RE:But what's happening to the rule of law in Russia is terribly upsetting.

Actually, it really is terribly upsetting whether the person who says it measures up to our (yours and mine, of course) high moral standards, or not.

I will never presume to shut up a Russian journalist's criticizing Guantanamo simply because he is ... a Russian journalist.

I do realize that American public in general does not care what happens outside of the American borders as it is. There is no need to call for caring even less.

To me, the two most important issues to be faced by the next President will be security in southwest Asia, and the filling of the next Supreme Court vacancy as well as a large number of federal court vacancies. On those two issues, I have real agreement with a McCain Presidency.

"Security in sowthwest Asia": security of what precisely? National sovereignty? Religious freedom? US hegemony over the natives? Establishing a Starbucks in every square mile between Baku and New Dehli?

"Filling of the next Supreme Court vacancy": filling it with what? A genuine jurist? A legal schoolar with actual credentials? A sock-puppet? The mummified body of Felix Frankfurter?

You can't go throwing such platitudes out without detailing what you actually mean. Not if you want to be taken seriously anyway.

McCain gets a pass because its increasingly clear nothing he says can be taken seriously. He reverses himself daily and outright lies the rest of the time.

Are you any better?

Another way to put El Cid's point:

Radical, fringe, whacked-out left foreign policy:

"Do onto others as you would have them do unto you"

Mainstream, right-wing-approved foreign policy:

"Suck on this!"*

I don't think this is an exaggeration.

*actual quote by serious political pundit

Does the telecom "immunity" mean immunity even from fact-finding inquiries such as those from Congress? Certainly Congress, with its enumerated power to declare war, has "national security" oversight as well, no? What about Congress' broad "commerce" power as a means to get answers? If nothing else, the "immunity" should be of some benefit to society as it often used in other contexts - as a means to gain transparency and insight into what happened.

Yet here is Diehl, bitterly complaining with a straight face, that "the law still doesn't seem to matter" to the Russian Government in either the domestic or international realm.

So, I guess this means that if Putin does get the VP nod, we shouldn't expect any endorsements from WaPo. Darn. And I thought he was the quintessential post-partisan choice for Obama.

We best put our thinking caps back on. The convention is just around the corner.

Wa Post: "The president must have the legal flexibility to detain those against whom there is credible, actionable intelligence but not enough evidence to bring charges."

The amount of evidence needed to bring a charge in the US is probable cause (I believe). It doesn’t take much evidence to have probable cause to arrest someone in the US, and in many cases, law enforcement officers bend the definition of probable cause to encompass far more than it should already allow. The idea that the president can arrest and permanently detain people on just suspicion (not even reasonable suspicion, but mere suspicion) of wrongdoing is so crazy and un-American that it reeks of Mussolini and fascism. burlydee

I hate to lump you with such company, burlydee, but both you and the Washington Post have essentially been victims of a framing exercise that makes your debate with them quite irrelevant to the Bush administration. The Washington Post garbles the situation, using the deliberate garbling of the Bush people. These are not people who are being held because there is credible, actionable intelligence that they are/were terrorists, because, like you say, that would constitute cause for arresting them. They are people who have been held because the Bush people thought, or continue to think, that these people have credible, actionable intelligence. They are being held for their believed value under interrogation, not because they may or may not have done anything. I do believe that makes the reality worse than what WaPo is blathering, and what you are assuming when you take the bait and try to refute it.

From the moment the Bush Administration rejected participation in the International Criminal Court, the die was cast that the US was headed down this sorry course. Cocktailhag

The die was cast when a certain Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations and Policy convinced the Reagan administration to begin backing away from international humanitarian law in effect to create a class of people with no rights, defined by being, in essence, any violent group that a country chose to use its military against. The move was made because that person wished to place the PLO in that class, in part because the PLO genuinely was attempting to use the protocols to gain legitimacy, but in large part because of his close ties to West Bank settlers who believed that Palestinians there should have no rights whatsoever because they had wrongly occupied land that had been given by God to the Jews.

The name chosen for the class of people who were to be given no rights under IHL was "terrorist". The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense was Douglas Feith, and you can read him making all of those arguments in the interview transcript that RMP cited with Philippe Sands. Ironically, he distinguishes himself and his people from "lawless regimes" by the "fact" that he doesn't believe in the concept of a superior class of person, and distinguishes himself from the "presidentialists" like John Yoo by the "fact" that he loves the Geneva Conventions.

I really wish that Tommy Franks was right. But this guy has had an undue influence on American policy that is downright dangerous.

Thank you for a most clear and rational answer to my question. I, too, am worried about those court appiontments, and that is what is keeping my hand on the lever for Obama, for now.

I cannot speak for Glenn Greenwald but for me, the feeling is that our national commitment to universal human rights, that came out of our revolution and was reaffirmed most strongly at Nuremberg, may be past reviving. People want to be rich, powerful and safe more than they want to be principled or consistent. They may wish to be consumers more than than they desire to be citizens of a republic. What you may underestimate is that a government that feels is can skirt the law on one thing today may have no scruples about doing something that you find eggregious tomorrow. You as a conservative must understand that government, without a vigilant press and public, is wont to expand its powers to tax, spend, and regulate to the nth degree. Add a heavy dose of secrecy, and you wind up with a dangerous mixture the Founders warned us against. Just wait until the Total Surveillance State uses its powers to ferret out every dime you've made or spent to tax in order to pay for itself and its imperial pretensions. After all, if you've got nothing to hide, why shouldn't the government know everything you do, say, and make?