• Blossom Dearie, Ann-Margret, Bruno Kirby, Jay Leno and Saddam Hussein celebrated birthdays.
• Hugh Downs hosted the 181st episode of Concentration. It is not known how many clues got stuck while turning.
• Harry Truman delivered a lecture on “The Constitution” at Columbia. Somewhere in Wyoming, 18-year-old Dick Cheney chortled.
• Senator John F. Kennedy criticized a federal student-loan program that required loyalty oaths. “Few high school graduates today are members of the Communist Party,” he joked.

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July 14, 1955: The United States ratifies the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War. Of the four conventions, the third is the “Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.”

August 21, 1996: President Clinton signs the War Crimes Act of 1996. “After 40 years, after the ratification of the Geneva Conventions, [we discovered] that it was not self-enacting, and we actually have never passed the necessary legislation to accept jurisdiction within our Federal courts to prosecute war crimes that we were aware of,” says Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe.

Subsection (d)(1)(A) of the War Crimes Act expressly defines and forbids torture: “The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.”

Violation of the War Crimes Act is a felony with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, or death if the torture victim dies.

September 11, 2001, 12:05 pm: Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld is told that al Qaeda is likely responsible for the morning’s attacks, based on a phone call the NSA intercepted 15 minutes after the Pentagon was hit.

September 11, 2001, 2:40 pm: Rumsfeld demands “Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden].… Need to move swiftly.… Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

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America loves a Redemption story. And Eric Holder was poised to provide one, upon his nomination for attorney general.

The soundbite we’re hearing again from January is the obvious one: “Waterboarding is torture.” But we’re not hearing the backstory of his selection, and what it may bring to bear on his decision whether to enforce the law of the land.

You’ll recall that Holder’s previous claim to fame was signing off on Bubba’s infamous midnight pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich (tax fraud), whose ex-wife coincidentally donated more than $1.65 million to the Clinton library, Hillary’s original Senate campaign, and the Democratic Party. The appeal bypassed conventional Justice procedures.

Oh, and Holder had also asked Rich’s lawyer for help becoming AG if Al Gore was elected. Which sounds odd until you learn that Rich’s lawyer was Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel.

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We’re not sure how we feel about our painkiller company making weed killer, but we definitely don’t want our weed killer company making painkillers. We can only hope they don’t mix up the packages, or we’ll be pushing daisies.

Back in 2003, while we were attempting the Guinness World Record for waterboarding, 13-year-old Savana Redding was strip-searched at her school in Safford, Arizona, on orders from the vice principal.

And in Supreme Court arguments Tuesday, the link between the two was implicit and chilling.

Redding, an eighth-grade honor student, was suspected of carrying drugs. The suspicion arose after a friend was caught with prescription pills, and said Redding had supplied them. On that basis and no other, the following happened:

Officials then pulled Savana out of class to be questioned and, eventually, strip-searched. During the search, two female officials made Savana remove her shoes, socks, pants, and shirt. She was then told to shake her bra and underpants and move them aside to reveal any hidden pills. None were found.

Redding never returned to the school. She later developed bleeding ulcers.

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Let’s try this again:

Fox News is polling its online readers over whether Miss California was right when she told Billy Bush she was denied the Miss USA crown Sunday night after she answered judge Perez Hilton that “marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Nope. We still can’t wrap our head around it.

Carrie Prejean Says Answer to Gay Marriage Question Cost Her Miss USA Crown [Fox News]

Courtesy of Rotten.com, a list of available names for the next faux-populist protest. We invite you to select a symbol and provide an appropriate issue to match.

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