It’s not even close to being cause for celebration; not yet, but it’s difficult to keep from feeling at least a tad hopeful lately; we may be experiencing a small shift in the judicial winds against the Bush regime’s extra-legal military justice system.
It just seems to me that the judges are growing annoyed by the decider guy’s unconstitutional endeavors; especially where Guantanamo and CIA extraordinary renditions are concerned. Judges have been coming down on the side of the U.S. Constitution more, and interrogators and defense attorneys alike are starting to break ranks and come forward to shine some much-needed light on a fundamentally flawed and unfair military justice system.
The Bush regime is undoubtedly still reeling from being discovered recently to have withheld potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense team of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo, as I wrote about a couple days ago. And now, a Second Circuit Court of Appeals judge is alluding to the illegality of the CIA’s secret rendition process. The court hasn't ruled yet but at least it's encouraging to see one of the three appellate judges with a skeptical cynical attitude.
Saturday’s New York Times ran the story:
Calling the process of rendition "outsourcing," a federal appeals court judge in New York sharply questioned government lawyers yesterday at a hearing involving a Syrian-born Canadian detained at Kennedy Airport in 2002 and sent to Syria, where he was held for 10 months.
The man, Maher Arar, received a multimillion-dollar settlement from the Canadian government this year after it was determined that American officials removed him from the airport in an act of rendition, under which terrorism suspects are sent abroad for interrogation in countries that often practice torture. Mr. Arar said he had been beaten repeatedly, and the Canadian government apologized to him and his family for the "terrible ordeal" after an inquiry found that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had wrongly told United States agents that he was suspected of being an extremist.
The judge, Robert D. Sack, was on a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals weighing whether to reverse the dismissal of a civil rights lawsuit filed by Mr. Arar against the United States. The suit was dismissed last year after a lower court ruled that it had no authority to review the case because it touched on national security and foreign relations.
Mr. Arar, a software engineer, was changing planes at the airport, en route to Canada, when he was detained by federal officials who claimed he was a member of Al Qaeda. He was flown to Jordan, and then taken overland to Syria. He said he was beaten and forced to make a false confession before his release in 2003.
Mr. Arar’s lawyers told the court that his lawsuit should be reinstated because the government had violated his constitutional rights. A Justice Department lawyer said the Constitution did not apply to non citizens who suffered injury abroad.
The appeals court has yet to rule on Mr. Arar’s appeal.
The courts are still behind in the whole ‘holding the Bush regime accountable’ thing but it does seem as though the bravest of the judges presiding over them are beginning to step up and play their constitutional roles, at least the ones with a conscience. We must see more of these [gutcheck] challenges.
Now, it’s Congress’ turn to step up. We must convey to them that they need to follow the way of the court or risk primary challenges. The courts have signaled their displeasure with Bush and Cheney’s arrogant disregard for the law, but only Congress can ultimately rein them in.
I also think it’s time to start asking the candidates what they plan on doing about the lawlessness in the White House, and 'running out the clock' is not an acceptable answer.
Impede, impeach and imprison.
Peace