As seen from Just Above Sunset

Thursday, 27 October 2005

Topic: The Law

A Bad Week: Harriet the Church Lady Just Fades Away

Thursday, October 27th was a fruitless day to write about politics. The White House was waiting on what the Fitzgerald investigation would yield, and there was no news.

But one hot issue was taken off the table - Miers withdraws nomination; new selection to be made 'quickly'.

Oh well.

This particular item, from Dallas Morning News, opened this way:

The fight for the philosophical soul of the U.S. Supreme Court took a new and different direction Thursday, as Harriet Miers - the president's friend and lawyer - withdrew her nomination to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Her decision was accepted with reluctance by the embattled President Bush, with jubilation by anxious conservatives and with suspicion by Democrats who accused the president of "caving in" to the right wing of the Republican Party.

And everyone, even the Brits, had something to say: Bush nominee sabotaged by right wing hawks from The Scotsman and Humiliated Bush forced to retreat as moral right turns its guns on him from The Guardian.

Back here, from The Chicago Tribune (Mark Silva) there's this -Withdrawal marks rare moment of weakness, surrender for Bush: "President Bush has reached a deep valley of his presidency, a place where even some of the ideological voices of his own party have abandoned him and his harshest critics are openly declaring a failed administration."

But then there's Ann Coulter - IT'S MORNING IN AMERICA!

She's happy. She's expects now we'll get a nominee who is a fire-breather, someone who will end this nonsense with the court coddling criminals, insisting folks have a right to sexual privacy, and allowing Christianity to be suppressed by a tiny heathen minority, and suggests the executive's powers may be limited in some way. Oh, that may be reading her wrong. She may just hope we get someone with "intellectual rigor" who will end this "legislating from the from the bench" and understand that, if any law is passed the does this or that, the Supreme Court has no right at all to thwart the "will of the people" and say it's wrong, by looking up stuff in the constitution - or some such thing.

Rather than cite the thousands of commentaries one can find in the media, and on the web, perhaps a summary will do.

Miers and the president said the nomination had to be withdrawn because the senate was asking, since there was no paper trail - the woman had never been a judge, even in traffic court, and had never written anything or said anything at all about constitutional law - for some documents about what she had done or said as Bush's personal attorney and later as White House attorney. Well, that was privileged, and he admires her decision to withdraw her name, to preserve this important principle of separation of powers.

No one bought it. That explanation had been proposed by a Washington Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer, the previous week, as a fine face-saving excuse to cut her loose. He was on all the talk shows being congratulated all day long. He was appropriately "ah shucks" humble.

It didn't matter. This was going nowhere. Any out would do.

The Democrats sat back and said little of substance, but all seem a bit concerned that the president is now really ticked-off and will nominate some judicial Neanderthal. But they have a dim view of his personality, thinking of him as a vindictive, spiteful person who lashes out at others and doesn't think things through, and would rather have a messy fight and destroy things, rather than do the right or even sensible thing. Of course, that's why his base admires him. But is it true?

Some say his days of sneering and petty vindictiveness are over - the bad news this week was too much. Those indictments were looming. The congress forced him to rescind his executive order suspending the Bacon-Davis act, and now the companies rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina have to pay workers "prevailing wage" rather than below minimum wage, or whatever they felt like paying. He must have hated that, and his contributors must think him a wimp. But he did it. He didn't have the votes to stop the congress from passing an override to his executive order. And then this was the week we reached two thousand soldiers killed in Iraq. The Pentagon said it wasn't a milestone. Brit Hume on Fox News said it was insignificant - we lost that many on one beach on one June morning in 1944 after all. But I was all over the news.

And then, to top it all off, the Chicago White Sox beat the Houston Astros in four games, a sweep, in the World Series. Texas loses, big time - in a final game in Texas itself. And his father and mother were in the stands.

And he has to withdrawn the Miers nomination.

Is he now spoiling for a fight? Seems unlikely. He's probably feeling pretty beat-up.

On the left there was talk that this may not be a good thing because now the "evangelical Christian right" is feeling its oats - they got the president to back down and dump this wimp with no real views. They want an anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-privacy zealot. Miers may have been "born-again" - but she wasn't sufficiently enthusiastic about Jesus or something. Bush lost his mojo. They found theirs.

And there was talk that this may not be a good thing because now the "intellectual right" is feeling its oats - they got the president to back down and dump this wimp with no real mind of her own. The want another Scalia, deeply read and with vast experience, who will be an anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-privacy zealot, and explain carefully why that is what the founding fathers wanted in this country. Scalia said it is "a fact" this country was established on Christian principles. Enough has been written about him in these pages. You could look it all up.

There was some talk the real reason this nomination was withdrawn was that James Dobson and a number of evangelical leaders were going to have to testify in the confirmation hearings about their meeting with Karl Rove, the one where he seems to have told them exactly how she'd vote on matters of concern to them. They called Bush and told him to dump the woman. They weren't going before congress. No one is confirming that story, by the way.

There were reports the majority leader of the senate, Bill Frist, called White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and then there was a conference call where Frist explained there just weren't enough votes to pass the nomination. What was the point in fighting it out?

It was a bad week. So now what?

And as mentioned in these pages a few weeks ago, one big problem seems to be that the Republicans made a commitment to the religious right, the evangelical born-again crowd, that for their support they would throw them a bone now and then. And the religious right felt - after all the years of being mocked and having to endure people arguing "under God" had no place in the Pledge of Allegiance, and being told officers at the Air Force Academy couldn't demand all cadets find Jesus, and they couldn't force all children in public school to mouth their approved prayers every day, and they couldn't have cities and states finance religious displays, and so on - well, this was pay-back time. They'd get this born again church lady or someone like her. Hell, maybe the teaching of evolution, and much of biology and geology supporting it, could be outlawed.

Now these folks want their payback for all those years of support.

Geez.

And add that former Republican Senator John Danforth - who Bush had as our UN ambassador for a time - back in June denounced the whole new Republican evangelical party as being just about the opposite of what anyone would consider Christian (see this for the particulars) - but that may be a theological dispute as Danforth is also an ordained Episcopalian minister, and the religious right suspects that's a fake religion anyway. But he did it again, Wednesday, October 26th, at, of all places, the Bill Clinton School of Public Service, a graduate branch of the University of Arkansas on the grounds of the Clinton presidential library. Ouch. That's here on the AP wire: "I think that the Republican Party fairly recently has been taken over by the Christian conservatives, by the Christian right. I don't think that this is a permanent condition, but I think this has happened, and that it's divisive for the country." And he said the evangelical Christian influence would be bad for the party in the long run.

