Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, June 11, 2009

Petraeus: "No Concerns At All" About Miranda Rights For Detainees Of FBI

By Steve Hynd


Spencer Ackerman was there to hear Gen. David Petraeus speak to the CNAS annual conference today, and liveblogged the speech. In amongst some very interesting COIN-related stuff, Petraeus took a moment to puncture the Republican outrage de jour.


Spencer quotes the man who the Right have made into a modern early-career Caesar:



A Fox News reporter asks about a Weekly Standard report that detainees were getting read Miranda rights. Petraeus says he has �No concerns at all. This is the FBI doing what the FBI does. � The real rumor yesterday is whether our forces were reading Miranda rights to detainees and the answer to that is no.� Sorry, Steve Hayes.


Meanwhile, the Anonymous Liberal notes that the Bush administration had FBI teams "read rights similar to a standard U.S. Miranda warning" to detainees too, and, via A.L., Greg Sargent has a statement from the Obama D.O.J. to the effect that there's been no overall change in policy and Miranda warnings are simply used to "preserve the quality of evidence obtained". As A.L. writes:



This makes complete sense. If you know you may want to prosecute someone eventually, it's malpractice not to mirandize them. It's a very simple measure that helps preserve evidence. I'm sure its standard FBI practice and has been for decades, including during the Bush years.


So to summarize: just another p.o.s. scary story created out of whole cloth for political gamesmanship.



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4 comments:

  1. JustPlainDaveJune 11, 2009 at 6:01 AM

    Actually the CNAS conference is today (June 11) - Petreaus' keynote ended at 10:00 am.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Steve HyndJune 11, 2009 at 6:29 AM

    Thanks, JPD. I'll fix that.
    Regards, Steve

    ReplyDelete
  3. KatJune 11, 2009 at 8:02 PM

    What?? This post is just about wingnut craziness??
    No comment about the lunacy of reading people their semi-Miranda rights after they've been tortured for god-knows-how-long? Or about the lunacy of getting prosecutable info out them via 'clean interrogations' after they've been tortured? Or about the lunacy of semi-Mirandizing them after they've already been imprisoned and tortured for years without ever having access to a lawyer during that time? Or re-interrogating them, only nicely this time, but still without their lawyer present?
    If you're thinking none of the above has anything to do with the Republican's faux outrage de jour, you're right.
    But it has everything to do with torturing people, and believing that after you've done that, you can ignore the psychological effects of years of torture, and just ask them nicely to repeat everything they said under torture so you can justify prosecuting them for whatever they said when they were saying anything they could think up that might convince you not to waterboard them again, or let them go to sleep, or not buttfuck them again.
    But I know you, so I'm sure you'll get back to us on all this as soon as you're over your tummy-ache. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Steve HyndJune 12, 2009 at 10:54 AM

    I think you covered it nicely, Kat. And you're correct, of course. :-)
    Regards, Steve

    ReplyDelete

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