that's the hard part - to recognize that 'the rule of law' in the US is kind of a political and social tool to fill prisons with poor people and the Supreme Court with idiots and then call and cry for upholding the 'rule of law' - But we can do it - Yes we can!!

Top recommended diary at Daily Kos by by RaulVB:

www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/8/751450/-Glenn-Greenwald-destroying-NPRs-Alicia-Shepard,-not-even-funny

Includes also much recommended comment "Greenwald also destroys Obama admin on post acquittal detention" by by science first.

"But these poor benighted people ARE educated by bitter experience, and they DO understand just what the Rule of Law means if you're not of the right color or the right class or you don't live in the right neighborhood, or don't associate with the right people and on and on and on."

Che, I don't wish to be pedantic but. If people can't be assed to reach for a dictionary or do a Google then their ignorance is their own lookout. But the ignorance will also be their undoing. It's stupid and lazy to just assume without the barest research that the concept "Rule of Law" is some how some sort of punitive and oppressive instrument.
It's not. The concept is a sound one and is designed to maintain an equity under law in which everybody from the powerful to the powerless are equally obliged by the responsibilities and all equally enjoy the benefits.

Reminds me of the days when certain groups would hit the roof in panic when told that they needed more Justice. "Sheet man, we don't need no more Justice!" they'd yell mistaking the word Justice for the words, "The Man". But ignorance of terms is only temporarily amusing.

One doesn't even need a high school education to get these concepts sorted. And they damned well need to be because there are fascist forces out there who are only to happy to tell the ignorant that they need less Justice and less Rule of Law and for the ignorant to fall for it.

And still on the matter of ignorance there is this well meaning twaddle.

Humanity against Crimes

Its obviously a play on the term "Crimes against Humanity." But that term is accurate and clear. There are a category of crimes committed by humans that offend humanity itself. Genocide, torture and rape being used as a weapon of war being main ones. But that still doesn't make the term "Humanity against Crimes" any more meaningful than "The War on Terror."

In the one term you have an abstract noun against crimes, whilst in the other you have a war against an abstract noun.

Muddled thinking is muddled thinking and the one is no better than the other just because it is "our" muddled thinking. Why the fuck they didn't just call the site "Humanity against crimes against Humanity" god only knows. It makes marginally more sense and at least has a ring to it.

And Che the fact that the USA is filled with prisons filled with people isn't the effects of the Rule of Law but a function of the privatisation of the prison service. Rampant Capitalism has, as it so often does, had a corrupting influence on that area of public life where it had no business operating. Or rather where if it was anyway going to have some input that input should have at all times been subject to the most stringent ethical audit.

The fact that that two legged piece of odium Condeleeza Rice could both be black and the Secretary of State whilst at the same time carrying a large tranche of shares in the "Corrections Industry that makes large profits from the often un just incarceration of a disproportionate amount of poor blacks is just one of the many signs how far the rot in American society has actually spread.

the shit-fer-brains that contributes to the site with the shit-fer-brains title and whose name begins with "O" I offer this.

Woman of Afghanistan

http://rethinkafghanistan.com/?utm_source=rgemail

Anyone who thinks you can take the torture out of this war is the kind of person who would think that you can take the pepper out of a chille concarne and still have a hot dish or not as the case maybe.

Anyone who thinks there is a right way to fight this one is the kind of person who doesn't understand the laws of gravity and had his head filled with hope where his brains ought to have been on the day back in January when they crowned the African without longform the Chieftain of all the Americans.

Morning Jebbie.

History is bunk after all

Much of what we're taught has been twisted to suit someone's needs

By Laura Miller

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/07/09/macmillan/

There are a few items in history that are illegal to even discuss if one departs from the official line. There are several modern hot button issues that will get you labeled as a kook if you investigate and come up with a different view than the accepted view of the human herd. I wonder if Laura knows this.

However, she is correct that almost everything that you were taught in school about history, and many other things, is not true. We do not, as a people, even understand the nature of the founding of our country, or the difference in a Republic, a Democracy, or an Empire.

Some day we will not have all the biggest guns and some other people will teach us the truth about the nature of America. (the hard way)

I am sure you've read by now the Washington Post article on how Mexican is investigating torture by its military against drug traffickers. What is interesting is that (i) Mexico calls it torture, (ii) even when it was for information gathering purposes and (iii) is investigating the abuses.

... all in stark contrast to President Obama's view of human rights.

I think it is a little early in the to be condeming Obama for endorsing the Bush Administration's tastefully understated policy on torture however, this column IS devoted to considering the legal and human rights implications of The American archipeligo.

We call locking people inside steel animal pens for life or strapping them to a padded steel crucifix to be injected with poison a "sentence" while the attorneys quibble about how we would like to define the even less discreet term "torture".

As for the rule of law? The "rule of law" in the US operates to blindly steer a vast rudderless slaveship with nearly 2.5 million captured bodies held prisoner and locked away in its hold.

The notion that "the rule of law" can be expected to somehow restrain the executive branch or function as an instrument to insure the protection of constitutional rights of likewise captured assets seems almost mawkishly naive if sincere. While I consider Mr Greenwald's efforts noble, he speaks to injustice from the hot house sanctum of the profession of law itself. I think Che' has the schrewedest take I have perused on this material today. For my money, we are living to see the rise and final collapse of an almost impossibly, theatricaly wicked empire. I believe we have time to make better choices than dieing on our feet however. Since there seems to be little within the law to be done about the outcome anyway, I believe any person with good sense would be well advised to consider the option of repairing to distant shores before he awakens from this dream of justice and discovers himself impressed into service to the realm fitted in bracelets and embarked on a cruise to hell. Revolution is a leathal remedy for redressing grievences but then who among us is not already chattel?

I believe it was the not surprisingly Frenchman Michael Foucault who observed that, "a prisoner is not a soul trapped in a body but rather a body trapped in a soul." Contemplate Foucault's maxim Mr Greenwald before we close the baleful subject of "Justice" you raise here.