Well, it hasn't helped George.

__

Footnote:

In a discussion of pending legislation in the UK on outlawing criticism of the other guy's religion, no matter who you are, Christopher Hart has some comments in The Sunday Times, October 23 -

Jonathan Swift observed that the problem with religion was that there wasn't enough of it around: "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." Three centuries on there is even less of it around and we still hate each other.

The difficulty, at least for the scientifically educated but spiritually malnourished, is not the idea of religion itself, meaning some system of ritualised worship that helps us to make sense, if only symbolically, of the human, natural and supernatural worlds. The difficulty is rather that all the religions on offer are so patently preposterous, if not downright unpleasant.

Judaism tells us in its most sacred text, the Torah, that a donkey once turned round and started an argument with its master (Numbers, chapter 22); and that the supreme creator took time out to instruct his chosen people not to carry dead badgers, pelicans, hoopoes or bats (Leviticus, chapter 11).

Christianity, while accepting these texts as sacred, further believes that God manifested himself on earth in the form of an excitable and frequently ill-tempered 1st-century Jewish rabbi called Joshua ("Jesus" in Greek) who disowned his family and believed that the world was soon going to end. How do we know Jesus was Jewish? Because he lived at home until he was 30 and his mother thought he was God.

Then there is Islam. Its followers believe that its sacred text, the Koran, is the word of Allah as dictated to his prophet Muhammad. Non-Muslims might regard Muhammad as a deluded and bellicose man who had far too many wives than was good for him. His private life as recorded in the Koran itself, for instance sura 66, is also rather surprising.

Buddhism is an increasingly popular choice for westerners these days with its distinctive mix of cowardice, escapism and self-absorption. Hinduism has always been the colourful and vibrant national religion of India, although under the guidance of that wicked imperialist power, the British raj, it did at last begin to accept that burning women alive on their husbands' funeral pyres might not be such a good idea.

Shintoism, the national religion of Japan, venerated the emperor as a living god, at least until 1946 when Hirohito, under gentle pressure from the US army, admitted on the radio that he wasn't really.

The emperor Vespasian's last sardonic words, as he lay awaiting death and the posthumous deification bestowed on the Caesars, best put this religious belief into perspective: "I think I'm turning into a god."

Some like to believe that primitive tribal religions were much nicer. Unfortunately many of them practised human sacrifice. When the British (wicked imperialist power, etc) captured the Ashanti capital of Kumasi in present-day Ghana, they found a grove of death where the ground was saturated with the blood of thousands of human victims.

So much for religion.

But see Cenk Uygur here -

It is a chilling fact that most of the world's leaders believe in nonsensical fairytales about the nature of reality. They believe in Gods that do not exist, and religions that could not possibly be true. We are driven to war after war, violence on top of violence to appease madmen who believe in gory mythologies.

... Osama bin Laden is insane. He believes God whispered in the ear of Mohammed 1,400 years ago about how he should conquer Arabia. Mohammed was a pure charlatan - and a good one at that. He makes present religious frauds like Pat Robertson look like amateurs.

He said God told him to have sex with as many of the women he met as possible. I'm sorry, I meant to say "take them as wives." God told him to kill all other tribes that stood in his way or that would not placate him with assurances of loyalty or bribes. God told him, conveniently, that everyone should follow him and never question a word he said.

He sold this bag of goods to the blithering idiots who lived in the Arabian Peninsula at the time. If that weren't shockingly stupid enough, over a billion people continue to believe the convenient lies that Mohammed told all that time ago -- to this very day.

... George W. Bush is the most powerful man alive. He is a class A imbecile. He is far less intelligent than the average Christian. But like most of the others, he believes Jesus died for his sins. That idea is so perverse and devoid of logic it should shock the conscience. Instead, it gets him elected, and earns him the reverence of a great percentage of America. America! The most advanced country in the world -- run by a bunch of villagers who still believe Santa Claus is going to save them.

There is no damn Easter Bunny. There is no Jesus waiting to return. Moses never even existed. These were all convenient lies from the men of those times to gain power. Their actions were rational -- they wanted to deceive their brethren so that they could amass power. I get their motivations. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand our motivations, thousands of years later, still following the conmen of yesteryear into our gory, bloody, violent end.

Jesus is said to have said on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Because Jesus was insane and the God he thought would rescue him did not exist. And he died on that cross like a fool. He fancied himself the son of God and he could barely convince twelve men to follow him at a time when the world was full of superstition.

... I know most of you don't actually read your religious texts, and when you do, you assiduously try to avoid the parts that make no sense whatsoever or hide underneath the comforting grasp of your religious leaders who have concocted a bunch of circular logic (a crime to even use that word in regards to Christianity, Islam or Judaism) to shield you from the obvious folly of the written text.

So, I'm not calling you stupid if you haven't really read the material. And I know how powerful brainwashing is. We all received it when we were young and it is exceedingly difficult to break its grasp. But people dance around the issue out of politeness because they don't want to call you what you are -- ignorant.

There are a lot of people I love dearly and respect wholeheartedly who believe in religion. I hate to do this to them. But we have killed far too many people, wasted far too much time on this nonsense for us to keep going in this direction for fear of offense.

... Jesus was a lunatic. God is not coming to your rescue. He hasn't come to anyone's rescue in thousands of years, including Jesus. Mohammed was a power hungry, scam artist and ruthless conqueror. Moses and Abraham were figments of the imagination of some long dead rabbi. He would probably laugh his ass off at all of you who still believe the fairytales he made up thousands of years ago. He probably wouldn't even believe it if you told him.

... Have I offended you? That's too bad. Stop killing each other in the name of false and ridiculous Gods and I will stop ridiculing you. Trust me, your offense is much worse than mine.

... Right now as you read this, there are ignorant, hateful Muslims teaching other ignorant Muslims how to put on a suicide belt. There are orthodox Jews telling other Jews how they must never leave their "holy land" no matter what the consequences are to other human beings. They assure their followers -- remember, they are not the chosen ones, we are. If we crush and oppress them, don't worry, God will excuse it, and even desires it, because He is on our side.

