But I see by Zoltan's blog that he has become a devotee of Transcendental Meditation! Got to hand it to him!

Me, I've had a lot of work done on my teeth, but I could never transcend dental medication. I always ask for the most powerful pain pills the dentist can give me!

high-level lawbreakers are protected from consequences by our political class

See, the answer is right there in the caption...no need to think about it.

Jones, it's too late! You just commented! Oh, sure, you told yourself, it'll only be this once. But then you saw your comment, right there on the web, newly minted, sparkling and bright. Nice, ain't it? And now you are telling yourself (don't deny it, we've all done it) "Well gosh, Maybe I who shouldn't, say it, but that's one hell of a comment! And it showed up with no misspellings or grammatical mistakes, and it's pretty well put!"

Well jones, that's it! You're hooked now! And why not, I ask?

Comment, gpjones! Comment til your eyes bubble! You've made a hell of a start, and there is every reason your comments should get better and better. Soon you will notice a new spring in your step, and catch that blond in the office who wouldn't give you the time of day before staring at you and breathing heavily, eyes glistening, the tip of her pink tongue protruding slightly from between rows of pearly-white, perfect teeth. After that, it's only a matter of time until the boss calls you in; "Jones", he'll say, "You've changed, and for the better! There's a new spring in your step, a glint in your eye, and the tone of command in your voice! You're redolent of Napoleon brandy, fine cigars and a judge of fine horseflesh, yet a regular maven withal!" "Call me GP, please" you'll say, swishing your riding crop against your well cut jodhpurs as if to the manner borne, calling for Dom Perignon and caviar with toast while flicking an invisible speck of dust from your cuffs of fine Michelin lace. Now you await the cornucopia of effluence which your patrician instep, the result of a thousand years of consanguineous breeding, tells you is yours by right. Outside, your mighty steed awaits, flecked with foam. You have the pride of a Spanish hidalgo, the blood of a thousand years of Jonses runs in your veins, yet, au fond, you're a regular guy, too.

Of course, sooner or later you'll get it right in the neck and find yourself waist-deep in the Mulligatawny, but hey A pish un a fortz iz vi a khasene un a klezmer!, if you get my drift.

So I look forward to hearing lot's from you!

LOL. Prime and welcoming stuff. Who wouldn't want to stay on board after that?

The commenter that made me feel the most welcome at first was the guy who's now getting deleted- Bebop-o. I miss his insights and hope he finds a way to be back on UT full time soon.

For me, reading the Geneva Conventions as including a right to habeas corpus seems obvious in that if a person is guaranteed no punishment without judicial review, and a prisoner is entitled to full POW treatment until a review, and a civilian is entitled to have reasons for detention or internment reviewed every 6 months, it seems like they are saying someone cannot be detained without a review of why they are being detained.

That's why I said that all the Supreme Court needs to do is connect those dots, which are implied it would seem by Hamdan (although all they said specifically was that the bare minimum, Common Article 3 is something anyone is entitled to) with the Boumediene dots, that a venue isn't a valid one for habeas unless it has the power to set someone free, and that would mean the Afghan prisoners had those rights.

That's for me. The route to guaranteeing habeas to the Guantanamo prisoners was through arguing that Guantanamo is in U.S. jurisdiction and the U.S. is capable of providing those rights there, therefore. So nobody is sure whether Boumediene applies in Afghanistan. I'm therefore expressing the likelihood that they would say it does, based on what they've said so far, since Geneva definitely applies in Afghanistan or Pakistan or wherever the prisoners were picked up or being held -- only Kosovo hasn't signed Geneva, and only because it is too new.

They haven't done so yet. It's rather important. One of the ways Bush has been emptying Guantanamo and not refilling it is by shipping prisoners to Afghanistan (and elsewhere). There are 10,171 registered prisoners in Afghanistan at the beginning of 2008, and thought to be a few thousand more that are not registered (with the ICRC). At some point, those included women and children. Guantanamo is the tip of the iceberg with these guys.

GG makes mention of this...I'm not a Bush supporter, but I always thought that criminality was determined by conviction, not accusation. Maybe some of the regulars can clear this up for me.

-- John Anderson

A conviction denotes guilt, not criminality. One can engage in criminal acts (criminality), prior to being judged as legally guilty of that behavior.

Bush, and others, have admitted engaging in behavior which is against the law and therefore it is proper to describe their multiple acts as criminality.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt. I read it and decided I'd run out of explanations. That's the kind of stuff that you used to hear about in Southern Sudan. A starving child curled up against a dead mother. But not a few miles from a waiting convoy of food trucks, or across a berm from an ambulance. What's happened to these people?

LOL. Prime and welcoming stuff. Who wouldn't want to stay on board after that?

I hope it made him feel welcome. After that, he's supposed to think: "Jeez, I can't possibly be any more Meshugeh (nutty, crazy) than him. What have I got to lose?"

Or maybe I'm just casting perelman before swans or even swains, the swine. But living in a Wodehouse, I should throw stones?

Anyway, it means "A pee without a fart, is like a wedding without a band!"

But what the hell happened to Be-bop-O? Yes, he probably used more space than was truly considerate, but why wasn't a compromise worked out? Did something happen?

And is Be-Bop being deleted, or did he just get scared off? Last I remember, Glenn was asking him to post somewhat less.

Than I got pretty busy, and only read Glenn's articles, and threw in a word just so nobody would get ideas about "he's gone, thank god". Than I got the flu, a few days ago, and the Gaza assault started, and I got caught up in the commenting for a while.

Gosh, I would hate to think that Be-Bop ended up getting himself banned because he needed a pen-pal, and didn't handle it right. Considering his situation, that's pretty harsh.

People with limited mobility (that's him, right?) can become very attached to the Internet. At this point, if, Got zol ophiten!, I became disabled, I bet I would end up pretty dependent on the Internet.

Hadn't he been posting for years here? This is too bad.