Category: Gulags and Torture

Man of the Hour.

The Post profiles Anthony Romero, the current head of the ACLU. Intriguing to note that the organization has grown by 33% (100,000 new members) in the past eighteen months. Even if I disagree strongly with the ACLU on campaign finance, I think most of the time they’re doing God’s work. So that membership stat may end up being Ashcroft’s only positive legacy.

We only lock up the bad people.

The Justice Department gives its most detailed accounting yet of how its used its post-9/11 powers in the war on terror, although the vagueness of the report does little to satisfy congressional critics and civil liberties advocates. On a loosely related note, it must be some weird cosmic irony that the spokesperson for the Ashcroft Justice Dept. is named Comstock.

Next stop, Room 101.

It came out yesterday that two suspected Al Qaeda operatives held in US custody died from “blunt force injuries” during interrogations. Even if these wounds were perpetrated before their capture (which is a big if), it’s utterly dismaying to read where the line is being drawn by our government between “stress and duress” and out-and-out torture. Equally stomach-turning is that we apparently subcontract out the tough nuts to crack to those nations even less perturbed by the ethics of torture than we are. What have we become?

Do whatcha like.

Checks and balances? Bah, humbug. Like the legislative branch on the matter of Iraq, the judiciary has now also capitulated to the chief executive, allowing Dubya to detain American citizens at will in the name of fighting terrorism. Oh, heck, let’s bring back torture too while we’re at it.

WE have the body.

Oh, these suspects have very important information…they’re just not allowed to tell it. As the Ashcroft Justice Department leaps at the chance to try out their newly validated surveillance powers, the Post examines their contortion of a 1984 material witness statute to keep terrorist suspects locked up indefinitely. Very sneaky…but how far can you bend a law before it breaks?

Carter Beats the Dubya.

Former President Jimmy Carter decries Dubya’s Middle East policy, as well as the numerous human rights violations currently being overlooked and/or perpetrated in the name of anti-terrorism.

Ashcroft’s “Hellish Vision.”

Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Law professor at GW and television staple during l’affaire Lewinsky, lashes into John Ashcroft for his recent plan to create extraconstitutional internment camps of “enemy combatants” (re: US citizens) in and around the country. (Via Caught in Between.) Y’know, I do believe John Ashcroft is the scariest man in the country right now.