There are maniacal Christians who are praying for the end of time. Who are hoping that most of the world's population is wiped off the face of the Earth by their vengeful and murderous God. Whom they believe is, ironically, a loving God. Unless, of course, you make the fatal mistake of not kissing his ass and appeasing him, in which case he will slaughter you and condemn you to eternal torture. What kind of sick people believe this?

The kind who live next to you. The kind who voted for George Bush.

Other than that, religion is fine.

Posted by Alan at 20:27 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Friday, 28 October 2005 07:41 PDT home

Monday, 24 October 2005

Topic: The Law

Odd Challenges on the Limits of Free Speech

Monday, October 24, in the New York Times one could find this -

You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.

What's the problem?

The Onion produces a streaming audio parody of the president's weekly radio address - now and then, not every week, as the latest is dated September 5 and concerns Hurricane Katrina. The problem is the header, containing a picture of President Bush and the presidential seal.

Here's what has happened:

"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton's office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)

Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement."

Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception.

Oops.

Well, putting aside the fair use doctrine and considerations of the legal protections afforded to satire and parody - discussed in the pages in June 2003 in relation to Fox News suing Al Franken and the Margaret Mitchell estate trying to stop publication of that novel The Wind Done Gone, and in July 2004 in relation to Ray Bradbury suing Michael Moore about the "Fahrenheit 911" film title and Mattel suing a Swedish artist for using Barbie Dolls satirically - the White House wants The Onion to cease and desist, as it were. The Onion prints a half a million hard copies a week and three million a week read it online. Who knows how many may think the president says these things?

As for The Onion, the Times tells us Scott Dikkers, the editor in chief, shot this back: "I'm surprised the president deems it wise to spend taxpayer money for his lawyer to write letters to The Onion."

And then he suggested the money be used instead for tax breaks for satirists.

The Onion's non-satiric lawyers are claiming the readers in question just aren't that dumb. THEY know The Onion does parody. They get a joke. The magazine's attorney, Rochelle H. Klaskin - "It is inconceivable that anyone would think that, by using the seal, The Onion intends to 'convey... sponsorship or approval' by the president."

Other points the attorney makes - there's a headline in the current issue "Bush to Appoint Someone to Be in Charge of Country." Duh. And anyway, The Onion and its website are free, so the seal is not being used for commercial purposes.

But they requested a formal application to use the seal. What the heck. Why not?

There has been no response to the application.

The Times, being an investigative newspaper, asked Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, how this all came about, and got this response:

"Despite the seriousness of the Bush White House, more than one Bush staffer reads The Onion and enjoys it thoroughly," he said. "We do have a sense of humor, believe it or not."

Well, many refuse to believe that, and see this odd legal complaint as proof.

What's the point of making a fuss?

And haven't we seen the presidential seal on a podium in this or that "Saturday Night Live" sketch? Are they next?

Now as you might recall, Fox News had copyrighted the words "Fair and Balanced" for use identifying their news operation, and didn't like those words being used in the title of Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. They lost. A transcript of the hearing is here.

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, but see this - 'Lawsuit Barbie' Fails for Mattel, Court upholds an artist's use of the doll in his series of photographs, Christine Steiner, The Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, January 07, 2004.

Ray Bradbury never filed a suit after all his comments.

And as mentioned here, there was that "sequel" to Margaret Mitchell's novel, Gone With the Wind, by a black author, Alice Randall. The Mitchell estate fought in the courts over Randall's right to publish this take on what happened at Tara after Rhett left the scene for good. The Wind Done Gone was finally published in late 2001, after a three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals on October 10, 2001 affirmed a previous court's decision to block an injunction against its publication. The copyright didn't apply to this "racial commentary" on what Mitchell had written.

But did anyone copyright or register as a trademark the presidential seal? Is it public domain?

What is the gripe?

Is this like someone making a fake police badge and impersonating an officer to do nasty things? Now that is illegal, but should the fellow in the Village People who dressed as a cop have been ordered to cease and desist, and made to dress as a civilian? What about Halloween "cop" costumes?

And shouldn't these White House staff folks been working on other things?

With Karl Rove distracted by his legal problems the White House staff is becoming far too undisciplined. He's not riding herd on them and they're getting pretty far "off message."

This may explain the nomination of the Church Lady, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court. They'd all been reading The Onion and got confused. They've started doing parody themselves.

__

Okay, is this parody? Or what is it?

On October 20, at the University of Florida, columnist Ann Coulter gave a speech to raise money for the Alachua County Republican Party. Eight hundred folks paid up to seventy-five bucks each to hear her speak, and after she got her thirty-grand speaking fee, and after the cost of food and beer - this was the third annual Ronald Reagan Black Tie and Blue Jeans BBQ - the Alachua County Republican Party got the rest. You do the math.

One wonders if the Young Republicans in our colleges are really paying attention in their economics classes.

The Universal Press Syndicate covered the event here in the Independent Florida Alligator, which has to be one of the great newspaper names of all time.

The scene?

The audience, decked out in patriotic garb and cowboy boots, fanatically surrounded Coulter before dinner, asking her to pose with them for pictures.

One woman caught Coulter's attention by begging for a picture, saying, "My husband loves you."

The Republicans got in the spirit of the night while enjoying an SUV-size trailer full of Budweiser beer.

Whatever. Her theme for the night was the weaknesses she saw in the Democratic Party.

"The Democrats complain about the Republican base being nuts. The nuts are their entire party."

And she warned these folks to not allow Democrats anywhere near foreign policy, "not even to keep them away from domestic policy."

And she defended the war in Iraq and ranted that the Democrats were "demoralizing America" when this war was "a magnificent success."

They ate it up.

But then there was this:

She also criticized the media for being liberal and Democrats for whining about their rights under the First Amendment.

"They're always accusing us of repressing their speech," she said. "I say let's do it. Let's repress them."

She later added, "Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment."

What? Is this the new right-side Republican position? Is this where we're heading?

University of Florida College Republicans President Ashlee Black:

"I think that she's incredibly intelligent and outspoken. She's a little raw, but I think she balances the left's Michael Moore."

Ah yes, fair and balanced. Michael Moore and his kind like free speech, but what about the other side of the question?

One wonders if the Young Republicans in our colleges are really paying attention in their government classes.

___

Footnote:

So sue me.

