Or so says the lead editorial from Friday

As long as the we’re going after the New York Times for the evil of publishing the stories about the NSA terrorist wiretapping, terrorist bank record spying, etc., I say let’s lynch the treacherous scum in the Bush White House!

Get a load of this statement by some “senior official” Benedict Arnold describing what the administration told the leaders of the heroic Kadima party in Israel, warning them to not go “too far” in their triumphant re-invasion of the Gaza strip:

“‘The Israeli measures might not only affect innocent civilians but could build support for Hamas,’ said the senior official in an interview with Reuters.

“‘We have told them to be careful because plainly when you have this kind of military force deployed close to civilian populations there is a very high risk of accidents and I think that can further worsen this crisis.’”

Collective Punishment counterproductive? How dare you lying traitors imply that The Terrorists

by Jim Lobe

In a major defeat for President George W. Bush with potentially far-reaching implications for his conduct of the “war on terror,” the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday ruled that military tribunals established by the Pentagon to try suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, violated the U.S. Constitution.

Writing for a 5-3 court majority, Justice John Paul Stevens also rejected the administration’s long-held position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to suspected al-Qaeda detainees or so-called “unlawful combatants.”

In so doing, Stevens appeared also to reject the administration’s legal claims that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, combined with his position as commander in chief in wartime, gave Bush sweeping powers to ignore existing laws and treaties.

The administration has relied on those claims not only to set up the military tribunals and deny Geneva protections to suspected terrorists, but also to disregard existing laws with respect to the wiretapping of citizens and other controversial actions in carrying out its “global war on terror.”

“This is a huge victory for the rule of law and for the role that the founders envisioned for the court, which is as a check on executive power,” said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First. “Its rejection of the reliance on the AUMF is hugely significant and reaffirms the role of Congress.”

“The Supreme Court is saying that the president can’t go and create some new legal universe where he makes the rules,” said Barbara Olshansky, the deputy legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents some 200 of the 450 detainees who remain in Guantanamo. “This is an astounding blow to the notion of a unitary executive.”

The case was brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former chauffeur of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and one of about three dozen Guantanamo detainees who were to face trial by military commissions established by the Pentagon. Like many of the detainees, Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and was sent to Guantanamo Bay, which opened in early 2002.

Lawyers for Hamdan, who was charged with conspiracy, argued that the commissions lacked authority to try him for two reasons: first, because conspiracy is not a violation of the law of war; and second, because the commissions’ procedures violate basic due process under U.S. and international law, including the Geneva Conventions.

After a federal district court ruled in his favor, an appeals court, which included the current Supreme Court chief justice, John Roberts, reversed the decision, essentially upholding the administration’s claims that it had the power on its own to create tribunals and establish procedures that fell short of fundamental due process.

But five of the Supreme Court justices upheld Hamdan’s claims, finding that, in Steven’s words, Bush lacked the authority to take the “extraordinary measure” of setting up special military commissions for detainees in which they were denied due process protections available to defendants under either U.S. criminal law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), or a key section of the Geneva Conventions, known as Common Article 3.

“In undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the executive is bound to comply with the rule of law that prevails in this jurisdiction,” wrote Stevens, who stressed that there was nothing in the AUMF’s language or legislative history “even hinting” that Congress intended to give the executive the power to ignore or supersede existing laws and treaties on the rights of detainees held by the U.S. military.

The majority’s holding that the United States is bound by Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, however, potentially goes far beyond the specific procedures of the military commissions at Guantanamo.

Article 3 provides that all detainees are legally entitled to humane treatment “in all circumstances” and may not be subject to “cruel treatment and torture” or “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”

“This holding would not only apply to the handful of Guantanamo detainees charged with crimes,” according to a statement by Human Rights Watch (HRW), “but to all the detainees held by the United States in the ‘global war on terror,’ including those at Guantanamo and at Bagram [air base] in Afghanistan, as well as the ‘ghost detainees’ held at secret prisons.”

“The broad decision today will have an impact on United States detention and interrogation policies not just at Guantanamo Bay, but across the board,” agreed Massimino, who noted that the decision comes amid continuing struggles inside the administration over the rules governing interrogations.

Three justices dissented from the majority decision with one of them, Clarence Thomas, feeling strongly enough to read his opinion aloud for the first time in his 15-year tenure. Echoing the administration’s position, he warned that the decision would “sorely hamper the president’s ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.”

Chief Justice Roberts, who had sided with the administration in the appeals court decision, would probably have provided a fourth dissenting vote, but he recused himself from the case because of his prior ruling.

Asked about the decision at a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Bush himself stressed that he was prepared to work with Congress to devise new procedures for military tribunals and that, in any event, the court’s decision “won’t cause killers to be put out on the street.”

In recent weeks, Bush and other top administration officials have appeared more sensitive to international demands that the Guantanamo facility, where three detainees committed suicide earlier this month, be shut down, and some observers suggested that the court’s decision may hasten that prospect.

“Now the president must act,” said CCR president Michael Ratner. “Try our clients in lawful U.S. courts or release them. The game is up. There is no way for President Bush to continue hiding behind a purported lack of judicial guidance to avoid addressing the illegal and immoral prison in Guantanamo Bay.”

(Inter Press Service)

Do you guys read Lukery?

He rules. That is, he blogs every damn thing on earth. For example, this great piece by Laura Rozen in the Post about Iranian exiles and their lies that I had missed.

