Right now, I’m asking for yours: take action to assist Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who is under attack by our military for the crime of… wait for it… discharging his duty honorably and refusing to dishonor the flag and his uniform by engaging in misconduct as a Guantanamo military commissions prosecutor with respect to the case of tortured juvenile Mohammad Jawad (who has been released, btw) (via Candace).. My own interview with Col. Vandeveld is here. Col. Vandeveld is a genuine American hero: a man of conscience, who answered the call and was willing to prosecute military commissions defendants to the...

It seems that the Government’s latest exercise in poor sportsmanship in Guantanamo detainee contested habeas cases (in which it holds every advantage, but is still losing over 70% of them anyway) is to insert clauses in the very same House bill that ensures that Guantanamo will remain open (and hence an open beacon and focal point for all of America’s enemies to rightfully regard us as the monstrous hypocrites we are, thus requiring a continued and expensive military presence everywhere) that will now add an extra level of harassment toward the intrepid souls who signed on to do detainee representation...

Let me be the first to say that I have no brief whatsoever for American/Yemeni dual national and pain-in-the-ass cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (who apparently is the subject of a new video released by a supposed al-Qaeda affiliate and hence is the subject of renewed calls for his extra-judicial execution). If indeed he exchanged e-mails with the Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and he communicated with Christmas underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in such a way as to facilitate either of their plots, then I say we find Mr. al-Awlaki, try him, and if found guilty, punish him to...

Well, we’ll start with Kentucky Senate candidate Trey Grayson… well, the guy who beat him in the Republican primary, anyway, Dr. Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, who is of course, “the Tea Party” movement favorite in Kentucky… and now we know why. In an editorial board interview, it seems, Dr. Paul managed to combine the two obsessions of that movement (libertarianism and, of course, racism) in one sentence, suggesting that the hard part of freedom is believing that the Civil Rights Act should not prohibit blatant racist acts of discrimination (say, “Whites only” lunch counters) by private enterprises. And...

We’ll start with the absolute outrage of that Trump having the audacity to name a Muz-lim as Miss U.S.A. this HuffPo piece by former GTMO Chief Prosecutor and current gad-fly retired Colonel Morris Davis in which he likens the win-loss record of (my fellow Columbia College alumni) Barack Obama and Eric Holder in Guantanamo detainee habeas corpus actions (13 wins against 35 losses) to the win-loss record of ousted Redskins coach Jim Zorn (a comparable percentage at 4 wins/12 losses). Col. Davis goes further, and ties in the recent “liquidation of enemies of the state because the President decides they...

This comment from Jeralyn at Talkleft on the Obama Administration’s proposal to alter the rights of terrorism suspects (Charlie Savage in the Grey Lady has more) by delaying the time before which they would be presented to a judge for arraignment so that they may be waterboarded interrogated longer… pretty much sums up my rather unified feelings toward the third term of the Bush Administration first (and at the rate things are going, hopefully only) term of the Obama Administration; specifically, Jeralyn’s take: Taking rights taken from terror suspects today just makes it easier to take them from all of...

I have little to add to what Greenwald or Paul Campos has about my college classmate and President Barack Obama’s choice of Elena Kagan as his nominee to replace retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. The Cliffnotes version is that, like Barack himself, Kagan has left virtually no paper trail, and, as an ideological matter, is a complete tabula rasa (that’s pretty much code for “stands for nothing”) but has convinced smart glib people that she is smart and glib, and as a Harriet Miers-like cipher and loyal retainer won’t give Barack too much trouble in the nominating process,...

I’m not complaining mind you, that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad evidently did not apparently get training from any serious terrorist organization, as widely reported… the last thing I’d like to see is yet another major atrocity in the heart of the city in which I and my family live and work. But this is a week that must make us ask over and over and over again… how do people get their jobs? Mr. Shahzad, for example, got an MBA degree and had a job in the financial sector… despite , evidently, being enough of a loser to...

It seems essential to believe that furriners, especially those people (in this case, from Pakistan) must be invariably involved in nefarious plots, and hence, this “breaking news” report that the person wanted for questioning in the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square has FOREIGN connections, As usual, we forget that whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing, and we can expect the usual suspects to draw their own conclusions, which, of course, will validate their own world view that all Mexicans illegal aliensswarthy furriners– ‘specially them Muslims– is out to get us. I’ll just say, maybe, and...

The Grey Lady joins what I guess must be a chorus wanting to know why the Obama Administration “didn’t do more… and faster…” with respect to the disastrous Gulf Coast oil rig disaster and mega-spill. At least we already know why the oil company involved, BP, didn’t ask for more help sooner and take decisive action sooner: because it is a profit-driven enterprise, with every incentive to cut corners to maximize profits, damn the human and environmental costs. That’s capitalism folks: we’re supposed to admire that attitude. Indeed, we’re supposed to admire it when the Government behaves the same way…...