This evening's music features blues guitarist Ronnie Earl.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

A Bipartisan Group of US Senators Would Like to Re-Ban Torture Again

Six months after a Senate committee released a damning report that described in horrific detail how the CIA tortured "war on terror" detainees at black-site prisons, a bipartisan group of powerful lawmakers introduced legislation reaffirming the ban on torture.

The seven-page amendment [pdf below], introduced Tuesday and sponsored by senators John McCain, Dianne Feinstein, Jack Reed, and Susan Collins, will be included in the Defense appropriations bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and mandate that interrogations of individuals conducted by agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and Department of Defense strictly adhere to the Army Field Manual. ...

There are already laws on the books in the US that prohibit the use of torture. But the McCain-Feinstein amendment would specifically prohibit the use of violence and coercive techniques to extract information from individuals detained in an armed conflict. ...

While the amendment would establish the Army Field Manual as the sole rulebook for interrogations, the manual, as currently written, authorizes the use of techniques — notably sleep and sensory deprivation — that the United Nations Committee Against Torture recently condemned as constituting "torture or ill-treatment."

One way the McCain-Feinstein amendment appears to resolve that issue is by requiring the Army Field Manual to be thoroughly reviewed and revised to ensure it "complies with the legal obligations of the United States" designed to "elicit reliable and voluntary statements that do not involve the use or threat or force." Any changes to the manual must be disclosed publicly, the amendment stipulates.

Katherine Hawkins, a national security fellow with the transparency group OpenTheGovernment, told VICE News that the Army Field Manual, "as it is written now, clearly forbids the worst abuses by the CIA."

"But its Appendix M is deeply flawed," she continued. "I think senators McCain and Feinstein were wise to require that it be updated to forbid all forms of coercion — and to require that it remains public after any updates."

Congress Didn't Notice the FBI Creating a 'Small Air Force' for Surveillance

Last week, Americans learned that even as the NSA collected information on their telephone and Internet behavior, the FBI was using fictitious companies to secretly operate what the AP called “a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cell phone surveillance technology.”

The news organization reported that surveillance flights may be more than a decade old, and identified “more than 100 flights since late April orbiting both major cities and rural areas.” ...

The merits of this program will now be debated.

What’s already clear, however, is the anti-democratic nature of keeping it hidden all these years. The U.S. is supposed to be governed by the people. Whether Americans want a federal law-enforcement agency using planes to conduct surveillance on vast swaths of the country is a question properly aired and debated.

It is for Americans to choose.

Instead, an executive branch that has grown alarmingly powerful since the September 11 terrorist attacks, or perhaps even before, imposed its preferred policy in secret.  The vast majority of Americans were completely unaware of its choice.

This made voter accountability on the issue impossible.

Putin Says US Imperial Footprint Unmatched: 'Draw a Map and See'

Responding to ongoing brinkmanship between the United States and his country, Russian President Vladimir Putin dared reporters to publish a map of the two nations' global military footprints and then "see the difference."

The comments came over the weekend as G7 leaders assembled in Bavaria, Germany—a meeting which, prior to the recent upheaval in Ukraine, would have also included Russia. On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama closedthe summit by saying that the Russian leader was aiming to "recreate the Soviet empire." ...

However, Obama's accusations of Russia violating the "sovereignty of other countries" are striking in light of the United States' own military strategy, which Putin highlighted days earlier in a Saturday interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. ...

Outside of what he described as the "remnants" of Soviet-era armed forces in Tajikistan, Armenia, and zones with high terrorist threat such as the Afghanistan border and Kyrgyzstan, Putin said that "Russia has virtually no bases abroad."

"We have dismantled our bases in various regions of the world, including Cuba, Vietnam, and so on," he said.

And despite statements about Russian aggression, this draw-down highlights a policy that "in this respect is not global, offensive or aggressive."

"I invite you to publish the world map in your newspaper and to mark all the U.S. military bases on it," Putin continued. "You will see the difference."

