Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

IT'S OFFICIAL

"In My Room" by the Beach Boys is the creepiest song ever recorded.



Just what is he doing in his room? When I was a lad, the things I did in my room would have been best discussed only with a medical professional. posted by Carlton at 11:41 PM

SITE FEED?

Well, I guess I now have a site feed. Joy.

I also find myself with nothing much to say. posted by Carlton at 3:50 PM

WHY WE FIGHT

Some time ago, I saw this movie. I meant to write about it, but didn't. Here's the trailer:



It's been a while, but I have two things to say:

1. I didn't really know much about the Eisenhower administration before this film. WWF makes out Eisenhower to be a kind of benign visionary, warning us of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" -- and perhaps he is, when looked at from a certain light.

It's always more complicated than that, of course -- for example, Ike was behind the overthrow of democratically elected regimes in Guatemala (on behalf of the United Fruit Company) and Iran (which is where all our troubles started with the latter country, really). The film references those two events, but doesn't emphasize them (as I recall). Now that I consider it, however, those events may even underscore the fact that Ike was speaking as someone who had his hands dirty, both in the "guilty" sense and the "working hard in the thick of things" sense.

Either way, it's a shame not to know more about history as recent as this.

2. The central point of the film is that we will have war as along as it is profitable. If companies which can exert (almost total) influence over the government will make more from war than from peace, we will have war. I can't see much to argue with about that.

Maybe it's a corollary to Upton Sinclair's quote:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Now we can say, "If a given event will make a man money, then he is generally for it, whatever it is." posted by Carlton at 3:09 PM

FORECLOSURES

Just to continue my earlier post, I don't expect that I'll have anything to do with the practice of actually buying homes at foreclosure auctions. That looks to be a very difficult and complex (and risky) process, and also requires more cash up front that I have to spare. My preliminary research indicates that the buyer often has to have the ENTIRE purchase price -- with no financing -- in hand on the date of the auction.

I do believe that some folks who already have money (naturally) will make a great deal more from this down market, however. Perhaps one of my readers? posted by Carlton at 1:11 PM

WHERE HAVE I HEARD THIS BEFORE?

Oh, right. Baghdad. From the Treason Times:

Ten months after Hurricane Katrina, [New Orleans] still does not have a reliable electrical system. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of repairs are still needed on a system devastated by flooding, the local utility is in bankruptcy and less than half the system’s prestorm customers have returned. Of those who have, many have endured hot and sleepless nights with no air-conditioning.

“How do you expect the city to recover when you don’t have a reliable source of electrical power?” asked Robert Harmon, an engineering consultant in the Bywater neighborhood.

So much for the injury; now comes the insult. Entergy New Orleans, the power company here, wants to increase its rates 25 percent to help pay for part of what it says is $718 million in storm losses and revenue shortfalls. That would increase the average household bill by $45 a month.

Is Bush's goal to make Baghdad look better and better by comparison? Who knows? posted by Carlton at 1:06 PM

WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

As a former and perhaps future homeowner, I have been watching the current real estate market with some interest. According to this article, Americans have taken out $2 trillion in ARMs in the last several years, (and even if that article is wrong, the number is still quite high, I am sure), a great many of those mortgage-holders are going to be affected adversely by higher interest rates once the ARMs start to adjust. In fact, convestional wisdom suggests that there will be a wave of foreclosures and/or bankruptcies on the part of homeowners who were stretching to the limit just to make the lower payment.

That's bad for them, of course, but possibly good for me, a potential homebuyer who is sitting on some proceeds from the last home (a condo). Or it may not work out like that. Who knows? Either way, I occasionally run a Google News search for "foreclosures" or similar terms just to see what's happening.

Today I get this article from the Atlanta Business Journal:

Georgia foreclosures near top in U.S.

