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Catching up
Aug. 21st, 2005 01:09 amCp. Roberts actually has a dry heat. It doesn't mean it isn't hot, but 90F+ is bearable (109F, as it was when I was there a week ago, however, is still damned hot, and not weather to be driving in, better to be flopped in the shade, preferably with a cold beer, glass of limeade, sherbet, or other cool bevande).
The course I'm taking, is pointless. I am a qualified instructor. Authorised to teach almost any class the Army has (so long as I have either taken it, or been otherwise accredited). To teach this (which is a class meant to co-ordinate lessons learned and to synchronise a set of common taks, which are taught as discrete things) requires a small amount of pre-work, but no radical new understanding of instructional technique, nor new skills.
What the Army should have done was demand (in the same way they demanded students to this course) people to show up for instructor training. Then, in addition to having people to teach this course the state, and National Guard Bureau would have 40 more instructors (which are always in short supply). This is a useful course, people deploying need to know this sort of thing. It's a whole lot better to use stuff from combat vets experiecnce; and some combat vets to teach it [those of us who have been in the box make up about 1/3 of the class) and give it to these guys, so they aren't so FNG when they get over there. It ain't the same as the knowledge which comes of experience, but this is the next best thing.
There is nothing I am learning here which justifies two and-a-half weeks of my time. Time the Army could be better spending to have me doing other work.
In other news we have more snakes. The East African Sand Boas have started to lay (I say started because one of them did, and the other hasn't). It seems we did the math wrong, or the literature is faulty, or we didn't have the enclosure warm enough, or something, because we thought they were due almost 6 weeks ago. They are the cutest things, and when they have had their first shed I'll post photos, as promised.
On the political front...
As others have said, if I weren't a citizen, I don't think I'd be all that willing to set foot on soil the US Gov't controls. In a suit brought by a Canadian we shipped to Syria (because we have "good" evidence he was involved in terrorism. You have to trust us on this one Yer Honor, because it's classified, so we can't show you, but it was real good evidence. Yes, Yer Honor, the Syrians, after torturing him for a while decided we were wrong, but we don't believe them) about his being shipped to Syria and tortured, said people who pass through the US, enroute to other places have to realise the only right they have is to not face gross physical abuse. They may, according to the brief, be denied food and sleep, be kidnapped and sent to any country we feel like, and all other manner of indignities; so long as the US doesn't perform those indignities.
This is, of course, old news. It broke a week ago. I was engaged in some discussion of it here and here at John Scalzi's Whatever (those posts are worth reading in their own right, as usual the comments are important).
What brings this to mind was something I saw at SCOTUSBlog.
The Justice Department argued on August 2 that the Hamdan ruling "significantly undercuts the claims advanced" by the detainees. The government contended that the Hamdan ruling gave a narrow interpretation to the Supreme Court's ruling allowing the detainees to file habeas petitions. Thus, it argued, the foreign nationals have no constitutional right to due process and, without that, they have no right to any relief in District Court.
No right to due process. Harar wasn't in the US. That's the claim we offered up. He was passing through, wasn't on the other side of Immigration, so he wasn't in the US, which is why we could kidnap him and send him to Syria. Never mind that he was a Canadian citizen, we felt like it, and he was in a place we controlled, but not actually the US, so he loses.
The Hamdan case, on it's face, seems a little harder to make so cut and dried, but only because Syria let Harer go, and so it seems to be different.
No right to due process. Due procces, my friends, is what rule of law is all about. Amendments IV, V, and VI to the Constitution are due process. Dred Scott was about due process, at some level the Revolution was about due process, all we have to do is look to the grievances.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses
The Fifth Amendment says:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The Sixth says:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
No due process means none of that applies. The Gov't has said (though not in so many words) it has the right to take non-citizens (and the case where we paid bounty hunters to go to Mexico and abuduct a suspected murderer of a US agent make this a pretty broad claim of taking), when they aren't in the US, hold them outside the US, compell them to confess and then shoot them (or hang them or do with them as we please). Taken at it's most broad interpretation we don't even have to make them confess, we can just execute them pour encourager les autres.
What galls is the same Gov't saying we can't reveal some of the things which happened in places we control, because those images might cause people to hate us, and decide to attack us.
