two things of beauty....
Jun. 12th, 2008 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lagilmanOne small step back to the nation I was born to... SCOTUS: Guantanamo Detainees Have Habeas Rights (via dailykos)
In a 5-4 decision today written by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court has ruled that foreign nationals detained at Guantánamo Bay retain the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus, and that such rights were not validly stripped by Congress in passing the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, as the procedures in provided did not constitute an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus and were therefore unconstitutional.
A SCOTUS shame that it was as close as 5-4.
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In the window of my office, there's a crystal sun-catcher a friend gave me years ago. I hung it there when I moved in, without thinking much about the placement. Until this morning when, by a trick of time, light, and whatever, the light hit the crystal just-so and splayed a rainbow across my keyboard.
Typing in colors, indeed. Good thing I'm not prone to psychedelic flashbacks...
In a 5-4 decision today written by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court has ruled that foreign nationals detained at Guantánamo Bay retain the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus, and that such rights were not validly stripped by Congress in passing the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, as the procedures in provided did not constitute an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus and were therefore unconstitutional.
A SCOTUS shame that it was as close as 5-4.
------------------------------------
In the window of my office, there's a crystal sun-catcher a friend gave me years ago. I hung it there when I moved in, without thinking much about the placement. Until this morning when, by a trick of time, light, and whatever, the light hit the crystal just-so and splayed a rainbow across my keyboard.
Typing in colors, indeed. Good thing I'm not prone to psychedelic flashbacks...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 06:37 pm (UTC)Not the one I was born to -- which is good
Date: 2008-06-12 07:55 pm (UTC)Re: Not the one I was born to -- which is good
Date: 2008-06-12 09:56 pm (UTC)b) The issues are the processes involved. The Guantanamo prisoners may or may not be the scum of the earth, but the issues are that due process of the law in the form of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights have, to put it bluntly, been getting raped by this travesty of justice. The Bill of Rights tends to require duly issued warrants for arrest and incarceration, requires speedy trials, right to counsel, humane treatment, etc., as opposed to secrecy and secret rendition, cruel and unusal punishment/torture, and indefinite incarceration.
c) Many of the renditioned sorts, were "detained" for such lovely reasons as someone else's greed--someone who's offered a large bounty to accuse any random third party of being a terrorist, without any requirement of actual proof, might be quite tempted to collect the bouny by giving false information. Then there were the cases of "person with the misfortune to be the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time" to be rounded up and hauled off... it happened to at least one classmate of mine in college, there were rioters marching over from Boston who were trashing the railroad tracks, and the Cambridge Kops started illegally tear gassing the MIT campus and arresting MIT students who were in the vicinity of Kresge Auditorium, the Student Center, and the campus chapel who didn't run. The whole operation was illegal because MIT had/has its own independent state-charactered police force which is reponsible for patrolling and policing the MIT campus. Anyway, one of my classmates, who was a mild-mannered oblivious to things physics or math major, spent a night in the pokey because he was the antithesis of a terrorist. Meanwhile, several of my more rambunctious classmates disappeared into nearby buildings, observed where the tear gas grenades landed, and literally after the smoke cleared, went and collected themselves some unexploded teargas grenades to have to play with.
d) There are recorded cases of "detainees" being essentially murdered by US citizens--people who knew nothing, tortured to death, NPR has graphically reported at least one such lethal atrocity that happened in Afghanistan. There are also records of minor children being raped in front of their parents at Abu Ghraib by US citizens, apparently.
e) The Iraqis are far more civilized than I, had what the USA done to Iraq, been done by another country to this one, I wouldn't be behaving anywhere near so politely as most Iraqis are.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 02:29 am (UTC)(purely hypothetical note to purely hypothetical troublemakers with a creative bent: it would be a lovely ID4 prank, to have them go to black [pun intended] for 24 hours that day....)