More Brains!

[elfs]

South Carolina tries to find a way to ban Gay/Student Alliances

GSA's are clubs usually found in high schools to promote awareness of gay students and their issues. South Carolina is desperate to figure out how to kill them without banning all clubs from campus.

Americans face a declining standard of living over the next 20 years

If this doesn't scare you, nothing shall. Soaring costs for everything are leading to a bunker mentality for most households, and consumerism is dropping to an all-time low. But the irreversibility of it is the really scary part. Dammit, where's my fusion-powered future? (via solarbird)

What the frack is John McCain on?

I've seen this quote in a thousand different places, so I'm just going discuss the original quote from John McCain:

We're now going to have the courts flooded with so-called "habeas corpus suits" against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that.

Let me be the first to applaud the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling stating that wherever the United States exerts sole authority over people, the rule of US law is intact and not to be overridden by the rule of men.

But what the hell is McCain on? If "the courts are flooded," so the frack what? Isn't it his duty as someone seeking the office of president to see to it that the courts are funded, maintained, and operated in a manner consistent with the constitution? You know, that whole Amendment 6 thing, "Right to a speedy trial, confrontation of witnesses" thing.

So far, McCain has dissed the First Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, and Article I section 8. Can this man really swear to uphold the Constitution?

Comments

[kengr]

Habeus corpus *specifically* doesn't apply to POW camps.
Check a copy of the US Constitution. War and incasion atre specifically listed as times when that right may be suspended.

And your last paragraph shows that you don't understand what's going on at Gitmo (and elsewhere).

The folks held there are *not* people who were fighting US troops and then surrendered or were captured.

They are people who were *seized* by US trops *or intelligence agencies*. Not in combat but essentially because someone said something that made someone decide that they had info or might be a threat.

Rules for folk captured during combat or who surrender on the battlefield are (as I noted above) covered by things like the Geneva Conventions and related accords or are subject to what amount to criminal charges.

The folks this decision covered are not under those rules. They have been detained without charges and with no explanations of why they are being held or no chance to argue that the reasons are bogus.

Gitmo is *not* a POW camp.