ACLU/EFF/John Doe v. Gonzales

Lou Reed's 1975 album Metal Machine Music has been called the greatest fuck off to the music industry ever made. Four sides of unlistenable white noise, produced, as Reed would later admit, while he was mostly stoned.

Now Bush has released his own Metal Machine Music: Alberto Gonzales. The current legal White House legal counsel is nominated to succeed John Ashcroft as Attorney General. It is Bush's own very special fuck off to America, not stoned, but high on his own pleasure ride and ready for four more years of touring the world with his band of blood brothers.

In retrospect Ashcroft may sound like sweet-sour gospel. Ashcroft had at least two lords to serve, down here and up there. Gonzales seems to be willing to serve just one: his long-time friend George Bush. Gonzales is the man who fabricated the infamous torture memos, put the middle finger to the Geneva convention and appeared to obstruct justice. A loyal disciple, with the potential to produce sufficient white noise to stifle voices of dissent.

And what Lou Reed has to do with this? Nothing. I'm just curious: playing Metal Machine Music to a prisoner of war, excuse all me, terrorist, would that constitute torture?

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On the Case:

Obligatory liberal U.S. scholar round-up
Balkin
Froomkin
Pink Bunny

How Appealing News article oversight

Newsweek on The Roots of Torture