Jim Nichols

Gun Case Could Broaden Legal Basis for Wide Range of Rights

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By refusing to allow Guantanamo detainees to be transferred anywhere in the United States, including its supermax prisons, those representatives in Congress eagerly fighting to keep the prison in Cuba open may unintentionally be easing the lives of terror suspects.

Last Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 258-163 to refuse to allow detainees now held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to enter the United States. Even a supermax prison facility isn’t safe enough to contain them, they decided, in a nonbinding resolution.

But Peter Finn at the Washington Post noted on Sunday that conditions at the United States’ most secure federal prisons are actually far more draconian than they are at Guantanamo Bay.

“For up to four hours a day, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, can sit outside in the Caribbean sun and chat through a chain-link fence with the detainee in the neighboring exercise yard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” writes Finn. By contrast, terror suspects in U.S. prisons are usually kept in complete isolation, allowed only one hour a day outside, and never get to speak to anyone.

The federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado is home to such notorious convicted terrorists as 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef; Teodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber; and Terry Nichols, convicted of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The conditions at Florence are supposedly so bad that terror suspects in Britain appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent their extradition to the United States, arguing that the prison conditions constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In fact, studies have found that such extreme isolation can cause or exacerbate mental illness.

At Gitmo, meanwhile, KSM gets to work out on the gym’s elliptical machines and stationery bikes, choose his own movies to watch in the media room, read newspapers and books, and play handheld electronic games, reports Finn.

The Obama administration hasn’t yet revealed how it intends to close the Guantanamo prison, and what it plans to do with the 220 or so detainees that remain there.

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A NEW BALANCE OF POWER: Two cases this term could also completely rework American election law, handing powerful conservative interests unprecedented power to manipulate elections. The first is Citizens United v. FEC, in which the conservative bloc appears poised to overrule a century-old rule permitting laws limiting the influence of corporate money in politics. Should the Court gut this rule, as it is widely expected to do, the health insurance industry will be free to spend billions to defeat lawmakers who support meaningful health reform; the tobacco industry will have free reign to spend limitless sums to elect politicians who will immunize them from accountability under the law; and Wal-Mart will be free to unleash its massive treasury to help elect a Congress which will strangle unions and freeze or eliminate the minimum wage. Also looming is the Court's decision in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which concerns the power of Congress to create "independent agencies" whose members cannot be fired at the whim of the president. Should the Court gut Congress' power to create such agencies, the next Karl Rove could pressure the FCC to fine the Rachel Maddow Show while ignoring the antics of Glenn Beck, and he could strongarm the FEC into manipulating elections to benefit a future president's party.

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"If Harry Reid does not have the leadership skills to get 60 votes for cloture and give a Democratic president an up-or-down vote on health care, progressives will help defeat him in 2010, even if that means Republicans take that seat," said the head of one progressive organization, who's still working out the detail of the campaign. "There is no use for Reid's vote if 60 Democratic votes means nothing on cloture, and no use for Reid's leadership if his leadership is so blatantly ineffective."

That might not be such a troubling threat if Reid, who's up for re-election in 2010, wasn't suffering at the polls.

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That famous infighting of the core McCain campaign versus Sarah Palin is still continuing, with former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt openly saying at the Atlantic's "First Draft of History" symposium that it would be "catastrophic" if Palin were to win the Republican nomination in 2012.

Schmidt said: "I think that she has talents, but you know, my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican Party in 2012, and in fact, were she to be the nominee, we could have a catastrophic election result."

It's sure been a long journey for Schmidt, as far as his attitudes on Palin are concerned. The Los Angeles Times reported in October 2008 that Schmidt himself pushed McCain into picking her. After Karl Rove said the pick was a campaign decision, and not a governing decision, Schmidt fired back: "Karl's wrong. She's an exceptional governor, a reform governor in Alaska."

But with the campaign long over -- and Palin's performance regarded as disastrous by everyone except her core fan-base -- Schmidt is sure singing a different tune.

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Barack Obama, the US president, has agreed to abide by a 40-year policy of allowing Israel to keep nuclear weapons without opening them to international inspection, according to a US newspaper.

 

In a report on Saturday, The Washington Times quoted three unnamed sources as saying Obama had confirmed to Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, that he would maintain the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

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Breaking news from the change we can believe in front! The Obama administration is opposing Congressional legislation to protect reporters from being jailed for refusing to reveal who disclosed confidential information to them. For national security reasons, of course. As Charlie Savage put it in a story in the New York Times the other day, “The bill includes safeguards that would require prosecutors to exhaust other methods for finding the source of the information before subpoenaing a reporter, and would balance investigators’ interests with ‘the public interest in gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information.’” Obama doesn’t like this. And he’d like judges to be told to be “deferential” to the executive branch when it screams “national security” in such cases.

And, as the inaptly named Jason Ditz reported on Antiwar.com a couple of weeks ago, the administration is seeking the extension of several major provisions of the Patriot Act, including one that would allow the gov to subpoena library and bookstore records, and others that make it easier to wiretap on the executive branch’s whim.

Oh, and given Congressional Democrats’ opposition to sending more troops to Afghanistan, in the pursuit of god knows what, the admin is going to turn to the Republicans for backing. On issues of imperial war and the national security state, Obama 1 is looking more and more like Bush 3.

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Your will is always within your power

 

Nothing truly stops you.  Nothing truly holds you back.  For your own will is always within your control.

 

Sickness may challenge your body.  But are you merely your body?  Lameness may impede your legs.  But you are not merely your legs.  Your will is bigger than your legs.

 

Your will needn't be affected by an incident unless you let it.  Remember this with everything that happens to you.

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That not every industrialized nation has single payer... they all have some form of universal care.  But they aren't all single payer.  I'm glad to see he's vowing to help run Democrats in primaries of folks who don't vote for the public option.  The movie on Friday should be interesting.

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