Morning Reads: Continuum of Torture from Chicago to Gitmo

Good morning!

On this date in 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the military to detain Japanese-Americans and Alaskan Aleuts for the duration of World War II. The order would be officially rescinded on this date in 1976, and the US government would eventually pay modest reparations to the surviving detainees, beginning in 1990. Today, President Obama designates Honouliuli Internment Camp in Hawaii — the largest and longest used of the detention centers — and two other sites on the mainland as National Historic Monuments.

Stat of the day: $3.77 billion — the final tally for all declared campaign spending during the 2014 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets. While it set a new record for dollars spent, it was the first cycle since 1990 in which fewer donors gave money than in the previous election. “Simply put,” they write, “more money went into the system, but fewer people provided it.” The figure doesn’t include undisclosed “dark money” expenditures.

From the Windy City to Gitmo –> At The Guardian, Spencer Ackerman tells the eye-opening story of Richard Zuley, a former Chicago police detective who would go on to become one of the most brutal interrogators of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Ackerman writes that he “used similar tactics for years, behind closed police-station doors, on Chicago’s poor and non-white citizens,” and “multiple people in prison in Illinois insist they have been wrongly convicted on the basis of coerced confessions” under duress that can only be called torture. AND: The conviction of David Hicks, an Australian national who pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges after a lengthy detention at Gitmo, was overturned on appeal Wednesday. Matt Apuzzo reports for the NYT that there has been a grand total of six convictions by Gitmo’s military tribunal, and this is the third to be thrown out on appeal.

Ferguson –> The Justice Department announced that the Ferguson Police Department must review and change its tactics, or it will bring a lawsuit charging that the department has demonstrated a pattern of racially discriminatory policing. CNN has more.

Second verse, same as the first? –> During a speech in Chicago on Wednesday, Jeb Bush unveiled his foreign policy team and WaPo’s Phillip Bump notes that all but one are veterans of his father or brother’s administrations — including most of the familiar names who sold the public on the Iraq war. AND: Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress notes that aspects of the Obama administration’s Iran policy that Jeb Bush attacked on Wednesday actually originated in George W. Bush’s White House.

“Bogged down in the courts, and fighting for his life” –> Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi writes about a man who blew the whistle on massive fraud at Countrywide Savings in the lead-up to the 2008 crash. His story “highlights just about everything that can go wrong when you give evidence against your bosses in America.”

The rest of the story –> Salon is running an excerpt from a new book by John Bateson that reveals the profound trauma American Sniper Chris Kyle suffered as a result of all of those kills glorified in the Hollywood version of his life — and the real story of how helping another vet who was going through a similar experience led to Kyle’s own violent death.

Guns are the solution to everything –> Alan Schwartz reports for the NYT: “As gun rights advocates push to legalize firearms on college campuses, an argument is taking shape: Arming female students will help reduce sexual assaults.”

Skewed history –> A legislative committee in Oklahoma voted to cut funding for Advanced Placement US history classes, which many on the right view as insufficiently patriotic. Judd Legum reports for ThinkProgress that the bill “would also require schools to instruct students in a long list of ‘foundational documents,’ including the Ten Commandments, two sermons and three speeches by Ronald Reagan.”

French bigotry –> A report released this week by the Council of Europe finds that, as Lucy Westcott at Newsweek writes, “Rising intolerance in France has spawned systematic problems with racism and hate speech and acts, threatening ethnic and religious minorities in the country.” The report was prepared prior to the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the anti-Islam backlash that followed.

Playing both sides –> Big Pharma supported passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, but MoJo’s Stephanie Mencimer reports that the industry is now backing groups seeking to destroy the law.

Snowbound –> The Huffington Post reports that Boston Mayor Marty Walsh “is urging cabin fever-crazed residents to stop hurling themselves from their windows into snowbanks. ‘It’s a foolish thing to do and you could kill yourself,'” he said during a speech on Monday.

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