When a female soldier is sexually assaulted by a fellow soldier, and a commanding officer can make the crime disappear with the stroke of a pen, or the wave of his hand, that’s not justice. That’s Military Justice.

And the more I find out about this bizarre animal the less impressed I become. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that the military take the same attitude toward ‘justice’ that they take toward women: Maybe. And: Depends upon the situation.

Now I come across this:

Two defendants in military sexual assault cases cannot be punitively discharged, if found guilty, because of “unlawful command influence” [about] derived from comments made by President Barack Obama, a judge ruled in a Hawaii military court this week.

These were the President’s comments:

“I expect consequences,” Obama added. “So I don’t just want more speeches or awareness programs or training, but ultimately folks look the other way. If we find out somebody’s engaging in this, they’ve got to be held accountable — prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.”

Back to the circus:

Navy Judge Cmdr. Marcus Fulton ruled during pretrial hearings in two sexual assault cases — U.S. vs. Johnson and U.S. vs. Fuentes — that comments made by Obama as commander in chief would unduly influence any potential sentencing, according to a court documents obtained by Stars and Stripes.

I bolded the important bit there. I read the Judge’s decision to block sentencing in these assault cases [here], but that is not his reasoning. The article is absolutely wrong.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have a hard time believing the actual ruling. If you’re like me, your head is about to explode. Fulton ruled that no member of the court was influenced. The people in uniform weren’t the problem. That should be case closed. But No. Fulton averred that the problem was that the public had been influenced. Therefore, Americans’ perceptions of the sentences handed down for punishment would be presumptive. The trust placed in the military courts would be abused, and therefore punitive court-martial needed to be voided.

If this isn’t one of the dumbest rulings I’ve ever come across:

At a minimum the court finds that a member of the public who is aware of all the facts and circumstances in this case would have doubts about whether the accused would receive a post-trial review of any punitive discharge that was untainted by improper external influences. A disinterested and informed member of the public would believe that the Commander-in-Chief’s statements about the military are significant to a flag officer. A member of the public would believe that the post-trial actions of a flag officer are acts of significance, and that the officer’s seniors would take note of them particularly in the current climate surrounding the issue of sexual assault in the military. A member of the public would not hear the President’s statement to be a simple admonition to hold members accountable. A member of the public would draw the connection between the “dishonorable discharge” required by the President and a punitive discharge approved by a convening authority. The strain on the system created by asking a convening authority to disregard this statement in this environment would be too much to sustain public confidence.

What a freak I am, huh? Me being the non-existent member of the public who did believe “the President’s statement to be a simple admonition to hold members accountable.” Given I don’t exist, Fulton had no choice but to remedy the President’s “unlawful command influence” — over the public?! — by nullifying proper punishment for sexual assault. And just to make Fulton’s opinion crystal clear, here was his ruling as to the actual (relevant) “influence” on members of the military:

Effect of the statement on members

The Court finds there is currently no evidence that members are influenced by the President’s statement. It may be that members in this case have not heard of the statement or, if they have heard of it, they may have already forgotten it.

So nobody that could convene a hearing, preside over one as a judge, or sit in judgment of a defendant has been unduly affected. It’s only the people outside the military who have been victimized by the Commander-in-Chief’s “unlawful command influence.”

Now that this ruling’s come down, you know what it means.

The ruling sets the stage for defense attorneys to use the same arguments in sexual assault cases throughout the military.

Brilliant.

The Zimmerman family are certainly paying close attention to what George’s lawyers, p.r. flaks and social media advisers are telling them. Every two or so weeks one of them steps onto internet center stage and sings another charming passage of the public rehabilitation opera.

Last month it was George’s brother Robert writing a piece for the Daily Caller. And wasn’t it a surprise to read that George spent his free time playing civil rights warrior:

In December 2010, a black homeless man named Sherman Ware was assaulted by a well-connected white man named Justin Collison in front of a bar in Sanford, Florida . .

My brother George Zimmerman, who lived in Sanford at the time, fought for justice on Ware’s behalf . .

George made fliers about the incident and distributed them at black churches. He asked the community for help, informing them of what he perceived to be a grave injustice. George was incensed that although a warrant for Collison’s arrest had been issued, Collison had not yet been arrested.