And also this one, from Denver's local CBS affiliate:

Colorado Leads The Nation In Home Foreclosures

Not to be outdone, there's the good folks in Indiana:

Report: Indianapolis Region Led Nation in Foreclosures in Q1

I guess the idea is that, if there's bad news happening, at least it's happening to
us worst. We're number one! posted by Carlton at 12:35 PM

DAY 9

I now officially want to eat everything that I can get my hands on. Including telephone books. posted by Carlton at 1:35 PM

OH SNAP

This article from the Boston Globe might be filed under "stupid criminals" except for one thing:

PLYMOUTH -- A newly elected Plymouth selectman was arraigned on charges of soliciting sex from minors on the Internet after he was arrested along with 10 other people in a far-reaching sting operation.

In what was dubbed Operation Trenchcoat, local police, federal officials, and state investigators prowled cyberspace for predators during a two-month probe. One of the men they found soliciting sex from police officers who posed as teenage girls was Sean Dodgson, 45, a selectman who beat his opponent by 100 votes in last year's election.

What's that one thing? The penultimate paragraph of the article lists a bunch of "also arrested but not famous" people -- and I KNOW one of them from my Hooker Street days. In fact, he was LIVING at Hooker Street when he was arrested.

Snap.

(Hooker Street, by the way, is in a state of serious decline. If the cops decided to search the house, I can only imagine the things they would find.)

One thing -- I'm not disputing that this police operation was a good move for law enforcement. Give these men due process and, if appropriate, punish them. (Sorry dude!) But I have questions: Had these men made contacts with minors before? Is it really that easy to commit this kind of crime? I guess I worry a bit about entrapment (a word I am probably not using in its technical sense) -- you don't want your sting to sweep up people who wouldn't have committed the crime EXCEPT for the police involvement, right? (Like you walk up to the kid in the bad neighborhood and offer him 10 times the normal amount for some drugs -- he'll probably find some to sell you, even if he wouldn't have otherwise.)

An interesting experiment might be to have police work the OTHER way -- have cops on the 'net contact teens pretending to be predator types, just long enough to warn them or their parents about the dangers. Telling a girl's parents that she's talking to 45 year-old guys on MySpace should shake up somebody's world, I would think. Outreach, you know.

Unless, of course, the whole idea is to generate high-profile arrests. Outreach doesn't do that.

(UPDATE after some thought: "Yeah! Yeah! I was trying to WARN her! Yeah! I was going to tell her parents! Yeah! Right AFTER I met her at that seedy motel! That's right, I was going to meet her there and tell her how DANGEROUS it is to meet strange men on the internet at seedy motels -- and then I was going to go home and drink all those wine coolers I happened to have with me.") posted by Carlton at 1:05 PM

DIET OF WORMS

Not really! Everyone's been asking me about how my diet is going -- actually, no one has asked, but that's OK!

To recap: I am on the South Beach Diet. I am currently rounding out Day 6 of Phase 1, which is supposed to last 14 days but can last longer. I am pondering whether to extend it a bit -- it is supposed to be the period in which the most weight is lost in the least amount of time, although it is also the most restrictive.

My compliance with the terms of the SBD have been pretty good. My slip-ups are as follows: on Day 1, I accidentally ate a candy that wasn't sugar-free (without thinking), on another day I was parched and bought a Gatorade, and had two swigs of it before thinking, "Hey! Can I drink this?" (Answer: No.) Yesterday, I was at a restaurant in DC and I ordered a steamed seafood platter without the rice (it also had some veggie medley to go along with it, whatever) -- and it came DRENCHED in butter. I recalled a passage from the book saying that butter isn't the worst thing in the world, and I was hungry. I'm not one of those "send it back!" kind of people, so I ate it. It was otherwise fine -- and yummy.

So, that makes two relatively minor "without thinking" mistakes, and one "unfortunate, but not the worst thing in the world."

I know the next question: am I swimsuit-model material yet? I'd rather not post the actual numbers here on the Interweb, but it looks kind of like I have lost some weight.

