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Dror Ladin is a staff attorney at the ACLU National Security Project. He writes—ACLU Lawyers Will Get to Question Ex-CIA Officials in Torture Case:

In a critical step towards accountability, a federal judge has ordered that former high-ranking CIA officials will have to sit for depositions in the lawsuit against the two psychologists who designed and implemented the CIA torture program.

Two of the officials are John Rizzo and Jose Rodriguez, who both held top positions when the torture program was developed and carried out. Rizzo was the CIA’s chief lawyer, and Rodriguez was the head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center and then deputy director of operations. The depositions are expected to happen in the next few months as part of the discovery process, which will be completed by mid-February.

The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three men — Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, Gul Rahman — who were tortured using methods developed by the CIA-contracted psychologists, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen.

Rizzo was the CIA’s acting general counsel for much of the George W. Bush administration. President Bush nominated him to be confirmed in the position in 2007 but was forced to withdraw the nomination amid objections over Rizzo’s involvement in the torture program. Rizzo went along with the now-discredited Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memos that purported to approve torture, privately acknowledging the OLC’s “ability to interpret over, under and around Geneva, the torture convention, and other pesky little international obligations.” Rizzo also helped draft Bush’s still-secret order authorizing the CIA to establish secret detention facilities overseas and to interrogate detainees.

Rodriguez has repeatedly defended the CIA’s torture of detainees and played an integral role in the program from the start, authorizing the use of specific abusive methods on detainees. In 2005, over the objections of the White House and Congress and in violation of a federal court ruling, Rodriguez ordered the destruction of more than 90 videotapes that showed the torture of detainees through waterboarding and other methods. [...]

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread: 350:

A seven-member team at the Economics for Equity and Environment have concluded in The Economics of 350: The Benefits and Costs of Climate Stabilization that quickly reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere to 350 parts per million would have significant economic costs. But authors Frank Ackerman, Kristin Sheeran and Eban Goodstein say that these costs would, at worst, amount to foregoing less than one year’s normal growth of about 2.5%-3% of GDP. And they would be far below the costs – both economic and otherwise – of not making the reduction or of not making it rapidly.

In 1990, at the Rio Earth Summit, it was thought that stabilizing the atmosphere at around 450 ppm of CO2 would mean holding the average rise in temperature to 2°C. The effects of this would be unpleasant and problematic – highly problematic in some parts of the world, especially low-lying and high-latitude areas, – but livable with adjustments. If current levels of increase continue, we’d hit the 450 ppm mark around 2040. But in the past few years, scientific opinion has shifted. 

On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin adds an interesting spin on post-debate analysis. What might really be behind that $916 million Trump loss. New contributor @Canuck_Pundit points the finger at Marla. Clown panic + AR-15 = Perfect Storm of Derp.

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BuzzFeed and several other news outlets were able to obtain the court filings related to several of Donald Trump’s bankruptcies in the early 1990s. As news outlets begin to dig, Twitter user @nycsouthpaw immediately noticed something in the 1993 filing—Donald Trump’s lawyer admitted they had to meet with him in pairs because of his penchant for lying. 

The key part can be seen here, but I’ve transcribed for easier reading. Check out this exchange in the deposition of Trump bankruptcy lawyer Patrick T. McGhan, key parts emphasized:

Q: You had a meeting on June 16, 1990?

A: Right. Same identical entry. Right. Okay. For three quarters of an hour with Donald, right.

Q: Did Mr. Miller always do everything together with you when he was active in this case?

A: Not everything, but we—it’s always been our practice to make sure two people are present, and we don’t have a problem of people lying.

Q: You are meeting with your client?

A: That’s right. Your client. Hey, Trump is a leader in the field of expert—he’s an expert at interpreting things. Let’s put it that way.

Q: That’s interestingly put. As I recall in your letter to Mr. Descantis, which we marked yesterday, you indicated the policy of your office was to have two attorneys present for meeting with public officials?

A: Correct.

Q: Here you are meeting with your client?

A: That’s right.

Q: Was it necessary for both you and Mr. Miller to always attend the meeting —

A: We always do that.

Q: Always?

A: We tried to do it with Donald always if we could because Donald says certain things and then has a lack of memory.

There you have it. Donald Trump’s own lawyers could not meet with him individually because of his history of lying to them. 

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There seems no end of Republican legislators willing to cozy up to the violence-minded far right. And yet pundits still pretend they don't know how Donald Trump happened.