Meanwhile, though George pleaded with them, the NAACP did nothing. Until the brouha turned into a big deal and then they stepped all over the poor wretch to take credit for everything. In the meantime . .

. . George continued to demand that the police be held accountable. He attended a community meeting, where he spoke to the newly installed mayor and other leaders. He urged them to revoke the outgoing police chief’s pension. “The law is written in black and white,” George said. “It should not and cannot be enforced in the gray for those … in the thin blue line.”

Let’s pause a moment so everyone can dab their tears. In addition to this ‘Eyes On The Prize’ episode from the Zimmerman Public Broadcasting System, the family and their supporters have managed plenty more. They dug up better, bloodier photos of George on that fateful night. The lawyers also did swell business dirtying Trayvon in court, claiming they possessed a shocking video from the teen’s cellphone showing his pals beating up homeless men. When the ‘pals’ turned out to be other homeless people, the counselors snickered and offered an obligatory “Oops.” Mission accomplished.

And it continues. Today we see the latest effort in the extra-judicial trial. George’s dad, Robert Sr., just published an Amazon-available e-book on the shooting called “Florida v. Zimmerman: Uncovering the Malicious Prosecution of my Son, George.” If you anticipated that the pater Zimmerman would exhibit a defter touch in matters of race than his sons, you were wrong. Courtesy Think Progress:

The most striking chapter is called “Who Are The True Racists,” an apparent effort to rebut claims that his son’s actions were racially motivated.

Previously, Zimmerman Sr. “believed generally racism was a thing of the past.” He says that, personally, he hadn’t encountered much racism, even though his wife is Hispanic. But after his son shot and killed Trayvon Martin, however, Zimmerman learned that racism is “flourishing at the insistence of some in the African American Community.” He then goes on to list various black leaders and organizations that he believes are racist:

. . and I provide you the identities of these supremacists. See if your racial animus meter as well grows white hot at the mere mention of the names: The NAACP, President Ben Jealous, the Congressional Black Caucus, the United Negro College Fund, the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers, the NBA, the Martin family attorneys, and the funeral director who processed Trayvon’s remains. They’re all racists, all of these organizations, all of these institutions, all of these people, they hate whitey — every one.

If the gurus of public perception flitting about the Zimmerman compound believe this will endear George to the jurors loose among the masses, they’re stealing their salaries. Regular folk don’t think the NAACP are vicious. Nor do they think that cops and funeral directors are crazies. This makes me wonder if George’s begging America’s racists for donations for his defense wasn’t a rancid strategy. I wonder if it didn’t fill the Zimmermans’ pockets with bad intentions.

Zimmerman Sr. says that because of [Eric] Holder’s decision to investigate whether Trayvon Martin’s death violated federal civil rights laws, the FBI did not have “adequate resources to investigate clearly identified potential terrorist [sic] in the Boston area.” Now, “tragically, we have suffered the consequences of Mr. Holder’s politically motivated decisions.”

Both the Department of Justice and the FBI launched Sanford, Florida, investigations in March 2012. The Boston marathon was two months ago, in Boston. Maybe the Zimmermans are just morons.

Workers of the World! You may call me . . Rick.

Rick Santorum ripped Mitt Romney’s campaign Thursday for mishandling President Barack Obama’s “you didn’t build that” gaffe last summer. The former Pennsylvania senator recalled all the business owners who spoke at the Republican National Convention.

“One after another, they talked about the business they had built. But not a single — not a single — factory worker went out there,” Santorum told a few hundred conservative activists at an “after-hours session” of the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington. “Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them. You know what? They built that company too! And we should have had them on that stage.”

So this is his 2016 campaign strategy: Sucker the drones. Have them carry Ricky to the Oval office, preferably in a mid-Phoenician sedan chair fashioned from his enemies’ foreskins. Any of you foresee a problem with this strategy?

“There is income inequality in America. There always has been and hopefully, and I do say that, there always will be,” said the former Pennsylvania Senator . .

“We should celebrate like we do in the small towns all across American, as you do here in Detroit. You celebrate success. You build statues and monuments. Buildings, you name after them.”

Some voters will take notice of Rick’s vigorous career as a fuck you Republican.

At a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa on Sunday, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum singled out blacks as being recipients of assistance through federal benefit programs, telling a mostly-white audience he doesn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Then again, Rick once donated his family name to American butt humping. And what’s more populist than that?

