For the Record

A "morally depraved" judiciary: Arar case dismissed in the U.S.

Greenwald discusses and summarizes:

Yesterday, the Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 --  agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety.  It held that even if the government violated Arar's Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him.  Why?  Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" (p. 39).  In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

Reflecting the type of people who fill our judiciary, the judges in the majority also invented the most morally depraved bureaucratic requirements for Arar to proceed with his case and then claimed he had failed to meet them.  Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have.  As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement:  it "means government miscreants may avoid [] liability altogether through the simple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury" (p. 27; emphasis added).

Americans, in particular, should read the rest of Greenwald's excoriating post, including the embedded excerpts from dissenting judges lamenting the death of an independent judiciary and describing Arar's horrific treatment.  What has that country come to?  Oh, and there's also this.

This about sums it up

Richard Gwyn, in today's Toronto Star, has an excellent "opinion" piece on the prospects for regulation and reform in the U.S.  The short cut:

[T]o really understand what's going on, follow the money. The American political system has become its hostage.

"fingernails on the cliff"

Great lecture here by Harvard's Elizabeth Warren. It's an hour long so I'll summarize. She's compared household expenses today and in momndad-time, finds all sorts of creepy stuff. Eg, spending is down on all fun stuff, way up on unfun stuff; the latter eats up all the $ from working women and much from dad. Unfun stuff hasta be paid so need two jobs to avoid fail. Add decreased safety net and increased ed costs and you get rise in bankruptcy, esp for fam with kids. Scary portent: the lucky pull away from the unlucky, eventually Brazil.

McCain's top campaign adviser works for Hillary's top campaign adviser???

What the fuck???

Mark Penn isn't just Hillary Clinton's chief strategist -- he is also the CEO of one the world's largest public affairs firms, Burson-Marsteller.

Burson-Marsteller's DC-based lobbying subsidiary is headed by one of John McCain's top advisers, a Republican lobbyist named Charlie Black.

Guess this splains why HRC and JMcC gave the exact same speech on Tuesday!

What can one say about this sort of thing?

This is what the U.S. abroad has come to.

For first time, unmarried women outnumber married women

This post has lots of treats, including the cool Women's Voices.  Women Vote.  (yes, that's an irritating name) video with all those awesome women in the Oval office (including one of my fav bloggers---Digby of Hullabaloo).  Cached in there is an interesting statistic:

Recent polling in particular indicates that unmarried women, for the first time a larger demographic than married women, vote more heavily for Dems than practically any other group.

God, I am so sick of seeing crazy old white guys calling all the shots.  Married or not, here we come!

Bush wishes he could do this

Musharraf imposes military rule:

Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup and is also head of Pakistan's army, suspended the constitution on Saturday ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether his recent re-election as president was legal. He ousted seven independent-minded Supreme Court judges, put a stranglehold on independent media and granted sweeping powers to authorities to crush dissent.

One small difference: Bush would probably keep the complicit Supreme Court who anti-democratically installed him in the first place.

Hat tip to my most excellent stepfather, Don Doiron.

Bush wars to cost 40 times estimates

8K for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.

US income inequality worst since 20's

Among the stats released by the IRS (and you know, girlfriend, that the rich have all kinds of ways of hiding their income, so things are undoubtedly much worse than these stats indicate):

-- The top 1% earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent in 2004.

That is, the top 1% gets more than 1/5 of all income.

-- The bottom 50% earned 12.8 percent of all income in 2005, down from 13.4 percent.

That is, the bottom 50% gets about 1/8 of all income.

One of the interesting things about keeping track, to whatever small degree, of things like this is seeing the same old ludicrous and empirically disconfirmed excuses wheeled out over and over by Bush et al.   So last time stats on inequality came out, Bush was all about his "the income gap was an education gap"; now it's that "skills gaps yield income gaps".  Whatever.

Tutu barred from speaking for speaking up against Israel: updated

How very tiresome that reactionary members of Zionist lobbies (how many profit from, or are friends with those who profit from, the arms and munitions industry, I wonder?) persist in persecuting rational observers of the continuing human rights abuses of the Israeli government against the long-suffering (40 years and counting) Palestinians.  Not content with hounding top-flight academics like Norman Finkelstein (who was "retired" from his position at DePaul University) and Juan Cole (whose offer from Yale was withdrawn), pro-Israel-no-matter-what attack dogs have now scuttled a talk  at the University of St. Thomas---thanks to the helpful interference of University President "Father knows best" Dennis Dease---by Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace prize, among other accolades.

As if this supression of reasoned observation weren't outrageous enough, the cancellation was accompanied by the removal of Cris Toffolo, the chair of the Justice and Peace Studies program (which had sponsored Tutu's talk), from her position as chair, for "the way she questioned the administration's decision".  Toffolo has tenure (thank heavens) but no longer heads the department.

Muzzlewatch has further details and the means to write a letter of protest here.

UPDATE: Facing widespread condemnation for its decision to block a speaking invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the University of St. Thomas announced Wednesday that he would be welcome on the campus after all. While many on the campus said that they were pleased with the reversal, some also questioned whether the university was doing enough to undo damage from the incident.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/11/tutu