Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
With such a complete and insightful answer to your own question, you don’t leave me much to comment on. In addition to all the reasons you sighted, for some there is also guilt that they let the Iraq invasion happen and then allowed GWB to be reelected followed by the torture which started on his first term. For these M$M owners, managers, editors, pundits and reporters to own up to their share of the responsibility forces them to call into question their idealized fourth amendment reason to exist.
Instead of facing the truth about torture in our police departments, prisons, and detention camps, they opt to minimize and rationalize. If there has to be a “Truth Commission” as the only way to get some of the guilty to face their own truth, then I truly hope the commission isn’t turned into just another rationalization and propaganda effort. Once the commission idea is decided, we have to put all the pressure we can on making it an honest commission that will bring out the truth, not just about “non combatants” but also another “commission” on our oppressive, retributive, crime increasing prisons.
Do I remember right that the US imported to Iraq prison guards? I seem to recall that they did so.
Yes, I think it was Lynndie Egnland's boyfriend among them, but I chose not to take the time to Google how many at AG were corrections officials in civilian life. But some were.
Yes, indeed it was a good post.
I would add that it only touches the surface. Bad judges, prosecutors, juries, cops, laws and so forth are the essence of the American law system. (I no longer care to write "justice system" when referring to it)
As always, 'war is the health of the state'; and the 'war of drugs' has corrupted everything it has touched. If memory serves me, some asshole who was just elected vice president wrote into law (or was instrumental) the federal asset forfeiture law among other horrendous acts by Biden the horrible.
If a man is sentenced for a crime he did not commit by the horrible law system we have today --- then his sentence is the cruelest torture that you could devise.
God I hate prosecutors; I have researched their total lack of respect for the law. May they each one get just what they deserve.
For so many reasons, I've come to share that view, even tho I did a small amount of that work for a tiny municipal govt back in the day. People hate lawyers; fine, we/they can be a lying, and amoral cohort. But until one has dealt with a prosecutor who is largely unbound from any checks on the power to destroy your life via prosecution, you haven't really understood which lawyers deserve the most loathing.
Prosecutors have actually opposed the Innocence Project from introducing new DNA technology/evidence (and usually losing) which can definitively prove that the scrapings under the victim's nails or ejaculate in her vagina do not come from the man they convicted. These prosecutors do not care if an innocent man languishes in prison. All that matters to them is not losing a notch in the belt.
As in any profession there are always some "good guys" and I believe that you were one of them once.
A lawyer once told me while I was preparing an essay that many lawyers start out in the prosecutor's office because you have to work some damn place once you graduate law school. The evil men stay. (according to him)
I read the blogs on proprietorial wrongdoing as much as I read Glenn. Wait, seems I read a lot of lawyers!
Anyway, my main point is that we need to stop trying to fix all the evils of the world and work on the evils here domestically first. And, it would do no harm in starting with the flawed "justice" system.
That was an excellent post Mona and heru-ur, Biden's views on crimes and sentences and his idea of justice does concern me. Not to mention his national security desire to misuse our military. He seems like a good guy, so I'm not sure why he can't open up his mind and see the damage his positions have caused. Maybe without worrying about his senate constituency, he will recognize some of his errors.
Our government has had tyrannical tendencies for the last two hundred years. Anyone who is surprised or upset at this notion should stop complaining and start responding.
The only real response is NOT to just keep changing the players in Washington and hoping the last person will be better than the next one, but rather to change the system.
It is our right to re-model the government's powers by Constitutional convention. Referendums in every state must be initiated, and a convention called to re-adjust the powers of the three branches and resolve these problems.
The mere fact that a separation of powers exist is only the beginning to defining controls upon the government. If the executive branch is too abusive of their power with the military, then a specific control to mitigate that abuse must be developed or the power removed from the office.
For more on this, see my blog. (Link @ sig)
All the time you spend crying about how others are calling you names. It really makes one wonder if you are a hypocrite. But then you call people liars after faking your own death online. Then one knows for sure.
Perhaps, you should make an appointment with a neurologist. We had no such agreement.
My comment was meant to point your question in the proper direction. There is nothing less useful than ranting about some fabricated catch all group who exist only in your paranoid fantasies.
Address them, if they exist, but stop complaining about them all the time to others who are unable to perceive them.
With such a complete and insightful answer to your own question, you don’t leave me much to comment on. In addition to all the reasons you sighted, for some there is also guilt that they let the Iraq invasion happen and then allowed GWB to be reelected followed by the torture which started on his first term.
I guess I had thought of their feelings of liability over the 2004 election, because I read the NYT and they have been extremely defensive as to why they sat on the FISA wiretapping until after the election. I hadn't thought of the guilt/shame angle. Perhaps they are ashamed of what they did or feel bad about it? It's possible, but they seem too angry and (self-)righteous about it when they talk. Maybe that's an image or an act? I would hate to think we get bad press because our press can't stand themselves.
I've been feeling we need our own network of think tanks. And one of the purposes would have to be community dissemination. I did notice that when Glenn gave the plight of the Bosnian-Algerian prisoners just the right touch, it spread and no one ignored the feeling of revulsion. (Sorry for the stream of consciousness, I don't know what this para has to do with the first one, I thought of it while I was writing the first one).
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
