Final score:

Incremental progress: 1
Headlong dash to the past: 0

Sorry, Mssrs. R, no lovely parting gifts nor a home version for playing.

The Sun is sunnier, the sky bluer, the birds chirpier today.

Because ‘an empty vessel makes the most noise’ is still a truism.

Because the Power Point Presidency has left the building.

Because the attempted hostile takeover of the United States of America has been thwarted.

So the madness imposed by panic can be wrestled back into the dark,. dank place whence it sprang. Ye olde scribe takes a modest measure of some pride in having repeatedly pointed out the exact same stance in law (and in the tradition of Constitutional protection) as the court has determined, from the time the very first charges were brought, and even before.

In a decision that could ban the military’s favorite methods of prosecuting Guantanamo Bay detainees, a federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned the 2008 military commission conviction of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote for a three-judge DC Circuit panel that Hamdan could not be prosecuted for acts that were not crimes at the time they were committed. That’s because the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing laws ex post facto—after the fact. The government cannot make something a crime after you’ve already done it and then charge you for doing it. But that’s exactly what Congress seemed to do in 2006 when it made “material support for terrorism” a war crime and encouraged the military to prosecute Gitmo detainees—who had already been imprisoned for years—for committing it.

“This is a massive blow to the legitimacy of the military commissions system,” says Zachary Katznelson, a senior attorney at the ACLU. The commissions “have been trying people for years for something that isn’t even a war crime.”

[snip]

“Not only did the president sign the legislation knowing there wasn’t a legal basis for this charge,” Katznelson says, “but his administration then prosecuted people for something that was not a war crime at all.” Source

Nothing can ever replace or recompense the egregiously extended vita interruptus of too, too many dumped into the den of shame that is the black hole of Guantánamo, but that the established judicial system, albeit grindingly slowly, can and does adhere to the bedrock truisms of the American system and clearly enunciates that war (or anything which might be labeled ‘war,’ declared or not) does not put the protections afforded by the instruments of liberty in a lockbox and does not and cannot supersede the rule of law is exceedingly praiseworthy.

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”
- Aristotle

So the first ‘debate’ has come and gone. Impressions:

Worst thing of the entire program was to witness Jim Lehrer morphing from news media patriarch and éminence grise to Captain Dunsel in the span of the first 15 minutes.

Mr. Obama had a ready, if rote, grasp of facts and figures, but few flickers of fire.

As for Mr. Romney, he gave a creditable audition for the role of hyped-up Harold Hill in The Music Man, but little more.

All three people on the stage essentially were lost in the weeds for the bulk of the time allotted.

Ye olde scribe hereby dubs W. Mitt Romney the Calzone Candidate.

All the meat is hidden by the denseness of the upper crust, which releases hot air.

Sweden rocks.

Swedish people believe today that the worst scandal suffered by their country in the last 20 years occurred in 2001, when the Government was involved in the controversial program to torture and illegally transfer persons detained by the CIA.

According to a poll conducted by Channel 5, the scandal arising from the CIA’s secret flights was number one, ahead of poor governance in the face of the 2004 tsunami in Asia, that endangered 10,000 Swedish citizens who were in Thailand.

Meanwhile, third place went to the controversial support and participation of Stockholm in the construction of a weapons factory in Saudi Arabia, a situation that drove the resignation in March of the Defense Minister, Sten Tolgfors. Source

With the slow-burning but tenacious investigation of the CIA ‘black site’ in Poland, the floodgates of truth are being incrementally pried open more and more.

Cloistered inside government offices, surrounded by classified documents, Polish prosecutors are building a case that could result in criminal charges against the nation’s former spy chief and even, some say, against former senior political leaders. Evidence that a foreign power was allowed to conduct illicit activities on Polish soil has deeply shaken many Poles’ faith in the United States and in Poland’s sense of itself as a successful democracy born from the ashes of the Cold War.

[…]

“It’s the kind of thing we expect from Soviet Russia. We remember the Soviet occupation; we remember the German occupation,” said attorney Mikolaj Pietrzak, who represents one of the Islamist men allegedly held and questioned in Poland. “The fact that this beacon of liberty which is America would allow this — it’s a great disappointment in the United States as the land of the free.”

Poland is not the only country in Europe where the U.S. allegedly operated a secret detention facility with at least tacit permission from somewhere within the host government. Black sites are also thought to have existed in Romania and Lithuania, two other developing democracies, as well as in countries in North Africa and Asia.

But Poland is alone among the European nations in having launched an official investigation of the matter.Source

Some more on the case in Poland here.

Should anyone happening upon this post own (or know someone who does) one of those delis which name their sandwiches, might ye olde blogscribe humbly suggest for the menu a $1000 Mitt Romney Grilled Bonanza:

Wagyu beef tongue topped with Ass cheese and gold leaf between slices of the world’s most expensive bread.

Pepto-Bismol , natch, an extra charge.

By broadly asserting corporations as “people,” W.M. Romney has publicly defined his active engagement in one of the lowest, most odious, and most near-universally despicable commerces conceivable.

