The Washington Post reports House Bill Bans Waterboarding:
The House approved legislation yesterday that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, drawing an immediate veto threat from the White House and setting up another political showdown over what constitutes torture.
The measure, approved by a largely party-line vote of 222 to 199, would require U.S. intelligence agencies to follow Army rules adopted last year that explicitly forbid waterboarding. It also would require interrogators to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. The rules, required by Congress for all Defense Department personnel, also ban sexual humiliation, "mock" executions and the use of attack dogs, and prohibit the withholding of food and medical care. . . .
. . .Retired Army Gen. Paul J. Kern, a lead investigator of the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said he thinks that having two sets of standards for interrogation -- one for the CIA and another for the military -- has created problems of credibility and accountability. Kern, who signed a letter along with 27 other retired general officers asking the intelligence committees to hold the CIA to the military's rules, endorsed the standards set by the military.
"We ought to have one set of standards, period," Kern said.
Walz voted for the bill; in the past, he has said that he believed waterboarding to be a form of torture, and that American investigators shouldn't use torture.
Minnesota's wind energy industry got a"coal in its Christmas stocking" when the Senate passed a version of the Energy Bill without extensions of tax credits for renewables like wind and solar, according to the WaPo article, Senate Passes Energy Bill Minus Tax Package. Bless his little heart, Norm Coleman voted to end the Republican filibuster on the bill with the House-version extending the tax provisions; unfortunately, the pro-wind energy forces could only muster 59 votes.
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