For those of you who are interested in the purest example of hypocrisy in the history of mankind, check out Kevin Baker' latest posts regarding the Gimto Supreme Court case, Boumediene vs. Bush. As is the norm with folks on the right, rather than putting the blame squarely on the people he supports in Washington (Bush Co) for causing the problem to begin with, he accuses the 5 judges who voted in favor of detainee rights of being activist judges (snore...).
This case would have never happened if our current leaders in the executive branch decided we could hold people without trial and torture the shit out of them. I find it hilarious that the "less government" crowd supports this. Kevin and company have been screeching in fear that a President Obama would create a fascist government with totalitarian control over its people.
Um....dumb assess.....it's already here and you are the biggest cheerleaders of it!!! And they accuse me of having a blind belief system? Good Lord....
Almost as funny is the arrogance that they FEEL that they know more about the Constitution than 5 Supreme Court justices and can't see the political bias of the Bush appointees, Roberts and Alito.
But the real kicker is the quote that Kevin has on the top of his page.....in the banner which defines his site!!!
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand
Well, I guess if the shoe fits....
10 comments:
If you liked that, you'll love this.
My weekly Friday post.
I find it hilarious that Mark, after being told dozens of times, still continues to misrepresent "what conservatives think". National defense is a legitimate function of any government and your overly simplistic view of the "less government" crowd shows me that you need to spend less time "talking" to people and more time listening.
Is there any political bias with Ginsburg or does bias only exist on that "other" side. Ahhh division...lovely word. I know, I know...we wouldn't be so divided if that pesky other side would just go away.
If we had a facist government with totalitarian control over the people, your blog probably wouldn't exist.
Arguing with Kevin Baker doesn't have anything to do with dead Iraqi children, hence it must not be that important right? That's the standard of what is important and what is not I thought.
To the folks who post here - put down why YOU agree or disagree with the ruling and why.
The ruling is correct, but it is years too late. The damage has been done.
The problem is that among the real terrorists in Gitmo there are hundreds of innocent people. These men were swept up in Pakistan and Afghanistan by local authorities, who then turned them over to US forces for a bounty of several thousand dollars a head. We had no way of telling whether one of these guys was a terrorist, the victim of petty grievances by the local authorities, or a way to get some quick cash.
Over the years we have released hundreds of completely innocent men from Gitmo, but we are still holding hundreds more, some up to six years. Not only have we violated these people's rights, but now we don't know what to do with them. Their countries of origin don't want them back because they have been tainted by years of imprisonment.
Now, once these people are released, what will they do? Their lives have been ruined by years of imprisonment. We're afraid to let them go because we fear they have been radicalized against us, feeling that we are an evil country for falsely imprisoning them. And they would be right.
Had Bush abided by our constitution we would have freed the innocent years ago, and brought charges against the real terrorists. Most of them would be executed or rotting away in some prison, forgotten forever. We wouldn't have the open sore of Gitmo exposing our hypocrisy to the world.
Even the former head prosecutor at Gitmo has said the place is just plain wrong.
The reason why we have a constitution that protects people's rights is to prevent gross miscarriages of justice and naked malice. It's why the Geneva Conventions ban torture and cruel treatment. It's in our long-term best interests to treat even our enemies well, because they might not always be our enemies.
For example, most of the success of Bush's Surge is due to the Sunni Awakening Councils, former Saddam loyalists, who were tired of being attacked by Al Qaeda. These are exactly the same guys who were three years ago blowing up American humvees with roadside bombs. They came to us despite what we did in Abu Ghraib (and that wasn't just a few bad apples -- they imported the techniques from Gitmo).
No one is arguing that the real terrorists should just go free. We're just saying that all people have certain inalienable rights. That justice must be applied to all people, no matter how vile they might be.
Scalia and Cheney believe that giving these people basic rights will somehow allow them to escape justice or hurt Americans. If they're guilty and we have the evidence, we can prove it. We should be smart enough to figure out a way to try them without exposing ourselves to security risks.
The bedrock principle of American jurisprudence is that it's better to let 10 guilty men go than to imprison one innocent man.
But the right wing doesn't seem to believe that. Because men like Cheney and Scalia and Bush seem to be afraid that if some terrorist is let go and pulls another 9/11, they'll get blamed. And it's the blame that's key with these guys. They really don't care about killing people They've sent at least four thousand American soldiers to their deaths in Iraq for a lie. But since these are soldiers you can't blame Bush and Cheney -- they're soldiers dying at the hands of our enemies. Soldiers are supposed to die.
What's really shocking about this ruling is that there are four Supreme Court justices who voted against it. Which is all the more reason that John McCain should not be our next president, seeing as he thinks those four guys are just fabulous jurists.
Thanks for the reply Bruce.
Torture, naked malice, gross miscarriages, Geneva conventions, aside...when you speak of our constitution, do you think the inalienable rights that appear in the Constitution of the United States apply to citizens of the United States only?
RIP Tim Russert
A superb anchor man and investigative journalist...
Absolutely not, last in line. I know that questions was to Bruce (whose post above i really liked) but when the US takes over 'Guantanamo Bay' -- Cuban territory housing a US Naval Base 'leased' since the '50s when the US 'owned' Cuba -- in order to do completely unconstitutional things, to non-US citizens -- all 'presumed' never found guilty of a list of what every military and constitutional lawyer has described in the main as baseless charges, outside of the United States, then you bet the US constitution applies to these people held in US custody, indefinitely, illegally, inhumanely and unconstitutionally, by our military authorities. Which is why, thank God, 5 out of 8 of the Supreme Court Justices who are not puppets and slaves to one or another political Administration, but their own masters who remember WHY they became Judges and have a conscience, ruled as they did. Joanne.
The bedrock principle of American jurisprudence is that it's better to let 10 guilty men go than to imprison one innocent man.
And war is not a matter of jurisprudence. Members of our national community are the people that can lay claim to ALL of the protections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, period. We did not "establish and ordain" our Constitution as a tool of world rule.
The old international campaign against piracy does however, offer the best model for how to deal with terrorism - better than treating it as a "war" or a simple criminal action.
Hey folks, been out of town for the weekend. Sorry for no reply...speaking of which, last and juris, blk doesn't reply much so don't take offense. I rip him often for putting up an opinion and then vanishing but he never listens...time to get on him again as your points should be addressed.
Kevin, glad to see you still read me. I read you everyday-I just don't feel the need to post for the time being. That could change in the future.
I read GODC and sadly have to say that you completely miss the point as to what is wrong with education. Again, I would recommend that you read Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me and then please try to open your mind a little bit to how much our culture has changed over the last 20 years-diversity wise-as to why kids aren't learning as much. The other problem, as I have always said, is that teachers are lazy.
George Will, who is a generally reliable conservative, excoriates McCain for his excoriation of this decision. Read Will's analysis. It's very telling.
I have now lost all respect for John McCain. This man has become a conservative bootlicker. He knows he will lose without the rabid support of "the base" and is going back on every reasonable decision he ever made.
blk, you never had any respect for McCain - not as long as he was a registered Republican. But it sure makes you sound even-handed and open-minded to say otherwise.
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