Libera Nos, Domine.—Deliver us, O Lord,
not only from British dependence, but also . . .

Never shall [I] deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many. No experiment can be more interesting that that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions. The firmness with which the people have withstood the late abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them… I hold it, therefore, certain, that to open the doors of truth, and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason, are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent. . . .

. . .

While a great volume of material has been published about torture from a political or legal perspective, there have been relatively few publications addressing the spiritual and moral dimensions of the issue. University of Wisconsin professor Derek S. Jeffreys tries to fill the gap with a new book entitled Spirituality and the Ethics of Torture. I put six questions to Prof. Jeffreys about his book. . . .

Federal prosecutors in Arizona have struck against a new menace that threatens the safety of the community. They brought charges against Walt Stanton, a divinity student at Claremont School of Theology in California. The crime? Stanton left bottles filled with drinking water in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, an 18,000-acre area that straddles the border with Mexico, smack in the middle of one of the most heavily traveled routes for illegal immigrants from Mexico. Stanton belongs to a group called “No More Deaths,” which works to combat the large number of deaths suffered by those crossing illegally—frequently involving heat prostration and dehydration. Stanton states that he was appalled by the number of people dying in transit through the area and wanted to do something to save lives. CNN reports that prosecutors saw it differently: . . .

From Bloomberg: . . .

The human memory is an amazing engine, but Karl Rove’s is something truly extraordinary. Consider Rove’s last brush with the law—in connection with the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Rove told investigators that he learned about Plame’s status from a reporter whose name he couldn’t recall; he also failed to disclose a discussion he had with Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper in which Rove told Cooper that Plame worked for the CIA. Then Rove learned that Cooper had testified about all of this before a grand jury. Suddenly, Rove’s memory improved, and he rushed back to the grand jury to “supplement” his prior testimony. . . .

Dusty Foggo, the man at the heart of a scandal that took down a number of senior CIA figures close to former director Porter Goss, had a reputation as a hardworking and hard playing wheeler-dealer whose friction with agency bean-counters was a steady source of colorful stories. In today’s New York Times, David Johnston and Mark Mazzetti paint a fascinating portrait of a different Dusty Foggo: the architect of the agency’s system of black sites, the pulse points of the intelligence community’s extraordinary renditions program. Hints of Foggo’s involvement in this program appear in the documentation filed with the court connected with his sentencing, and from the trial itself it was apparent that Foggo’s intimate involvement with super-secret projects insured him cover for many of his corrupt dealings. . . .

Documents released from the House Judiciary Committee’s two year investigation into the U.S. attorney’s scandal reveal that New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired at the insistence of Karl Rove because he refused to use his office to advance the partisan agenda of the Republican Party during an election cycle. I discuss the case with Iglesias and DemocracyNow’s Amy Goodman on today’s program, and I come back at the end for a discussion of the rendition of Raymond Azar. (The segment in between on the healthcare town hall meeting at Bucknell University is excellent, too.) . . .