Posted by Alan at 21:28 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Tuesday, 25 October 2005 08:18 PDT home

Wednesday, 5 October 2005

Topic: The Law

Two Days Out: Wednesdays with the Church Lady

By midweek, Wednesday, October 5, you'd think things would have settled down about the nomination of Harriet Miers for the open seat on the Supreme Court. Conservatives would have realized what Karl Rove does to people who don't do the pope thing with President Bush - you know, agree on infallibility as a given. In two days they should have come around. But they didn't, and that ate up all the space in the news and commentary.

There was enough other news.

The Shiite dominated parliament in Iraq changed the rules for the upcoming referendum on the new constitution, cleverly assuring there was no way it would not be approved, then, after the Kurds and Sunnis cried foul, and even the UN weighed in saying that would kind of, sort of, make the whole thing a farce, they said that the old rules would do just fine. That's all explained in the Associated Press story here. Busted! Ramadan started Monday night and things should have settled down over there, but that's a Shiite thing and we got this: Ramadan bomber kills 26 at Shi'ite mosque in Iraq - and that was at a funeral thing for someone killed in an earlier bombing.

But things are going well, as the president said in his radio address just a few days earlier, that Saturday morning thing - Iraqi security forces had "more than 100 battalions operating throughout the country." Cool. But there was that Tuesday press conference, four days later where we got slightly different numbers, with "there are over 80 army battalions fighting alongside coalition troops… There are over 30 Iraqi battalions in the lead." Let's see, a full battalion is about six hundred folks. Twelve thousand disappeared? He's not good at math? Whatever. And after he met with the Generals the next day - Pace and Petraeus - we got this - "I was also pleased to hear there are 3,000 Iraqi forces [taking part in an offensive in western Iraq]. Over 30 percent of the Iraqi troops are in the lead on these offensive operations." What's going on here?

The week before, two other Generals - Abizaid and Casey - had told Congress that there was actually one Iraqi battalion able to take on the insurgents on its own, as an autonomous force. Yeah, they admitted they had said there were three, but it was just one. Sorry about that.

But you have to trust the president. There's been good progress. He says so, and just pulls numbers out of his ass and smiles. He knows no one will check. The press doesn't do that sort of thing. So we have 139,000 or 149,000 troop there? You see both. So far 1,942 of our people have been killed, and ten in the first five days of October. We're spending a little under six billion a month on the effort. But who is counting?

Other news? The Tom DeLay indictments and the story around it just get stranger, as the Associated Press reports:

Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men's causes.

When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay's private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt's son all ended up with money, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist recently charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation, and Jim Ellis, the DeLay fundraiser indicted with his boss last week in Texas, also came into the picture.

The complicated transactions are drawing scrutiny in legal and political circles after a grand jury indicted DeLay on charges of violating Texas law with a scheme to launder illegal corporate donations to state candidates.

The government's former chief election enforcement lawyer said the Blunt and DeLay transactions are similar to the Texas case and raise questions that should be investigated regarding whether donors were deceived or the true destination of their money was concealed.

Yes, when Tom DeLay had to step down because he had been indicted, the house Republicans named Roy Blunt majority leader to take his place. Geez.

What else? There's Larry Franklin - Pentagon Analyst Pleads Guilty in Spy Case - and it seems he passed a whole lot of classified information to Israel, the Likud Party, and to pro-Israel lobbying groups here. He admitted it. Ah well, at least they caught the spy in Dick Cheney's office - Espionage Case Breaches the White House - the FBI and CIA calling it the first case of espionage in the White House in modern history, a Marine from New Jersey who had worked for years stealing anything top secret that might help overthrow the government in the Philippines. Yep, things are tough over there. You could look it up, but no one does, as there is more than enough bad news to go around.

Really, there is. See Hard-hit New Orleans will lay off 3,000 workers (no residents now, no businesses now, so no tax base and thus no money) or CIA Chief Refuses to Seek Discipline for 9/11 Officials (everyone makes mistakes and that's old history) or Lindsay Lohan in Car Crash (the paparazzi were chasing her just down the street from here and she ran her new, big black Mercedes convertible head-on into a van, but she's fine) or Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes Expecting Baby (some people shouldn't reproduce).

Good news? There's this:

The Republican-controlled Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to impose restrictions on the treatment of terrorism suspects, delivering a rare wartime rebuke to President Bush.

Defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment that would prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held.

This is a rider to a spending bill on the war, sponsored by John McCain, who knows a bit about abuse of prisoners, from personal experience. But it won't survive in the House. Bush has his guys there, and the White House has said Bush advisers would recommend the president veto the entire bill over the legislation. He gets to do what he wants. But he has never vetoed anything, so one never knows.

Underlying all this is the Fitzgerald investigation of who in the White House had the bright idea of revealing the name of an undercover CIA agent to get back at her husband for embarrassing the president when he exposed a bit of fibbing about Saddam trying to build nuclear weapons. Late Wednesday, October 5, see US officials brace for decisions in CIA leak case, and set that against this bit of gossip:

I just talked to a source who told me that Karl Rove has been missing from a number of recent White House presidential events - events that he has ALWAYS attended in the past. For example, Rove was absent from yesterday's presidential press conference to promote Harriet Miers. These are the kind of events Rove ALWAYS attends, I'm told, yet of late he's been MIA each and every time.

My source tells me that the scuttlebutt around town is that the White House knows something bad is coming, in terms of Karl getting indicted, and they're already trying to distance him from the president.

Well, the man has kidney stones - so this may mean nothing.

Besides, all anyone is talking about is Harriet, making the rounds in the senate doing some chitchat with the folks before the confirmation hearings. The two major newspapers of record, the New York Times and Washington Post, the morning of Wednesday, October 5, front page how she's now "the church lady."

The Times tells us that when she was a partner in a Dallas law firm, she "felt a void in her life." After long conversations with a colleague and with her sort of boyfriend, Nathan Hecht, she decided to accept Jesus as her savior and be born again. She was baptized right away - and she became a Republican just about the same time. Of course. The Post tells it differently - this conversion came when she listened to a speech by a surgeon. Afterwards that, she told Hecht, "I'm convinced that life begins at conception." Hecht, now a Texas Supreme Court justice, said to the Times that she's still pro-life, but "You can be just as pro-life as the day is long and can decide the Constitution requires Roe." That's not helpful. The Post also tells us the folks at her evangelical church like her enthusiasm for all that born again stuff, but she can't sing a lick - "Let's just say she makes a joyful noise unto the Lord."

Don't know what she'd do on the bench, and she can't sing. But she was "born again" (something didn't take the first time?) - so now what?

