Press Secretary Gibbs: Brainwashed or a Pure Asshole?

I was leaning against posting on that stupid episode until I saw this:

That Obama has vigorously embraced and at times even exceeded some of Bush's most controversial and radical policies is simply indisputable. I'd request that anyone doubting that just review the very partial list I compiled in Update II yesterday. In that list, I neglected to mention numerous other compelling examples (recall Tim Dickinson's recent revelation that Interior employees call their Department under Ken Salazar's corporate-serving rule "the third Bush term"). Among my most prominent omissions was the Obama administration's Bush-copying use of military commissions rather than real courts to try "War on Terror" detainees.

Military commissions were one of those Bush/Cheney policies which provoked virtually universal outrage among progressives and Democrats back in the day when executive power abuses and rule of law transgressions were a concern. The Obama administration's claim that the commissions are now improved to the point that they provide a forum of real justice is being put to the test -- and blatantly failing -- with the first such commission to be held under Obama: that of Omar Khadr, accused of throwing a grenade in 2002 which killed an American solider in Afghanistan, when Khadr was 15 years old. This is the first trial of a child soldier held since World War II, explained a U.N. official who condemned these proceedings. The commission has already ruled that confessions made by Khadr which were clearly obtained through coercion, abuse and torture will be admitted as evidence against him. Prior to the commencement of Khadr's "trial," the commission ruled in another case that the sentence imposed on a Sudanese detainee Ibrahim al-Qosi -- convicted as part of a plea bargain of the dastardly crime of being Osama bin Laden's "cook" -- will be kept secret until he is released. What kind of country has secret sentences?

Rest of the post should be read.

It's good that some Congressional leaders-- Keith Ellison and Alan Grayson-- are outraged enough to call for Gibbs firing.

And most likely, Gibbs is a pure asshole.