Update: Also, the guy is fucking brilliant – for a Tazmanian.

Also the KAOS Report archives have finally been updated, that is last week and this one.

And there are 8 new stickers for sale at http://scotthortonshow.com/stickers

Two more:

in honor of his dissent [page 25] in the Hamdan case, and Our freedom is more important than your good idea the way I always wanted to say it:

Check out this great article about DDT in the NYT Magazine from 2004.

“Probably the worst thing that ever happened to malaria in poor nations was its eradication in rich ones. That has made one of Africa’s leading killers shockingly invisible. ”’Silent Spring’ had a clear message about things at home Americans could see and touch and feel,” said Brooks B. Yeager, vice president of the Global Threats Program for the World Wildlife Fund. ”Americans who live on the Carolina coast know the brown pelicans have come back” since DDT spraying was halted. ”Malaria is a long way away. You have to read about it or see in person its devastation, and not many Americans have the opportunity to do it.”

Lawrence Barat, the World Bank’s adviser on malaria control, said, ”When I tell people I work on malaria, sometimes I get, ‘Gee, I didn’t know it still existed.”’

One of the most depressing aspects of talking about malaria is that you get to hear the phrase ”the powerful AIDS lobby,” a term no one but a malariologist would use. AIDS in the third world is still criminally underfinanced, but at least it gets some money and a lot of attention. Malaria gets AIDS’s dregs. AIDS was a sudden plague, very visible in its choice of victims, and it has a vocal constituency in rich countries. Even in Africa, malaria gets nowhere near the attention of AIDS. It has always been around, and it kills not middle-class adults but rural 4-year-olds, who don’t have much of a lobby.”

Hat tip: Lew

John Roberts’ Decision overturned!

Washington -AP, June 29, 2006 – The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and Geneva conventions.The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

Two years ago, the court rejected Bush’s claim to have the authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers. In this followup case, the justices focused solely on the issue of trials for some of the men.

The vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court’s liberal members in ruling against the Bush administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined in the case because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan.Thursday’s ruling overturned that decision.

Take that you liberty destroying sonsabitches!

“New maps, anytime
On a different issue, the court ruled that state legislators may draw new maps as often as they like

95.9 and 92.7 FM in Austin, TX, KAOS959.com to stream.

Must be, because an honest pro-war veterans group would have to call themselves “Vets for Destroying Whatever Used to be Good About America Forever in the Name of Fear.”

“Here you are lazy news editors: some good news. It’s steaming hot and ready to print.”

Update: These damn democrats have more.

Laura Rozen has a new piece in Mother Jones about Ledeen, Franklin, Rhode, Gorbanifar, SCIRI, et al. in Rome in December 2001.

This one is not about the lies that led us into Iraq, but the lies that are leading us into Iran, and how full of crap Gorbanifar is. Like we didn’t all know that. All but Curt Weldon that is.

by Ron Paul

The United Nations is holding a conference beginning this week in New York that ironically coincides with our national 4th of July holiday. It

Jonathan Turley writes about the death of privacy in America, “not with a fight, but a yawn.”

“For most of our history, one of the greatest protections for civil liberties has been the practical inability of the government to surveil a large number of citizens at one time. In the last couple of decades, those technological barriers have fallen away.

“In the meantime, the Supreme Court has removed legal barriers to the government’s acquisition of personal information by allowing it to obtain the records of banks, telephone companies and other businesses without a warrant. This combination of legal and technological changes has laid the foundation for a fishbowl society in which citizens can be objects of continual surveillance.”

In case anyone learned from the Liddy show or some crap that there is no right to privacy because it isn’t specified in the Bill of Rights, Wrong!

The first, fourth, fifth and ninth amendments recognise the natural right to privacy, and the tenth forbids the national government from exercising any power not expressly delegated to them.

In Armed Madhouse, Greg Palast has a whole thing about Bearing Point and other “private KGB’s” who sell all their data to the state.

I am convinced that all good men owe it to the rest to oppose all state activity of any description. As long as we’re begging for a little of our own money back in this form or that, we have no standing to oppose them when they unveil the new DNA database.

And there are a few.

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. … Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Not that that isn’t obvious.

Thanks Charley Reese.

According to a writer to Lew Rockwell, this is the Sears tower, if you live in the Liberty City area of Miami:

He writes:

“Speaking as a former resident of Miami, to a kid in the Liberty City area, this is the Sears Tower — not some building in Chicago. The tower is all that’s left of the old Sears Building on Biscayne Blvd. in Liberty City. Since I’ve been out of Miami for more than a decade, I can’t tell you what stage of construction it is in, but it is supposed to be part of a new Performing Arts Center. Maybe it already is.”

Will anyone even care at all when it is fully revealed how full of it the FBI and TV news are on this one?

The Post page 16 last Sunday:

“Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said. …

Parsi said that based on his conversations with the Iranian officials, he believes the failure of the United States to even respond to the offer had an impact on the government. Parsi, who is writing a book on Iran-Israeli relations, said he believes the Iranians were ready to dramatically soften their stance on Israel, essentially taking the position of other Islamic countries such as Malaysia. Instead, Iranian officials decided that the United States cared not about Iranian policies but about Iranian power.

The incident “strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance,” Parsi said.”

Here is Gareth Porter on the matter.