Some backstory: sometime in February or March, I stepped on a scale for the first time in a long while, and just about fainted dead away at the number I saw. (I mean, WHAT?) I resolved at that time to get on the exercise horse and make a difference. I joined a gym and started swimming 3 or so times a week. I started walking in the evenings, climbing 6 flights of stairs at work, etc. In June, I went to the doctor for a checkup and was weighed by the nurse -- and people, I weighed EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT. To the digit. I was in better shape, probably, but the number hadn't budged. That number was too high.

I started the SBD about six weeks later, I'd guess, after two weddings and my birthday. I forgot to weigh myself on Day 1 of this diet, to get a baseline, so I weighed myself on Day 2 on our trusty bathroom scale (which is accurate to an acceptable degree). At that time, I showed up as about 10 pounds lighter than I was in the doc's office. So what happened in the meantime? Answer: I dunno! I read the SBD book and tried some of the food after the doctor's visit, and I guess I had been thinking about the diet for much of that time, so perhaps I subconsciously altered my eating habits. Perhaps the time of the doc's visit was a kind of unusual maximum, and I reverted to the mean shortly thereafter . . . ? In any case, it was the easiest 10 pounds I ever lost.

So anyway, I weighed myself yesterday and discovered that yes, I have been making progress. Except for the above-referenced lapses, I've kept to the diet, although I feel like I am eating more food by volume than one is supposed to -- although the book says to eat until you are no longer hungry. That's one instruction I have been able to follow to the letter. The food I'm allowed to eat is good, also, so it hasn't really been that difficult.

One bad thing about the SBD -- no alcohol in Phase 1. None.

posted by Carlton at 7:13 PM

HILARIOUS

Star Wars junk -- it's mad stupid.



Just watch. posted by Carlton at 2:11 PM

OLD PICTURES

Found amongst a stack of old CDs . . .

I give you, Greg McDonald, ca. 1992. (At, I believe, a College Bowl event of some type or other.)

posted by Carlton at 11:58 AM

GOING OUT WITH A WHIMPER

I find this hard to believe, (but it has to be true, since it's in Wikipedia):

In Transformers: The Movie, Unicron (whose lips never moved when he spoke) was voiced by Orson Welles. Unicron proved to be Welles's final role, as he died a few weeks after completing work on the project; rumors persist that Welles did not complete recording of all his lines, and that Leonard Nimoy filled in for him, but director Wally Burr and actress Susan Blu refute the claim. There were two attempts to produce Unicron toys for the Transformers toyline, including voice clips from Welles himself, but the unimpressive results never made it to production.

The Magnificent Ambertrons

Except, except: There it is.

When the mighty fall, they end up playing space robots.

posted by Carlton at 8:59 AM

THE SOUTH BEACH DIET

There was a micro-firestorm of controversy here on this page when I included "The South Beach Diet" book on my reading list for the past few months. I am pleased (?) to report that today is my second day on this diet -- Phase I, for the initiated.



(I followed a bit too close, I guess.)

Readers can look at the pictures I've posted recently and make up their own minds regarding the state of my fattitude -- but personally, I'm ready to take some action. My goals are not lofty; I only intend to lose about 10% of my total weight (if I can). The last couple of years (seven months of unemployment, anyone?) did some damage to my waistline, and I'd rather feel like I'm taking some action than feel battered by fate. Or should I say, buttered by fate. posted by Carlton at 10:02 AM

MY BROTHER'S WEDDING . .. IN PICTURES!

Some context: My brother, Kris, married Joy, a Chinese (from China) dermatologist who has recently been living in Japan and Denver. My brother lives in Mississippi. (They were introduced via mutual Christian missionary friends who live in Japan. Initial communication was via the Internet.)

The 'burg!

This wedding was interesting to compare to my own wedding, which took place about a year ago. Whereas my parents are religious, church-going Southern Baptists, my brother and I diverged from that tradition in opposite ways. I went to the left, as it were, and he went to the right. Our wedding was a small affair at a hotel in New Orleans, and we did not schedule a side trip to Hattiesburg for the (not, as it turned out) obligatory reception/party involving the large proportion of the town who knows my mother. Our ceremony was scrubbed of any reference to religion -- Molly was raised Catholic, I SoBab, and neither of us can really be bothered with the metaphysical. The officiant was Johann, a friend of ours, ordained via the Internet. Oh, there was one overt reference to the Almighty: my brother, my best man, chose to make a short speech about something along those lines during the ceremony -- much to our surprise (dismay?).

