autograph"

A new "Professional Misconduct Review Unit" will handle disciplinary action stemming from Office of Professional Responsibility findings, in which intentional or reckless professional misconduct is alleged. The unit will decide whether evidence and the law back those OPR discoveries. It will also take over from OPR the responsibility for deciding whether the misconduct merits referral to the prosecutor's state bar association for discipline...

Federal judges have long grumbled that the department's internal ethics process seemed rigged to sweep embarrassments under the rug. The new review unit doesn't appear to address those concerns, because it won't review cases where prosecutors weren't found by OPR to have committed misconduct (i.e. the David Margolis review). 

see Former Holder Chief of Staff to Lead New Misconduct Unit

meanwhile, court rules government can continue to suppress detainee statements

"Many of us knew years ago that waterboarding (along with other inhumane practises) was being used on (mostly) illegally detained individuals in prisons that remain open and active under the Obama regime. Is the Obama regime prosecuting or even investigating these crimes that have been openly admitted to by the instigators like Berkeley Law professor John Yoo and the torturers? Heck no! Obama has famously said that we need to "look forward, not backward."

Next time I get pulled over for speeding, I hope the police officer has the moral vision of our president and accepts my pleas of 'I won't do that again, I promise'. I mean if it works for mass torture, surely... humour aside, the entire corruption of the interpretation of Constitutional Law in regards to Gitmo/'terror' detainees has not only led to a substantial reduction in the civil rights of most Americans; but also made it legally impossible to lawfully prosecute those who were genuinely out to cause harm. The case is building against teachers of Constitutional Law, it seems such a career is the best preparation for a life of subverting the Constitution...

Cindy Sheehan: Transparency in the Age of Obama

c/o Richard Brenneman:

 "Here in Berkeley, John Yoo, the legal architect of the George W. Bush administration, is a proud member of the University of California Law School faculty, a well-paid scholar on the state's payroll.

But in Texas, Jim Mitchell, a psychologist who helped design the Yoo-enabled torture techniques practiced on captives taken in the "war on terror," may lose his state license, report Danny Robbins and Adam Goldman of the Associated Press...

Nice to see that at least one of the professions is taking actions against a major player in one of this country's greatest and most despicable human rights scandals.

Statement from Former Prisoner on the 9th Anniversary of Guantanamo

"It isn't my eye, not my broken fingers or broken ribs, not the sexual abuse or the humiliation that is the worst.  It is missing those seven early years of my child's life." -Omar Deghayes, Outside the Law

"By turning Bush-era indefinite detentions into institutionalized policy, President Barack Obama is laying the foundation for future presidents to use preventive detention (imprisonment) as a tool. 

- St. Petersburg Times columnist Robyn Blumner 

Welcome to the president's private prison.