It shouldn't be necessary for the Supreme Court to tell the president that he can't have people taken into custody, spirited to a remote prison camp and held indefinitely, with no legal right to argue that they've been unjustly imprisoned -- not even on grounds of mistaken identity. But the president in question is, sigh, George W. Bush, who has taken a chainsaw to the rule of law with the same manic gusto he displays while clearing brush at his Texas ranch.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion seems broad and definitive enough to end the Kafkaesque farce at Guantanamo once and for all. "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," Kennedy wrote. Again, it's amazing that any president of the United States would need to have such a basic concept spelled out for him.
"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," Kennedy wrote. Again, it's amazing that any president of the United States would need to have such a basic concept spelled out for him.
I say "amazingly" because it's still hard for me to believe that arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention and torture continue to be debated, as if there were pros and cons.
"The nation will live to regret what the court has done today," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a dissent, warning that the ruling "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." Everyone hopes he's wrong, of course. But if the only thing that mattered were security, why would we bother to have an independent judiciary? Why would there be any constitutional or legal guarantees of due process for anyone? We could just lock up anyone who fit the demographic profile of the average armed robber, say, or anyone with psychological traits often displayed by embezzlers.
Everyone hopes he's wrong, of course. But if the only thing that mattered were security, why would we bother to have an independent judiciary? Why would there be any constitutional or legal guarantees of due process for anyone? We could just lock up anyone who fit the demographic profile of the average armed robber, say, or anyone with psychological traits often displayed by embezzlers.
Has he any trck record whatsoever in questioning what has been happening at Gitmo ?
Or has he bravely waited until it is obvious that his beloved repug party will not be there to succour him in 2009 before suddenly discovering the Constitution of the United States of America isn't an optional extra ?
I'm seeing this all over the media now. People suddenly finding their consciences under the chair where they left them 8 years ago and pretending this is what they thought all along. keep to the Fen Causeway
Uh, yes. Consistently, for as long as he's been a columnist, which has only been since 2005. He has been the paper's most reliable critic of the Bush administration since then. A lonely voice.
Which is why I thought he was a republican, I simply could not imagine any other creature being tolerated there.
But it does not stop my wider critique. I imagine the media will finally wake up from their acquiescent torpor sometime in mid-January 2009 and immediately start asking awkward questions of the new administration like it has any right whatsoever to the role of holding the administration to account. And I find it a little sickening to see all those signs of awakening and trying to pretend they've been at it all along. They weren't, they collaborated. With McCarthy it was from fear and yet some still spoke out. But this time it was from commitment and all other voices were stilled. keep to the Fen Causeway
In what sense is the (radical right) ruling faction of the Republican party "conservative"? There is a case to be made for genuine conservatives as stabilizers of traditional social orders that have evolved features that no one fully understands. There is little that can be said for radicals who favor overturning law and a liberal social order in favor of greed, war, and authoritarian rule.
Today, Democrats are indeed conservative: The US tradition they are defending includes relatively strong support for rule of law, personal liberty, social welfare, and so on. Democrats are fighting to reverse recent erosion of these traditions. Surely this noble effort is conservative, perhaps even reactionary. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
Robinson is not one of them. He's one of the good guys and a damned good columnist. The only one worth reading from the WaPo, actually, but I always found Dionne boring. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
There are no black Republicans beyond Clarence Thomas.
HYPERBOLE ALERT
Anyone who has done business in Los Angeles can tell you that there are lots of Black Conservatives. A friend of mine is one. His father is a Republican and I will guess that his grandfather was also. His father was instrumental in the land deal that enabled Pepperdine University to sell its South Central L.A. campus and move to Malibu. I was a consultant to his son for a year. We bantered back and forth about politics all of the time.
A company I worked for had four partners. Two of them wanted to retire. The other two brought in two new partners, a husband and wife team of Black lawyers, both Republicans. The woman became the CEO. Unfortunately she did not understand contracting and ran the business into the ground within five years. Fortunately, I had an opportunity to begin consulting for LAUSD and doubled my income the year following my departure. One of her abilities which she touted was "managing account receivables." This bought her a couple of months of cash flow, but then we were on credit hold by all of our vendors. But these two were exceptionally inept. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
We could just lock up anyone who fit the demographic profile of the average armed robber, say, or anyone with psychological traits often displayed by embezzlers
They'd never let him say it on the WaPo pages, but let's be honest: We do that any way, as anyone familiar with criminal justice in this country knows. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
I either don't understand what you are saying, or if it is the plain meaning
The plain meaning of what I said was that people are wrongly tried and convicted in this country's criminal justice system, because they happened to fit a certain profile. How many people have we had to take off death row after discovering through DNA research later that they didn't commit the murders they were tried for?
Others suffer harassment by the police because of their demographic profiles. For example, you're familiar with the "crime" of DWB, I assume. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
