Hesiod at Counterspin finds the goods to show the hypocrisy of Bill Frist's criticism of Richard Clarke.

John Hutson once was the Navy's Judge Advocate General--its top lawyer. Now he is dean of the Franklin Pierce Law School in New Hampshire. He is so angry about the Bush Administration's treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo that he has signed onto their brief in the Supreme Court.

The Bush administration is holding about 640 foreign nationals at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, incommunicado, with no legal hearings and no idea whether they'll ever be released. That not only violates international law and U.S. military regulations, but invites other countries to detain American servicemen and women indefinitely and mistreat them, Hutson says. So Hutson, a lifelong Republican who voted for President Bush, has signed a "friend of the court" brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to oversee the conditions of detention. "If there were 600 Americans in a cave in Afghanistan and al-Qaida said they were going to hold them indefinitely, we'd be pretty unhappy," he said.

The two cases scheduled to be heard by the Court in April concern the question of whether the detainees at Guantanamo should have access to the U.S. Courts:

by TChris

Civil rights groups are frustrated that the Democratic party has not worked harder in Florida to restore the voting rights of residents who have felony convictions.

The law [disenfranchising felons] has been on the books since 1868, when Florida gave blacks the right to vote as a condition of the state's being readmitted to the Union after the Civil War. A new State Constitution drafted that year expanded the number of crimes that required disenfranchisement, a change that critics say was meant to affect blacks disproportionately.

More than one in four African American men in Florida are unable to vote. Increasing numbers of ex-felons have had their voting rights restored after the problem became widely publicized following the presidential election in 2000, but the process is cumbersome and the waiting time is significant.

Arguments against disenfranchising participants in a democracy are strong.

"Why should we keep people from voting after we spent all this money rehabilitating them?" Representative Kendrick B. Meek, a Miami Democrat, said. "Why stand in judgment on whether they should vote or not? This is politicians standing in and playing the role of virtuecrat."

Scott Maddox, the Demoratic party chairman, says that Governor Bush and the Florida legislature support the ban for partisan reasons. He also sees hypocrisy in their unwillingness to forgive felons who have paid their debt to society.

"It's amazing to me that these Republicans that keep quoting the Bible seemingly don't believe in redemption and forgiveness when it comes to restoring civil rights," Mr. Maddox said through a spokeswoman.

by TChris

It would be nice to believe that, at this point in our nation's history, we have put cross burning behind us. Sadly, two teenagers have been arrested in Arlington, Washington for setting fire to a cross in the yard of an African American pastor.

He moved his family to an upscale neighborhood in Arlington to give his seven kids a safe place to live. "We live here for the community, for the awesome environment, but something like this happens, it causes you to wonder 'where we're going?'" said [Pastor Jason] Martin.

A crowd of 500 people showed support for Pastor Martin by marching against racism Saturday.

We all know "Married to the Mob"--now it's time for Married to the Jihad. This is a very bizarre article, in the truth is stranger than fiction department, particularly in its depiction of the wives' approval of their children becoming fighters. It consists of interviews with two women, Maha and Zaynab, Canadian mother and daughter married to al Qaeda fighters. The teaser:

They may be rich, cultivated and beautiful; but when the West steps up its 'war on terror', their husbands and sons are in the firing line. Jan McGirk meets some remarkable women.

A couple of tidbits:

Abdurahman and Omar were captured by the Americans and imprisoned at Guantanamo. Abdurahman, who liked to posture around the bazaar, swigging from an imported bottle of tabasco sauce to impress his buddies, has blamed greedy Kabul acquaintances for "selling" him to the Americans for a bounty. Omar, who was only 15 at the time, hunkered down with some fleeing Arab fighters in Khost, eastern Afghanistan, until American troops attacked the hideout. Despite being described by his mother as the most sensitive of the brothers, he is reported to have killed an American medic during the gunfight before taking a bullet himself, in the eye. He was soon whisked off to Guantanamo, where he was not allowed to speak with his incarcerated brother and where he remains under interrogation.

Maha describes how proud she is of her martyr husband, now dead. As to her teenage son:

Abdul Karim was also cornered and besieged that day. Described by his mother as a dreamy boy with a taste for Harry Potter and Matrix DVDs, he had been exploring the fields surrounding their new hide-out with a 16-year-old Arab friend, looking for hazards. They had left their weapons behind so as not to arouse the locals' suspicions, only to be ambushed by Pakistani soldiers lying in wait.

Abdul Karim was struck by a bullet that ripped through his spleen, liver and kidney and nicked his spinal cord. He later told his sister Zaynab that no water or first aid was offered to the bleeding boys for at least three hours, while Cobra helicopters attacked his father and comrades in the house. Pakistan army sources say the ensuing battle raged for 12 hours, and left nine foreign fighters dead. They showed Abdul Karim a photograph of his father's charred corpse while he lay recovering in a military cot. Now being held incognito in a basement somewhere near Islamabad, he is paralysed from the waist down.

