A Mockery Of Justice

A tidbit from Justice Kennedy: the Supreme Court's man in the middle by Michael Doyle:

In Boumediene v. Bush, Kennedy's 5-4 opinion extended habeas corpus rights to foreign prisoners seeking to challenge their detention at Guantanamo.

"It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," a vehemently dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia said.

How can Antonin Scalia make such an irresponsible statement? How can a Supreme Court judge be against the rule of law? How can a Supreme Court judge have such little regard for personal liberty? This man is making a mockery of justice, and does not belong on the Supreme Court.

What is habeas corpus?

Britannica.com says it is:

…an ancient common-law writ, issued by a court or judge directing one who holds another in his custody to produce the body of the person before the court for some specified purpose. Although there have been and are many varieties of the writ, the most important is that used to correct violations of personal liberty by directing judicial inquiry into the legality of a detention. The habeas corpus remedy is recognized in the countries of the Anglo-American legal system but is generally not found in civil-law countries, although some of the latter have adopted comparable procedures.

The origins of the writ cannot be stated with certainty. Before the Magna Carta (1215), a variety of writs performed some of the functions of habeas corpus. During the Middle Ages habeas corpus was employed to bring cases from inferior tribunals into the king’s courts. The modern history of the writ as a device for the protection of personal liberty against official authority may be said to date from the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509), when efforts were made to employ it on behalf of persons imprisoned by the Privy Council. By the reign of Charles I, in the 17th century, the writ was fully established as the appropriate process for checking the illegal imprisonment of people by inferior courts or public officials.

Read the rest here.

Without some form of “protection of personal liberty against official authority”, what are we left with? Well, fascism comes to mind.

Here is part of what Britannica.com says about fascism:

Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from each other, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.

I respectfully submit to Antonin Scalia that more Americans will probably be killed BECAUSE of Guantanamo and the LACK of habeas corpus there. I know that if my mother, father, sister, or brother were detained there (with all their rights stripped away) I would be extremely angry at those holding them.

I am also deeply offended and insulted by Scalia’s fear-mongering in service to America’s “extreme militaristic nationalism.” A Supreme Court justice should not be making predictions that are not based on any factual evidence. Especially predictions that support a particular partisan position.

We talk often of the global economy. We need to talk more about global justice.

Antonin Scalia should resign from the Supreme Court. Someone who does not support justice for all does not belong there. Someone who has so little faith in our courts to convict the guilty does not belong there.

Glenn Beck Has Made Me Feel Better

As I’ve previously written, it concerns me when I agree with Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck usually writes and says the most vile, hateful things you can imagine. Every once in awhile he lets out a curve ball that I find myself agreeing with. I find this unsettling.

Now I feel as if the world has come back into some form of correct balance and alignment. Glenn Beck is back to his usual moronic self.

He’s imagining himself as president. Someone please get that image out of my head! As president he would line up all those imprisoned at Guantanamo and shoot them in the head. He is another Santa Claus. John McCain is the other Santa. Is it possible to have more than one? Like the jolly one, Beck must just KNOW when someone has been naughty and not nice and deserving of being shot in the head. Beck must think that Habeas Corpus, the Magna Carta, trials before a jury of one’s peers, and civilization itself are quaint, insignificant remnants from some bygone time. Not to mention the concept of murder as a crime.

Beck has a “shoot them in the head” fetish:

• "Beck has a warning for Muslims 'who have sat on [their] frickin' hands' and have not 'lin[ed] up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head'," Media Matters for America, August 10, 2006.


• “I wonder, do we have a guy who will tell me the truth who is well spoken, who has the fire in the belly to do a couple of things: one, shoot the bad guys in the head, and, two, shrink the size of government?” Glenn Beck, September 6, 2007.


• “I say Rudy Giuliani is the candidate who will stand up to our enemies, tell them to get the hell out or we`ll shoot them in the head.” Glenn Beck, September 6, 2007.

From Glenn Beck on how the US should treat Gitmo detainees: We’re going to shoot them all in the head by John Amato:

Listen to this rant about the Supreme Court decision on Gitmo detainees and you’ll know the state of conservatism in this country He’s like so many of them.

Beck: This court has done some frightening. frightening things….If I’m president of the US, I would go on National television and say—’ladies and gentlemen, the Supreme Court said that we don’t have Gitmo so that is over. We’re going to release all of them, but I want you to know from here on out our policy is to not have prisoners. We’re going to shoot them all in the head.’

If we think they are against us, we’re going to shoot them and kill them—period because that’s the only thing we’ve got going for us—cause we can put them away and get information. If we can’t put them away and they’re going to use our court system—kill them.

The Court never said we didn’t have Gitmo or couldn’t arrest or prosecute them. Maybe Beck could ask Bush why he can’t get guilty verdicts with all the resources we spend on the war on Terror. What an example of American thought he represents. Mass killings are only predicated on what we (US Govt) think about them. How nice. It doesn’t matter if he said this on TV or on the radio, he should be immediately fired by CNN to start with. What an embarrassment for them.

I wish to emphasize this sentence by Mr. Amato: “Maybe Beck could ask Bush why he can’t get guilty verdicts with all the resources we spend on the war on Terror.”

Bush Screws Up Again

So what else is new? Yet more incompetence by the United States. Some would call this criminal, but no, it seems only the innocent get punished. Impeachment, before it’s too late.

From America's prison for terrorists often held the wrong men by Tom Lasseter:

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

If you were one of these men would you have any resentment towards the United States?

Bush Loses, Justice Wins

And Bush is pouting like a two year old. "We'll abide by the court's decision, that doesn't mean I have to agree with it."

From Guantanamo ruling - the fallout by Kevin Connolly:

Whatever you think about the morality and legitimacy of the Guantanamo detention facility, there can be no doubting the determination of the Bush administration to stick to its policy, regardless of judicial attempts to undermine it.

The legal implications of Thursday's judgement are huge - after all, it is at least possible that it might end with American judges ordering the American government to release foreign detainees.

It means that even though the US government deliberately built this camp in an American base on the island of Cuba - so that it is not on American soil - and even though the detainees are not US citizens, they are deemed to have rights under the constitution.

The Bush argument that those rights are forfeit because America is fighting a "war on terror" was dismissed.

Read more here.

U.S. Personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese"

From Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators by Justin Rood:

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.