The happy couple at the rehearsal BBQ!

This weekend's affair was in Hattiesburg, where my brother (and his new wife, and my parents) live. The ceremony was quite small, and held in a chapel on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi -- which my brother, sister and I all attended, and where my father was a professor for many years. (My sister, co-incidentally, was married in the same chapel some 18 years ago.) A group of ladies threw a reception after the ceremony at the First Baptist Church. Molly and I chose to forego such a party.

The ladies.

The Christianity this weekend was pretty much wall-to wall. My brother is a member of a small church which is itself a splinter group of a church which I would consider to be far to the right of even the average SoBab congregation. (I didn't find out the reason for the split, but I'd love to know.) One of the members of this church hosted the rehearsal dinner (a very yummy barbecue) at his palatial home in
the wild rural area outside of Hattiesburg, reachable only by a very long and dusty dirt road. This home happens also to be where the splinter church holds its meetings. I spoke with a few of these church members. My impressions: almost all of the families homeschool the children, that the group is fairly affluent overall, and that the family ideal for the group is that of a dominant, decision-making husband and a submissive wife whose primary function is to be a mother.

At the rehearsal!

Molly, a Catholic by experience, was unfamiliar with the "free-form" style of prayer adopted by Baptists and other groups -- instead of rote prayers, the speaker just lets loose, speaking conversationally from the heart with no advance preparation (or organization, in some cases). Three men were asked to pray during the ceremony -- and did, at length. There was also some lifting of hands, which is unusual in my own experience. The couple was asked to recite three different sets of vows, which I found odd, and there was talk made of the wife "submitting" to her husband, and the "covenant" between the two plus the Lord. It occurred to me during the ceremony that the two may have had a "covenant marriage", but I don't think those are available in Mississippi.

Awww!

So that was it, really. It was a fun trip, and I was able to see a lot of people that I hadn't seen in a very long time. It was also a bit of an anthropological exercise, a glimpse into my brother's social and religious world. I also learned that my sister, as well as my brother, occasionally reads this page.

Us after the ceremony posted by Carlton at 11:07 PM

IRS UPDATE

I've been out -- my brother's wedding was this weekend in Mississippi, and Molly and I were happy to attend. Pix to come.

Today was also my 34th birthday. It was fun -- a nice dinner and some phone calls/cards from well-wishers.

My JOB, on the other hand, is a giant pile of horse poop.

WASHINGTON - Flood damage at IRS headquarters will take six months to completely repair, the tax agency said Tuesday.
. . .
The General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings, estimated it will take the rest of the year to manufacture and install replacements.

Some employees may return to the building this fall. Taxpayers should notice no change in IRS operations because its computers and employees work at locations scattered across the country.

The last paragraph of the article sends my conspiracy theory antennae up, however:

Bart Bush, assistant regional administrator for the GSA's capital area buildings, said workers pumped 3 million gallons of water out of the building over four days. It will take 30 days for the building to dry and repairs to begin.

We have to wait for a Bush to save us from flooding? I'll never work again! posted by Carlton at 10:47 PM

LOOTERS

I've written about this before, but it's easy to see the Bush gang through the lens of George's own business career: take over as management of a going concern, parcel out all the value, leave behind only a husk for shareholders -- preferably bankrupt. In my Corporations class, we called that "looting." Looters are often characterized by: extreme short-term planning, disregard for stakeholders/owners (i.e. you and me), and an almost pathological appetite for risk. For a looter, there are no consqeuences, so why not gamble?