I think we need to go and re-read the grievances in the Declaration of Independence (which always seem to be glossed over, in favor of the stirring bits at the front).
The course I'm taking, is pointless. I am a qualified instructor. Authorised to teach almost any class the Army has (so long as I have either taken it, or been otherwise accredited). To teach this (which is a class meant to co-ordinate lessons learned and to synchronise a set of common taks, which are taught as discrete things) requires a small amount of pre-work, but no radical new understanding of instructional technique, nor new skills.
What the Army should have done was demand (in the same way they demanded students to this course) people to show up for instructor training. Then, in addition to having people to teach this course the state, and National Guard Bureau would have 40 more instructors (which are always in short supply). This is a useful course, people deploying need to know this sort of thing. It's a whole lot better to use stuff from combat vets experiecnce; and some combat vets to teach it [those of us who have been in the box make up about 1/3 of the class) and give it to these guys, so they aren't so FNG when they get over there. It ain't the same as the knowledge which comes of experience, but this is the next best thing.
There is nothing I am learning here which justifies two and-a-half weeks of my time. Time the Army could be better spending to have me doing other work.
In other news we have more snakes. The East African Sand Boas have started to lay (I say started because one of them did, and the other hasn't). It seems we did the math wrong, or the literature is faulty, or we didn't have the enclosure warm enough, or something, because we thought they were due almost 6 weeks ago. They are the cutest things, and when they have had their first shed I'll post photos, as promised.
On the political front...
As others have said, if I weren't a citizen, I don't think I'd be all that willing to set foot on soil the US Gov't controls. In a suit brought by a Canadian we shipped to Syria (because we have "good" evidence he was involved in terrorism. You have to trust us on this one Yer Honor, because it's classified, so we can't show you, but it was real good evidence. Yes, Yer Honor, the Syrians, after torturing him for a while decided we were wrong, but we don't believe them) about his being shipped to Syria and tortured, said people who pass through the US, enroute to other places have to realise the only right they have is to not face gross physical abuse. They may, according to the brief, be denied food and sleep, be kidnapped and sent to any country we feel like, and all other manner of indignities; so long as the US doesn't perform those indignities.
This is, of course, old news. It broke a week ago. I was engaged in some discussion of it here and here at John Scalzi's Whatever (those posts are worth reading in their own right, as usual the comments are important).
What brings this to mind was something I saw at SCOTUSBlog.
The Justice Department argued on August 2 that the Hamdan ruling "significantly undercuts the claims advanced" by the detainees. The government contended that the Hamdan ruling gave a narrow interpretation to the Supreme Court's ruling allowing the detainees to file habeas petitions. Thus, it argued, the foreign nationals have no constitutional right to due process and, without that, they have no right to any relief in District Court.
No right to due process. Harar wasn't in the US. That's the claim we offered up. He was passing through, wasn't on the other side of Immigration, so he wasn't in the US, which is why we could kidnap him and send him to Syria. Never mind that he was a Canadian citizen, we felt like it, and he was in a place we controlled, but not actually the US, so he loses.
The Hamdan case, on it's face, seems a little harder to make so cut and dried, but only because Syria let Harer go, and so it seems to be different.
No right to due process. Due procces, my friends, is what rule of law is all about. Amendments IV, V, and VI to the Constitution are due process. Dred Scott was about due process, at some level the Revolution was about due process, all we have to do is look to the grievances.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses
The Fifth Amendment says:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The Sixth says:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
No due process means none of that applies. The Gov't has said (though not in so many words) it has the right to take non-citizens (and the case where we paid bounty hunters to go to Mexico and abuduct a suspected murderer of a US agent make this a pretty broad claim of taking), when they aren't in the US, hold them outside the US, compell them to confess and then shoot them (or hang them or do with them as we please). Taken at it's most broad interpretation we don't even have to make them confess, we can just execute them pour encourager les autres.
What galls is the same Gov't saying we can't reveal some of the things which happened in places we control, because those images might cause people to hate us, and decide to attack us.
I think we need to go and re-read the grievances in the Declaration of Independence (which always seem to be glossed over, in favor of the stirring bits at the front).