State Dept: Overcoming ISIS in Iraq to Take 3-5 Years

When it was first launched last summer, the US war against ISIS was supposed to be a quick push meant to shift the momentum back in favor of the Iraqi government. The first year of war has seen ISIS take even more territory, and Iraq less able to resist than ever. Officials are increasingly admitting its a long war.

State Department spokesman retired Admiral John Kirby conceded the victory is “not going to happen overnight,” predicting that in Iraq along the war was going to take another 3-5 years. That wasn’t even necessary a full war timetable, but just the amount needed to “overcome the ISIS onslaught.”

Another administration spokesman on the war, retired General John Allen, last week predicted that the overall war, covering both Iraq and Syria, would last “a generation or more,” an admission that this war is far more open-ended than anyone figured.

Why is the DNC Sending Out Pro-Bernie Sanders Emails?

The "Sheepdog", the Sheep and the Plantation

Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall noticed something interesting recently: he’s been getting a lot of pro-Bernie Sanders emails from the Democratic National Committee despite the organization’s neoliberal leanings and commitment to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. ...

Although Marshall’s analysis is generally partisan, he briefly dips into a deeper critique here when he writes, “If you want to be arch about it there’s a bit of this that reminds me of how things operate in one-party states where there are usually a few official opposition candidates who are harmless and make nominal runs and everyone gets along and goes along…think there’s some element of that – Hillary does kind of need and want the Sanders candidacy.” ...

Ironically, it seems that the DNC and left-critics of the Sanders campaign agree on a very important fact: they believe Sanders will attract a number of young voters and activists, then dutifully tell them to vote for Hillary when he drops out. The DNC sees that outcome as a win and leftists see it as a loss, but both perceive his dropout as inevitable. “Hillary Clinton certainly doesn’t regard Sanders as a threat,” writes Ashley Smith at Jacobin, “She knows that the national election business follows the golden rule: whoever has more gold, wins. ...

The Black Agenda Report’s Bruce Dixon believes that those committed to such an inescapable outcome are assisting Sanders in playing the roll of the “sheepdog”: “The sheepdog’s job is to divert the energy and enthusiasm of activists a year, a year and a half out from a November election away from building an alternative to the Democratic party, and into his doomed effort. When the sheepdog inevitably folds in the late spring or early summer before a November election, there’s no time remaining to win ballot access for alternative parties or candidates, no time to raise money or organize any effective challenge to the two capitalist parties.”

With White House Bid Underway, Clinton Role in Honduras Coup Raises Key Concerns

State Department's role in 2009 Honduras coup makes Clinton's "campaign-season progressive rhetoric seem hollow"

During her time as Secretary of State, presidential candidate and former first lady Hillary Clinton engaged in the "engineering of regional politics in the service of the economic elite," according to a Salon exclusive, Hillary Clinton Sold Out Honduras, published Monday.

"Though it’s less sexy than Benghazi, the crisis following a coup in Honduras in 2009 has Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints all over it, and her alleged cooperation with oligarchic elites during the affair does much to expose Clinton’s newfound, campaign-season progressive rhetoric as hollow," writes journalist Matthew Pulver. "Moreover, the Honduran coup is something of a radioactive issue with fallout that touches many on Team Clinton, including husband Bill, once put into a full context." ...

Pulver explores how the Clinton family's "legal pitbull," Lanny Davis, was "deployed as an auxiliary weapon against the rightful, legal, democratically elected president of Honduras."

"If you want to understand who the real power behind the [Honduran] coup is, you need to find out who’s paying Lanny Davis,” said Robert White, former ambassador to El Salvador, just a month after the coup. Speaking to Roberto Lovato for the American Prospect, Davis revealed who that was: “My clients represent the CEAL, the [Honduras Chapter of] Business Council of Latin America.” In other words, the oligarchs who preside over a country with a 65 percent poverty rate."

Through his reporting, Pulver suggests that Zelaya, a progressive, was ousted because his plans to raise the minimum wage and otherwise provide assistance to the poor were opposed by business interests and the wealthy.

Also of interest:

Hillary Clinton sold out Honduras: Lanny Davis, corporate cash, and the real story about the death of a Latin American democracy

Obama = McCarthy + Dulles Brothers