In that vein, interesting stuff here:

The top officials of this administration are remarkable gamblers and optimists. They have also proven remarkably single-minded in playing the destabilization game. If they are in the Roman-Empire business, don't think Augustus, think Caesar's Palace. Like so many gambling addicts, they've never run across a situation in which they're unwilling to roll the dice, no matter the odds. They just give those dice that special little rub and offer a prayer for good luck, always knowing that this just has to be their day.

Medicare, roll the dice. Social security, roll the dice. Tax the poor and middle class by untaxing the rich, no problem. Wipe out what's left of the checks and balances of the American system in favor of a theory of an all-encompassing "commander-in-chief" government, roll those dice. Launch endless, Swift-Boat-style, bare-knuckle campaigns of fear, lies, and fantasy (accompanied by gerrymandering and vote-suppression schemes) meant to install Republicans in power for decades to come, no matter the cost to the political system -- don't wait, toss ‘em now!

This is, essentially, a full-scale a program for the destabilization (as well as plundering) of this country, one that fits snugly with their operations potentially destabilizing the planet.

Yep, there's more. posted by Carlton at 9:30 PM

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY



. . . From Mrs. Bettye and all of us. posted by Carlton at 12:18 AM

A BOAT IN READINESS

Just a word on CT Senator Joe Lieberman, 2000 Democratic nominee for Vice President, a Democratic contender for President in 2004, and 18-year Senator under the Democratic party banner:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), the Democratic Party's 2000 vice presidential nominee and a leading voice of its centrist wing, announced yesterday that he will run as an independent in the November general election if he loses a primary battle next month to an increasingly popular antiwar candidate.

and

As his lead narrows, Lieberman has weighed an alternative option: collecting 7,500 voter signatures to secure a place on the November ballot as an independent. But the due date for that option is Aug. 9, one day after the primary -- meaning that Lieberman must begin collecting signatures well before he knows the outcome against Lamont.

That this tactic -- collecting signatures for an independent run before a primary that he should win easily -- shows disloyalty to the Democratic party is no big thing. What, after all, is party loyalty? (I'd say that it is something, as opposed to nothing, but let's call it nothing.)

I think that this shows something worse than disloyalty on Lieberman's part. I'll let Sun Tzu speak for me:

There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general:

b) Cowardice, which leads to capture;

Ts`ao Kung defines the Chinese word translated here as "cowardice" as being of the man "whom timidity prevents from advancing to seize an advantage," and Wang Hsi adds "who is quick to flee at the sight of danger." Meng Shih gives the closer paraphrase "he who is bent on returning alive," this is, the man who will never take a risk. But, as Sun Tzu knew, nothing is to be achieved in war unless you are willing to take risks. T`ai Kung said: "He who lets an advantage slip will subsequently bring upon himself real disaster." In 404 A.D., Liu Yu pursued the rebel Huan Hsuan up the Yangtsze and fought a naval battle with him at the island of Ch`eng-hung. The loyal troops numbered only a few thousands, while their opponents were in great force. But Hu an Hsuan, fearing the fate which was in store for him should be be overcome, had a light boat made fast to the side of his war-junk, so that he might escape, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The natural result was that the fighting spirit of his soldiers was utterly quenched, and when the loyalists made an attack from windward with fireships, all striving with the utmost ardor to be first in the fray, Huan Hsuan's forces were routed, had to burn all their baggage and fled for two days and nights without stopping. Chang Yu tells a somewhat similar story of Chao Ying-ch`i, a general of the Chin State who during a battle with the army of Ch`u in 597 B.C. had a boat kept in readiness for him on the river, wishing in case of defeat to be the first to get across.

In Lieberman, we see a powerful candidate who is afraid of a weak challenger. Lieberman should be able to crush Lamont, with institutional bias alone if not for the power of his connections and fund-raising. Cross-eyed with fear, however, he can't seem to shoot straight at Lamont, and has hit himself in the foot more than once. How on earth could this be? More than anything, Lieberman seems to have internalized the idea that his position is his by right -- a real, if weak, challenge seems to have driven him completely off the rails.