The president said she'll be just fine, Tuesday, in that press conference. One: "I know her character, I know her strength, I know her talent, and I know she's going to be a fine judge." Two: "It's one thing to say a person can read the law - and that's important ... But what also matters is the intangibles. To me a person's strength of character counts a lot. And as a result of my friendship with Harriet, I know her strength of character."

He mentioned "character" at least eight times. One thinks of what he said about Vladimir Putin in June 2001 - "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country?"

That worked out, didn't it? (Some folks don't think it did.)

Well, that how the man makes decisions.

But not to worry, James Dobson of Focus on the Family says Harriet Miers will make a great Supreme Court justice. He's been telling all his radio listeners, who want abortion banned and gays to go away and America to be solely Christian, that there's something else going on. Don't worry. She's with "us." But he won't say how he knows this. As he told the New York Times here, he's been to the White House and talked with Rove and the gang, and "some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about."

Colorado Senator Ken Salazar is oddly upset with that. He says if Dobson knows some secret about Miers, he should share it everyone, particularly the senate who has to advise and consent on this nomination, or perhaps reject it - especially if Dobson heard some super-dooper secrets straight from the White House. "It seems to me, all of the [information] the White House knows about Harriet Miers should be made available to the Senate and the American people. If they're making information available to Dr. Dobson - whom I respect and disagree with from time to time - I believe that information should be shared equally with a U.S. senator."

Ha, ha. You don't get to know! You'll find out everything once you confirm her.

But wait! There's more! Dobson, on his Wednesday, October 5th radio show, has a change of heart and says he's waiting for "a sign from God" as to whether he should endorse the woman. Apparently he just realized Karl Rove isn't God. -

He said "There is so much in the balance [with this nominee], there is no way to put it into words." Because of that, Dobson is begging the Lord: "If this is not the person you want on that Supreme Court, all you have to do is tell me so, and do it through any means you want to."

He finally then discussed why he is supporting Miers, saying "I can't reveal it all, because I do know things that I'm privy to that I can't describe, because of confidentiality." He then states that Miers "is a deeply committed Christian" and that people who know her have all told him that "she will not be a disappointment."

"I believe in trusting this president and this time because of the stand that he has taken and the way he has implemented it consistently for four and a half years. When you put that with all the other information that I have been able to gather - and you'll have to trust me on this one - when you know some of the things that I know, that I probably shouldn't know, that take me in this direction, you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, why I have said why I believe that Harriet Miers will be a good justice."

He then states, "if I have made a mistake here ... the blood of those babies that will die will be on my hands, to some degree. And that's why is has weighed so heavily on me."

Poor guy! All these things he knows that he probably shouldn't know! All those dead almost-babies if he didn't fully understand all the super secret stuff Rove and the fellows told him about this woman!

Yeah, it's almost comical.

What's not comical was the seminal column in the Washington Post midweek from George Will, "the" conservative to a lot of people, even if his prose style is turgid and condescending and oh so "intellectual." The man is not happy.

That means he's operating from this thesis: The president "has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution."

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's "argument" for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers's nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers's name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

George Will is cold. The leading Republican voice just called his president, who he has supported, lacking in the will or, even worse, the ability to make judgments of any consequence. He said the man just doesn't think.

On the other end of the conservative spectrum, the last person you'd call intellectual at all, the reactionary Phyllis Schlaffly, with a livelier prose style, is just blunt: "Bush is building his own empire without regard for the conservative movement or the party."

The man who was senate majority leader before he said those odd things about how he agreed with Strom Thurmond about "nigras," Trent Lott, on MSNBC is also unhappy - Miers is "clearly" not the most qualified person for the job, and there are "a lot more people - men, women and minorities - that are more qualified, in my opinion, by their experience than she is." On the far, far right, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback added something about how the president's promises about Miers' "heart" aren't enough to assure him that she's "sufficiently conservative" on social issues.

Brownback and Dobson, of course, want a "reliable vote." So do Phyllis Schlaffly and much of the right. They would support the confirmation of Harriet Miers if they got assurances, and maybe Dobson has, that no matter what the evidence and arguments presented before her in session, she will vote against abortion rights and gay rights and all the rest. They want nothing to do with someone who considers the merits of any given case.

So, is she the one? No one knows.

There's a lot of agony on the right here.

Over at the National Review, editor-at-large of the National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg, has this to say:

Conservatives, I thought, were supposed to believe ideas have consequences, that American institutions - chief among them the Supreme Court and the Constitution - have specific and organic roles to play in the culture which depend on intellectual honesty, opposition to cant, and a dispassionate rejection of the politicization of the law. The reliable vote argument - absent other rationales - runs counter to all of these. This becomes obvious when you imagine a Democratic President appointing a confidante with few obvious credentials for the Supreme Court. A president Kerry could hardly convince any of us that his pick should be confirmed because she's a reliable vote.

Wow. He said that? He wants someone who listens and thinks and considers the evidence and the statutes and the precedents and the constitution and THEN decides what's right? He is on the other side of the right, as is George Will.

You see the opposing forces here - shall well have "a dispassionate rejection of the politicization of the law," or shall we embrace complete politicization of the law, to save America from the fags and sluts and the ungodly?

The Democrats can sit back and watch the debate. But maybe they should join in.

__

Footnote on Jonah Goldberg:

What he says above is fine, but does one forgive him for this?

Posted by Alan at 21:23 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Wednesday, 5 October 2005 21:45 PDT home

Wednesday, 21 September 2005

Topic: The Law

The Law: What We Forbid

So John Roberts will be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

If you got to the Google news aggregator - that thing that uses infobots to continually scan the news and provide links to thousands of stories in all the major categories of news you can imagine - and you put "Roberts vote count" in the search bar and hit the return key, as of late Wednesday, September 21, you'd get about fifteen hundred links. (Try it here.)

Here are some:

Dem leader of Senate says he'll vote no on Roberts (San Francisco Chronicle)
Democrats Announce Support for John Roberts for Supreme Court (LifeNews.com)
Democrats revive filibuster threat (MSNBC)
Democrat plans no filibuster on Roberts (Atlanta Journal Constitution)
Why Roberts Should Not Be Confirmed As Chief Justice (San Francisco Chronicle)
Should Democratic Senators Vote to Confirm Roberts? (TPMCafe)

That last one is good. It's by Robert W. Gordon, a professor of law and legal history at Yale - and a graduate of Harvard College and Law School, if that sort of thing impresses you. He thinks the answer is "no," the Democrats should block the Roberts nomination - but won't pretend it's an easy call.

