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POPSoriginalism vs. policy judgments good point being made here. Breyer's thinking depends on estimate of a policy's outcome, something he piously refused to consider when thinking about other rights. .
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POPSGitmo judge, critical of prosecutors, removed Had threatened to stop proceedings unless prosecutors started sharing evidence with defense. Prosecutors stonewalled on handing over interrogation and medical records; wanted trials underway before November elections
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POPSBush/Cheney Pot calling the Kettle black! The Bush/Cheney Neocons would have loved patterning the USA after the repressive government of Uzbekistan but thanks to our constitution (a bit tattered from the last 8 years) for not allowing them this fantasy. With all their criminal efforts they have rendered America as the Pot and Uzbekistan the Kettle. The charred blackness which is on the Pot; doesn't see the black on himself and calls the kettle black! Excerpted From Article: But this is Uzbekistan, a repressive country where laws mean little, rights are relative and torture is endemic... After criticism from Wash., Uzbekistan ejected the U S from a military base that was supplying the war effort in Afghanistan. How much influence should the US try to exercise — if any at all — over another country’s behavior? And will that country be receptive, given the abuse, indefinite detentions and closed tribunals that have been part of the United States’ record in recent years?
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POPSSupreme Court Judges: Judge, Not Legislate But just as McCain has asked voters to check his opponents' track record, a glance at his is heartening. McCain, unlike a number of fellow GOP senators, voted in favor of Ronald Reagan's failed nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. And as National Review Online's Jim Geraghty notes, McCain characterized as "a largely unknown quantity" George H.W. Bush's nomination of Justice David Souter — who now usually votes with the high court's liberal contingent. We know that Sens. Clinton and Obama want the federal judiciary to be a liberal quasi-legislature. McCain this week committed himself to buttressing the federal courts' integrity as what they were meant to be: nonpolitical tribunals, dedicated to upholding the Constitution.
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POPSBush's Child Prostitutes, 1.2M as young as 13 Bush's invasion of a country that posed no threat to the US was illegal under both US and international law, according to legal experts. Bush has been convicted of war crimes by citizen tribunals around the world, including New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Istanbul. Just las week, the towns of Brattleboro and Marlboro Vermont voted to indict and arrest Bush and Cheney. In 2002 and 2003, Bush led a propaganda campaign to defraud Congress, the American people, and key allies into believing Iraq was a threat. Bush claimed Iraq had stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to use against the US, and was sharing them with Al Qaeda. Speaking near Rochester NY, Bush later admitted, "See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." ...AlterNet
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POPSThe battle for free speech rages in Canada Article: "Free Dominion was served with a human rights complaint last summer which was later dropped. Currently, we are in the midst of one defamation suit initiated by Richard Warman, and we have been served notice of another suit by Warman, as well as notice of a joint suit by Warman and Warren Kinsella. Ezra Levant is fighting a human rights complaint before the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and he has been served with notice of a defamation suit from Richard Warman. Mark Steyn is fighting several human rights complaints, and he is suffering almost daily abuse on Warren Kinsella’s blog. The most vocal writers who have been fighting the human rights commissions have been threatened with lawsuits and worse. Blogger Mike Brock even received an email that read, “I hope that type of sentiment comforts you the day you find yourself staring down the barrel of a 12 gauge shotgun, Mike.”
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POPSRigged Trials at Gitmo This is but a very brief clip of a fascinating and very important article just released on the Nation Web site. Please, read the entire piece, and learn how the guy running the trials at Gitmo is demanding there be NO acquittals.....period. The situation gets dirtier and dirtier every day. I can't wait until Jan 20, 2009.
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POPSGitmo trials rigged; JAG officers flee DOD top dog lawyer, to whom judges, defenders, and prosecutors report, says: "We can't have acquittals"; Former prosecutor resigns, insists fair trial "not possible" under current arrangement
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POPSUnNecessary Harm "Trying these men this way is sure to raise international hackles. Injecting the death penalty, which is unpopular internationally in the best of circumstances, will only increase the bad feeling. Alienating the world, as the Bush administration still does not seem to understand, is not simply loutish behavior. It has very real implications for national security. The United States relies on other nations to monitor terrorism suspects and track down leads, and to apply pressure to nations like Iran. It relies on the support, or at least the absence of inflamed hatred, of the citizens of countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to keep friendly governments in place. It is reckless to needlessly act in ways that outrage the rest of the world."
