Dear Kos readers,
I'm the guy who exposed the Reverend Moon crowning on Capitol Hill. Now I have another untold story that I'd like to offer for your reading consideration.
http://media.orkut.com/articles/0145.html
Before being named U.S. Ambassador to Italy, major Republican fundraiser Melvin Sembler was asked by Florida Trend magazine about ACLU lawsuits that accused his teenage drug rehab company, STRAIGHT, of "something close to psychic murder."
"It just shows we must have been doing something right," he said, grinning.
But it was shut down for criminal abuse on a wide scale, after being named one of George H.W. Bush's "thousand points of light."
This is a story about how Florida's "culture of life" mainstreamed the use of torture on American teenagers, long before Eugene Volokh mused that we oughta do it to child abusers.
This story is about the torture of teenagers -- if methods like those at Abu Ghraib can be called torture.
It's a story that asks the question of why the three most powerful men of the Bush family have admired and rewarded Melvin Sembler, whose greatest accomplishment was resurrecting another, abuse-laden program that Watergate investigator Sam Ervin literally compared to North Korean POW abuse.
It is an investigation of the man who just won the Washington Post's "narcissism run amok" award, who doesn't speak Italian but has been charged with handling the Sgrena diplomatic crisis in Italy.
And it's about another man who is out for revenge.
I hope you'll check it out and pass it along to others.
Sincerely,
J