Republican Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey, a seven-term incumbent locked in a close re-election race, headlined an Oct. 1 breakfast organized by an official for an antigovernment group that New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness considers a “domestic terrorist threat.”

That "domestic terrorist threat" would be the New Jersey Oath Keepers, a radical militia group premised on the potentially imminent need to start murdering people if the government begins to do things members personally believe to be, in their own minds, un-Constitutional. To get a notion of what sorts of things might count as justification for such murders, recall that Oath Keepers were also a prominent contingent of both the Bundy Ranch standoff and the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge.

At the breakfast, Garrett hailed the official, Edward Durfee, as an “unsung hero.” Durfee is regional coordinator for New Jersey Oath Keepers, a group state officials list as “militia extremists [who] pose a moderate threat to New Jersey.” [...]

Garrett didn’t respond to interview requests.

So the good representative will lavish praise on the leader of a state militia group, but isn't nearly so eager to talk to the press when someone wants to know why the hell he would do such a thing. That sounds about right.

Welcome back to our coverage of the other natural disaster bearing down on America today, the Donald Trump presidential campaign.

Today's big news would have to be the abject humiliation of Ted Cruz. No, it's not really the "big" news, but we're still allowed to marvel at just how low the man's prospects have sunk as he valiantly attempts to make pro-Donald Trump phone calls without ever saying Trump's name.

As for the rest of the news, most of it is considerably less funny. Most.

• Wow. That's the only possible response to news that the notoriously belligerent and shouty Gov. Chris Christie is helping Trump prepare for his upcoming town hall debate.

• Testimony from one of Trump's past bankruptcies reveals that Trump's own lawyers tried to avoid meeting with him one-on-one because Trump would so frequently have "a lack of memory" afterwards about what he had told them. Instead, two lawyers would be present for each meeting.

• Trump again dismissed questions about his insulting comments towards women, saying of his past comments: "A lot of that was done for the purposes of entertainment." But "there's nobody that has more respect for women than I do."

• Appearing in Nevada, Trump proudly announced to his audience that they were pronouncing the name of their state wrong. He also promised an interviewer that while he was not versed on the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, he will take a look at it and "come out very strongly one way or the other. I will have an opinion." Now that's presidenting!

Teachers, parents, and students in more than 200 cities staged “walk-ins” on Thursday to demand increased funding for public schools, expansion of community schools with added services, to call for an end to harsh discipline in schools that often has a disparate racial impact, and—especially in Massachusetts—to protest plans to expand charter schools at the expense of public schools.

“The [Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools] walk-ins are about the need to invest in our students — particularly Black and Brown students,” said Keron Blair, director of AROS, in a statement sent to ThinkProgress. “We want the next president to close the Wall St. billionaire tax loopholes that rob our public schools of the money they need to provide our children with the education they deserve. Many schools in Black and Brown communities across the country are called failing. But it is the students, parents and educators that have been failed.”

Tim Kaine joined a walk-in in Pennsylvania, promising that “We’re going to have teachers around the table to make sure we have policies that work.”

In Chicago, the walk-ins served not only as a way to call for more funding but also as a way to rally support for teachers, who plan to strike next week if their union does not reach a contract deal with the school system. In Massachusetts, it was an opportunity to speak out against Question 2, a ballot measure that, if approved, would allow state officials to approve up to 12 new charter schools per year.

In Milwaukee, teachers wore Black Lives Matter T-shirts to their walk-in.

Donald Trump’s initial thrust into politics was fueled by a single idea: He’s rich, can fund his own campaign, and doesn’t owe anyone. But everything we’ve learned since then shows that just the opposite is true: Donald Trump has been piling up debt for decades.

In the 1970s, he ran up a $38 million personal debt and was bailed out by his father.

In the 1990s, he racked up $1 billion in debt twice and raided his own company to enrich himself, and even then, may have needed insolvency laws to climb out of the hole he dug.

Wouldn’t it be remarkable if the tycoon, who was claiming even in his darkest days in the 1990s to be worth over $1 billion, was admitting to the IRS that he was really not just dead broke, but hugely under water? And that a special escape provision called “insolvency”—a place Trump has never publicly confessed to being—saved him a bundle in taxes?

In the 2010s … we don’t know. American banks long ago stopped dealing with Donald Trump, and for a very good reason. Those losses Trump reported in 1995? They were 2 percent of all the net operating losses reported for the entire country. Donald Trump was a one-man economic wrecking crew.