Why do I bother to explain things to you when you can’t comprehend? I don’t know. That strange bit escapes me. Good thing little else does.

For instance, you ask. How do I know to make a right turn and a right turn and then a left turn to get to some strange place I’ve never been before? Well, I know that I know. I just do. And gawd I know that’s not enough for you. I’m sure you’re going to make a big deal out of it to force me to justify what looks like some misadventure. It’s just right, right, and left. Okay? Sheesh.

But no that won’t be good enough. You want reasons. Arguments. So how about this? Let’s avoid the whining and watch this clip instead. I think this video could clear up a lot of confusion between us.

There’s a certain region in most men’s heads where we just happen to understand things. Okay? It’s just there. As a result, we spend a great deal of our lives stuck in situations trying to convince you of facts we already know (you have no idea). Some of you others are annoyed by this. It’s been derogatorily referred to as ‘Mansplaining.’ As if our grasp of the truth were a conceit. As if it were only a product of gender arrogance.

But I assure you, nothing could be more concrete. We are not the same. Our brains happen to be different from yours. We experience the mysterious process of ‘Comprehension’ very differently, and we manage it at different rates.

Here — watch Maine state Rep. Kenneth Fredette speak to this directly. In the midst of addressing Medicaid expansions, Ken shares what it feels like to undergo ‘Knowledge’ as a man:

Ramifications. Subtleties. Okay? So ‘Mansplaining’ is not talking down, and it’s not disrespect. It’s merely the product of an essential trait: Manderstanding. That’s all. See? Soon enough. Remember to bookmark this post, dear, and share it accordingly.

There was Benghazi. Also something happened to/with a reporter, and then the Tea Party groused about their IRS paperwork. Now we find out a Hawaiian guy has run off to Hong Kong after telling Americans something they already knew. In a London daily. Okay.

All these are scandals apparently. But aren’t scandals supposed to have something to them? Aren’t they supposed to make me angry? Isn’t there supposed to be a reason for that? I’m not seeing many reasons.

Help me out, guys. What’s the nub of the controversy here? These outrages surely boil down to something. A point? An essence? The heart of a matter? Charles Krauthammer unravels the mystery:

“Horrible customer service.” That’s what the newly fired IRS commissioner averred was the agency’s only sin in singling out conservative political groups for discriminatory treatment.

. . But when the maitre d’ screens patrons for their politics and only conservatives find flies paddle-wheeling through their consomme, the problem is not poor service. It is harassment and invidious discrimination.

Chuck can’t even scare up a compelling metaphor. If a restaurant in Jim Crow-era Alabama were dropping flies in the locals’ soup I’m not sure the DOJ’s Civil Rights lawyers would bother. ‘Asshole’ pretty rarely overlaps with ‘invidious,’ except when you’re hired to play professional victim a la Krauthammer.

Brit Hume listens to DNI Clapper’s weaselspeak, and he bristles:

This administration is in the habit of saying things we already know are not true. It’s a very peculiar way to proceed in dealing with a scandal like this.

There we go! A SCANDAL. Like this:

Look, I happen to think that the NSA program is valid and legitimate. And I don’t think anything that this leaker has said, who is being called a whistle-blower, which I doubt — but I don’t think anything he has said points us in the direction of any specific abuses of any kind. . . But I do not understand why the people in this administration can’t seem to shake hands with the truth.

It’s all perfectly fine, there’s nothing wrong. Until Brit watches the video — then it’s outrageous the way Clapper’s lying about the outrage. *Poof* suddenly there are two scandals. Schroedinger’s cat anybody? First there is a scandal, then there is no scandal, then there is.

Peggy Noonan takes a crack at it.

This Is No Ordinary Scandal

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate . .

No one’s been buying the earlybird ‘Watergate’ special. Not even Peggy herself. So she did the thing all over again. As for ‘No Ordinary Scandal,’ let me clarify . .

Why This Scandal Is Different

Sometimes when you’re writing part of a column you keep getting close to the meaning of what you want to say but you don’t quite get there, the full formulation of the idea eludes you. Then two days later, relaxing in conversation with friends, the thought comes to you whole, and you think: That’s what I meant to say. That’s what I was trying to get.

. . my friend got to the essence. He wrote, “The left likes to say, ‘Watergate was worse!’ Watergate was bad—don’t get me wrong. But it was elites using the machinery of government to spy on elites. . . . It’s something quite different when elites use the machinery of government against ordinary people. It’s a whole different ball game.”

