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POPSRendition suit by innocent man to be re-heard Is there justice in the USA? Canadian citizen, detained in error for two weeks at JFK, then flown by US to Jordan for interrogation, held for 10 months. Restitution paid by Canadians, but court in US held it had no jurisdiction, saying that while at JFK, Arar was not technically in the USA. Totally innocent man - all now agree - abducted by the USA, probably tortured in Jordan. Can the USA say "Oops" and not be held responsible for the abduction and torture of an innocent man? Are we different than Stalin only by degree?
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POPSMilitary Trials Shrouded in Secrecy The piece goes on: "The right to a fair and public trial is a bedrock principle of democracy," said RCFP Executive Director Lucy A. Dalglish. "Unfortunately, in this regard, members of the armed services have fewer rights than those granted to criminal defendants in civilian courts. We believe that, at a minimum, the armed services should create an easily accessible docket‚ of information listing those charged, details regarding the charges against them and the date and time of their trials and pre-trials."
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POPSThis Sober Life I don't miss asking, "Did I say that?" I don't miss crying on train tracks, don't miss not knowing where to start, don't miss questioning, "Am I falling apart?" I don't miss counting prescription pills, don't miss wondering, "Would this jump kill?" I don't miss being angry and not knowing why, don't miss yelling up to God, "Just let me die!" I don't miss not sleeping night after night, don't miss not having an appetite. I don't miss puking and I sure don't miss quitting, I figure by now you get the point that I'm setting.
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POPSCanadian free speech The suit names: • Ezra Levant (famous for his stirring YouTube video of his confrontation with the Canadian Human Rights tribunal after he published the “Mohammed Cartoons”) • FreeDominion.ca (Canada’s answer to FreeRepublic.com) • Kate McMillan of SmallDeadAnimals.com • Jonathan Kay of the National Post daily newspaper and its in-house blog • and me, Kathy Shaidle of FiveFeetOfFury.com
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POPSCourtroom Quotations The following quotations are taken from official court records across the nation, showing how funny and embarrassing it is that recorders operate at all times in courts of law, so that even the slightest inadvertence is preserved for posterity.
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POPSFree Speech A Casualty Of 'Hate' Powers
What had happened is that one of the chapters of Steyn's New York Times' (and for that matter Canadian) No1 bestseller America Alone had been excerpted and published by Canada's largest weekly magazine. The Canadian Islamic Congress, through the agency of three law students, brought complaints against Steyn and the magazine before the federal human rights commission, and also before two provincial ones. (That's another Orwellian aspect to all this; there is no rule against double, triple or any other multiple jeopardy, as there is no limit to how many complaints can be lodged before different tribunals for the same words.) Since then more has come out that makes these Canadian tribunals or commissions seem even more like kangaroo courts than they already did, which is saying an awful lot. The Canadian Human Rights Commission it would not go ahead with the Steyn prosecution (though the Canadian Islamic Congress has just indicated it will appeal that decision)
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POPSUK Children's House Of Horrors:Forensic Teams Find Teeth And Bone Fragments The former Jersey health minister Stuart Syvret said the UK Government must now step in. He said: 'The only hope for justice is if London intervenes and it sends a completely independent judiciary, prosecution and courts.' Investigations at the home started in February after a discovery of what later was found to be part of a coconut. Nonetheless scores of people came forward claiming they were drugged, raped and beaten between the early 1960s and 1980s. Police excavated four secret underground chambers at the site, referred to as punishment rooms by some victims, and found shackles and a large bloodstained bath. Three men have been charged with sex abuse offences as part of the inquiry into historical abuse.
