A Practical, Defensible One-Off Solution To The Problem Of True Terrorists At Gitmo.

November 7, 2008

Re: A Practical, Defensible One-Off Solution
To The Problem Of True Terrorists At Gitmo.



Early on it was made plain here, on five occasions from May through July of 2004, that the reason the Bush administration wanted to use military tribunals to try prisoners was that evidence against them had been obtained by torture and therefore could not be used against them in federal courts. At the time, this was completely unrecognized, and not even covered, by the news media. Subsequently, of course, the point became widely known and, indeed, conceded. (The issue was discussed in posts of May 13th, May 27th, June 2nd, June 23rd and July 8th, 2004, which are reprinted in Blogs From The Liberal Standpoint: 2004-2005 (Doukathsan Press, 2006).)

Now, because of the failure of military tribunals, the new Obama administration will be faced with a major problem: what to do about longstanding detainees who were responsible for 9/11 or other horrors. It is widely assumed that, as was said here four and one-half years ago, the detainees cannot be successfully tried because, as was said here in 2004 and is now long conceded, the evidence against them is deeply tainted by torture. On the other hand, they surely cannot be set free. So, how to proceed?

There is a simple answer that, once again, as almost always true of the MSM, has not been considered by the media. It turns on the reason why the Supreme Court initially decreed in 1961 that evidence obtained illegally cannot be used in court to prosecute a person -- a rule now so deeply embedded in the public and professional psyches that the original reasons for it tend to be forgotten or ignored.

Before the Supreme Court’s 1961 ruling (in Mapp v. Ohio), evidence obtained illegally was admissible in court if it seemed to be reliable. To stop the cops from obtaining evidence illegally, as by beating prisoners with the proverbial rubber hose, we relied on civil suits, internal police discipline and even prosecutions against cops. The matter was once expressed by Justice Frankfurter -- one of the worst Justices in American history but beloved of the Harvard Law School for decades -- in the pithy question of “Shall the criminal go free because the constable has blundered?” To put this question was to answer it, so the rule was, as said, that reliable evidence could be admitted, while we would rely on suits against the cops to stop them from gathering evidence illegally in future.

Well, as you have likely guessed since you know about the long prevailing corruption of our criminal justice system now so powerfully exemplified by the Bush administration, the idea that civil suits, internal police discipline or even prosecutions would stop police misconduct was simply hopeless. Police station beatings and illegal seizure of evidence continued apace. So finally the Supreme Court had to say that, to stop this police misconduct, evidence that was seized unlawfully would be inadmissible at trial, would be excluded at trial. There would then be no point in beating the evidence out of suspects, or seizing it illegally, because if such conduct were shown, the evidence would be inadmissible for purposes of a prosecution -- it would be “excluded.”

This ruling in Mapp, called the exclusionary rule, was absolutely necessary at the time -- and afterwards, too, because police misconduct did not wholly stop, so a rule making it self defeating continued to be essential. But, because of the rule’s origin, there has long been a debate over whether the exclusionary rule is constitutional in nature or merely preventive in nature (i.e., is only to prevent violations of the Constitution), and, correlatively, over whether it can be altered by Congress or otherwise suffer inroads. Passing the details of the debate, however -- or perhaps “deliberately ignoring” them would be a more apt phrase -- the origins of the exclusionary rule provide an answer to the question of how to deal with those prisoners at Guantanamo who simply cannot be set free, but must instead be tried and punished if found guilty (actually, when found guilty, not if found guilty, because of overwhelming proof of their culpability). The solution is to create a one-off exception to the exclusionary rule for terrorists who attacked the United States in the past, a one-off return to the rule which prevailed prior to Mapp v. Ohio. Under this one-off exception, (1) evidence obtained against the prior terrorists by illegal torture or abuse would be admitted if it appears reliable (e.g., if it is corroborated by other evidence that was learned from the terrorist, from his fellows, or from the “fruit of the poisonous tree” obtained by following up on what he admitted under torture), while (2) further illegal obtaining of evidence via torture and abuse is deterred by bringing prosecutions against, and in the case of prisoners who were innocent, allowing civil suits against the persons responsible for the torture, from Bush on down to the CIA and military guys who did the beatings, waterboardings, etc.

It likely would also be helpful, though perhaps not essential, if, in recognition of the horrible nature of the Bush administration’s misconduct in torturing people into confessions, a horrible character made even worse because so many FBI and other criminal investigation types were able to get pertinent information through normal techniques of interrogation before they were shoved aside by the torturers, the penalty was restricted to life in prison without parole, instead of being death, for terrorists found guilty (as they will be) due to evidence obtained wholly or partly through torture.