It is.

That’s exactly what I meant.

The victimization of little people. That’s the scandal. Peggy thinks about them about the same time she cocks her head and gazes into the camera lens. Now that it’s clear a few dozen of the sainted averages were barely delayed in their attempts to acquire tax exemptions, Peggy couldn’t be more steadfast. If Bob Crane had suffered this way, a Stalag 13 sitcom wouldn’t have been nearly as funny.

Rush Limbaugh. You can count on Fatso to get right to the point:

The Question is Not Whether the Obama Regime Will Survive, But Will America as Founded Survive the Obama Regime?

. . Do I want somebody in charge of this kind of surveillance who doesn’t like this country as it’s founded? Do I want somebody collecting this kind of data on everybody who is in the middle of trying to transform this country into something the founders never intended it to be? On the other side of this is you would hope that our country and our intelligence agencies are able to determine planned attacks against this country and citizens against this country and uncover those in enough time to thwart them. In that sense, you want this kind of ability. And, by the way, the ability exists. This genie’s not gonna go back in the bottle.

The domestic snooping is necessary and it’s permanent. That narrows the problem a bit.

So in my mind, it does matter who’s in charge of it. It does matter. The political identity of the people who administer something like this matters incredibly. . . The government’s not just this thing sitting there that people run. There are certain kinds of people running it.

It’s a scandal that the President is a Democrat. Fair enough.

There’s just something about going back to the motherland. It puts a man in touch with his essential self. Tells him who he is. Reminds him of what’s good and what’s bad. What’s right and what’s wrong.

I understand Roger Simon is visiting Israel.

He is the man holding things together, the bastion against the absolute Orwellian madness that is the Obama administration.

And losing his mind.

And it is clear from afar that Matt Drudge is the most important person in America today. He is the key man holding our society up.

If Matt Drudge were to be throttled by one of his mancrushes, America would perish. Right.

What is true? What do I know? Hmm. Well I know a little sports because I played them. Basketball, baseball, soccer. I know some music because I played guitar and drums. Did a little songwriting. I know a little molecular biology because I worked as a research scientist for 10 years. John Hawkins knows a few things as well. Unfortunately sane people don’t mention them much, so for us he composed a list:

20 Basic Truths You Can’t Talk About in America Anymore
John Hawkins | Jun 08, 2013 | Townhall.com

1.) People who want to change sexes should be treated by a psychologist, not deformed through surgery, given hormone treatments, and falsely told that they can change sexes.

This is something John happens to know. People who are trapped in their bodies need to be medicated, patronized and denied. If they talk about Chaz Bono or Renee Richards, you say: “They are fake. You don’t want to be fake.” Nobody should live a lie. Nobody should be allowed. A woman must be born a woman always. Deception needs to be exposed in America, especially when it’s someone’s body.

3.) Most black Americans are good and decent people, but percentage wise there are more black Americans in jail because percentage wise, black Americans commit a lot more crimes than white Americans.

John knows Negro too. Though crime is bad, black people like it. They enjoy being bad. That’s why we put them in jail. It’s a good thing we put them in jail, then they know that they’re bad. Frankly it’s been a long time we’ve been putting them in jail, they should have come to their senses by now. Nobody said that Negroes were smart.

6.) Illegal aliens are foreigners who knowingly broke the law to come here and Americans owe them even less than we owe other foreigners living in China, Sweden, or El Salvador because at least those people didn’t break our laws.

You made breakfast this morning. But did you give it to Sweden? No. You got a paycheck this Friday? Did you give it to China? No, even though Chinese are better than Mexicans. The yellow ang-ang don’t want to live next to you and don’t want your TV. They made your TV, okay? For that alone they probably deserve a biscuit or something, but I’m not offering one until they specifically ask. What I’m saying is: You should keep your things.

9.) Our soldiers should make every effort to avoid civilian casualties, but when it comes right down to it, the life of an American soldier should be treated as more important than the life of a foreign civilian.

You know how hard it is to avoid shooting Arab women and children? C’mon. Being a soldier is already tough enough, let’s not make it any tougher. Besides, they’re Chinese.

11.) The only practical way to make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is for the Israelis to transfer the Palestinians and take their land.

