Oh hey look at that, it appears our next Attorney General is not some bilious torture-fetishist sack of ooze! In his testimony before the Senate today, Eric Holder gave answers so unequivocally Soft on Terror that even the most unrepentant liberal of all, Senator Patrick Leahy of the gay marriage state of Vermont, approved. MORE »

Happy Almost Fourth of July, Patriots! Here is your president George W. Bush mumbling about how the Supreme Court’s ruling on Guantanamo is now the Law of the Land, so he’ll follow it. Clearly, the terrorists have taken the real George Bush and hidden him under the White House bowling alley, leaving this suspicious clone to run out the clock on his presidency. Either that or George Bush is high. WHATEVERS MAN IT IS ALMOST VACATION TIME SO WATCH THIS OR DON’T. [RedLasso]

If you missed the Republican debate last night, well, we envy you. The mildly amusing bits included:

* The chimes indicating that a question’s alloted time was through, or that a candidate had gone on long enough, prompting a member of the celebrity panel of judges to “gong” them.
* John Edwards gay jokes.
* Ron Paul blaming America first.

The most wrist-slittingly entertaining moment, though, came not from any candidate, but from the debate organizers. To close out the debate, Fox News’ Brit Hume asked each candidate about “a fictional, but we think plausible scenario”: Three malls near “major US cities” attacked by suicide bombers. The would-be bombers of a fourth mall have been captured and sent to Guantamo. HOW HARD WILL YOU TORTURE THEM?

As you can see in the above clip, John McCain stumbled, and Mitt Romney promised to lock up thousands more in a hundred new Guantanamo Bays.

After the jump, Republicans applaud waterboarding.

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* Court upholds law insuring there will be no Guantanamo Redemption for the charming, good-natured inmates of that prison. [WP, NYT, LAT]
* Supreme Court says smoking kills, but it’s still cool. [WP, NYT]
* David Geffen sits in a booster seat at the booster dinner he hosted for Barry Hussein. [WP]
* One hundred Americans in a room, and only 9 of the most stoned think they trust President Bush to improve national healthcare. [WSJ]
* Ellen Tauscher looks like low-hanging moderate fruit to the gaping maw of California hippie bloggers. [WP]
* Jurors begin deliberations today in the trial of that lying liar Scooter Libby. We’ll let you know if you need to pay attention. [WP, NYT]
* White House calls reduction of British forces in Iraq, “a sign of success.” [LAT, USAT, Guardian]
* Maybe there are actually three things from Texas. [NYT]

From Linda Greenhouse’s account of the Supreme Court argument earlier this week in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the controversial case about detainees’ rights: MORE »

Those guys on the Supreme Court — they’re old, yes. Some of them are very old, in fact. But despite that, you can’t fool them by just making shit up, Senators Kyl and Graham. So while your brief on Hamdan might look very much like it’s from Senate floor debate, well, there are cameras and things that will prove that it never happened. Even if you try really hard to make it convincing: MORE »

Because Wonkette is a family blog — with just a soupcon of assfucking — we’re showing you this G-rated picture of Justice Antonin Scalia, with all five fingers raised.

Justice Antonin Scalia goes hunting with Dick Cheney. But in case you need more support for the proposition that Nino is the coolest, most bad-ass justice on the Supreme Court, consider this report from the Boston Herald:

Minutes after receiving the Eucharist at a special Mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had a special blessing of his own for those who question his impartiality when it comes to matters of church and state.

“You know what I say to those people?” Scalia, 70, replied, making an obscene gesture under his chin when asked by a Herald reporter if he fends off a lot of flak for publicly celebrating his conservative Roman Catholic beliefs.

“That’s Sicilian,” the Italian jurist said, interpreting for the “Sopranos” challenged.

Considering how much we drop the F bomb around here, Justice Scalia is a man after our own heart. Can you believe that he flipped someone the bird with bits of the Eucharist still between his teeth? Cert denied!

(We love Cheney for the same reason, since he used the F-word on the floor of the U.S. Senate. And we have lots of other reasons for loving Cheney too.)

Update: This post is the subject of a correction/clarification.

More evidence of Scalia’s coolness after the jump.

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Saddiq Ahmad Turkistani was freed from a Taliban prison in the early days of the Afghan war. He’d been wrongly imprisoned, he told reporters–though he had indeed helped hatch a plot to kill Osama Bin Laden. He despised the Taliban and al Qaeda, and was an eager supporter of the U.S. war on terror. MORE »

We’re a bit late on this item because, frankly, the implications are terrifying. Afghani brothers Badr Zaman Badr and Abdurrahim Muslim Dost were released at the end of October from three years’ detention in Guantanamo. The activity that drew the attention of military interrogators was a satirical piece that Dost wrote in reply to Bill Clinton’s 1998 $5 million bounty for the capture of Osama bin Laden in the wake of the US embassy bombing in Tanzania and Kenya. Dost counterproposal: Offer up 5 million Afghanis–valued at roughly $113–in return for the capture of Bill Clinton, described in Dost’s piece as “clean-shaven, having light-colored eyes and he had been seen involved in a scandal with Monica Lewinsky.” The brothers saw a long march of interrogators, several flown down from Washington, over their three year ordeal, and they proved a tough crowd indeed: “Again and again, they were asking questions about this article,” Dost told Newsday reporter James Rupert. “We had to explain this was a satire. It was really pathetic.” MORE »

On to some belated acknowledgment of happier news. Last night, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved the McCain-Graham amendment to the military spending bill prohibiting “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of military detainees. The wracking sobs of Alberto Gonzales were audible from down the street. And we’re also sure that it’s pure coincidence that the Senate should take a hardline stand against inhuman and degrading confinement on the verge of another marathon interrogation of a Supreme Court nominee about as likely to deliver recognizably human opinions as a butterfly would deliver the Gettysburg Address. — HOLLY MARTINS MORE »