Sorry Glenn. I deserved it. Just monumentally saddened on days like this. Apparently my moral outrage at anyone who would defend this in any way was over the top and thread cluttering. My apologies.

I don't understand how you or anybody expects we are going to change the underlying human dynamic at play here without publicly shaming and ostracizing those who would defend the indefensible. How do you change this when seven learned men on one of the highest courts in the land accept as compelling specious legal reasoning and engage in a degree of moral weakness that isn't becoming of a prison guard much less an American judge?

How do you convince someone of the wrongness of something that they can't or won't perceive to be wrong? How do you convince those so blinkered by the perception that it's necessary, or just as pernicious, that it's a forgiveable sin in service of the greater good or just an unfortunate reality of the world we live in when it isn't anything of the kind.

You honestly believe we are going stop this with better legal arguments and more civility in the comments thread?

Again sorry. Just feeling dejected and pissed off. This isn't the country or Constitution or the judicial system I thought I'd be serving when I raised my hand and swore my oath. I guess I just wish we didn't go around lying to ourselves and everybody else about where we really stand.

corporations and their profits. And in the rightwing worldview that is "an existential threat" to America and their political patrons. Republican politicians don't represent the little people. The little people are their stooges. The people they get to vote against their own self interest and in the interests of the very people/entities that make it impossible for their quality of life to improve.

What's "terrifying" is the prospect that something passes that actually helps the stupid little republican stooges, costs them less, works, improves their health and lives, they wake up to that fact, and Republican politicians and their corporate backers go the way of the dodo.

But then again there's a segment of the population that would rather live in a cardboard box with their family without a pot to piss in roasting a pigeon on an old curtain rod over a sterno flame, so long as that means some brown person somewhere doesn't derive some shared benefit from taxation.

Because some people in this country really are that dumb and shortsighted.

Wow. Thanks for straightening that out. But see it's hard for people to take your comments in good faith or even from a point of consistency or coherence when you overlook the fact that America had no reason other than to see that Amar was renditioned to and tortured in a country known for its willingness to torture, and that sending him there in the first instance, was a violation of domestic law under the circumstances.

And that was all before you implied that "there was more to the story" and he deserved to be renditioned to Syria because he didn't want to serve (rather than deserted) in the military of a country known for its human rights violations. Oddly of the very type he was ultimately subjected to.

Hey why do you think our mortal enemy and a honorary member of the "axis of evil" shared the information they obtained from torturing Amar with The Great Satan?

Be honest Joe. You could give a shit what happened to Amar or why. He was "other" and he deserved it. Right? If not just a big "bureaucratic mix-up" by the benevolent American government.

Your words that "if Canada and America were complicit" they should be what? The court just said they couldn't be held accountable even though they were obviously complicit. Because it was a policy dispute. See how convenient it is to achieve zero accountability when you're complicit in crimes against humanity. Everybody just points the finger at some other guy, everyone claims "I know nothing but sadly I'll concede we were purposely incompetent", and judges say "not my problem".

Poof, presto chango, everybody looks away and pretends nothing bad really happened. It's called moral cowardice in my book.

he had a head injury.

What's Clinton, Bush, and Obama's excuse for perpetuating an untinterrupted line of Executive Branch lawlessness. Each man covering for the last.

I really think today's bottom line has been stated accurately and repeatedly:

We are so fucked.

Thank god the right wing goofs have drawn a line in the sand at the 2nd Amendment. We may have to rely on it sooner rather than later. Hopefully not actually rely on it, rather the threat of it.

Maybe the Million Peaceful Men Packin' Heat March on Washington. A sort of symbolic protest. Everybody with cardboard cutouts of guns with the saying "next time they're real and we'll have us an actual problem".

nothing more nothing less. Sadistic means are just the surest method to that end. Period.

Showering someone with money and sexual favors might work too to get a desired confession but it isn't as guaranteed as sadistic torture.

Pain will make you say anything. Overloads of pleasure just lots of "oohs and ahhs".