But we all know about the Palestinians, don’t we? Bitch bitch.

13.) Men are just generally better at some things than women, just as women are just generally better at some things than men are.

Then there are those things that men are worse at then women. But do you ever hear us complaining? No. Get all the pregnant you like, ladies. But when it comes to computers and running things, Jesus Christ.

17.) The Boy Scouts could never survive gay scoutmasters because no parents with a brain in their head are sending their male, teenage boy out in the woods alone with a gay man who may very well be attracted to him, just as the parents of Girl Scouts wouldn’t want to send their teenage daughter out alone in the woods with a straight adult who might secretly be savoring the opportunity to have her alone.

My pants start to shrink when I think about 13 year-old girls. I think gay guys are the same way, probably, with Boy Scouts. I can see it. Start the fire while I sit right here, Timmy. Yes bend right over little man. Oooh yeah, Daddy likes. Starting a handsome fire myself. Wherever there’s smoke, there’s a flame called “Me.”

Texas: Come for the barbecue, shoot and kill the hookers.

A Texas jury acquitted a man of the murder of a prostitute on the grounds that he was entitled to shoot her because she had “stolen” his property by taking his money but not having sex with him. The jury accepted Ezekiel Gilbert’s claim that he was only trying to retrieve his money when he shot 23-year-old Lenora Ivie Frago — an escort who he met on Craigslist — in the neck on Dec. 24, 2009, and hadn’t meant to kill her. Frago was paralyzed by the gunshot wound, and died seven months later.

Frago thought that ripping off a dog-dumb john wasn’t a capital offense. And she’d have been correct about that except for one crucial detail: The sun had already set.

Under Texas law, an individual is authorized to use deadly force to “retrieve stolen property at night,” and Gilbert’s lawyers cited that provision as justification for Gilbert’s action, reasoning that Frago had stolen $150 from him by taking his money without delivering sex.

Because she took his money “at night,” Ezekiel was allowed to shoot Frago in the neck, turn her into a quadriplegic, then snatch back his $150 from her frozen fingers. Also, to laugh his ass off for the following seven months while she clung to life and then died. There’s no requirement for the shooter to be involved in legal activity. So if Frago had shorted her pimp, he would have been entitled to shoot her too. “At night.”

The Texas provision authorizes deadly force not only to “retrieve stolen property at night” but also during “criminal mischief in the nighttime” and even to prevent someone who is fleeing immediately after a theft during the night or a burglary or robbery, so long as the individual “reasonably” thinks the property cannot be protected by other means.

Which means you can catch a glimpse of the next door neighbor’s kid, your son’s best friend, toilet-papering your yard on Halloween. You can run out the front door with your shotgun. You can make the poor boy run for his life in front of the trick-or-treaters, and then you can blow his head off. And it’s all perfectly legal, as long as it’s “in the nighttime.”

You pick this week’s National Review from off the top of the mail pile (oh goody) and you look at the cover. In bold white print it says “Lincoln Defended.” So you squint and look a little closer, and that’s when it smacks you. “Abraham Lincoln?”

Yes, Abraham Lincoln. 130 years post-Reconstruction the thug house that is America’s political right-wing still teems so disturbingly with bug-eyed Lincoln bullies that the tower of bi-monthly conservative discourse is trying to talk sense to them.

It won’t work, of course. These patriots consider it a mark of Flawless Character to be happy that Lincoln was assassinated. After all he suspended habeas corpus! He waged war on values America! He stole their living breathing property!!1! The list of grievances is so extensive that it’s impossible to corral all the victimized politics-groups:

. . A few founding figures of this magazine were firmly in the anti-Lincoln camp. Libertarianism is rife with critics of Lincoln, among them Ron Paul and the denizens of the fever-swamp at LewRockwell.com. The Loyola University Maryland professor Thomas DiLorenzo has made a cottage industry of publishing unhinged Lincoln-hating polemics. The list of detractors includes left-over agrarians, southern romantics, and a species of libertarians — “people-owning libertarians,” as one of my colleagues archly calls them — who apparently hate federal power more than they abhor slavery. They are all united in their conviction that both in resisting secession and in the way he did it, Lincoln took American history on one of its great Wrong Turns.

