Also, many of them have died under our supervision. Obama owns this now.

I always thought Derbig was Blumenthal. But what do I know? Nuttin'

If and when the new President actually closes Gitmo, he is going to have to figure out what you do with suspected terrorists.

The irony is that some of these guys will probably get sent to a country where they will be treated far worse than they are treated at Gitmo. In fact, wait until the US starts trying to move these guys. Almost certainly, some of them are going to find ACLU lawyers to represent them and keep them from leaving (or at least, keep them from getting sent to a place where a prison is really a prison).

One of the main reasons I am a conservative is because the consequences of liberal empathy are almost always disastrous for the victims of that empathy.

So, for example, many of the homeless are on the streets because liberals thought it wrong to keep the mentally ill in live-in psychiatric facilities.

So the people who have been welfare-dependent for generations watch their families disinegrate and their young men murder other young men. Again, victims of liberal empathy.

Just so, the inmates at Gitmo are going to suffer when Gitmo closes and they are no longer under the care of the US government but someone else who will not treat them well.

You could quit whining online and call or e-mail your House or Senate representatives on issues. It's called lobbying.

You're right, sending an email to my reps takes all day! In fact, it is almost as though the two activities are mutually exclusive, except that they aren't.

One of the problems I see on both these blogs and on news commentary, both on CNN & MSNBC is that much guessing and speculation happening on every issue. Every word that comes out of Obama's mouth is twisted and evaluated. On the up side at least people are paying attention this time.

You also have to realize majority of people pay no attention to what is happening outside of what affects them personally. I'll give you an example. At my reading group last week, I mentioned Palin's connection to secessionists and their connections to the White Aryan and Militia movement. One woman in her 50s asked me "What was the Militia Movement". You have a whole generation of people who never paid any attention to issues outside the realm of their beautiful, over-protected children; and a even younger generation who never READ the newspaper or anything else but poorly written misinformed blogs.

People marching down the street in suits and dresses get more attention. Stunts and costumes simply make the entire march seem like a parade in which people are there to have fun, not protest. If you take a look at pictures of old civil rights marches, people aren't casually dressed and laughing and having a good time. There are no people dressed oddly. They are dead serious and dressed as if they are going to an important event - which they are.

Actually, a pretty good example of how humor in protest can be effective is linked at my sig. It's all in how you do it, dyk.

;-}

When you apply for a U.S. passport, the application goes to the State Department for checking. At that point, the CIA has the right to request 30 days to run a check of its own, precisely because of national security and intelligence and, among other things, terrorism.

Would it be okay if they ordered you to maximum security site while they do that? After all, you might be a threat. You might need a medical exam (I hear they do pretty comprehensive strip and cavity searches).

Or would you argue that there was no reason why they should presume in advance that you needed to be incarcerated?

Most of the problems with "countries of origin" have been that the Bush administration was insisting that those countries continue to hold the prisoners without charge. In addition, the U.S. government has kept them on lists of international criminals. Until the U.S. courts absolved the 5 Bosnian-Algerians of all wrongdoing in their habeas petition, Bosnia was unwilling to take them, because they were 'terrorists': so designated by the United States.

As for the "15 or so high value detainees", they got this designation because they were transferred from black sites in 2006. Many, if not all, represent a serious threat to the U.S. in terms of reputation. Two are known to be a real problem: Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Ramzi bin al Shibh. One is iffy: Abu Zubaydah. Many of the rest were picked up because KSM or AZ mentioned them during torture. Those two have since repudiated their lists, saying many of the people named were just acquaintances or famous families. So we don't even know that all the '15 or so' are even problematic. One is the father of a guy who was sent up in New York state, and is doing 30 years for falsifying an ID (because he was a 'terrorist'). So it isn't even clear that those for whom convictions can be had in court are necessarily dangerous.

When you do things like this that pollute your justice system, and confuse your rolls of criminals, and destroy your normal evidence process, and arrest people on hunches, or because some guy you are waterboarding, after he hasn't had sleep for a while, and was in total sensory deprivation for a month, and whose wife and kids you are also holding and threatening to rape and kill, spewed names and names and names, you don't really have justification even for waiting to find out who you really have. And just because we've all been taught to believe that there are harmless people mixed with hard core down at Guantanamo, doesn't mean that has ever been proven the way real crimes are proven. Hate the U.S.? Quite possibly. In case anyone didn't notice, that is not a crime, or cause for incarceration or military action.