This Week In Tyranny
First a big thanks to Prairie Weather for tipping me off to Secrecy News (from the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy); it’s been added to the Liberty Huggers.
Since Congress is in recess and the President is in the Middle East this seemed like a good time to do an all-judicial edition of This Week in Tyranny. From Reuters (via):
A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that four former Guantanamo prisoners, all British citizens, have no right to sue top Pentagon officials and military officers for torture, abuse and violations of their religious rights….The appeals court cited a lack of jurisdiction over the lawsuit.
A decision like this makes it less likely that those who approved torture will be held accountable. Our leaders are torturers and we approve of it. That’s who we’ve become.
In a second article from Reuters:
A U.S. judge denied a request by a group of Guantanamo inmates to investigate the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videotapes and said on Wednesday a Justice Department probe of the issue would be sufficient.
<snip>
Kennedy wrote in denying the investigation request that the two suspects were interrogated before they had been at Guantanamo, so they would not have been covered by his order to preserve evidence.
Judge Kennedy is a disgrace. The black site policy has also been in part about avoiding jurisdiction and his credulous (more likely corrupt) reasoning plays entirely into that specious claim. If the executive wants to play games like this it now has a precedent. Does the man not understand he trivializes his profession by giving his stamp of approval?
If you haven’t really kept up with the Don Siegelman court saga there’s a nice timeline over here. It’s a truly remarkable corruption of the judiciary and the kind of thing that causes people to lose faith in the justice system.
I’ll leave on a happy note. The tide may have begun to turn in the battle agianst executive secrecy, and when the pendulum starts to swing back towards transparency it won’t stop in the middle. There’s reason to think good news may be ahead.
Dan
2 Comments
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (2)
Alabama has severely been hurt by W’s judicial appointees. George W.’s U.S. Appointees in Montgomery Alabama profiled and prosecuted the state’s most popular democrat Don Siegelman so Riley could win the governor’s elections.
Al. has become the prototype and role model of RPMPM (Rove’s Politically Motivated Prosecuting Machine) as well as electronic Diebold Optical Scan Voting Machine and ES&S Central Tabulator tampering and how to cover up multi-million dollar campaign contributions that was used against Siegelman’s Education Lottery and to elect Riley (mainly from Lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon)
The U.S. judge’s second jobs is the president and 47% owner of a multi-million dollar military contracting company. The U.S. attorney is married to a Major GOP operative who has worked jointly managing Al. elections with Karl Rove in 1994 (Alabama supreme court justices), 1998 (William Pryor, Al. attorney general and in 2002 and 2006 (Robert Riley Sr. Al. Gov.). The assistant U.S. attorney is the Inspector General of one of the nearby Military bases. He recently approved a military contract with the judge’s military contracting company.
The governor is being groomed to be McCain's running mate. George W. even provided a generous retirement package to his recent Secret Service agent-in-charge (ChristopherMuphy) of the three state area so that he could use his connections to take care of people that got in the way for Riley during Alabama’s reformation.
Yes, to all of the above, except for one thing: ultimately Congress is responsible for 1) who sits on the courts and 2) the laws which allow the judiciary the latitude they use in deciding these matters.
And of course, we're responsible for the Congress we elected. And for cheering on candidates who don't raise these matters in their campaigns.
Dan,if you haven't seen it, you aren't going to like this very much!