Federal Prisoners in WV Test MP3 Player Program from wtrf.com: Hundreds of female inmates at a federal prison in West Virginia are testing a program to bring the quality of entertainment behind bars into the 21st century. More than 400 inmates have spent about $70 apiece to buy MP3 players from the commissary in the Federal Prison Camp at Alderson. U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley says the program is essentially a technology update because inmates have been able to buy radios for decades. If it works in West Virginia, it will be rolled out to other federal facilities in late spring or early summer. Billingsley says keeping inmates occupied helps promote safety, particularly in overcrowded prisons where stress, conflict and the risk of violence is high.
listen to corbett report on @RBNlive weeknights at midnight from corbett report: From My Lai to Abu Ghraib to Afghanistan, we have seen the all-too-familiar pattern: denials followed by excuses followed by faux apologies and offical handwringing. What is never examined is how each event fits into the bigger picture of the dehumanization of war. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we go in search of the thread that connects our own time to the history that helps to explain it.
iceland's government collapses from cnn: Iceland's ruling coalition resigned Monday, three months after the collapse of the country's currency, stock market and several major banks, and following months of public protests, Kristjan Kristjansson, a spokesman for the prime minister said. The government also fell after the resignation of the government's commerce minister in response to the country's financial mess. The minister, Bjorgvin Sigurdsson, resigned Sunday, saying the government had failed to restore confidence in the three months after the collapse of the financial system.
iraq to reopen notorious abu ghraib prison from ap: Iraq will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month, but it's getting a facelift and a new name, a senior justice official said. The heavily fortified compound of gray, stonewalled buildings and watchtowers has come to symbolize American abuse of some prisoners captured in Iraq after photos were released showing U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating inmates at the facility. The scandal stoked support for the insurgency and was one of the biggest setbacks to the U.S. military effort to win the peace in Iraq. The renovated facility will be called Baghdad's Central Prison because the name Abu Ghraib has left a "bitter feeling inside Iraqis' hearts," deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said Saturday. Abu Ghraib, which was a torture center under Saddam Hussein, has been closed since 2006.
from ap/yahoo: Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cannot be tried on allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said Tuesday in a case he described as "lamentable."
U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.
The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions...
"This is a lamentable case," Hogan began his 58-page opinion Tuesday.
No matter how appealing it might seem to use the courts to correct allegations of severe abuses of power, Hogan wrote, government officials are immune from such lawsuits. Additionally, foreigners held overseas are not normally afforded U.S. constitutional rights.
"Despite the horrifying torture allegations," Hogan said, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented.
from raw story: In this video clip, CNN interviews Cyrus Kar, an Iranian-American filmmaker, who is suing U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for wrongful imprisonment and the violation of his Constitutional rights.
In Iraq to film a historical documentary, Kar was charged with being a terrorist and placed in the notorious prison at Abu Ghraib. He was held for 55 days, most of them in solitary confinement. After 49 days, he was finally given a hearing and eventually freed.
Rumsfeld has filed motions to have the suit dismissed. A hearing in January will determine if Kar's lawsuit can go forward.
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from oregonlive.com: Peter Goodwin, the first doctor in Oregon to campaign publicly for the terminally ill to obtain medical help in ending their lives, died Sunday shortly after exercising the right he fought to secure. He was 83. Goodwin's four adult children and their spouses surrounded him in his Terwilliger Plaza apartment when he took a planned overdose of a prescribed drug Sunday.
Updates on 'Insufferable Portland'* 
from wtrf.com: Hundreds of female inmates at a federal prison in West Virginia are testing a program to bring the quality of entertainment behind bars into the 21st century. More than 400 inmates have spent about $70 apiece to buy MP3 players from the commissary in the Federal Prison Camp at Alderson. U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley says the program is essentially a technology update because inmates have been able to buy radios for decades. If it works in West Virginia, it will be rolled out to other federal facilities in late spring or early summer. Billingsley says keeping inmates occupied helps promote safety, particularly in overcrowded prisons where stress, conflict and the risk of violence is high.
