who is this Glistening Between Thighs?

(that's worth a delete right there)

I don't quite know why, but golly, I love an update! It's like a flower which just burst into bloom, or something. Or something else, maybe. I'm not sure.

You remind me of the moose who sat in the mountain laurel woods with a bottle of Wild Turkey. You mooed at the moon this:`Thus good and evil have joined in one, so that everlasting Plan rules all, wicked men shun,

in their misery. (not you Moose?)

Always craving more goods (People),

and forfeiting nobility of life foolishly,

flouting gods common law-both deaf, and blind.

Some madly rushing to his/her a own destruction,

some striving zealously for reputation, some groping,

unrestrained for profit, other's for sensual sexual pleasure,

but all encountering evil everywhere, finding the opposition of what they strive for.-Then dead, Cleanthes wrote that... 'off-topic'...

Who were the worthless attorneys who represented Nazi war criminals at the close or WWII?

And should we pass judgement on whoever attempted to defend Sadam Hussein in court?

OK, I'll give it a shot. Any lawyer who defends such a client brings credit to his or her profession, upholds the highest standards of the law, and brings validity to the entire process of justice if they do the job to their best ability.

-- casual_observer

______________

Of course, but what if said lawyers chose to ONLY defend the worst of the worst, over and over again, every time, and what if, in their heart of hearts, they did it purely out of greed, and they defended clients that made it sick for them to defend, and what if they used immoral defenses which were nevertheless entirely legal ones? Don't tell me there is no such thing; the law can't explicitly cover every contingency; the Law and morality are not identical.

Remember, as I wrote, the moral jugements I'm referring to are an individual's, and are not a legal matter. Every decision has a moral dimension, but not necessarily a pertinently legal one.

Although Derbig claims not to know this, oomex is compu-geek shorthand for Out of Memory Exception. Judging by his genuine lack of computer skills, I now realize that I accused unfairly. Not trying to start a new feud here :]...Derbig used to despise me for being the bastard son of William f. Buckley and Edward Said. Although, if I recall as well, he never actually called me 'the bastard', which means the two were married at one time.

Anywho! You can call me Oomex anytime, I like the ring to it. You can call me Omar too.

I am posting this without having read the 160 or so letters that came before, so feel free to disregard if what I'm saying is redundant or superfluous.

I don't think Holder arguing that detainees were not prisoners of war as defined by Geneva is a big deal. There are multiple classifications within the treaty, and prisoners of war have to meet qualifications that suspected terrorists simply can not (weapon displayed openly, wearing a uniform, etc.). They are still entitled to rights under Geneva as enemy combatants (I believe under common article 3 as Glenn mentioned). What the administration was attempting to do was classify suspected terrorists as "unlawful enemy combatants," and then argue that this classification forecloses any and all rights. I don't think Holder ever supported that position.

Prisoners of war under Geneva may not be interrogated at all, beyond name rank and serial number. Any president would want the ability to question suspected terrorists, although I hope most presidents would do so humanely and within the bounds of law. I think the problem of international terrorism could much more effectively be battled without military intervention at all, simply through cooperation among global law enforcement authorities, but of course the Bush administration has set us back a few decades on that front. Think of what we could have accomplished with the goodwill we had after 9/11.

I also don't think Holder arguing for detention of suspected terrorists until the end of the "war" in 2002 is troubling. At that point in time, it may have been reasonable (although perhaps naive) to say that the "war" would end after Bin Laden was killed or captured. Now that most people are aware that this "war on terror" will probably continue until we decide on a better name, the idea of detaining until it ends is ridiculous. The eventual realization of SCOTUS that detainees in Guantanamo were in a perpetual state of legal limbo has been suggested as a factor in the Court changing its mind on cert in Boumediene, and deciding as they did.

(Cert was originally denied to Boumediene. Either Stevens or Kennedy or both changed their mind and cert was granted on a rehearing of some sort - the procedural details are fuzzy for me)

violate the law for money and corporations as" . . . the difference being a "gang member" regardless of how financially successful his criminal enterprise is, is unlikely to have the financial wherewithall to insulate himself from legal accountability should he be caught. Corporations on the other hand do it as a matter of business and are rarely, with a few notable sacrificial lambs who take down entire segments of an industry, held accountable. And corporate lawyers willingly string out litigation indefinitely to save the entity money (time value) rather than counsel them to accept the legal consequences of their actions once proved.

Yeah they are both bad actors, and yeah it is probably a matter of perspective which attorney is the engaging in the more noble pursuit, and yeah it's also a matter of the scale of potential or actual harm inflicted. For myself I have very little empathy for corporate attorneys or their clients. It was a very bad legal precedent to for all intents and purposes insulate corporate actors from personal civil and criminal accountability. As I'm sure you know it isn't very hard for lawyers to insulate with a few degrees of separation any executive from personal accountability. Yet most corporate attorneys know full well the culpability of their entity client and its directors, officers, or managers, and that not one of the former will likely ever be held accountable for the very human consequences of their profit driven decision making. But they are more than willing to interpose themselves to prevent justice from being done so long as billables are high and the checks keep getting signed.

The ethical issues are not quite the same between individuals and entities despite law schools all over America trying to brainwash people into believing they are. A street criminal languishes in jail until what little process he is afforded expires. The corporate criminal and their lawyers join our political criminals on the cocktail weenie and bullshit circuit at 7:00pm every day. Same can't be said of the public defender.