This solution could be adopted by the new Obama administration whether by itself or in conjunction with an appropriate congressional law or resolution. The solution, one is sure, could and would be successfully defended in the courts. The courts don’t want to see freedom given to the terrorists who attacked America, and the one-off solution confined to the extraordinary fact of years of prior illegal torture will enable courts to be assured that the dreadful enemies will not go free. (One notes that in the past there have been various kinds of cases in which, obviously due to the hydraulic pressure of circumstances, courts have occasionally declined to apply the exclusionary rule in situations where it would seem applicable.) For the same reason that move the courts, the solution will be acceptable to Congress and the public. It also is likely to be quite acceptable to foreign governments which have been deeply upset with America and will be further upset if even terrorists are executed because of torture, but will understand that the men who planned 9/11 cannot be set free. The one-off solution will be acceptable to persons of my own persuasion, who abhor what the Bush administration has done, want its personnel to be prosecuted for their terrible crimes, but do not want the major terrorists set free. In fact, the only people who will object to the one-off solution are likely to be those complicit in torture who will be prosecuted (as they should be -- which would equally upset them regardless of whether or not a one-off solution is adopted), and their right wing supporters who believe it was perfectly alright to torture people. But all those people have already caused us an immense amount of trouble (and were rejected by the nation at large on November 4th, one would venture). You can never satisfy everyone, and it is no bad thing if those who are dissatisfied are -- ironically in view of Rumsfeld’s largely untrue comment about Guantanamo detainees several years ago -- the worst of the worst that America has to offer.

The short of the matter is that the one-off solution -- allowing unlawfully obtained evidence to be used because of the dreadful situation we find ourselves in due to years of Bushian misconduct, while deterring future misconduct by punishing prior misconduct via prosecutions and suits by innocents who were tortured -- provides the Obama administration with a legitimate and likely widely acceptable solution to one of the serious problems bequeathed it by the rotten people whom it is succeeding.*

*This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to: www.mslaw.edu/about¬_LTV.htm.

Obama And Afghanistan; Obama And The Second Coming Of Clintonia.

November 6, 2008

Re: Obama And Afghanistan; Obama And The Second Coming Of Clintonia.


We hope for Barack Obama to have all the success in the world. And given his smarts -- he seems far and away the smartest president-elect in the last 45 years -- he should although, as one person put it to me, people hope for so much from him that there conceivably could be no way he will not disappoint and begin to catch tremendous flak, even early on. Yet one nonetheless hopes he will be tremendously successful.

There are, however, a few things about which he should be very careful, in the interest of both himself and the nation. To me, foremost among them is the possibility of war in Afghanistan. Obama has said we should get out of Iraq, but fight in Afghanistan. If he really believes that instead of just having said it for campaign purposes, and if he really does it, then his presidency is already doomed. Neither Alexander the Great, nor the British nor the Russians succeeded there. The British once sent out a column of what -- 20 or 25 thousand troops? -- of whom I think two returned (that’s two as in two, not as in two thousand). The Russians had, I think, about 150,000 men there and lost what, about 14,000 dead, despite modern weapons, if I remember correctly? There is something about the countryside, the people, the mindset that does not admit of victory by invaders. We found out in Viet Nam and Iraq that we cannot accomplish our imperial military aims any better than the British, the French (in Algeria and Indo China) or the Russians could. And we already have learned in Afghanistan that we cannot convert that opium growing, warlord-ridden nation into a democracy that focuses on other things. If Obama were to fight a war in Afghanistan, his Presidency would be as good as over. Huge numbers of us who supported him, and have hopes for him, will leave him and begin assailing him.

I have mentioned at other times that war has destroyed five presidencies in the last 90 years, those of Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. History says it will destroy Obama’s too if he really meant it when he said he will fight in Afghanistan, that graveyard for empires.

And, when one thinks about it, why fight in Afghanistan? Initially we fought there because its government, the Taliban, had harbored Al Qaeda. So we decided to depose the Taliban instead of simply destroying Al Qaeda’s camps -- a very questionable decision, if one that was at least understandable given the temper of the time. But in the long run it didn’t work. The Taliban are back. The opium is back. The warlords continue. And when they have to, Al Qaeda personnel simply go into Pakistan. To think we are going to change the situation (without the commitment of at least what -- a million men? 1.5 million men?) defies both recent history and long term history since Alexander the Great. Even if we were to commit a million men, Al Qaeda will simply go to Pakistan. And then what will we do -- invade Pakistan? Not to mention that our military actions and our actions against prisoners are our opponents’ finest recruiting tools and thereby promote endless war.

