Babies and Homer are both so innocent.

 The tea parties seem a  lot more like pure unadulterated stupidity.

E.  A Democrat.

Time to do another load. Good thing laundry doesn't require much reasoning power.

Per a Guantanamo detainee .

After all the faux pilitical theatre of the first 100 days of the Obamanation, we are finding that yet again Obama was likely lying when he promised to end the Military tribunals.

U.S. May Revive Guantánamo Military Courts

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.

Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.

Well, well.  Isn't this interesting.  All that bluster about how unconstitutional the military tribunals were and here Obama is going to continue using them.  Hmmm.  Sort of makes you wonder about how sincere he was on the campaign trail, eh?

Officials who work on the Guantánamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts. Judges might make it difficult to prosecute detainees who were subjected to brutal treatment or for prosecutors to use hearsay evidence gathered by intelligence agencies.

Wow, and the sticking point seems to be that they want to continue to use evidence that is not admissible in a US Court of Law.  Isn't that supposed to be a bad thing?  Here Obama is planning to do the same thing.

Obama administration officials — and Mr. Obama himself — have said in the past that they were not ruling out prosecutions in the military commission system. But senior officials have emphasized that they prefer to prosecute terrorism suspects in existing American courts. When President Obama suspended Guantánamo cases after his inauguration on Jan. 20, many participants said the military commission system appeared dead.

Yep, that's what they said.

But in recent days a variety of officials involved in the deliberations say that after administration lawyers examined many of the cases, the mood shifted toward using military commissions to prosecute some detainees, perhaps including those charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”

Hmmm.  Now that they are in charge of not letting these people loose all of a sudden their tune changes.  And it sounds  a lot like the one that Bush was singing.  I guess that they lied when they said they were going to change things.  Seems the more that this group "changes" things the more the are just the same.

Several officials insisted on anonymity because the administration has directed that no one publicly discuss the deliberations.

Administration officials said Friday that some detainees would be prosecuted in federal courts and noted that Mr. Obama had always left open the possibility of using military commissions.

Hmmm.  Sounds like some serious backpeddaling to me.  Go figure.  Someone's going to have to point me to an Obama quote to that effect if they want me to actually believe that.

Still, during the presidential campaign Mr. Obama criticized the commissions, saying that “by any measure our system of trying detainees has been an enormous failure,” and declaring that as president he would “reject the Military Commissions Act.”

Yep, that's how I remember it too.

The military commissions, which were established specifically for trying Guantánamo detainees, have been subject to repeated delays and court challenges that argued that detainees were being denied basic rights of American law. Only two trials have been completed in the nearly eight years since the Bush administration announced that it would use military tribunals.

Yea, like the past four months while all the detainees were sitting on the hands waiting ... and after making all the fuss over how these poor soles were not receiving their due process.  Seems like the net result for the really bad boys is that Obama has added 4 months to their time served without action.

Any plan to adjust the military commissions would walk a tightrope of granting the suspects more rights yet stopping short of affording them the rights available to defendants in American courts. Several lawyers say the commissions are only beneficial for the government if they make it easier to win a prosecution than it would be in federal court.

The Bush administration’s commission system was criticized in part because it permitted evidence that would often be barred in federal court, like evidence obtained through coercive interrogations and hearsay.

The administration is likely to make it more difficult for prosecutors to admit hearsay, while not excluding it entirely, the lawyers said. The hearsay issue is central to many Guantánamo cases because they are based on intelligence reports and detainees may never be permitted to cross-examine the sources of those reports.

Hmmm.  Adopting the Bush MO with minor modifications isn't what Obama was elected to do.  This is a real slap in the face of his ardent supporters.  How used they must feel now, except prehaps those who refuse to see the obvious right in front of them.

Human rights groups said Friday that using any form of military commission would be seen as permitting shortcuts that would not be available in existing American courts.

Yep, just like Bush was accused of doing.  Where's the change?

Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that Mr. Obama had pledged to return the country to the rule of law and that “continuing with the military commission system would be a retreat from that promise.”

Gabor Rona, the international legal director of Human Rights First, said military commissions would only be necessary if the administration wanted to assure convictions that might not otherwise be certain.

“The administration is making a huge mistake,” Mr. Rona said, “if they believe getting convictions through suspect methods is more valuable than letting justice take its course.”

That's right.  It is a huge mistake to promise the American people one thing and then to do the exact opposite, but the appears to be what's about to happen.

It is not clear how many of the remaining 241 detainees are likely to be prosecuted. The four-month suspension of military commission proceedings Mr. Obama ordered is to end May 20. As a result, administration officials are considering whether to ask military judges at Guantánamo for an additional delay. In making such a request, administration lawyers might outline their proposed changes.

Interesting.  They want even MORE delays.  Is Obama planning to run out the clock on this issue?  I mean he's got at least 3+ years left to go.  That seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me.

In recent days, senior administration officials have hinted publicly that commissions were far from dead, yet offered no specifics and their comments drew little attention. In Congressional testimony on Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said, “The commissions are still very much on the table.”

No surprise here.  They are all lying through their teeth.  Lip service in the name of justice.

In a news conference this week, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. emphasized that if the administration did use military commissions, the rules must give detainees “a maximum amount of due process.”

But, speaking of detainees whom American officials have accused of involvement in major terrorist plots, Mr. Holder added, “It may be difficult for some of those high-value detainees to be tried in a normal federal court.”

Whoa,  really?  Who would ahve ever thought so?  You were so certain on January 20 that these commissions were the worst possible atrocity imaginable and now you are switching to embrace them?  Sorry, but I'm not going to let you try and slipt that one under the rug.

Meta: This post is a serious comment.

in prosecution of voter intimidation case.

EXCLUSIVE: Career lawyers overruled on voting case
Black Panthers had wielded weapons, blocked polls

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews

...

Meta: This post is a serious comment.

 “just for a fleeting moment” contemplated seeking an abortion after learning she was pregnant with her son Trig, who will turn 1 on Saturday."   There is a name for when women who are pregnant are allowed to determine whether or not they keep their baby or have an abortion. It is called pro-choice.  - True dat.  Funny how they just don't seem to want others to have the same freedom of choice.

I'm sure there's plenty of things that people have considered doing for fleeting moments, which they do not wish to be legal.

I think it's impressive artistically and rhetorically, even though I'm not nearly that libertarian (actually at one point the message sounds downright anarchistic to me, seemingly implying that an individual is free to completely defy any exercise of any authority by any official to whom he did not personally grant that particular authority, but perhaps I'm misreading it a bit).

As long as there never could be anything such as cartels, trust, monopolies... the "vision" of the Ken Schooland would lead way to his utopia.

Freedom to "willfully" buy from the company store. With the cartels willfully not employing one who isn't towing a given company's line.

But it's not really whitewashing what the illegal immigrant is doing.   Instead, it's whitewashing our tendency to knee-jerk.  

Unauthorized does mean illegal.   But unauthorized is less inflammatory.   I see it as helping to avoid the immediate "but you must just hate brown people" reaction.   Anything that lets us get past an emotional response and on to the more serious matter of sane immigration policy and its enforcement is good in my book.

It's rather like "negro" and "black".   Negro means black; we borrowed the word from another language.  Using Black is just as descriptive, but less inflammatory.