From Raw Story:

A Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not "persons" according to it's interpretation of a statute involving religious freedom.

The ruling sprang from an appeal of Rasul v. Rumsfeld, which was thrown out in Jan. 2008. "The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the constitutional and international law claims, and reversed the district court's decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to Guantanamo detainees, dismissing those claims as well," the Center for Constitutional Rights said.

After the Supreme Court recognized, over objections from the Bush administration, that terror war prisoners have the right to habeas corpus petitions, it also directed the D.C. court of appeals to reexamine the case.

The SCOTUS says they're persons concerning habeas corpus, right? And the Court of Appeals says, well, not concerning religious freedom or something like that?

Oh, and there's this treat for Constitutional scholars from our Constitutional law prof prez:

"In its first filing on detention and torture under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice filed briefs in March urging the Court of Appeals to reject any constitutional or statutory rights for detainees," says a release. "The Obama Justice Department further argued that even if such rights were recognized, the Court should rule that the previous administration's officials who ordered and approved torture and abuse of the plaintiffs should be immune from liability for their actions."

Pelosi aide asked where the faxes are to make the Speaker know single payer must be "on the table."

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to contribute to a blizzard of faxes to our Dems who think single payer should not be on the table.

Gob, at Corrente, has posted about an organization, 1payer.net, which will fax your messages to Baucus, Pelosi, the WH, etc.

It appears that Congressional leaders are being deliberately dismissive of single-payer to the point of ludicrous statements. It's like they have put their fingers in their ears and are yelling "I can't hear you, I can't hear you." Here they are in all their Congressional member glory:

Baucus a few days ago: "Everything BUT single payer is on the table. Single payer is off the table."

Pelosi: "In our caucus, over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer."

Pelosi's aide: "Where are the phone calls, e-mails and faxes in support of single-payer? Speaker Pelosi has been in favor of single-payer for a long time. Now make us do it."

OK. We are up to the challenge. He wants to see the faxes. Let's break their damn fax machines with the faxes.

You can send a fax right now to Pelosi, Baucus, the aide and the White House.

Send one now and send another in a few minutes. Give them enough faxes that they have to run get more paper (or electronic ink, as the case may be.) Then when they have received all of these, we will do it again. And again. And we will print them out and dump them on Pelosi's office desk.

So let them see what happens when they ask for faxes. Then maybe they will have to take their fingers out of their ears.

Thank You

Clark Newhall MD JD
Physician & Attorney
Law Office at
57 W. 200 South, Suite 101
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
http://www.cnewhall.com

We can't afford to not have single payer. Next best, we must have a real public plan: like Medicare, an Everybody In, Nobody Out plan. If Big Insurance wants to go up against a public plan, to keep sucking up "rents," well, let them try...if Congress wants them around.

Here she is, on video, boasting about cutting swine flu money from the stimulus.

And here's her own website (sure to be scrubbed later today...), pitching the same thing.

Do tell, oh Lady From The County(*), how is it serving the people of Maine if they all die from flu which could have been alleviated or ameliorated if you hadn't demanded that the money for doing so be spent elsewhere.  Your constituents can't be harvesting potatoes or getting clean water grants to any productive use, when they're sick and/or dying from flu.