There are two kinds of arguments for Yes, the political and the substantive.

The substantive argument is that Roberts really isn't that bad, and is about the best we're going to get out of George Bush. He has glittering credentials, is obviously very smart, and claims not to be an ideologue. He says he respects precedent, is deferential to legislatures except when they exceed the clear boundaries of their authority, has no doctrinaire method (such as "originalism") for interpreting the Constitution, and will decide cases one at a time. He says he has no particular personal or political views, at least none that will influence his decisions. He admires his old boss Judge Henry Friendly, of whom it was said that nobody could tell if he was a liberal or conservative.

On the other hand:

Roberts knew exactly what he had to say in his job interview and he said it. He was playing for the Democratic swing votes, not just the majority's. He made strategic, but mostly symbolic, concessions to their views. He knows people are worried about his views on presidential power, so he praises Justice Jackson's opinion in the Youngstown Case, which gives a judge who wants to limit presidential power some categories and guidelines for doing it. He knows people are worried about his views on civil rights, so he distances himself from his younger self, the Reaganaut firebrand of the 1980s, and affirms his commitment to antidiscrimination and even some affirmative action. Obviously he knows people on both sides worry about how he will decide abortion cases, so while he recognizes that the case law establishes a "right to privacy", he won't say anything specific about its scope and application.

None of this however tells us much about what kind of judge he will be, except that he will be a rhetorically cautious judge - not a flamethrower like Scalia or an iconoclastic reactionary like Thomas who is perfectly willing to throw hundreds of statutes and cases overboard to vindicate an abstract theory of the Constitution. He will work within the received materials of case law and conventional argument. Unhappily those materials are not all that constraining, especially for a clever judge like Roberts. There are a hundred ways to read a precedent or a statute creating a right so narrowly that you can claim to respect it while whittling it away, or making it practically impossible for anyone to get a remedy for its violation. And when you read his testimony carefully, you see that he has not really committed himself to much of anything at all.

There's much more, the political part, but you get the idea.

For many not in agreement with the positions of the Christian evangelical right, now in almost total control of Republican Party and thus the government itself, the issue that is key is the issue of abortion rights - what they call state-sanctioned murder of unborn children, and the other side calls "choice," a decision best left to the woman and her doctor, and not the business of the government at all. The whole thing, the basis of the Roe v Wade decision, hinges on the "right to privacy" established in case law first in the 1965 Griswold decision - the highest court ruling the State of Connecticut really shouldn't be busting into the bedrooms of married couples and arresting them for having in their possession any form of birth control. The idea is there's enough in other parts of the constitution that allows one to infer a general right to privacy - some things are just not the government's business. That opened a can of worms. We got Roe v Wade, and recently the Lawrence v Texas decision - holding that the agents of the State of Texas had no business busting into the bedrooms of consenting gay men and arresting them for doing what they were willingly doing with each other. That ruling offended a lot of the righteous, or the self-righteous, who thought people shouldn't do such things.

The underlying problem has always been there. Some things the government can and should forbid - rape, murder, theft and assault and all that. Oh heck, add speeding and littering. No one, left or right, argues otherwise. No one argues some speech should be sanctioned - libel, slander, and the famous yelling FIRE in a crowded theater (when there is no fire, of course, as otherwise that might be useful). The problem is always around the edges, with things like "victimless crimes." Do you forbid gay marriage? It hurts no one - or it destroys the whole fabric of civilized society. Do you forbid the medical use of marijuana to ease pain? It actually helps people - or it is the first slip on the slippery slope that will make us a nation of drug fiends.

So what about abortion?

Digby over at Hullabaloo has a long explanation of why he signed a petition opposing the Roberts nomination. It seems right - but futile. Roberts will be the next Supreme Court Chief Justice. Digby ends with this:

... I believe that a woman's right to choose gets to the very heart of what it means to be an autonomous, free human being. Control of one's own body is fundamental to individual liberty. If the church believes that abortion is morally wrong it should instruct its voluntary membership not to do it. Individuals must always be allowed to follow their own consciences. But there should be no legal coercion on such a personal matter.

The only issue the government could be called upon to arbitrate is if the fetus has an equal right to life as the woman in whose body it lives. But there is really no argument about that. There is almost nobody who believes that an abortion is wrong if the life of the woman is at stake. Indeed, the vast majority (80%+) of Americans believe that abortion should be available at least in cases of rape or incest, so it is clear that the "abortion is murder" argument is illegitimate. No one can believe that it is moral to murder a person because of the way he or she was conceived, or by whom.

Therefore, the right of the fetus is not the real issue - the reasons a woman wants an abortion are the issue. This leads us to ask which particular circumstances are so difficult for a woman that she may be allowed to have an abortion. 80% or so of Americans think that rape or incest are such circumstances. But how about a failing, abusive marriage? A terminal illness? Five other children and no job? Being 43 years old and carrying a child with serious birth defects? Being a foolish 15 year old girl in love? Should we make exceptions for some of those? Any of them? Who decides? You? Me? John Roberts?

This isn't about murder and it isn't about the right of the fetus. It's clearly about controlling women's personal moral behavior. I don't think the government has any business doing that.

Unlike some others, I think it's quite likely that the court will overturn with these two new Bush justices as soon as they get the right case. This is simply too vital to the conservative cause. The notion that they want to milk it is quite right, of course, but I think they will happily run on abortion in individual states for as long as they can. Milking the issue seems to me to be much more likely if it's turned back to the states than if it's not.

John Roberts is a professional movement conservative at the very top of the food chain. His wife is the president of "Feminists For Life." He will vote to overturn and make women fight in more than half the states of this country for a basic right they've taken for granted for over a generation. It is depressingly likely he will be confirmed, but I'm glad to go on record opposing him.

That's pretty clear, but when I forwarded it to Rick, the News Guy in Atlanta, Rick took issue -

"It seems right - but futile. Roberts will be the next Supreme Court Chief Justice."

Yes, but futility, or the lack thereof, isn't everything. I think of it this way: Doing what you believe is the right thing is the cake; being successful at doing what you believe is the right thing is the frosting on the cake.

"Unlike some others, I think it's quite likely that the court will overturn with these two new Bush justices as soon as they get the right case. This is simply too vital to the conservative cause."

I disagree with Digby on this.