To run as an independent, Lieberman will need to make use of the same organization and operatives that he is currently using in the primary. As the Chinese generals in the example discovered, your followers may not be so willing to fight for you if they think you are ready to bail out on them at a moment's notice. We will see. posted by Carlton at 11:52 PM

ADD THIS TO THE READING LIST

I've just started The March of Folly, by Barbara Tuchman. By some strange co-incidence, I have been seeing references to it almost everywhere I look for the past few months. So, off to the local library.

It should be instructive. In the intro, Tuchman quotes the Encyclopedia Britannica regarding Philip II of Spain and his disasterous campaign against England: "No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence."

Yes, it should be instructive. posted by Carlton at 11:08 AM

ROBOTS RISE UP!

When you run out of things to say, try pictures!

I'm a big fan of magazine art from the Fifties and before, especially pulp scifi covers. It's so, so . . . earnest. I mean, this metal guy is clearly ripped up about his lil buddy (or maybe he did the ripping up . . I don't know!):



More than just a Queen album cover!

Robots are heavily anthropomorphized in sci-fi -- how can they not be all snuggly-wuggly when they are so cute! Surely this robot is sad about the dead spaceman:



And for some reason, the robots always get the hottest blondes!


(Although they are usually unconscious.)



Not many artists care to explore how different and inscrutable a computer mind might be from our own:



That is all. posted by Carlton at 11:07 PM

COLLAPSE

I've finished Collapse by Jared Diamond, which I recommend. There were a couple of nuggets I pulled out of it and wanted to share.

1. First, simplistic baby talk: I don't think Diamond puts it quite this way, but it seems like a great many of the problems of past and present societies, the kind of problems that threaten collapse, can be traced to overpopulation. (Diamond writes about population at length, but not as simply as I am.) Humans living in civilizations always have an impact on the environment, and more humans mean greater impact, and greater stress on limited resources. Once the resources are used up -- the last trees cut down, the last fish eaten, the last drop of water or oil used -- the society either finds an alternative or collapses. Fewer people means the same resources can be more abundant for individuals, and perhaps can be managed for sustainability.

Writing this makes me say "duh" under my breath -- of course that is true. It's so obvious even a fictional computer program is aware of it:

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.

As simple as it is, I never really thought about it much. So, I'm sharing.

2. One point that Diamond makes which I really like is that successful societies (i.e. ones that don't collapse or just muddle along) all seem to share at least one characteristic: an ability to examine their own culture and determine what values to keep and what to leave behind.

The Greenland Norse, for example, regarded themselves as European Christian farmers, and stubbornly maintained that lifestyle even though it was unsuited to their new environment. Further, they refused to adopt any customs of the Inuit peoples, despite the latter's superiority in the environment. That society lasted about 400 years, then collapsed. (In this case, "collapse" seems to mean "slowly starved to death.")

As a positive example, Diamond points to modern Australians, who have traditionally regarded themselves as English shepherds and farmers. Over the past century or so, however, they have discovered 1) that their ties to Asia are at least as important than their ties to the Auld Sod, and 2) that the whole agriculture thing is not working out for them, since European-style farming has ruined almost all of the arable land on the continent, and such farming is almost laughably un-economic, sustained only by subsidies and a cultural idea that farming and shepherding are part of "who we are and what we do." Australia may be in the process of modifying its collective self-image, and that may be a key to its sustainability as a society in the long term.