So forget looking at who has donated $2,000 to Trump’s campaign. Forget even those who gave $10,000 to some PAC. Right this moment, the Republican candidate owes someone hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe more. So who does Trump owe? He has admitted to at least five loans of at least $50 million each, but any of those loans could be for any amount above $50 million.

Who really owns the Republican candidate for president?

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Don Blankenship is the former CEO of Massey Energy. If you think Donald Trump is a jerk, it’s only because you never met Blankenship. Sure, Trump sent $25,000 to Pam Bondi to get out of a Trump University investigation. But did he take a state Supreme Court judge to the French Rivera for champagne and hookers? Did he spend $3 million to buy another judge while he had a case before that court so he could get a favorable ruling?

And okay, Trump might have had workers build a skyscraper without helmets, but Blankenship—who had a lovely habit of telling his workers to ignore safety standards—got 29 men killed in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in 2010.

For directly issuing the orders that sent these men to their deaths, Don Blankenship received a whopping one year in jail. 

Tommy Davis ... lost a brother, a son and a nephew in a disaster that could have been prevented.

Davis gave a heart-wrenching speech in front of reporters after the sentencing hearing.

“This man has no remorse at all,” he said of Blankenship, whom a federal judge penalized for conspiring to ignore safety protocol to produce more coal.

Remorse? Blankenship is proud of what he did. Deeply proud. He’s the man who crushed the union! Brushed aside regulators! Turned judges into his servants! He’s the Republican hero personified.

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As of 5 PM EDT Hurricane Matthew remains a deadly Category 4 storm with winds gusting over 160 MPH as it continued moving toward the central Florida coastline. The National Hurricane Center has issued a Hurricane Warning for the affected region. Much of Florida’s east coast is subject to mandatory evacuation. All tolls have been suspended throughout the state to facilitate travel. Some shelters are said to be filling up in Brevard and neighboring counties.

Matthew could still veer away a bit and/or weaken slightly, or it could intensify toward the threshold of Category 5, by the time it makes what is being called partial landfall, i.e., closest approach. The latest track indicates that will likely be just north of Melbourne at about 7 AM on Friday. 

Cocoa Beach, Merritt Island, Port Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center, and Daytona Beach are among the places expected to take the worst hits starting tomorrow morning. The max surge is predicted to be between 5 and 10 feet, centered on Daytona, with large wave tops well above that. Implying some of these places will be partly or completely submerged while suffering sustained winds of 100 MPH or more for several hours. All homes, buildings, and especially RV and mobile home parks in this region are at extreme risk. Do not under estimate the unique danger posed by this storm.

The storm is forecast to track parallel to and just off the coast for the next 24 hours after passing KSC, past Daytona and Jacksonville, then turning slightly and following the northeastern curve of the lower Georgia and South Carolina coasts almost perfectly, before finally arcing out to sea. Remaining residents in the these areas are urged to evacuate while there is still time.

There is now also a chance that Matthew—or what’s left of it—could then boomerang back and hit the same soon-to-be-ravaged coastal areas again early next week greatly complicating relief efforts. An event that would be unprecedented in recent storm history.

No surprise here, but Donald Trump isn’t as brilliant as he’d like everyone to believe.

According to the Jack Mitnick, the accountant who prepared Trump’s 1995 tax return (the one that enabled Trump to write off $916 million in losses and legally avoid paying federal taxes for 18 years),  the presidential candidate didn't understand the tax code.

As far as I know, and that only goes through late '96, he didn't understand the code," said Jack Mitnick, a former tax adviser for Trump, in an interview with NBC's TODAY. "Nor would he have had the time and the patience to learn the provisions. That's a lifetime of experience."

At a rally in Colorado on Monday, Trump continued to brag that his business acumen allowed him to use the tax code to his benefit.

“I mean, honestly, I have brilliantly — I have brilliantly used those laws. I have often said on the campaign trail that I have a fiduciary responsibility to pay no more tax than is legally required, like anybody else, or put another way: to pay as little tax as legally possible.”

Ahhh, what it must be like to bask in the glow of your own brilliance.

Oh, wait:

But Mitnick claimed it was he who used the tax code in Trump’s favor. “Right. I’m the one who did all the work,” he said.  

Never mind.

Trump is slipping in the polls giving us an opportunity to elect progressive champions at all levels of government. Sign up with Daily Kos and Democracy for America to help get out the vote for more and better Democrats on Saturday, October 8.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, the supposedly reluctant water-carrier for Donald Trump has been under intense scrutiny since he stepped into the speakership and into the role as de facto leader of the Republican Party. But if you look closely under all the hype, Ryan is failing as badly as his predecessor John Boehner to make the place work. In fact, in some measures he's doing worse.