Better to try to achieve peace, use humint to locate enemies, and, if and when necessary, destroy enemy camps or bases with all that vaunted high tech military stuff like predators and guided bombs.

One can only pray that a smart guy like Obama sees the light on this and does not fight a war in Afghanistan. Otherwise one will in future have to write that war destroyed the presidencies of Wilson, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Bush and Obama.

There is another, lesser matter that I think Obama should be careful about. It is being said that, to some extent, he is filling his transition team and administration with persons from the Clinton Administration. (It would be harsh to call them retreads, would it not?) There are obvious reasons for this: experience and keeping peace within the Democratic Party are two of them. When Carter failed to do this in 1976, his administration foundered, partly for lack of experience. But if Obama goes too far with this, he is going to create bitter enmity among so many who had much to do with his success and who will be very put off by a second coming of Clintonia.*


*This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to: www.mslaw.edu/about¬_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to: www.velvelonmedia.com.

Bring Back Bump Elliott.

November 3, 2008

Re: Bring Back Bump Elliott.

Bring back Bump.

Only readers who followed Michigan football under Coach Bump Elliott from 1958 through 1968, which probably was the worst single stretch in Michigan football history, can understand in their guts the depth of disappointment, frustration and even anger in that sarcastic remark. The remark is directed at the fact that Michigan may have made the mistake of a lifetime, so to speak, when it hired Rich Rodriguez as coach to replace the underachieving Lloyd Carr. Carr was an underachiever, even though he won about 75 percent of his games, because he should have done even better in view of the fantastic talent Michigan had, and because he was unable to beat Ohio State after it traded John Cooper for Jim Tressel. Yet right now Carr looks pretty good compared to Rodriguez.

Both before and after Michigan’s loss to Purdue last Saturday, which was its fifth straight, I believe, the three pre and post game announcers on the Big Ten Network were discussing the situation in a way that sounded a bit unusual to me. For it seemed to indicate at least the possibility of an underlying subtext critical of Rodriguez or of what he might or might not do now. It reminded me a bit of, though I think it was less overtly critical than, remarks made about the Michigan coaches last year by Lou Holtz, I think after the loss to Appalachian State which was the beginning of the end for Carr (who had previously been subject to criticism). When the announcers, who are supposed to be paid cheerleaders, instead speak critically or indicate a subtext of criticism, you’ve got a real problem, it seems to me.

As the entire college-football-following world must know, this is a remarkably disastrous year for Michigan. It will be its first losing season in over 40 years -- since 1967. It will be the first time since 1962 that it lost seven games -- which it has done only four times in its history. Worse, it is almost certain to lose eight, which it has never done before, and it is about equally likely to lose nine or even ten, since it still has to play some good to very good teams, including Minnesota, Northwestern and Ohio State. And this year will end a 33 year string of bowl game appearances. All this, in college football terms, is a total meltdown. It reflects a level of incompetence like that of the Federal government under George W. Bush.

Although they never foresaw a disaster of this magnitude, there are lots of people (pretty much everyone who is au courant, I gather) who foresaw a bad year for Michigan. After all, it lost three All-American or near All-American level seniors who joined the NFL (Long, Hart and Henne). It lost several other outstanding seniors. It lost some great juniors (Mannington and Arrington) who opted to go to the NFL, and, the Big Ten Network announcers said, it lost a total of seventeen players who had remaining eligibility.

Above and beyond all this, and I think perhaps far more important because Michigan always has, and I gather still has many terrific football players, it was known that the new coach would be bringing with him and would install a totally different offense, the spread formation, for which Michigan’s current personnel, it was feared, might not be suitable or which they might find it hard to learn -- as indeed seems to have proven the case -- so that it would take a few years for Rodriguez to attain the success at Michigan that he had achieved at West Virginia.

These facts would seem to inherently mitigate Rodriguez’s responsibility for the current disaster. Yet there are other factors which point in the opposite direction, i.e., which point to culpability. For example, though it was expected that the offense might find it difficult to learn and run its new system, it was also expected that the defense could be alright, even pretty good. But it stinks. It’s just lousy. It is unable to stop other teams for the full course of a game, and correlatively and worse, it seems unable to tackle. When did coaches stop teaching players to wrap their arms around runners’ legs and instead try to tackle them by wrapping their arms around the runners’ torsos -- their upper torsos, no less -- so that the runners’ legs can keep churning and they may well break the tackler’s grip, as has been occurring all the time against Michigan? (Can you imagine trying to stop Jim Brown this way? Well, you can’t stop far lesser runners, either, this way.) Incompetently tackling torsos instead of legs seems to be par for the course for Michigan these days. (So, incidentally, it is not surprising that Michigan tacklers too often get stiff armed (in the face, sometimes) and get knocked off their tackles.) Tackling torsos instead of legs is simply a result of bad coaching, if you ask me, and reflects badly on Rodriguez and his staff.

