On a Tear

I'm running through a bunch of articles, tonight, that I'd printed out over the last week or so. Catching up on my reading, this time, feels like being repeatedly beaten over the head. Some of the articles are actually about that: beating people over the head. I don't feel I have the energy, just now, to do personal justice in prose to any of these topics, so I'll just pass a few of the articles along. They're all from Slate, and they cover what has recently been the unintentional running theme of this blog: the injustice of United States policy as set by the Bush administration with regard to civil liberties. Of the dozens of pieces read in the last little while, these few have really stuck out. Forget Nuremberg Tortured Logic Bad Party Line The Courtroom Slam Stream of Conscience ...no one can sue to enforce the protections of the Geneva Conventions or any other international protocol. And the detainees' first layer of appeal is not a standard military court—the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces—but instead a panel hand-picked by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Last summer, even prosecutors complained that the Rumsfeld gang initially selected to try the detainees would ensure that convictions were upheld. And, yes, the pun in the title of this post is very deeply intended. ..