A British Judge joins the fray over the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, calling the U.S. policy a " monstrous injustice."

Lord Steyn, a serving law lord, said the United States was acting illegally by holding the men without trial since their transfer from Afghanistan early last year.

"By denying the prisoners the right to raise challenges in a court about their alleged status and treatment, the United States government is in breach of the minimum standards of customary international law," he said.

As to the military tribunals, Lord Steyn said:

"The term 'kangaroo court' springs to mind. It derives from the jumps of the kangaroo, and conveys the idea of a pre-ordained arbitrary rush to judgment by an irregular tribunal which makes a mockery of justice.

The law lord left his audience in no doubt where his own feelings lay by quoting the famous meditation of John Donne, the 17th century poet and preacher: "No man is an island, entire of itself . . . Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

Lord Steyn, 71, the third most senior law lord, said that under English law the writ of habeas corpus would protect citizens and foreigners. That was consistent with human rights law, which Lord Steyn concluded, the US had broken.

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The troops celebrated Thanksgiving at Guantanamo:

Yesterday, it was the end of the Muslim holdiay Ramadan. Today, it's Thanksgiving. The prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba has marked the holidays with traditional cuisines.

The prisoners got lentils, baklava, dates and chicken stew yesterday. Their captors are eating turkey, stuffing, cranberries and pumpkin pie today.

The base holds some 660 prisoners from 44 countries captured in the war with al-Qaida and other militant groups. International human rights groups accuse the U-S of denying the prisoners justice. More than 20 of the men have attempted suicide.

Update: Red Cross Slams U.S. over detainees at Guantanamo [link via Counterspin]

Update: Guantanamo guards celebrate in new facility.

Gov. Arnold has paroled a second killer--this time a woman who killed her husband's mistress.

What a welcome change from Gray Davis on this issue.

Now the U.S. is taking hostages....

U.S. soldiers have arrested the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former Iraqi general who is believed to have been helping Hussein loyalists regroup and coordinating attacks against the coalition, Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno said Wednesday.

In the arrests, the two women, along with the son of al-Douri's doctor, were found by soldiers from the Army's 4th Infantry Division in a raid on a house near Samarra late Tuesday. They were being held for interrogation.

"We believe that they might have some information on where [al-Douri] is traveling, how he is moving," Odierno said.

Billmon explains how this is in violation of the Geneva Convention.

A former Iraqi general who was captured by the U.S. near the Syrian border on Oct. 5 has died while being interrogated by by the U.S.

Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, an air defense general captured Oct. 5 in a raid near the Syrian border, was being questioned Wednesday while in American custody in Qaim near the Syrian border when lost consciousness after complaining he didn't feel well, the military said in a statement.

He was pronounced dead by a U.S. military physician. The cause of death is under investigation, the military said. The statement did not give his age.

President Bush snuck off the ranch to fly to Iraq for his first visit to have a two hour Turkey dinner with the troops. Meanwhile, Hillary flew to Afganistan to have dinner there with the troops. She will then go on to Iraq.

Bush's visit was top secret. In fact, his office put out word he'd be doing the family thing in Crawford:

Otherwise, Bush is celebrating Thanksgiving much like he always does - alongside family members, enjoying a traditional feast of turkey and fixings, only this time with a pecan pie made from nuts from trees on his ranch. Bush arrived here Monday night after spending the day at Fort Carson, an Army base near Colorado Springs, Colo.

He was clearly relishing the prospect of the time away from Washington as he appeared before GOP donors Tuesday in Las Vegas and described his morning on the ranch with his wife, Laura.

In the news today, several thousand more marines are headed to Iraq.

Update: Fox News accompanied the President, CNN did not.

We haven't covered this until now, but these reports of abuses by Miami police at the recent anti-free trade talk rallies are very disturbing and warrant wider dissemination and discussion. Have at it.

Miami police reneged on their promise to give safe passage to 25 busloads of seniors who attempted to attend Thursday's AFL-CIO rally against the Free
trade Area of the Americas, the leader of a retired union workers group charged Tuesday.

More:

Civil rights groups complained Tuesday that police at last week's trade talks abused protesters - some senior citizens - by arresting them without cause and denying them restrooms, water and phones.

Meanwhile, the national steelworkers union called for a congressional investigation and the removal of Miami police Chief John Timoney over the treatment of its members during the protests, and several groups said they will ssue the city.

And this:

Small, peaceful demonstrations were attacked with extreme force; organisations were infiltrated by undercover officers who used stun guns; buses of union members were prevented from joining permitted marches; people were beaten with batons; activists had guns pointed at their heads at checkpoints.