Then there is the question of fumbling. Michigan fumbles all the time. Too often, as well, and wholly aside from dropping any passes, Michigan’s players seem simply to drop the ball out of their hands even though they are not being tackled at the time. (The Big Ten Network announcers claimed, if I heard them correctly, that Michigan had fumbled away the ball 24 times in eight of its games, or three times per game, which, I think, doesn’t even count the times players simply dropped the ball out of their own hands but then picked it up.)

These fumbles and drops are simply nuts. They reflect horrible coaching. Good coaches won’t put up with it. They would take steps to train people not to do it, and will bench people who continue to do it. Can you imagine what Schembechler would have done if someone kept fumbling? It wouldn’t surprise me if minor physical violence could have resulted.

Then there are questions about Michigan’s kick off game and its quarterback. As for kick offs, it seems unable to kick the ball into or anywhere near the end zone. Sometimes it squibs the ball, which doesn’t even get into the air - - this is amazing. With regard to the quarterback, who transferred from Georgia Tech, he seems adroit at only two things: throwing a bullet pass directly into the ground three to five yards in front of an open receiver, and throwing the ball far over the head of a receiver who is wide open downfield. They should send him back to Georgia Tech. Of course, Michigan has nobody better, although one may question whether any other quarterback it has would be worse.

Frankly speaking, the horrendous defense, the tackling of torsos rather than legs, the fumbles, the simple dropping of the ball as if it were the proverbial hot potato, and even the apparent failure to train the kicker, and to train the quarterback to throw accurately, bespeak a certain and horrible possibility: that unlike Schembechler, and even unlike Carr, Rodriguez does not pay much attention to basics, to fundamentals, but is instead concerned mainly with trying to teach people the apparently difficult to learn spread offense (which he himself pioneered). If this possibility is true, if Rodriguez does not pay sufficient attention to basics, it is going to take a long time for things to get better, if they ever do.

These matters raise certain questions, to which I would love to learn the answers. (Maybe some sports journalist might make inquiries. Ah, I guess not, since it would require competence to do so.) How is it that Michigan decided to hire Rodriguez? True, he had a very good record at West Virginia, although one might want to consider that West Virginia is in a league, the Big East, which is pretty weak in football, however great it may be in basketball. Teams like Cincinnati, Syracuse, South Florida, Connecticut and even Pittsburgh are not exactly synonymous with the phrase perennial football powerhouses, and Louisville and Rutgers have usually been relatively weak even if they had a couple of decent to good years recently.

One gathers that Michigan hired him in a semi desperate situation because Carr quit after the regular season and, it seems, it was turned down by the highly successful coach of big time LSU, Les Miles, who had played and coached at Michigan, had been considered Schembechler’s protégé, and for a long while, it had been thought, had been groomed for the Michigan job. No outsider I’ve read seems to know exactly what transpired between Michigan and Miles, but there have been rumors that Miles was angry because Carr had treated him badly and had in effect nixed him for awhile or at least had tried to do so and had succeeded for awhile. I don’t know about the truth or lack of truth of this rumor, although it is public knowledge that a serious dispute had arisen over a recruit sought by both Michigan and LSU. (The details of the dispute are not pertinent here.) If the rumor about Carr’s effort to nix Miles is true, and if this caused Miles to get angry and to say the hell with Michigan if and when it finally decided it wanted him, then we would have the very ironic situation in which the underachieving Carr nixed the high achieving Miles, resulting in a new coach, Rodriguez, whose first year may prove the worst in Michigan football history.

Then there is also the question of didn’t Michigan consider that bringing on Rodriguez, with his new offensive system to which Michigan’s current personnel apparently is poorly adapted, would inevitably result in one or more bad seasons, maybe quite bad seasons, even if nobody could foresee the magnitude of the disaster that has occurred. If Michigan did not consider this possibility, its athletic big shots are incompetent. If it did but decided to go ahead with Rodriguez anyway, perhaps on the ground that he will succeed greatly after two or three years, when he has recruited his type of player, or perhaps because it found itself in a desperate situation, then one can say that a judgment of ultimate success can at least be questioned, although it could prove right in the end, and that acting out of desperation, if such occurred, is almost always a sure and stupid route to disaster.