Roberts has already publicly affirmed his belief in the judicial concept of stare decisis (the idea that sitting justices should not blithely overturn past rulings that have established themselves as law, even if they personally disagree with them) and has also said he sees Roe v Wade as established law.

But I wouldn't be totally surprised to find him voting in favor of allowing some state to find exceptions to the constitutional right to abortion, eventually watering down its effectiveness.

"Indeed, the vast majority (80%+) of Americans believe that abortion should be available at least in cases of rape or incest, so it is clear that the 'abortion is murder' argument is illegitimate."

Okay, although I'm on Digby's side in his overall argument, I do have a philosophical disagreement with him on this.

First of all, as much as I do pay attention to Gallup polls, I don't base my core beliefs on them. (For example, didn't one such poll have over 70% of Americans believing in the existence of angels? And so does this mean that angels actually do exist?)

Second of all, if I WERE in favor of outlawing abortions, I would probably do so based on the belief that abortion is "murder," or should be seen as "murder" in the eyes of the law. And if I DID think abortion was "murder," I definitely would NOT make an exception for rape or incest. (And I guess not even if the mother's life were imperiled by giving birth - in which case, the mother's life being no more valuable than the child's, I suppose we should try our best to save them both, hoping for the best, but letting the chips fall where they may.)

By the way, another one of my positions on this subject is SURE to annoy those on the so-called "pro-choice" side, and I would guess this probably includes Digby: I never liked the label "pro-choice," since, if indeed abortion is wrong because it is "murder," then making a "choice" is irrelevant, since the law does not allow one the "choice" to commit murder.

But nor, on the other hand, should it necessarily be about the right of a woman to "choose" to do with her own body what she wants, since the law does not permit her to commit suicide, nor (in most places) to engage in prostitution. This is not to say a woman can't get away with doing either of those things, it's just to say that we already do allow our government to claim legal authority over such matters.

But wait! Don't get me wrong! I am NOT among those who think abortion should be outlawed!

My main reason for being "pro-abortion" (and you know what I mean by that) is something I rarely talk to others about, mostly because it's based on my own personal "religious" beliefs, such as they are, that hardly anyone else seems to share.

Although I don't believe in the traditional God that most everyone else seems to believe in, I do think that if there IS a God that helps us decide how we should act, both as individuals and as a community, then this God is everything in the universe and beyond, and that God's laws are how everything works.

So just as I know not to walk off a cliff, since that would not be good for me, I know also that my whole happy existence depends on the support of a healthy community, which in turn depends on healthy adults raising healthy children. If, on the other hand, a community gets weighted down with mothers who can't support their children, it ceases to be a healthy community. (But if, instead of aborting, the mother chooses to place the baby up for adoption - and this should be HER choice, never the community's - that's fine, although it's worth noting that there are already thousands of unfortunate kids waiting to be adopted in this world, and placing them in good families is already a task that overwhelms us.)

And on that question of so-called "murder," we often forget that God does not decide what kind of killing is considered "murder" under our laws - we do. In fact, to the extent that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God has weighed in on anything like "murder" in general, he said in his famous Ten Commandments only that you shalt not "kill" - but paradoxically, one of the few times "He" addressed the idea of killing babies in particular, he seemed to be all in favor of it, instructing the Jews it was okay to go to Canaan and kill everybody they see, women and babies included.

The death of the extremely young, awful as this may sound, has always been a natural part of life on Earth. How many newly-born sea turtles survive long enough to create their own offspring? And it wasn't too long ago in human history that infants had maybe a fifty-fifty chance of becoming children, much less adults. Back then, we created as many babies as we could afford to raise, knowing not all of them would stay with us long enough to support us in our old age; it's only now, after our scientists have come up with miracle means of straight-arming infant mortality, that we are confronted with the vexing question of whether to purposely perform a task that nature used to handle on its own.

Obviously, I don't buy into the belief that abortion should never be used for "birth control" purposes, an argument that even many "pro-choicers" are too shy to deny; in fact, that's almost always how abortion will be used. In truth, as frightening and brutal as this may seem to some, when it comes to abortion as birth control, I think God probably approves of the concept. In fact, I think God, at least the one I believe in, might actually, in most cases, mandate it.

And so now you know why I rarely talk about this stuff.

Yep, telling the Christian evangelical right that, in regard to abortion, "God probably approves of the concept," would be a tough sell. And the secular left doesn't deal much with talk of God.

Rick may be right about all this. But the argument is too hot for these times, where everyone is saying he or she knows exactly what God approves of and what He does not, and everyone else just has it all wrong. I kind of like Rick's God - sounds like a reasonable fellow.

Posted by Alan at 20:30 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Wednesday, 21 September 2005 20:38 PDT home

Thursday, 11 August 2005

Topic: The Law

Legal Matters: Dealing with Canadians and Shoplifters

A long time ago the case of Maher Arar was discussed in Just Above Sunset here - December 21, 2003: Bitter Brits. Arar was the Canadian citizen we secretly deported to Syria. We don't do torture. They do. Torture is not US policy. And we thought he was a bad guy. We picked him up at the Newark airport when he was changing planes. But, damn, is seems he wasn't as bad guy. We had bad information. As the 2003 item points out, his crime was that his mother's cousin had joined the Muslim Brotherhood long after Maher Arar moved to Canada. And after ten months of torture and incarceration in a quite tiny cell in Syria, he was allowed to return to his home in Canada.

Oops. Now he is suing the US government. He is not happy.

Well, we were just being careful, and a bit overly enthusiastic. Understandable, of course.

Wonder of wonders, his case is finally being heard. You see there was rental lease agreement from 1997 which he had co-signed and that seemed to indicate he might have known someone who knew someone who… oh heck, the full details and all the supporting documentation are here if you're at all interested.

What's interesting now is the summary of our government's position, now that we're in court, as reported in the New York Times, Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - U.S. Defends Detentions at Airports (byline Nina Bernstein) -

Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food, lawyers for the government said in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.

The assertion came in oral arguments over a federal lawsuit by Maher Arar, a naturalized Canadian citizen who charges that United States officials plucked him from Kennedy International Airport when he was on the way home on Sept. 26, 2002, held him in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn detention center and then shipped him to his native Syria to be interrogated under torture because officials suspected that he was a member of Al Qaeda.

