ChezLark

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that US citizens detained by the government as “enemy combatants” have the right to challenge their detention in US courts. The two most notable detainees of this type are Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan and accused of fighting for the Taliban, and Jose Padilla, who was accused of plotting to set off a “dirty bomb” in the US.

Today, it was revealed that, rather than defend in open court the basis for Hamdi’s detainment, the government simply released him, after holding him for 2 years in solitary confinement, without charge and without access to a lawyer.

As a condition of his release, Hamdi agreed to renounce his US citizenship (he was born in the US), and submit to restrictions on travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. Oh, and he must agree not to sue the US for injuries sustained during his detentions. Unspecified is how these restrictions are useful to the US, since it has no obvious way of enforcing them. Also unclear is why the US would agree to release an individual they previously claimed to be a dangerous combatant who bore arms against the US.

Why would Hamdi agree to such a deal? His lawyer explains that

“He�s been in solitary confinement and couldn�t stand it any more. Anything that would get him home in the short term to his family would be preferable to almost any other alternative.”

In other words, Hamdi agreed under duress.

This is a particularly shameful episode in the debacle that is the US’s detainment of untold scores of US and foreign citizens in the “war on terror”. How many other people are being held on suspicions or allegations that would not stand the light of day? This Slate article may say it best:

Hamdi’s case, decided by the Supreme Court earlier this year, was supposed to represent a high-water mark for American freedoms during wartime. He had fought for and won his day in court, an opportunity to question his captors, and a chance at national vindication at the end of it all. Hamdi’s name stood for the proposition that the Bush administration couldn’t run roughshod over the courts and the law in its pursuit of the war on terror. It now stands for precisely the opposite: With a yawn and a shrug, the administration sidestepped the courts and the judicial process once again, abandoning this criminal prosecution altogether and erasing the episode from our national memory. Hamdi has been stripped of his citizenship and his freedom to travel, and sent packing to his family. The rights and processes guaranteed him by the Supreme Court have been yanked away one last time, by an executive branch that held him for years for no reason and smugly claims now that it was finished with him anyhow.

The Boston Globe also has an editorial.

Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri was quoted today as saying, “I would feel better if the Iraqi people would express their gratitude and stop harboring those insurgents. That’s the way to express gratitude to America.”.

If only those damn Iraqis would show more gratitude, get with the program, and show a little enthousiasm about being occupied by a foreign power that continually bombs their cities and then rounds up their citizens to be abused by the military, all under absolute immunity from prosecution, everything would be better, apparently.

Who voted for this guy?

A scary bill passed the House of Representatives today. HR 2028 reads:

TITLE: To amend title 28, United States Code, with respect to the jurisdiction of Federal courts inferior to the Supreme Court over certain cases and controversies involving the Pledge of Allegiance.

BODY [in part]:
`No court established by Act of Congress shall have jurisdiction to hear or determine any claim that the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, as set forth in section 4 of title 4, violates the first article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States.’.

A CNN Editorial lambasts the bill. The ACLU is “disappointed” by the passage of the bill, which, it claims:

would strip jurisdiction from all federal courts — including the Supreme Court — over any constitutional claim involving the Pledge of Allegiance or it’s recitation, and is the latest of several similar court stripping measures.

It’s not entirely clear how the bill strips jurisdiction from the Supreme Court, since the Supreme Court is not “established by Act of Congress”, as far as I know. Section 8, Clause 9, of the Constitution only gives Congress the authority to “constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court”.

See also my previous post about the Marriage Protection Act

I was reading the Saturday paper in Toronto today (in Canada, the Saturday paper is the big one, not the Sunday paper), and came across two pro-Canada editorials that contrasted Canada’s social policies to the US.

The first is a sarcastic list of ways in which the US is supposedly better than Canada, including:

2. No other country has leaders as dedicated. Passed over by the draft, a disappointed George W. Bush’s honour led him to become a fighter pilot with the Texas Air National Guard. But not even that was enough. As he wrote in his autobiography, he continued to fly with his unit for “several years” after his obligatory service.

5. Because more Americans are behind bars than are enrolled in universities, the U.S. has become a role model for freedom-loving nations. When George Bush increases this ratio to the point that no Americans are in universities, not only will its streets be safe from criminals, but its sacred institutions will be safe from sexual deviates and liberals.

10. America spends 10 times as much as all other countries combined on weapons and its armed forces. Only a “coalition of idiots” would want to interfere when a nation this well equipped is making the world a better place.

The second, in the Business section, argues that:

I would argue [...] that for its own future well-being, the United States’ best hope is to become more like [Canada]

[...]

In health care, unemployment insurance, progressivity of the tax system, social supports, poverty reduction among the elderly, the role of unions, workplace standards, health and safety rules and other measures that contribute to economic security, Canada does better.

Health coverage is clearly one area where Canadians have done much better. Some 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all, while the percentage of private sector employees with a company health plan has dropped from more than 60 per cent in 1993 to just over 45 per cent last year.

Canadians should be proud of what has been accomplished through our public health-care system, even though it needs some fixing. It is cheaper than the U.S. system, and Canadians are healthier.

[...]

[T]he United States appears to be losing social solidarity and a sense of reciprocity. The ties of community are weakening and giving way to a more ruthless social order and an excessive individualism. Canada is being pulled in this direction as well, and it is important to resist it.

I am certainly deeply ambivalent about the growing wealth disparity in the US, the pathetic-to-begin-with-and-rapidly-vanishing social safety net, and the quicky increasing number of Americans with no health insurance.

Should the US overtly emulate its neighbor to the north?

Oh, and the Toronto Star also point out that Batman is Canadian.

Slate has the skinny on inhalable alcohol vapor, which is available in some bars in the U.K. and could conceivably come to the US.

Bizarrely, this article reports that a team of engineers is working on a robot that will catch and consume flies to generate its own electricity.

Laura and I are in Toronto on vacation; a good friend of ours up here is about to have her second baby; we’re very excited. I’m trying to keep up the physical exercise even though I’m away from my physical therapist. This morning I ran the length of a short city block in a single uninterrupted burst, after a number of shorter, warm-up runs of a dozen or two yards.

Part of the difficulty in running is psyching myself up enough to put that much weight through my leg; it’s very scary to let myself land hard on it after the months of weakness and pain. I run with a noticible assymetry, or “hitch”, which I’m trying to erase with practice.

This Slate article on America’s debt has the following terrifying statistics:

• “Total U.S. nonfinancial debt — which is all the debt held by governments, households, and companies not in the financial sector — has risen from $18.1 trillion in 2000 to $22.8 trillion in the first quarter of 2004″
• “Federal debt rose from about $3.4 trillion at the end of 2000 to $4.15 trillion in the first quarter of 2004 — up more than 22 percent”
• “Total household debt has soared from $7 trillion at the end of 2000 to $9.5 trillion in the first quarter of 2004, up 36 percent”
• “The amount of outstanding mortgage debt has risen 43 percent in Bush’s first term, while consumer credit is up 20 percent”

Pay off that Visa bill!