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POPSAvoiding ‘CSI Kandahar’ they’ve just invalidated — decided the job is better done by politically unaccountable courts … the better to spare Nadler and his cohort from telling voters exactly what protections they’d lavish on the people trying to kill us. The attorney general begs to differ. The justices ruled that detainees get judicial review, but, as he posits, they “stopped well short of detailing how the habeas corpus proceedings must be conducted.” Many significant questions remain open, and, Mukasey rightly insists, “it is well within the historic role and competence of Congress and the executive branch to attempt to resolve them.” LAYING DOWN MARKERS The Justice Department has to live with the chaos caused by Boumediene’s dumping of approximately 270 combatants on the district courts with no guidance about how the cases should be handled. Fans of Kennedy & Co. laughably point to this as a demonstration of the high Court’s restraint. In Justice Antonin Scalia’s apt dissenting phrase
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POPSEnvironmentalists Hold On Congress What's the political response to our energy problems? It's more congressional and White House kowtowing to environmentalists, farmers and multi-billion dollar corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland. Their “solution," rather than to solve our oil supply problem by permitting drilling for the billions upon billions of barrels of oil beneath the surface of our country, is to enact the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that mandates that oil companies increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have realized that diverting crops from food to fuel use would raise the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as pork, beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. Ethanol production has led to increases in other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat. Since the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter, higher grain prices have had a huge impact on food prices worldwide.
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POPSJustice For Sale. This is obviously true, and that being the case, I am drawn to the conclusion that the US of A is not a democracy, a free country or anything else but a front for corporations, "Justice for sale" means corruption and greed know no bounds. The clippers here were mostly appalled at the way Dick'n'George manipulated the judicial branch, but this...........
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POPSBush OKs Execution Of Army Death Row Prisoner President Kennedy was the last president to stare down this life-or-death decision. On Feb. 12, 1962, Kennedy commuted the death sentence of Jimmie Henderson, a Navy seaman, to confinement for life. President Eisenhower was the last president to approve a military execution. In 1957, he approved the execution of John Bennett, an Army private convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. He was hanged in 1961.
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POPSCourts Strike Down Net Censorship Both First Amendment and pro-tech groups have been hugely critical of COPA, saying that the law is too broad, and would affect news or informational sites talking about mature issues, not just porn.
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POPSAnother Terrorist Kangaroo Trial With alot at Stake So the government caught bin Laden's driver, we are told to believe, but yet they lost bin Laden? Right! It's all a lie and another show trial for a fictitious account to justify a fake war for regime changes. It is not only Mr Hamdan's future that will be determined by the trial. There is great concern among members of the Bush administration that they too could find themselves before foreign or international courts for the role they played in facilitating and encouraging the torture of detainees. The infamous "torture memos" circulated by Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Charles Addington, and two former administration figures, Douglas Feith and Alberto Gonzales, covertly approved the abuse of prisoners by the CIA. These men were publicly warned recently by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when Mr Powell was Secretary of State, to "never travel outside the US
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POPSMcCain Strongly Resents Supreme Court Ruling Not that I expected differently from Bush's Heir to the Presidency. Now imagine Mr. McCain going to HoTse Minh City, former Saigon, or Hanoi. Our relations with them have just begun to improve and prove to be of vital interest.
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POPSCorporate Personhood he courts destroyed the semblance of equal protection under law because there is no way even an individual billionaire can approximate the raw power of these large corporations with their privileged immunities, and their control over technology, capital and labor. Right now it is the reverse. The sovereignty of the people is subordinated to the sovereignty of the giant multinational corporations. Corporations were chartered in the early nineteenth century by state governments to be our servants, not our masters.
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POPSWhen Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated. Meanwhile, even in democracies, the law accords diminished rights to many humans: children, prisoners, the insane, the senile. Teenagers may not vote, philosophers who slip into dementia may be lashed to their beds, courts can order surgery or force-feeding. Spain’s Catholic bishops attacked the vote as undermining a divine will that placed humans above animals. One said such thinking led to abortion, euthanasia and ethnic cleansing.
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POPSBoody Shirt an Icon of our Times It has been suggested that Batebi should meet with President Bush. Perhaps, that would give enough PR to the Admin to keep justiying an immoral war..."see, they are being persecuted over there, and they come to us for Freedom". It has also been posted in several reports that Batebi was sentenced to death for his "civil unrest". This report says 10 years. Either way, I personally am glad he got out and is free. All men have the right to be free and not to suffer. We just save save them all right now. It would be so great if everyone would just refuse to fight. All sides. Refuse to fight. But then that would leave the terrorists who will not refuse to fight...for their religion. Seems like the way to real peace, freedom and abolition of suffering is not to stop wars, but to stop religion.
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