Drip, drip, drip. Yes, it was torture

Step by step, drip by drip, the torture regime is falling apart.

The latest blow is another former Bush administration lawyer who was involved with Gitmo saying that yes, it was torture and the administration's entire approach was misguided and borne of panic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/27/guantanamo-torture-decrie_n_180123.html

"A deeply broken nation"

Greenwald. He's not succinct, but he generally gets around to making very damning points:

The key dynamic underlying all of this -- the linchpin that allows it all to happen and, historically, the primary hallmark of a deeply broken nation -- is the total elimination of the rule of law for the ruling class, with a simultaneous intensification of the law as a weapon against the citizenry. Does anyone expect there to be any widespread prosecutions for those most responsible for the looting, systematic fraud and grand-scale theft of the last decade? Identically, as more and more evidence emerges of the vast war crimes of the prior administration, the failure to enforce the law and our legal obligations against our nation's most powerful becomes even more transparent. As law professor Jonathan Turley put it on Rachel Maddow's show Monday night:
The president refuses to allow the investigation of war crimes. And we just found out the international Red Cross, also the definitive body on torture, found that this was a real torture program. And yet, the president is having a debate with the guy [Cheney] over whether it was good policy. . . .
It is just as bad to prevent the investigation and prosecution of a war crime as its commission because you become part of it. There‘s no question about a war crime here. . . .
You know, some people say, what do you need, a film? We actually had films of us torturing people. So this would be the shortest investigation in history. You have Bush officials who have said that we tortured people. We have interrogators who have said we tortured people. The Red Cross has said it. A host of international organizations have said it. . . .
He should be appointing a special prosecutor. There is no question about that. This is the most well-defined and publicly known crime I have seen in my lifetime. There is no debate about it. There is no ambiguity. It is well known.
Contrast these desperate efforts to avoid any criminal accountability at all for the country's most powerful lawbreakers with the merciless application of criminal law to ordinary Americans. As Brown University Glenn Loury recently wrote:
Simply put, we have become a nation of jailers and, arguably, racist jailers at that. The past four decades have witnessed a truly historic expansion, and transformation, of penal institutions in the United States — at every level of government, and in all regions of the country. We have, by any measure, become a vastly more punitive society. Measured in constant dollars and taking account of all levels of government, spending on corrections and law enforcement in the United States has more than quadrupled over the last quarter century. As a result, the American prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history.

Distrusting government power

One of the most puzzling things about the whole torture/rendition/detention issue has been now many conservatives have been complicit in enabling it. They should know better.

There are few things more certain in the world than the eventual abuse of any power granted to government officials. Sure, today we're detaining and torturing the "worst of the worst" (maybe) but what about tomorrow? What about 10 years from now?

There's an example on the wire today on a different issue that makes the same point.

The story is here: http://www.wpxi.com/news/18469160/detail.html

But the gist of it is that some 14- and 15-year-old girls took some nude pictures of themselves on their cell phones and they got caught. Obviously a bad idea and the kind of stupid thing teens will do. But authorities are charging them for possessing child porn for having nude pictures of themselves!

Now the entire point of child porn laws is to prevent children from being victimized, but here the law is being used to victimize these girls. Like I said, it was stupid thing to do. Show me a teenager and I'll show you someone who did at least one stupid thing today. It shouldn't be criminal to be a stupid teen.

I am quite sure that lawmakers had no idea that teens would be charged under child porn laws for taking photos of themselves. I'm pretty sure they imagined some sleazy guys would be the only ones caught up in their law. Well, one of the laws of unintended consequences is that petty government officials will take a mile if you give them an inch. And if they can stretch a law they will.

Something to think about next time someone says we should trust the government with the power to detain, disappear or torture someone.

FISA fight not over

No vote until July 8th, now.

There's still hope for figthing this off, apparently.

Every delay is a victory. If there's no vote this summer then it can become a campaign issue.

Here's Glenn Greenwald explaining why that's a good thing: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

The Constitution doesn't defend itself

Good summation from Hilzoy on why the FISA controversy is important: http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/06/fisa-why-it-mat.html

Mildred Loving, pioneer of love

Mildred Loving, of the delightfully appropriately named Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia has died.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

Richard (white) and Mildred (black/Native American), residents of Virginia, went to Washington, D.C. to get married in 1958 because Virginia banned interracial marriages. As a matter of fact, it made them felonies.

Upon their return, they started living together as man and wife until a 2 a.m. raid by the local sheriff resulted in their arrest. They pleaded guilty and were sentenced to jail, suspended so long as they left Virginia for 25 years!

They were, by all accounts, simple, down-home folks who didn't like the city and were not setting out to be civil rights pioneers. They were simply a young couple in love. Wanting to return home to Virginia they started legal action with the help of the ACLU that finally resulted in the unanimous June 12, 1967 Supreme Court decision that invalidated Virginia's law and any others like it as unconstitutional.

Sadly, the Lovings didn't get to enjoy their victory for very long, as Richard was killed and Mildred badly hurt in a 1975 car accident. They did have three children before that tragedy, however, and Mildred was blessed with grandchildren as well. The news reports suggest her health was never really good after the crash, which cost her an eye. She was 68 when she died.

The willingness of the Lovings to fight for their love played a direct role in the course of my life. My first wife (a Grenadian) and I (white dude) got married in 1979, just a dozen years after the Loving case, ironically in Virginia. My eldest daughter and my son are the fantastic result. Unfortunately that marriage, itself, ran aground on some rocks eventually.

My second wife is also from the West Indies, in her case Jamaica, and another beautiful daughter blesses us.

I've had a bird's eye view of the changes Loving wrought. back in the late 1970s and early 1980s interracial couples were rare enough that we'd always acknowledge each other if we happened to cross paths in the street.

Nowadays we're not even the only interracial couple in our small church and there are so many hues represented in my youngest daughter's preschool that there's no remarking on it at all.

All because of Mildred and Richard Loving. They never set out to be heroes and never wore the mantle comfortably. They just wanted to love each other without being molested by the state. And that ended up making them heroes despite themselves.

Some interesting posts on wrongful convictions

http://www.liberalpig.com/html/wrongful_conviction.html

My personal faith in the criminal justice system has been severely shaken by the error rate. What has been particularly disturbed by how hard prosecutors fight to keep their doubtful convictions.
The state should want justice as well as convictions.