Syrian and Canadian officials have cleared Mr. Arar, 35, of any terrorist connections, but United States officials maintain that "clear and unequivocal" but classified evidence shows that he is a Qaeda member. They are seeking dismissal of his lawsuit, in part through the rare assertion of a "state secrets" privilege.

You have to love the contentions here, especially the contention the suit should be dismissed because we know stuff we cannot tell even the judge. You have to trust us on this.

Judge David G. Trager of United States District Court of course prepared written questions for lawyers on both sides to address further, including one that focused on the fellow's accusations of illegal treatment in New York. Arar says he was "deprived of sleep and food and was coercively interrogated for days at the airport and at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn" - and he was, of course, not allowed to call a lawyer, his family or the Canadian consul.

Trager: "Would not such treatment of a detainee - in any context, criminal, civil, immigration or otherwise - violate both the Constitution and clearly established case law?"

Mary Mason, senior trial lawyer for the government, "it would not."

Legally, she said, anyone who presents a foreign passport at an American airport, even to make a connecting flight to another country, is seeking admission to the United States. If the government decides that the passenger is an "inadmissible alien," he remains legally outside the United States - and outside the reach of the Constitution - even if he is being held in a Brooklyn jail.

Even if they are wrongly or illegally designated inadmissible, the government's papers say, such aliens have at most a right against "gross physical abuse."

At most? Seems like she's saying he was lucky he didn't get the New York police broomstick up the ass treatment - but he was Canadian, not Haitian.

But here's a cool exchange:

Under immigration law, Ms. Mason asserted, Mr. Arar was afforded "ample" due process when he was given five days to challenge an order finding him inadmissible.

"The burden of proof is on the alien to demonstrate his admissibility," Ms. Mason said, "and he did not do that."

"Do you do this to all people on a connecting flight?" Judge Trager asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes, all have to show admissibility," Ms. Mason replied. …

The counterarguments came form David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, representing Arar. His notion was that the government had denied Arar "a meaningful chance to be heard" - refusing to let him call a lawyer initially, and later by sort of lying to the lawyer about his whereabouts. You see, Arar, who had been told he would be deported to Canada, was not handed a final order sending him to Syria until he was in handcuffs on the private jet heading out over the Atlantic. And we told his lawyer that he had been sent to a jail in New Jersey. Fooled ya!

Cole - "We can't take a citizen, pick him up at J.F.K. and send him to Syria to be tortured. We can't hold against Mr. Arar the failure to file a motion for review when he's locked up in a gravelike cell in Syria."

Wanna bet?

Other issues?

Dennis Barghaan, who represents former Attorney General John Ashcroft, one of the federal officials being sued for damages in the case, argued that Congress and recent judicial decisions tell federal courts "keep your nose out" of foreign affairs and national security questions, like those in this case.

At several points the judge seemed to echo such concerns. He said he had refused to read a letter from the plaintiffs detailing testimony before a Canadian board of inquiry into Mr. Arar's case because he did not know how to deal with questions that might require the government to confirm or deny classified information.

"How am I going to handle that?" he asked, rubbing his forehead and furrowing his brow before adjourning the hearing.

That's a real good question.

Tresy, over at Sisyphus Shrugs (great name for a commentary site) suggests this is a little too Kafkaesque for her taste and wonders why this isn't get more play in the media:

You would think that our government kidnapping the citizen of a neighboring democracy and sending him to be tortured, by an official supporter of terrorism no less, simply because of a signature on a rental lease agreement, would have some newsworthiness. Too bad Arar wasn't a pretty white woman. …

I guess we shouldn't be surprised that a government that claims the right to imprison suspects without any due process on grounds of national security would claim immunity from legal process on the same ground when the tables are turned. Still, it takes a bit of chutzpah to claim "clear and unequivocal evidence" that the plaintiff, now walking around free, is a terrorist. Sending him to Syria to be tortured is just what you do with obviously guilty people, you see.

Welcome to America. Have a nice trip.

Our friend, the high-powered Wall Street attorney, commented all this cannot be good for tourism. Maybe it will improve sales of the collected works of that Czech-born German-speaking writer, Kafka - and we can all read "The Trial" (1914). Maybe it will revive interest in that 1967 television series The Prisoner. Not much else good will come of it all.

But finally, the guy is a Canadian, and we've been unhappy with the Canadians for a long time. In an April 27th 2004 radio debate with a Canadian journalist, Bill O'Reilly threatened to lead a boycott of Canadian goods if Canada didn't deport two American military deserters, saying that his previous boycott of French goods - the one he thought-up and championed - cost France billions of dollars in lost export business. (See this - it didn't.) And although they sent troops to fight beside us in Afghanistan, Canada took a pass on Iraq. Seems they weren't impress with the WMD argument, or felt the pressing need for an immediate war. And now those Canadian folks have approved gay marriage and made it all legal.

Like we care what happens to this Canadian?

__

Other legal matter for the week:

Answers sought in death outside Wal-Mart
Man accused of theft begged to be let up from hot pavement, witness says
Robert Crowe and S.K. Bardwell, Houston Chronicle, August 9, 2005, 8:49 PM

A man suspected of shoplifting goods from an Atascocita Wal-Mart - including diapers and a BB gun - had begged employees to let him up from the blistering pavement in the store's parking lot where he was held, shirtless, before he died Sunday, a witness said.

An autopsy for the man, identified as Stacy Clay Driver, 30, of Cleveland, was scheduled for Monday, but officials said results probably would be delayed by a wait for toxicology tests.

Driver's family, as well as one emergency worker, are questioning company procedure, including whether Wal-Mart workers administered CPR after they realized he needed medical attention.

When Atascocita Volunteer Fire Department paramedics arrived, Driver was in cardiac arrest, said Royce Worrell, EMS director. Worrell said Monday he heard from investigators that Wal-Mart employees administered CPR to Driver, but he was not sure that happened.

"When we got there, the man was facedown (in cardiac arrest) with handcuffs behind his back," Worrell said. "That's not indicative of someone given CPR."

Liability here? Or is the business of America business?

Wal-Mart has been getting a lot of bad press lately. There was the shooting-the-cats business (here) and the big class-action discrimination lawsuit (and by "big" we're talking about 1.6 million plaintiffs) - and now this death-to-shoplifters enthusiasm. Perhaps questioning company procedure is in order.

On the other hand, too much regulation of business hurts the economy. And we love those low prices.

Posted by Alan at 18:06 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:07 PDT home

Newer | Latest | Older

«	October 2005					»

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31