Maha and Zaynab say it took them five months to find Abdul.

by TChris

Pamela Martinez was given a life sentence under California's three-strikes law for stealing a toolbox. Fortunately, her conviction was overturned on appeal. She entered into a plea bargain that resulted in a nine year sentence and was released after serving five. In the two-and-a-half years since her release, Martinez has become a dependable employee and a responsible citizen. Now, having realized that it mistakenly released Martinez about two months early, California's prison system wants her back.

The ACLU justly criticizes the state for spending $2 million just to "derail her hard-won successes." Martinez says her crimes were caused by a drug addiction that she's placed behind her. Now that she's finally gotten her life together, California wants to tear it apart.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger deserves credit for recognizing that this act of bureaucratic lunacy will not benefit the state. After the state supreme court upheld Martinez' return to prison, Gov. Schwarzenegger wrote to the court with a formal request to commute the remainder of Martinez' sentence. The court will consider the request after it reviews a report from the state Board of Prison Terms. In the meantime, Martinez hopes that a superior court judge will stay her return to prison (now scheduled for Tuesday) while the supreme court makes its decision.

A BBC television program airing Sunday night, Panorama, outs the man who betrayed Saddam. The program says it is his relative and former bodyguard, Mohammed Ibrahim Omar al-Musslit , who gave up Saddam after being arrested and interrogated.

Mr Musslit was a loyal lieutenant of Saddam Hussein. He was one of the people who accompanied the Iraqi leader as he fled Baghdad in a white Oldsmobile, as US troops entered the city on 9 April 2003. But Panorama will reveal that he was quickly broken by interrogators after being captured in Baghdad, and led American troops to his boss just hours after being arrested in December.

The program also reports that the U.S. will not give al-Musslit any of the reward money, because he didn't volunteer the information:

A senior US commander, Major General Ray Odierno, denied the source had been tortured but told the programme that he was "a shady character", adding that he believed "the US treasury gets to keep the money."

by TChris

What is life in occupied Baghdad really like? One journalist describes a city of relentless violence, much of it unseen by reporters who fear to leave their hotels at night.

Explosions from bombs, rocket propelled grenades and artillery as well as guns firing can be heard all day and night, but their locations are usually impossible to determine, even if you are foolish enough to search for them after dark, when gangs and wild dogs own the streets. There are systematic assassinations of policemen, translators, local officials, and anybody associated with the occupiers. ... Nobody in the US (and certainly nobody in Iraq) even cares much about the American soldiers dying daily, as long as the numbers on any given day are low. In the Sunni neighborhood of Aadhamiya in Baghdad there are nightly RPG and mortar attacks on the US base, and the men on the street erupt in cheers and whistles at the sounds.

Freelance journalist Nir Rosen offers a compelling look at a country torn apart by internal strife, united only by its hatred of occupation. One cause of suspicion and hostility, rarely reported in mainstream media: "over ten thousand Iraqi men are being held prisoner, and most of them are innocent."

TChris wrote yesterday about the Department of Homeland Security's budget crunch. Here are some more details, from the Wall Street Journal(paid subscription required):

The year-old Department of Homeland Security is declaring a hiring freeze at two of its front-line units because of a potential $1.2 billion budget shortfall.
A third front-line unit, the Citizenship and Immigration Service, also has a hiring freeze in effect because of an unrelated shortfall in fee assessments.

The timing of the news couldn't be worse for the Bush administration. Speaking this week before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, known as the 9/11 commission, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke raised serious questions about the administration's security efforts against al Qaeda prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Meanwhile, Democrats have been criticizing the department, which was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, for failing to have a comprehensive staffing strategy to secure the borders.

Democrats charge that the Homeland Security department shifted hundreds of agents from the southern border -- considered especially vulnerable to a terrorist attack -- to the U.S.-Canada border in order to meet new requirements set by the Patriot Act and the Border Security Act....The worst border problems in the country at the moment are in Arizona. Robert C. Bonner, the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, last month described the border security situation in Arizona, as a "complete mess."

Newsweek has the latest poll results following the testimony of Richard Clarke at the 9/11 Commission hearing this week. In a nutshell, Bush's terrorism approval rating dropped 8 points, from 65% to 57%.

If the election were held today between Bush and Kerry (no Nader, which we think will be the reality) Kerry would beat Bush 48% to 47%. With the margin of error factored in, it's a statistical dead heat. And too close to comfort for us. Give to Kerry.

At first glance, this is ridiculous. Upon reflection, it's scary. We reprint it only to show you how important it is to protect our Fourth Amendment:

British police used a giant X-ray machine to check for drugs and guns in raids on two London pubs, the BBC reported Saturday. Thirty four suspects were arrested by police who used a 7-foot high X-ray machine outside the two pubs. Suspects had the choice to be scanned or strip searched - officials said most people chose the X-ray. The scan shows anything hidden under one's clothes, including metal, plastic or ceramic guns, wooden clubs, explosives or drugs. Scotland Yard said the arrests were for offences that included possession with intent to supply drugs, possession of an offensive weapon, credit card fraud and immigration violations.

Here's a short poem we received by e-mail made up entirely of actual quotations from George W. Bush. We're told the quotes have been arranged, only for aesthetic purposes, by Washington Post writer, Richard Thompson.

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

If you're interested, Urban Legends sources the quotes.