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Rule of Law 
Mon May 09, 2011 at 06:00:05 AM MST
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On Fox "News" this Sunday criminal Former VP Dick Cheney said the following about returning to the use of waterboarding in terror interrogations:
I certainly would advocate it; I'd be a strong supporter of it
This is an area of contention that I have had with President Obama nearly from the first days of his administration. Namely the purely political decision not to follow through on our legal responsibility to investigate any credible allegations of torture and to prosecute those who were found responsible.
The fact that the criminal Bush Administration admitted to waterboarding at least three of our detainees, which has been by US and international law an act of torture and a potential war crime yet none of the top level people have ever been investigated for it is a national shame that will not be wiped away for a long time to come.
Worse it has left the issue of torture and waterboarding in particular open. At this late point it is easy to get academic about this form of torture. Given that I thought I would give everyone a taste of what is would be like to be waterboarded. This is a first person fictionalization of it, it is my best attempt to reproduce what a person would feel in that situation.
Warning: if you have been a victim of torture, you might not want to read this. I have been told that it can be triggering for traumatic memories and while I want everyone to get as vicsoral as possible an understanding of torture I don't want to traumatize anyone:
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Thu Mar 31, 2011 at 06:30:40 AM MST
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Bondeism started as a way for me to highlight the nitwittery of the Republicans in the 111th Congress. They say and do really gob smacking things and I post about comparing them to that gormless but loveable hillbilly Jethro Bodine. But I have to wonder if I have actually, through some unintended and accidental sorcery called this disease into reality (I'm probably taking too much on myself with that, still)?
It is one thing to misinterpret the Constitution, it is open for interpretation and people can be honestly wrong, but it is quit another for a Member of Congress in a leadership position to propose action that is completely outside the boundaries of the Constitution. Which is exactly what Eric Cantor is doing.
He is proposing and will force the House to bring to a vote a measure he is calling the "Government Shutdown Prevention Act". What this Act will say is that if the Senate does not pass a budget measure by April 6th, then HR 1, the Republicans draconian and job slaughtering bill (which, by the way the Senate has already voted down) will become the law of the land.
I hear you all going "But, but, but... Doesn't the Senate have to pass a bill and the President sign it for it to be law?" Why, yes, yes it does. It seems that the raven haired, square jawed Virginia Republican who is the House Majority Leader does not understand how the body he has been part of for a decade now works.
If there were an "All Time Jethro Bodineism Award" it is certain that Rep. Cantor would be earning himself a place in the nominees. It is easy to dismiss this as insane and a stunt, but I see a bigger picture emerging among Republicans nation wide.
The lawless behavior of Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin has shown that he and his Republicans have a shocking disregard for the laws of their state. They have broken and bent the rules to pass their union busting bill and have even defied a court order in the implementation of the law.
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Thu Jan 20, 2011 at 06:58:14 AM MST
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Graphic courtesy of lazyevaluator via Flickr
File it under going down the wrong damned path, again. The New York Times is reporting that the Obama administration is preparing to lift the ban on new military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. Shortly after he was inaugurated President Obama directed Defense Secretary Gates to order a freeze on new indictments for detainees at our national shame of a prison camp. The intent was two fold, one to review the incredibly slipshod cases against the men held there and to allow for the planning to begin closing the prison camp.
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Tue Jan 04, 2011 at 07:26:28 AM MST
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It is a bit of a philosophical conundrum if one can actually do good through bad methods. Of course you have to define good and bad, which are always value judgments. Let's make this a little more concrete; one of the Presidents unfulfilled promises is to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It is a national shame that a prison was built specifically to try to avoid the legal system of the United States. There have been credible allegations of torture there, as well as statements by Bush era officials that the totality of treatment there also rises to the level of torture.
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Thu Nov 18, 2010 at 07:42:32 AM MST
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My father loved the law. He loved it because it was an attempt to provide balance without resort to violence. Note the attempt in that sentence, it is important to recognize that justice is not about exact balancing but about a society making a concerted effort to balance the harm done by one person or group of people to others. We have seen some very serious hits to the one of the pillars of the rule of law, its universal application regardless of who is the perpetrator. Our nation is going to suffer from this as long as those who ordered and carried out torture in contravention of our laws and treaties are uninvestigated and unprosecuted. Still the fabric of the rule of law is holding on, even in the face of these insults.
In Murfreesboro TN, a judge has ruled against a requested injunction against the building of a mosque. This is the same building site that was the victim of apparent arson earlier this year. A local anti-Muslim group filed for an injunction against the mosque on the premise that the County board that approved it had broken its own rules in doing so.
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Tue Nov 09, 2010 at 07:18:35 AM MST
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Let's face it, people hate bankers. There are a lot of reasons to hate them these days, given that unbridled greed and a total lack of concern for anything other enriching themselves is in large part why we are in the mess we are right now. This is why you are likely to see more of what we are seeing in New York State right now.
In some counties in New York judges are not putting up with the shoddy and frankly fraudulent work in foreclosure cases. We have heard about the major banks delaying foreclosures for a while as they "Checked the paperwork process" then declaring that everything was copasetic and going back to full steam ahead in foreclosing on properties. However there really was no chance that they could fix a massive system filled with massive problems in the three weeks that they held foreclosures in abeyance.
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Tue Aug 31, 2010 at 06:04:46 AM MST
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In the movie Witness, there is a scene where a little Amish boy, who has witnessed a murder, takes the gun of the detective who is there to protect him from a chest of drawers. He is caught by his grandfather who sits him down for a talk. The grandfather asks if the boy would use this gun to kill. The boy says that he would only kill a bad man. The grandfather asks "How will you know who is the bad man?" This is the central point of our system of justice, we don't just assume that someone is a bad man before punishing them, we have an elaborate process designed to require proof of actions before we punish.
Unfortunately our trauma with terrorism has eroded this system. Today, as you read this, there is a list of people around the world who are targeted for death. They are suspected of being involved with terror plots, and some of them are your fellow citizens. If they are found anywhere in the world by our forces they will be killed. Not captured and brought to trial, not attempted to be captured, but killed out right.
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Thu Apr 29, 2010 at 11:21:10 AM MST
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There are a lot of reasons to be frothing at the mouth angry at the criminal Bush administration. One of the biggest is the way that they not only managed to overturn a half century of certainty about what torture is and the use of it, in doing so they have also extended the immunity of those committing torture in the name of national security. The use of the State Secrets privilege to quash cases brought by torture victims was the standard operating procedure in the Bush administration.
It has sadly continued in the Obama administration. Without letting our current Executive Branch off the hook at all, it is easy to understand how that happens. How many of us have ever been willing to give up privileges we have, even if we are fairly sure it is not a good idea for anyone to have them? Since no one, not even the former V.P. Dick Cheney is the villain in the movie of their life, everyone thinks they will use these powers only for good.
This is why we need groups like the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights to fight against the expansion of governmental power and accountability for any illegal acts the government might commit.
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Mon Apr 12, 2010 at 07:00:00 AM MST
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In my professional life (such as it is) I am a 6 Sigma Black Belt. For those who don't know (most of you probably) that is a process improvement project manager. One of the tenets of Six Sigma is that you have to design the process to meet the needs of the customer, whoever that is. It is simply summed up as starting with the end goal in mind. This is applicable and important when we are talking about politics as well.
In the middle of policy fights, it is easy to get narrowly focused on the minutiae of the policy itself, while losing sight of the overall goals. This is even more of a problem when one does not have an overall set of goals in the first place.
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