Another cliche dies

You've heard the old saying "The Pen is mightier than the sword", right? Not anymore:

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief. After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

The sword is officially mightier than the pen now. How else can one actually sign legislation meant to restrain their power while simultaneously declaring they will not obey it?

In case I haven't made it clear enough before, my view on the whole torture thing is built more on a value of honesty than with revulsion to brutality. I personally do not approve of it, & find that any ruling structure that ends up resorting to it deserves to collapse, though that is not what REALLY gets my blood boiling. No, what I hate is how by our conduct we have stretched US exceptionalism -- an idea that already started off with problems -- so far that it amounts to a blank check. We point out the window shouting "look at those SAVAGES! They don't play by rules!", puffing up our egos as some kind of timeless heroic badass -- The Lone Ranger with the weaponry of The Terminator -- who must do atrocious things simply to be able to sleep at night.

That distinction is a lie.

From the beginning of mans time as talking apes there have not been rules to war. The entire point of combat is that it's what happens when the parameters of civil society stop working. Any attempt to say otherwise has amounted to a sideways self-hate, a strategic calculation, or both. It was considered par for the course when villages were ransacked & burnt to the ground, when urban areas were carpetbombed, That was WAR.

But no, we come along and do the exact same things, and add a special twist: "We're not like THOSE people!" We attribute any atrocity done to altrusitic reasons, as if we do the world a favor or something. Personally even if we were doing favors I'd still oppose it, as it's not our job & they don't deserve charity anyway. As if that wasn't enough, we have the unmitigated GALL to be sideways about the whole mess:

"We're sooooo advanced! Now shut up & pass those pliers, this guy still has teeth!"

F**k that. Either we're advanced and we don't do it or there is no great separation. It'd actually be more humane to just come out and admit it. Nothing worse than a liar...

Split-the-baby works for once

Shorter Supreme Court: "Yeah, transfer Padilla. Your dictatorial powers are still up for scrutiny anyway"...

The Supreme Court ordered terrorism suspect and U.S. citizen Jose Padilla transferred from military custody Wednesday to stand trial in Miami, Florida. The brief order came at the request of the Bush administration, which had been blocked by a federal appeals court from moving ahead with the transfer.

The high court is also considering a broader appeal from Padilla, questioning whether President Bush had constitutional authority to hold him in military custody since 2003 as an "enemy combatant." The government had argued that that issue was moot because Padilla would be charged in criminal court. The Supreme Court will consider whether to review the appeal January 13

There was the attitude that this was a one-or-the-other case at first: either Padilla stands trial & the "enemy combatant" designation still exists, or the SC reviewed it & Padilla sat in limbo until they made their ruling. Glad they figured out this was a fallacy.

For our sake, let's hope that Alito doesn't turn out to be a total authority-monger, cuz this one just might go long enough for him to get confirmed before they decide. Sad, because the constitutionality of this is such an open-and-shut Hell No that a properly stocked court would rule on it inbetween bites during lunch.

Eh, you take your wins where you can.

Well DUH...

This may or may not become a semi-regular feature: "News I Could've Pulled From My Arse"

The idea behind it is simple. Sometimes a situation will come along that should've been seen a mile away, a story so obvious that I could've guessed and came up with the same thing. Hence, I could've pulled it from my arse. No real comment beyond a wisecrack would be necessary, since the fact that it is a story alone makes the essential point.

First installment -- "Most Justice Department probes of high-level leaks go nowhere":

When President Bush defended the National Security Agency after the disclosure that it had spied on hundreds of Americans, he angrily denounced media leaks about the program, and the Justice Department has now opened a criminal probe. But an ongoing Justice investigation of the president's own staff in an unrelated leak case and the handling of hundreds of other leak allegations each year suggest that the probe of the NSA leak - which focuses on the disclosure of classified information to The New York Times - faces huge obstacles.

Only two government officials have ever been convicted of leaking classified information to a news organization. Samuel L. Morison, a Navy intelligence analyst, was prosecuted for leaking three spy satellite photos to Jane's Defence Weekly in 1984; Jonathan Randel, a former Drug Enforcement Administration analyst, was convicted in 1999 of leaking confidential information about DEA investigations to a London newspaper....Mark Corallo, a former Justice spokesman who is now a spokesman for Bush adviser Karl Rove in matters related to the Fitzgerald investigation, said the department typically received hundreds of requests a year from intelligence agencies to investigate leaks, and most cases went nowhere.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've a leak to go investigate. The one I'm about to take...

Re: not trusting the military...

No shock here:

Support for President George W. Bush's Iraq policy has fallen among the US armed forces to just 54 percent from 63 percent a year ago, according to a poll by the magazine group Military Times.

Barely above 50% for people that willingly signed their lives over to the government? No wonder...

Though, as usual, since this is a poll, there's the obligatory grain-of-salt. Or is there?

Military Times, which publishes popular magazines for each of the US military branches including Army Times and Navy Times, cautioned that its poll, of 1,215 active-duty servicemen, is not necessarily representative of the military as a whole. The respondents were "on average older, more experienced, more likely to be officers and more career-oriented than the military population." (emphasis mine)

This isn't salt, it's anti-salt. If it's slightly over 50% when skewed towards people for whom the military is a career, then the true number is under when you factor in the average greenhorn. This is like doing a survey on eating disorders & including a caution that there aren't that many fashion models or crackheads in the sample.