It's a beautiful Saturday morning here in the high desert

i got back from scotland and the outer hebrides one week ago today, welcomed by cold, snow flurries and a full week of cloudy, chilly, damp and generally miserable weather... today, finally, the sky is clear, the sun is shining brightly and the temp has jumped from the upper 30s to the mid-50s and it's only 10:30... i'm listening to glorious celtic music with a melancholy tinge, perhaps befitting how i'm feeling about being back in the u.s. and continuing to witness the pathos of the erosion of everything we stand for...

glenn greenwald...

The first paragraph of today's New York Times article by Charlie Savage:

The 48 Guantánamo Bay detainees whom the Obama administration has decided to keep holding without trial include several for whom there is no evidence of involvement in any specific terrorist plot, according to a report disclosed Friday.

The Report itself, in a matter-of-fact-tone, describes the individuals to be kept in a cage indefinitely without charges this way:

They can't even be prosecuted in the due-process-abridging military commissions we invented out of whole cloth for those who can't be convicted in a real court. In other words: of course we'll provide a fair tribunal for proving your guilt -- as long as we're certain we can convict you -- otherwise, we'll just imprison you indefinitely without charges. All this even though 72% of Guantanamo detainees have been found to be wrongfully held since the Supreme Court compelled habeas hearings in 2008. And then there are the numerous Yemeni prisoners who have been cleared for release but who will be kept in a cage anyway because we arbitrarily decreed that we're not going to release even innocent prisoners back to Yemen.

[...]

Yes -- being as sentimental as I am -- I, too, harbor nostalgia for that "older principle of accountability under the law": you know, that idealized time when everyone was entitled to be charged with crimes before being imprisoned forever (rather than only those for whom prosecution was "feasible") and when Presidents weren't actually allowed to target American citizens for murder without at least some due process being granted. Anyway, did Sarah Palin post something to her Facebook page today? And isn't that Glenn Beck crazy?

i never thought i'd come to the day when i'd be embarrassed and ashamed to identify myself as a liberal, democrat and progressive...

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