Police violence outside trade summits is not new; what was striking about Miami was how divorced the security response was from anything resembling an
actual threat. From an activist perspective, the protests were small and obedient, an understandable response to weeks of police intimidation.

Amnesty International is also calling for an investigation .

Mother Jones provides Home Truths: There are 3.5 million homeless in America. At least 750,000 of them will spend Thanksgiving night on the street.

Via Drug War Rant: If you've got a tv in the kitchen, check out C-span today at 1:00 pm Eastern, for a "drug policy debate between William Bennett (moralizing drug warrior...) and Kurt Schmoke (former Mayor of Baltimore and drug policy reform advocate)."

Related: In Los Angeles this week, U.S. District Court Judge Howard Matz sentenced three men who distributed marijuana to the sick to probation and community service, departing downward from guidelines of 30 plus months. Matz praised the men's work and called the prosecution "badly misguided."

Update: Read Drug War Rant's Thanksgiving Day story--as Walter in Denver says, be thankful if nothing like this has happened to your family.

Patriot Watch discusses the erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act and explains why it's a bad idea.

Back in April Senator John Warner (R-VA), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee indicated he would like to revisit Posse Comitatus....The White House has also weighed in, "The threat of catastrophic terrorism requires a thorough review of the laws permitting the military to act within the United States in order to determine whether domestic preparedness and response efforts would benefit from greater involvement of military personnel and, if so, how."

Military analyst William Arkin criticized the erosion of the Act in an op-ed this week in the LA Times:

It's not that we're heading toward martial law. We're not. But outside the view of most of the public, the government is daily expanding military operations into areas of local government and law enforcement that historically have been off-limits. And it doesn't seem far-fetched to imagine that those charged with assembling "actionable intelligence" will slowly start combining databases of known terrorists with seemingly innocuous lists of contributors to charities or causes, that membership lists for activist organizations will be folded in, that names and personal data of anti-globalization protesters will be run through the "data mine." After all, the mission of Northern Command and other Pentagon agencies is to identify groups and individuals who could potentially pose threats to Defense Department and civilian installations.

Ret. General Tommy Franks weighed in this week as well:

Meanwhile, another military expert, ret. Gen. Tommy Franks, who ran the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, told Cigar Aficionado magazine of his concern that another major terrorist attack on the order of 9/11 could cause citizens to "question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid another mass casualty-producing event."

More excerpts from Franks' interview can be found here.

Patriot Watch will keep us all posted. Our views and explanation of the Act with some good reference links are set out here.

Could the Michael Jackson case get any wierder?

An executive with a Santa Monica charter jet company under investigation for secretly taping Michael Jackson has served for years as an FBI informant, sources said Wednesday. Though there is no evidence that authorities knew about XtraJet's surreptitious recordings of the pop star until after they were disclosed Monday, sources inside and outside law enforcement said company executive Jeffrey Borer worked as a bureau informant in Los Angeles.

In an interview late Wednesday, the 59-year-old Marina del Rey man denied ever serving as a government informant. The claim, he said, is "absolutely not true. I don't know where that came from.... If you print that, you'll get in big trouble," he said.

The company now denies it knew the hidden cameras were recording Jackson. Borer denies he's an informant. Where did the rumor come from? Possibly this?

Long before his name surfaced in the Jackson case, documents and interviews show, Borer has had brushes with the law. Most notably, federal records show, Borer was criminally prosecuted by the U.S. attorney's office in 1988. Though the nature of the case could not be determined immediately, records also show that a Jeffrey M. Borer was listed as an inmate in the federal prison system and was released in 1991.

Borer declined to discuss his prison time other than to say, "It is a matter of public record." Asked about Borer's prison history, his attorney, Stone, said: "I believe he has served time in prison."

So, is he or isn't he?

We have another reason besides Thanksgiving for light blogging over the next several days....we got a cast on our right wrist today and we're right handed. It goes around the thumb and to below the elbow. (It's not broken, just severely stressed or something like that.) It's very difficult to hold a pen and it hurts to move it a lot. So, we're picking at the keyboard and trying not to use the mouse--as a result, it takes a very long time to make even one entry.

We'll also probably write shorter entries, with more links to news than analysis--and we may have to be like Skippy for a while and forego caps as they take more hand movement--but we're going to keep at it. Typing is a lot easier than peeling the sweet potatoes for tomorrow's thanksgiving dinner.

We wish everyone a great holiday.