Yes, so what does that mean for us? I've written a couple of times on this page that I believe that we the people of the United States need to stop believing our own PR. We are taught from childood that we have the best of everything, that we are good and virtuous in war and peace, and that we are the smartest and most powerful people in the world. All of those things are probably true in some situations, or were true at some time in the past. At the same time, we do not profit from believing that what ever we have here in the US is automatically the best in the world, or that what we are doing is automatically the smartest, most equitable and just thing that could be done. It's that kind of thinking that has gotten us into Iraq, and that has cost people years of their lives in prison, or their entire lives as a result of war, and squandered many of our irreplaceable natural resources. posted by Carlton at 3:54 PM

HAMDAN ROUNDUP

I've read the news reports, but not the decision itself of the Hamdan case (regarding the Administration's use of military tribunals for the Gitmo detainees). Here are some thoughts:

1. I'm glad of it, that it exists at all. It's important to undertand that the Republican Congress, acting as the Administration's lackeys, had attempted to strip the Court of its ability to hear the case at all, in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005: (emphasis mine, naturally)

1) IN GENERAL- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

(e) Except as provided in section 1005 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider--

(1) an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; or

(2) any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention by the Department of Defense of an alien at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who--
(A) is currently in military custody; or
(B) has been determined by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in accordance with the procedures set forth in section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant.'.

The Court pretty much blew past that limitation, apparently asserting that the limitation didn't apply to pending cases. That puts about a dozen cases back on course, apparently.

The Bush people have done everything that they could to keep these cases from seeing the light of day in an open court -- and now we know why. The Court rejected the government's arguments on (I believe) every ground.

2. It's nice to see that the Geneva Conventions are still current law (as a treaty), and not "quaint". According to the majority decision, Article 3 of the Conventions applies to the Gitmo detainees: (from the treasonous Times)

The majority opinion by Justice Stevens and a concurring opinion by Justice Kennedy, who also signed most of Justice Stevens's opinion, indicated that finding a legislative solution would not necessarily be easy. In an important part of the ruling, the court held that a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3 applies to the Guantánamo detainees and is enforceable in federal court for their protection.

The provision requires humane treatment of captured combatants and prohibits trials except by "a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people."

The opinion made it clear that while this provision does not necessarily require the full range of protections of a civilian court or a military court-martial, it does require observance of protections for defendants that are missing from the rules the administration has issued for military commissions. The flaws the court cited were the failure to guarantee the defendant the right to attend the trial and the prosecution's ability under the rules to introduce hearsay evidence, unsworn testimony, and evidence obtained through coercion.

3. It's important to recognize that the case was decided 5-3, with Roberts abstaining because he ruled for the government when the case was in the lower court. If he were sittig, it would be 5-4 -- so once again, we find ourselves one justice away from a bad result.

4. What do I think this means? As I wrote in an earlier post, I'm not sure what the real change on the ground will be. Civics 101: The Supreme Court is powerful but limited; it can decide only the cases that come before it, and it has no power to enforce its decisions.

The Bush people are in this fix because of (at least) two deep character flaws: 1) simplistic, black-and-white thinking and 2) an utter inability to admit a mistake of any sort.

Simplistic thinking: "Bad" people don't deserve any protection from the law. Once a person is designated as "bad," there is no need to revisit the decision. Anyone who is not actively on our side, or who might have other interests besides doing our bidding is "bad." (See France.) To be honest, I'm not entirely certain if this is a flaw that the Administration actually possesses, or whether it's just an example of the flawed reasoning that they use in their PR. More properly, the real flaw may be utter contempt for the value of the lives of "those people" -- anyone who isn't a crony. (A few of those people in solitary forever -- or dead -- versus an inconvenience to ourselves . . . well, it's no contest.)

Inability to admit a mistake: We would never have imprisoned anyone in error, they would never have tortured anyone who wasn't "bad" or who didn't know anything -- and if we ever did do something like that, it must be hidden in a deep dark hole where no one can see it. Gitmo is such a hole. Since we never would have committed any kind of war crimes (for God's sake, we're Americans!) we can't possibly stop committing such crimes. If we change course as a result of a rebuke from a court (or anyone else) that would be like admitting we were wrong. Which we can't do.

5. As a result, I'm not certain to what extent this ruling -- which is unquestionably aginst the Administration -- will affect what they do. They are unwilling to change course, so they may simply throw some more dirt on top of the evidence. At this point, they are just stalling for time until 2008, at which time they can safely ignore the critics in perpetuity. posted by Carlton at 2:53 PM