As head of Bain Capital, an enterprise whose raison d’etre is the buying and selling of corporate entities for profit, W.M. Romney was, by his own words, actively dealing in the buying and selling of people.

Buying and selling people is slave-trading.

Applying his self-expressed parameters, W.M. Romney trafficked in (and profited handsomely from) slavery.

So this is how an extended, unwarranted, atrocious, panicked action shambles off the highway of history: Not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with “nostalgia.”

“There was a signing of papers of receivership that gave Iraq custody of the base effective today,” [U.S. military spokesman Col. Barry] Johnson said. “It’s quite nostalgic. It was the center of gravity for what we were doing here for all these years,” he added.  Source

Officially, the second “I” and the “O” in the term IIO used as a title here incessantly over the years may be retired. The leading “I” can never be expunged.

Update December 19: In on a lie, and out on a lie.

For security reasons, the last soldiers made no time for goodbyes to Iraqis with whom they had become acquainted. To keep details of the final trip secret from insurgents, interpreters for the last unit to leave the base called local tribal sheiks and government leaders on Saturday morning and conveyed that business would go on as usual, not letting on that all the Americans would soon be gone. Citation

Shock and awe that there exists such a thing as a declared end. Dismal, simply dismal.

U.S. Admiral James W. Stavridis, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, also expressed regrets in a letter read at the ceremony. He “there were hopes to continue the mission beyond 2011 ” and added: “We are concluding earlier than we had hoped.” Source

What have we become?

There you have it — indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial.  Source

Congress, then.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.  Source

Congress, now.  (More)

•  Replace “support” with “subvert”

•  Replace “defend” with “overturn”

•  Amend “against all enemies” to read “regarding enemies (proven, alleged, suspected or arbitrarily designated)”

•  Replace “true” with “fungible”

•  Amend “to the same” to read “to the same when expedient”

•  Replace “freely” with “lightly”

•  Amend “office on which I am about to enter” to read “office on which I am about to enter, unless inconvenient”

Together in peace.

In the late Senator Teddy’s case, with the solace of readily available government-paid end of life aid and assistance.

Edward Kennedy was a Senator who understood and extolled the service part of the phrase public service and who worked to make conspicuous and to never forgo the concept, responsibility and utilization of benevolence in government.

If directly calling for openly flouting and opposing the Constitution is not anti-American, what is?

From the U.S. Constitution, Article VI (emphasis added):

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

One can stare at that as many times as one likes and parse it ’til the cows come home and it still nowhere says “except Oklahoma.”

Republican mayoral candidate Anna Falling said Tuesday that putting a Christian creationism display in the Tulsa Zoo is No. 1 in importance among city issues that include violent crime, budget woes and bumpy streets.

[snip]

Falling, who has founded several Christian nonprofits and is a former city councilor, also said the next mayor needs to appoint people to city boards, authorities and commissions who will “honor God.”

[snip]

When asked whether she meant she would recruit Christians to serve the city, Falling said she was talking about “people committed to their churches,” and when asked whether she meant Christian churches, she said, “churches, yes.” Source

Fanaticism is a dish best not served at all.

Those who have followed the multiple citings of stories about the MEK, Camp Ashraf and the Bulgarian troops assigned there during the bulk of the occupation will find this of keen interest.

Iraqi forces raided a camp housing members of an Iranian opposition group on Tuesday, sharply escalating tensions that have been on the rise since the U.S. military turned over responsibility for the camp to the Iraqis.

Four people were killed by the Iraqi police and scores more injured…

[snip]

The raid came a day after the Iraqi government, which has maintained a security cordon around the camp’s perimeter, said it would assume complete control of the camp but promised to protect the people inside.

Shortly afterward, the group’s leaders announced they were willing to return to Iran if they were guaranteed immunity from prosecution. They insisted on guarantees in writing from Iran, the United States, the United Nations and Iraq.

A legal counsel at the camp, Behzad Saffari, said the Iraqis also opened fire in Tuesday’s melee. He claimed American troops witnessed the event but did not intervene except to take pictures. Source

A staggering, impressive and laudatory show of defiance and fierce bravery.

[Saeed] Hajarian is confined to a wheelchair and able to speak only with great difficulty, having suffered severe spinal cord damage after being shot in the face by a fundamentalist who, though later convicted, hardly served any jail time. He survives only with the help of daily medication, intensive physiotherapy and regular consultations with a neurosurgeon. He cuts as unthreatening a figure as any government is likely to encounter. But that hasn’t stopped Iran’s intelligence ministry from locking him up in Evin’s Section 209 – reserved for the most potent political suspects – and subjecting him to regular interrogations.

Hajarian’s captors fear his brain. They are trying to force him to sign a confession owning up to plotting a “colourful” or velvet revolution that would have seen the Islamic republic toppled and replaced by a pro-western puppet government, the political bogeyman that keeps Khamenei and his acolytes awake at night. In return, he would be allowed to leave prison – thereby handing the regime a propaganda coup and sparing it the increasing embarrassment of imprisoning a man whom it is already responsible for reducing to a shell.

