"not yet read in"

The fact that Padilla was driven out-of-his-mind seems to have escaped Judge Michael Mukasey, too. Will Mukasey be ok with the same standards being applied to him and administration war criminals? But wait - there is mind altering drug torture to bring people around to "sanity", enough to be accountable in court after they have been driven out-of-their-minds. At least some jurisdictions are beginning to mitigate that though, albeit even while they trample other rights, one step forward, two steps back.

Orrin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy points to this interesting observation that:

Judges are generalists and therefore they are at an inherent disadvantage vis-à-vis academics on narrow topics of law."

from CounterPunch:

Man's inhumanity to man rattles the sensibilities of all but the most hard-hearted, and like any other American, I was appalled to read the accounts of the very powerful (us) inflicting great harm on the weak and defenseless (them). Un-American to the core, torture by any method offends and repels, but nothing could have prepared me for the shocking, horrifying, de-humanizing accounts of the Water Cure inflicted by American soldiers on captured Filipino guerillas.

Whether any form of water boarding can be torture is beneath debate, and Attorney General nominee, Michael Mukasey, was horribly wrong to equivocate on this issue when questioned before the Senate Judiciary Committee."

Tonight, November 6, on PBS at 9 pm: "Extraordinary Rendition"

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