One might also question why, if what somebody recently told me is correct, Michigan, in the face of the current disaster, recently finalized a contract of no less than six years with Rodriguez. Did it need to do this as a matter of good faith because it had made some kind of promise of six years to get him to leave West Virginia, or because he had been forced to fork over a large sum of money to West Virginia to settle the dispute which arose? Whatever the reason, unless Michigan’s football fortunes change drastically and quickly, it is likely to find itself spending many millions to buy out his contract and cure its mistake in two or three years. This is only the more true because Michigan is in the midst of building huge, very costly, fancy-and-high-priced-suites as a large addition to the Big House in order to attract big money from the wealthy and corporations. They won’t flock to pay a fortune for suites to see a team that loses seven or eight games a year each and every year. They wouldn’t do it anyway, they especially won’t do it in the disastrous economy we are facing, it serves Michigan right if the suites fail because, as so many professors and alumni objected, the whole deal is another Reaganesque/Bushesque sellout to the rich, and, in any event, the need to sell out the new addition is going to put a lot of pressure on Michigan to get a coach who will win if Rodriguez doesn’t.

Then there is the question of why did Rodriguez himself leave West Virginia? He claimed, if I remember correctly, that it had welshed on some promises to build new facilities, and he said that, even though Michigan was losing lots of people to the NFL, you can’t overlook the fact that Michigan is Michigan, which, I take it, is a way of saying he thought Michigan will “reload.” But he had to know, and I gather did know, that the inception at Michigan would be rough because of the difficulty of installing his system. Maybe this wasn’t enough to deter him, and maybe he wanted to play on a bigger stage and believed he would succeed there. Or, as indicated by the bitterness of West Virginians who considered him an already decently or well paid but now self-aggrandizing sellout who left the people of his home state in the lurch, maybe his character isn’t what it should be. He professes to be surprised, by the way, at the depth of West Virginians’ anger at his leaving suddenly and unexpectedly after bringing football glory where it had not existed before. Is he stupid? Did he not understand what college football glory means in America, especially in states like Nebraska and West Virginia which do not have all the same outlets as, say, New York or California?

As well, maybe he didn’t consider that, although the Big Ten is no longer the top of the heap as it was by far in the 1950s when I was growing up, and has now been vastly surpassed for decades by the SEC and the Big 12, nonetheless succeeding in the Big 10 against the likes of Paterno, Tressel, and now a bunch of others too like Dantonio, Ferenz, Fitzgerald, Bielema and others might be a lot harder than achieving success in the weakstick Big East. (I once knew a coach who, though he later became a huge success in the pros, found out how hard it can be to be successful when one goes from an “inferior” college football league to a far better one with lots of smart coaches.)

Nor I must say, do the interviews he gives seem to show much intellectual firepower, since all he seems able to say is we have to go back to work, we have to keep on working and trying to improve, we have to hope the better results we are getting in practice will show up on Saturday too. This was about all he said after the loss to Purdue and his sadness and depression were so visible that one had to feel sorry for him.

It is true, of course, that despite the current disaster, all is not lost yet for the long run. Rodriguez was 3 and 8 in his first year at West Virginia (just as Joe Gibbs lost his first five games when he took over the Redskins with whom he later won three Superbowls, and Jimmie Johnson was, I think, 1 and 15 in his first year in Dallas before later winning some Superbowls). As well, Michigan seems to be playing an inordinate number of freshmen this year, and will likely do so again in 2009, when Rodriguez will have recruited his type of player and the 2008 freshmen are sophomores. If Rodriguez is a good coach, there ought to be major improvement in 2009, and even more in 2010. If he is a good coach, he should be challenging for the Big Ten Title in 2010, if not in 2009, and by 2011, in his fourth year, his team should not only be challenging for the Big Ten Title, but, as in the “old” days, should be in contention for the national championship. If his record is still lousy in 2010, and only the more so if it is still lousy in 2011, Michigan had better cast him out, and do so in plenty of time to come up with a good coach instead of having to conduct a hurried search as it had to do this time. It better cast him out lest its vaunted tradition go down the drain, as it did before under Bump Elliott after almost sixty years of football excellence under Yost, Crisler and others, and lest those expensive luxury suites it is building be relatively unpopulated and a big financial loss.*

*This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to: www.mslaw.edu/about¬_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to: www.velvelonmedia.com.

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