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POPSAction Alert - URGENT Abdel Al-Ghizaawi is a detainee at Guantanamo, who has hepatitis B, and since he's been there he has gotten AIDS as well as TB. He's dying, he has not been ruled guity - he was a simple shopkeeper with a wife and a baby. PLEASE go to the site and take action! While there, please take other actions as well, thanks! Please pass this around far and wide!
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POPSVote for Change? Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials Advising Democratic, GOP Presidential Frontrunners
AMY GOODMAN: Are you saying that there’s no difference between these candidates? ALLAN NAIRN: Well, fundamentally, there’s no difference on the basic principle of, are you against the killing of civilians and are you willing to enforce the murder laws. If we were willing to enforce the murder laws, the headquarters of each of these candidates could be raided, and various advisers and many candidates could be hauled away by the cops, because they have backed various actions that, under established principles like the Nuremberg Principles, like the principles set up in the Rwanda tribunals, the Bosnia tribunals, things that are unacceptable, like aggressive war, like the killing of civilians for political purposes. So, in a basic sense, there is no choice. But there is a difference in this sense: the US is so vastly powerful, the US influences and has the potential to end so many millions of lives around the world, that if, let’s say, you have two candidates that are 99% the same—t
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POPSTraditional Circle of Elders, Navajo-Hopi, Joint Use Area Great Spirit, teach me Your Laws, so I may others that follow. "The Natural Law will prevail regardless of man-made laws, tribunals and governments." The Great Spirit taught us to follow the Natural Law, to live in peace and harmony, to never take more than you need from this earth, to share what you have with others, to honor the land, he did not write these laws on stone slabs, but placed them within our hearts and minds. Cougar
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POPSWaterboarding Demo in Congress !? To Prove not Torture!? "In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. "'All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators,' writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law." Begs the question. How could he be charged in WW2 with the WAR CRIME of waterboarding? The recipient was a civilian seemed to be the point? Well so are the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. If there were POWs then it would NOT be a WAR CRIME but as Bush says they are not POWs then it is a WAR CRIME.
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POPSWaterboarding used by other groups as torture taint USA So -- the Spanish Inquisition, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, the WWII Japanees soldiers, all used waterboarding torture and now the U.S. Military under orders of George W. Bush and Dick Chaney -- good company we in the U.S. are keeping aren't we.
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POPS The Big Push For The United Nations Power-Grab
The United Nations as a "world body" is riddled with corruption and incompetence. Its bureaucracy, agencies and members are overwhelmingly hostile to the United States and other freedom-loving nations, most especially Israel. The U.N. agency, The International Seabed Authority could dictate what is done on, in and under the world's oceans. America would become party to surrender of immense resources of the seas and what lies beneath them to the dictates of unaccountable, nontransparent multinational organizations, tribunals and bureaucrats. LOST's most determined proponents have always been the one-worlders — members of the World Federalists Association (now dubbed Citizens for Global Solutions) and like-minded advocates of supranational government. The transnationalists understand LOST would set a precedent for diminishing, and ultimately eliminating, sovereign nations. It would establish the superiority of international mechanisms for managing "the common heritage of mankind"
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POPSUS Human Rights Violations Embolden Others To Act The Same
"Well, it’s very ironic, in fact, for the UN human rights machinery to feel compelled to be involved in a country that has very high human rights standards, at least a legal protection for human rights. I think the choice of the site in Guantanamo Bay was the first marker that there was an attempt by the US administration to manage the war on terror outside the legal framework. I mean, it was a deliberate attempt to shelter the actions of the administration from judicial scrutiny. From day one, this was my biggest concern. I think Americans and people all over the world have every reason to have confidence in US institutions when they are all engaged together. The system of governments has several branches, and in the field of human rights the judicial branch is probably the most important one. It’s the forum for protection, upholding of human rights law. So the signal that this entire war on terror would be fought outside the legal framework, I think, was extremely troublesome."
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