But Hajarian – himself one of the principal founders and architects of the intelligence ministry in his younger days – has turned the tables by refusing to leave prison. He has refused to give any admission, even when his jailers tried to break his resolve by interrogating his wife and detaining – though later releasing – his son. Effectively, the prisoner is holding his captors hostage, forcing them to provide, and even administer, the treatment needed to keep him alive. His interrogator has been reduced to carrying out his daily physiotherapy sessions. Source

There is more than ample evidence of the immature kindergarten level* to which political discourse has sunk, but this ludicrous stab mines untapped contemptible depths of sheer stupidity:

Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, Obama’s pick for the next surgeon general, was hailed as a MacArthur Grant genius who had championed the poor at a medical clinic she set up in Katrina-ravaged Alabama.

But the full-figured African-American nominee is also under fire for being overweight in a nation where 34 percent of all Americans aged 20 and over are obese.

Critics and supporters across the blogsphere have commented on photos of Benjamin’s round cheeks, saying she sends the wrong message as the public face of America’s health initiatives. Source

* With apologies to actual kindergarteners, who aren’t old enough yet to know any better.

Liz Cheney (more) — an American iteration of Imee Marcos?

M*A*S*H was cute — and fictional. This is neither:

The first full-time female FBI agent to be stationed at Guantanamo says she was made to bunk with vermin that gave her a tropical disease and was ostracized because she refused to join in a “spring break” atmosphere in which agents were encouraged to drink, date, and frolic when not interrogating alleged terrorists.…

[snip]

In her claim against Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice, Foley says she has photographs depicting “personnel at Guantanamo engaged in drunken carousing in a sexually charged atmosphere, day and night,” including shots of “”emale employees in bathing suits or revealing attire sitting on the laps of male employees, and female employees being hugged, kissed and likely groped by male employees.”

Her complaint states: “Other photographs reveal, among other things, what appear to be intoxicated FBI employees wearing some type of mocking imitation of Arab or Afghan attire, and personnel at a Halloween party dressed in orange detainee jumpsuits (apparently as a joke). Still other employees appear to be completely intoxicated and engaged in various activities which indicate both a pervasive discriminatory atmosphere toward women, as well as behavior inappropriate for employees stationed at a detention facility for terrorists. Some of the behavior resembles stereotypical ’spring break’ behavior. This highly inappropriate behavior by FBI personnel and other U.S. Government personnel working at Guantanamo, was known by the FBI, was encouraged by the FBI, and was tolerated by the FBI.” Source

Put as simply (and broadly) as possible, the partisan arguments in Congress regarding emergency funds for the automotive industry boiled down to:

Republicans - The government should maintain a laissez-faire position (while concurrently mandating concessions from labor) and the market should be the determinant of business decisions and viability.

Democrats - Monies for a large and many-tentacled sector of industry as a buffer and stopgap to allow a window of opportunity for major and wrenching labor and management decisions involving a restructured bsuiness model, but avoidance of a direct takeover of operations by the government.

Except for when, in both cases, those loudly proclaimed stances and principles are simultaneously tossed out the window.

A majority of House members have signed onto a bill to reverse the closing of 789 Chrysler dealerships and block General Motors Corp. from closing more than 1,300, while the full House could vote on the bill as early as next week. Source

Recession or no, there’s no slump in the commerce of bought and paid for legislators.

To paraphrase the anecdote regarding the Model T: You can have a Congress in any color you want, so long as it’s yellow.

Michael Jackson is still expired.

As for Abe Vigoda…

And now for something completely different.

Horrid.

The snippet comes from (and is linked to) a Google translation (slightly modified for clarity) of an article in Le Figaro:

Several stories circulating in the medical [sic], Rasoul Akram Hospital, not far from Tehran University, would have received from the “Black Monday” (June 15), 38 corps[es], including 28 wounded and 10 dead . “We found that the bullets had passed through the torsos to the diagonal, which means they were fired from above - ie [sic] a roof,” says the second doctor.

According to an official review, at least 17 people have been killed since the beginning of the dispute. However, a first quietly made by the nursing staff from different hospitals showed that to date more than 92 people died in Tehran and its environs. A woman eight months pregnant is one of the victims. Shot and killed, near the presidential palace, it was then transported to the hospital. Other disturbing stories are beginning to emerge in broad daylight. As one of the six corpses of young men found last week in Shahriar, on the outskirts of the capital. Their skulls had been smashed and their brains had been opened, presumably to retrieve the ball to clear the trace of the crime,” says the second doctor informed of this terrible massacre by a trusted colleague. Translated Source

Original article in French here.

Citing a philosophy of conscience based on the foundation of a refrigerator magnet, and a strange, tangled thicket of indistinct language slanted to evince personal victimhood (including mention of the voiced “Yes” vote of a one-year-old), Gov. Sarah Palin today announced that she is going Galt (ref.).

Don’t let the door hit ya in the butt on the way out.