| |
|
Thursday, November 24, 2005
|
|
Welcome to the Regime:
The Bush administration, determined not to yield any ground on the constitutional issues in the case of Jose Padilla , has indicated it may still hold the accused “enemy combatant” indefinitely—even if he is acquitted of the terrorist conspiracy charges he was indicted on this week.
Jonathan Freiman, a lawyer for Padilla, told NEWSWEEK that a senior lawyer in the Solicitor General’s office told him Wednesday that the government still asserts it has the power to hold his client—regardless of the outcome of the criminal case against him.
“I was told, ‘he’s still an enemy combatant according to the president and therefore they can still detain him at anytime,” Freiman said.
Freiman declined to identify which senior lawyer in the Solicitor General’s office made the assertion. The Justice Department’s director of public affairs, Tasia Scolinos, would not say today whether Padilla, a U.S. citizen born in Chicago, would be freed were he to be acquitted in the criminal case announced Tuesday by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. “The prosecutors believe this is a very strong case,” she said when asked what would happen in the event of an acquittal. “We’re not going to talk about hypotheticals.”
(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)
11:08:39 PM 
|
|
I thoroughly enjoyed Walk the Line. But of course I'm a Johnny Cash fan. But the story is told very well, especially because of the two fantastic performances. Reese Witherspoon is amazing; whenever she's on the screen she totally dominates your attention; she portrays a woman who seems more at ease in front of a crowd than in intimate situations. Phoenix is also great, very much the Johnny Cash I remember; he shows how Cash's demeanor onstage grows out of this character, and really puts the character over when he's performing. The direction is great two, at times you're totally intimate with the two characters as they are pulled into the ring of fire and also draw back from one another. And the music, well, the music is Johnny Cash music, and that's about as good as it gets. Highly recommended.
11:07:38 PM
|
|
Jean Schmidt lied about the letter she read on the House floor, when she called John Murtha a coward.
The Maryland GOP’s lies about Oreos being thrown at Michael Steele has suffered at the hands of the truth.
The White House lied about Congress having the same intelligence before the Iraq war.
The factually incorrect Fox News Channel (details here) has rejected a liberal ad.
Right wing bloggers and Drudge just made s**t up about CNN.
The White House lied about why it has botched Jose Padilla’s prosecution.
The White House slams talking about withdrawing from Iraq when its already phasing in just those plans.
And of course, beloved GOP icon and Supreme Court justice Scalia went back in his time machine and created an alternate reality where it was the Gore team and not the Bush people who petitioned the Supreme Court in 2000.
(Via Oliver Willis - Like Kryptonite To Stupid.)
6:36:10 PM
|
|
The picture on the website of him smoking looks so cool, alas. But it was lung cancer that got him.
12:44:40 PM
|
|
The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of Dec. 5, 2004.
(Via The New York Times > Most E-mailed Articles.)
Dang, I only read 3, though I have 2 more next to the bed, started 2 more but got bogged down by time, and can think of half a dozen that I did read that should be on the list.
10:51:59 AM
|
|
Trailer for Linklater's new PKD rotoscope (Apple-QT via Mov)
(Via robot wisdom weblog.)
Wow. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. A Scanner Darkly is one of Dick's finest movies, and I wish they'd get the damned movie out!
10:46:25 AM
|
|
"'A certain man,' said Rex, as he turned round the corner with Margot, 'once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That's what I like about coincidence.'"
Source: Zembla (more precisely:
Laughter in the Dark
)
(Via Oblique Screenwriting Strategies.)
10:25:56 AM
|
|
How nice. Federal prosecutors have indicted Jose Padilla on terrorism-related charges. Now, Padilla may well be a genuine badass terrorist...but why'd it take three years to charge him? Doesn't our Constitution provide the right to a speedy trial, not to mention seeing the evidence against you, the presumption of innocence, and the right to confront your accusers?
It didn't matter for Padilla, though. He is a U.S. citizen who was arrested on U.S. soil. And the government -- our government -- said that he had none of those rights. And threw him into prison, holding him incommunicado without even access to a lawyer until the courts said they couldn't do that. (Those damn activist liberal judges, coddling criminals again.) What justification did they give for this? Basically, they said that he's a bad guy. Again, he may certainly be a bad guy...but a court of law is the proper place to adjudicate that, not in John Ashcroft's press releases. The simple fact that someone is proclaiming something over and over doesn't make it true.
How so very...Bushlike. And don't forget that if they could do it to Jose Padilla, they can do it to you too.
(Via telescreen.org.)
10:10:04 AM
|
|
DONALD SENSING has thoughts on the Democrats' strategy:
So, knowing that the plan was to redeploy troops beginning next year, the Democrats decided to get in front of the wave: Demand the troops be sent home NOW and then when the Pentagon announces the plan to redeploy, take credit for it.
It's the Ralph Nader strategy, I guess.
(Via Instapundit.com.)
How funny is it to one minute decry the Democrats for being cowards and wanting to cut and run and the next minute say, oh, we were bringing the troops home anyway?
9:56:46 AM
|
|
|
Nov 23, 2005 - Cassini took this amazing image of Saturn's moon Dione on approach to its recent October 11, 2005 rendezvous; Saturn itself sits in the background. Dione is much darker on its western side in this image, and you can see the bright wispy fresh canyons right at the edge. Cassini took this image when it was approximately 24,500 kilometers (15,200 miles) from Dione.
|
(Via Universe Today.)
9:20:16 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 12/2/2005; 7:10:18 PM.
|
|
|