The conservatives who happen to despise Abraham Lincoln on personal, political and/or philosophical grounds are then known to be, but not limited to, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, their readers, subscribers and followers, true Libertarians, self-appointed intellectuals, university academics, internet kooks, farmers, redmecks, racists, Southerners, supremacists, Confederates, dinosaurs, debutantes, Rich Lowry’s friends and the founders of the National Review. In other words, one-third the GOP.

All of this, mind you, is only possible because of the disastrous flaw of the organic conservative brain. The poor overheated organ has no capacity for appreciating reality. It is instead obsessed with a far inferior thing: Philosophy. That’s why Lowry’s arguments in support of Lincoln, to counter specifically those against, are entirely taken with esoterics:

As I argue in my new book, Lincoln Unbound, Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the foremost proponent of opportunity in all of American history . .

. . whereas the rest of us are satisfied with ‘Saved the United States.’ Poor misguided souls. Let us call them ‘The Great Emancibaggers.’

Saw this Saturday night, it was on in the background at the bar. A boxing match between Miguel Zuniga and Daquan Arnett. If you’re squeamish about boxing or knockouts, skip it. If you like lessons in hubris, take a look.

In the fifth round, Zuniga backs Arnett up against the ropes. He throws looping rights, one after another, and Zuniga counters with short lefts. After getting better than he gives, Zuniga backs up and gives his opponent the “That’s it? Bring it on.” with his gloves.

And, of course:

A journalism professor from Marshall University takes to the West Virgina Gazette op-ed section and argues for gun control. The piece is a little rough but I like this bit. It’s a page right out of the conservative playbook:

Here it is. The NRA advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America. That’s treason, and it’s worthy of the firing squad. The B.S. needs a serious gut check. We are not a tin pot banana republic where machine gun toting rebel groups storm the palace and depose the dictator.

Hooray!

Normally, I am a peaceable man, but in this case, I am willing to answer the call to defend the country. From them.

To turn the song lyric they so love to quote back on them, “We’ll put a boot in your —, it’s the American way.”

. . from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of . .ahem. You tell ‘em.

Of course, you know this means war:

Professor: What America Really Needs Now Is a Violent Civil War to Kill Off the NRA
Bryan Preston | PJ Media | May 31, 2013

More honesty, this time from a Professor Christopher Swindell. But he starts his own honest heartcry with a lie.

Here it is. The NRA advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America.

No, it doesn’t. The NRA advocates fidelity to the U.S. Constitution.

Good boy. Now roll over.

That’s treason, and it’s worthy of the firing squad.

If he was a professor of history, he might know that even Benedict Arnold didn’t get the firing squad.

*SNEER*

Isn’t he adorable? The only reason we didn’t execute Benedict Arnold was because he fled to the Hudson River and hired locals to row him to the H.M.S. Vulture. Americans had only the day before captured his British co-conspirator John Andre and extracted from the Major’s boot Benedict’s plans to surrender West Point.

General Washington was not pleased. Andre was hanged.

Washington later dispatched a group of patriots to New York in order to abduct Benedict and return him to custody. Documents from the period do not support the contention that the Americans only wanted to talk to Arnold. And return his mixed tapes. The group nearly captured him.

After Arnold and 1600 Redcoats attacked Virginia in December of 1780, Washington dispatched the Marquis de Lafayette. His orders: Capture the traitor. Then hang him from the nearest tree. But the revolutionaries never did because, you know, they actually kinda liked the guy.

John McCain thought it would be a media coup. He’d form a clandestine partnership with members of the Syrian opposition. Then he’d slip across the Turkish border to chat revolution and take a few pictures.

U.S. Senator John McCain was photographed with a known affiliate of the rebel group responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims one year ago, during a brief and highly publicized visit inside Syria this week.

But McCain’s rebel buddy is an international criminal. He’s holding hostages.

According to families of the remaining captives and one of the released men, Anwar Ibrahim, one of the men standing alongside McCain in photographs released by the senator’s office is Mohammad Nour, the chief spokesman and photographer for the Northern Storm kidnappers. Nour appears in several shots where McCain is posing with different officials.

Ibrahim and other members of the kidnapped family said they recognized Nour, and another man affiliated with the group, also identified as “Abu Ibrahim,” immediately after seeing the photos, widely circulated by international media following McCain’s visit.

In America, kidnappers who would do their victims harm get the death penalty. In Syria, they get a public relations bonanza thanks to a U.S. Senator.