Another absurd tale from down in the rabbit hole. In the first court review of the Bush Administration's secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, it was revealed that the government claimed the accusations presented in its secret documents should be considered truth -- not because there were hard facts backing them up -- but because the accusations were repeated in multiple government documents.

Thankfully the federal appeals court has unanimously ruled that the claims supporting Huzaifa Parhat's six-year detention in Guantanamo were "bare and unverifiable." The absurdity of the Bush Administration's argument was not lost on the court. Reports the New York Times: "The court compared [the government's argument] to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem 'The Hunting of the Snark': 'I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.' 'This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,' said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit."

This is just another example of the Bush Administration tossing aside objective fact in order to create a world where they make their own rules; it's just another stop on our country's journey from Human Rights Watchdog to Human Rights Abuser. And it just goes to show how the mere existence of Guantanamo flies in the face of the Constitution. The Bush Administration has lost a string of Guantanamo Bay court decisions. But it's simply not enough to try to counteract these injustices as they happen; we need to start at the source. We need to close Guantanamo Bay Detention Center and do what we can to reverse this smear on the human rights history of the United States. You can start by signing Progressive Future's Close Guantanamo Petition and telling your friends.

Call it a qualified victory.

On July 1, the Pentagon agreed to investigate the showers built by KBR, a private military contractor in Iraq. More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have been fatally electrocuted by faulty wiring in the showers. There has been a lot of blogger commentary and reporting about the electrocution, including several items I wrote for Progressive Future.

And while I think we certainly helped push this issue into the mainstream, I'm pretty sure all the blogger activism in the world would not have made a bit of a difference without the efforts of Cheryl Harris.

In January, 2006 outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning people at Guantanamo, Mahvish Rukhsana -- a journalist and recent law school graduate -- volunteered to translate for the prisoners and eventually began representing an Afghan detainee. She has since published the stories of the detainees she has met in the newly-released book, My Guantanamo Diary. For more information, please visit http://www.mahvishkhan.com.

The work that lawyers like Rukhsana have done to advocate on behalf of these detainees contributed to a recent Supreme Court ruling to grant habeas corpus to all Guantanamo prisoners. That is why I felt so privileged to be able to talk to her about the importance of upholding the Constitution and restoring our international reputation. My interview with Rukhsana was conducted just before the Supreme Court's landmark ruling, and has been edited down to narrative form. [cross-posted from www.progressivefuture.org]

It's a dramatic story.

In Gloucester, Mass., out of a class of 1,200, 17 girls are pregnant or had children this year. Time magazine reported that some of the girls even joined a "pregnancy pact."

What went wrong? What would cause so many teen girls to get pregnant? Is the
'pregnancy pact' story legit?

Apparently, the only question the right is asking is: who's to blame?

In 1989, Exxon Mobil caused the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The accident, which dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of marine wildlife, and caused 33,000 Alaskans to file for compensation for economic loss and punitive damages.

They are still waiting to be paid.

It seems paradoxical that, in an age where it is apparent that big oil represents an outdated form of energy supply, oil companies are still trying to rake in the big bucks. After being charged in 1994 for punitive damages, Exxon, preparing to launch a long, drawn out fight against the decision, put aside the amount they owed in a private account; now, the amount that Exxon owes essentially equals the interest that they've made from that account. Fossil fuels represent our past, not our future, so why would the Supreme court come to big oil's rescue?

I am originally from a town outside of Chicago. I feel the Midwest loyalty. It has obviously upset me that there are people I know who have lost their property or have been cut off from going to see their loved ones because of the recent flood crisis.

But, despite these inbred loyalties, there is no possible way I can say that the Midwest flooding crisis comes anywhere near the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina. And there's no way I could conscionably say that the floods in the Midwest in any ways "dwarfed" what happened in New Orleans, which Rush Limbaugh Tuesday had the audacity of saying. Let's look at the differences: In New Orleans, you had a poverty-endemic urban center experiencing one of the most powerful natural distasters, which resulted in a death toll of nearly 1,900 deaths and $81.2 billion in damages, which the victims were given no warning to and FEMA feebly came to aid very, very late in the game; on the other hand, the Midwestern floods impacted a sprawling, white, rural population, who were given warning and immediate aid from FEMA, resulting in 24 deaths and $1.5 billion in damages.

I recently traveled to Madison, WI, to interview Rachel and Josh, two young Iraq War veterans about the health issues they've dealt with, due to poor accountability for both the private contractors who are supposed to be supporting our troops, and for the mental health needs of returning soldiers.

When I interviewed Josh about his difficulties seeking help for his PTSD, he recounted the whole horrific process with a smile on his face and a self-effacing laugh. It took me a while to realize that Josh laughed about his troubles because the seriousness of the situation was overpowering. Unfortunately, even the VA is starting to turn its back on the gravity of this problem, even as it escalates to frightening proportions.

Stay tuned to the Progressive Future website, as we will be launching these videos in the near future.

When I was a freshman in college, I was given the once-in-an-American-lifetime chance of visiting Cuba on a cultural exchange tour with my choir. Between the art, the food and the music, I spent the entire week entranced by the vividness of Cuban life. But I will also never forget being invited into the home of a local Havana woman to take part in a Santeria ritual. I was touched by how the Cuban people could welcome Americans into their lives, while also despising the practices of our government.

The cloud that the U.S.'s maligned reputation had cast over our trip was especially palpable when we traveled around the city of Guantanamo. Here was a structure, a prison, which stood to represent American-branded justice, yet its very existence went against everything our country stood for: the right to a fair trial, the notion of innocent until proven guilty, and protection against cruel and unusual punishment.