Republicans started off this year with headlines about happiness, with promises from leaders in both chambers that they were going to do their damnedest to pass all 12 appropriations bills and avoid the slapdash lawmaking that produces short-term spending extensions and all-encompassing omnibus bills at the end of the year. [...]

Ryan said the House would do a budget early this year and then start the appropriations process a month ahead of schedule.

But House Republicans never agreed to a budget―the Senate didn’t either, for that matter―and House lawmakers had a much later start on appropriations bills than usual. (By law, the House couldn’t advance a spending bill without a budget before May 15.)

John Boehner (R-Ohio) was able to get a budget done every year of his speakership. And that was during a period marked by internal House Republican dysfunction. Ryan came into the speakership with the promise that he would cure the bad blood in the Republican conference and usher in harmony, progress and regular order. Instead, the House slowed the budget and appropriations process from a legislative crawl to the shimmying of an overturned turtle trying to avoid death.

Boehner not only was able to get a budget done every year, he also got spending bills done—averaging six a year—and he did it with a more open amendment process. Ryan has had to clamp down on so-called “regular order” because of the ongoing rabble-rousing from the maniacs, the same people who ultimately wore down Boehner to the point he resigned. That amendment clamp-down hasn’t gone over so well with all the maniacs. “’Are you kidding me? Nothing has changed,’ one Freedom Caucus member told HuffPost last week. ‘Nothing.’”

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Remember how we first described Donald Trump's chances at Sunday's town-hall style debate: like rolling a Dumpster fire over a field of land mines? That's because it's such an uncontrolled environment compared to a traditional one moderator/one opponent debate. It's also a setting that Hillary Clinton typically thrives in.

Now add the sage advice of Chris Christie—the master of shouting down constituents—into the combustible mix. Robert Costa writes:  

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who has hosted countless forums with voters and is widely considered one of the GOP’s most talented performers in that setting, spent Sunday advising Donald Trump ahead of the upcoming town-hall debate, according to Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Giuliani, a former New York mayor and a Trump confidant, said in an interview late Sunday that Christie met with the Republican presidential nominee and his aides at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., and played a “very valuable role” during an earlier preparation session that lasted all afternoon.

Okay, here's a question: You're a constituent with a problem and Trump, Christie, and Giuliani walk into the room—which one do you choose to ask? NONE! LOL. They're all a hair trigger away from biting your head off and eating you for lunch.

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As of Wednesday, enough nations have formally joined the Paris climate agreement they signed last December to bring it into full effect. This will take place November 4, just a few days before the 22nd session of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) gets underway in Marrakesh, Morocco.

The threshold for becoming operational was getting 55 nations accounting for at least 55 percent of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases to join. The count so far is 57. But dozens of other nations are expected to join before the year-long period for doing so ends the day before Earth Day next April. Together, China, the United States, and India emit about 42 percent of the world’s total GHG emissions. All three have formally joined the pact.

The long-term goal of the Paris agreement is to hold emissions at a level scientists think would keep the average global temperature from rising more than 2°C. The aspiration is to keep it from rising more than 1.5°C. The signatories have agreed to move quickly to stop adding to their emissions and to make sharp reductions afterward. 

Most nations have submitted the agreement-mandated national climate action plans outlining their reduction plans. That’s progress, to be sure. But as those plans now stand the 2° goals won’t be met. More must obviously be done. The drafters of the Paris agreement recognized this inadequacy and have mandated that each nation update its contributions to cutting emissions every five years. Climate hawks will be doing everything possible to ensure those updates are not fluff masquerading as significant action. Thus, the Paris pact, flawed though it be, is a very big deal after nearly a quarter-century of tedious and often frustrating efforts to get everybody on the same page. 

Unfortunately, here in the United States, we still have a very big contingent of people who are not on the same page, who don’t want ever to be on the same page, who would like, indeed, to tear all the pages out of the book entirely. Even more unfortunately, because of the well-funded lies of the fossil-fuel industry, along with its campaign contributions, this contingent is represented by a hefty portion of the Republican members in Congress.

While not all of them fall into category of global warming deniers, this bloc of blockheads has placed obstacle after obstacle in the path of policies that, while far from from doing enough quick enough at least would move us in the right direction to attenuate some of the worst impacts of the changes in climate we are seeing or soon will be seeing. And we can expect these blockers to continue charging down the same dead-end road whether they are in the congressional majority or the minority come January.