What propels rape stories to wide attention?

It's always interesting to see which story blows up in the national news and races across the land like a prairie fire.
No, this isn't about Elliott Yamin.
We're talking about the Duke University rape saga, which has become the latest reality crime drama to spontaneously combust in our collective consciousness.
Two rich white boys, members of the Duke lacrosse team, were indicted in the alleged rape of a black stripper at a party March 13.
It's a Molotov cocktail of race, class, sex, sports, booze and politics.
New developments in the Duke rape scandal!
We're tantalized with a flood of evidence, innuendo and plain ol' gossip from breathless cable news personalities with pursed lips and hoisted eyebrows.
Once the journalistic pack starts slavering, every paper, magazine, news show and (ahem) columnist must join in.
Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts suggested the Duke case would've blown up even worse if the racial tables were turned.
"Imagine if the woman were white and reported being raped by three black members of the basketball team. You'd have to call out the National Guard."
Really?
"That hyperbole isn't born out by the facts," said Richmond-area attorney Jeff Everhart.
He's representing one of the four Virginia Union University students indicted last week for allegedly raping a University of Richmond coed on Jan. 21.
All four of the accused are black, two who had ties to the football team. One was a star quarterback as a freshman. All four were considered good kids, attending a historic black university.
The victim is white, an out-of-state student attending the posh University of Richmond, which has Duke-size tuition.
She reportedly left a party at a UR campus apartment with the four. Police say she was assaulted in some woods in western Henrico. Police found her and two of the suspects after neighbors heard a woman's screams.
Alcohol is a factor, as it is in the Duke case. Similarly, DNA tests will play a starring role.
But not a peep about the VUU case in the national media. The indictments played on Page B3 of this paper, while the Duke case started in our Sports pages and eventually made our front page.
We never reported the race of the UR coed because there's no indication race played any role in the alleged attack.
"Race is not a consideration in the case," noted attorney Everhart.
He, too, has noticed the glaring disparity in the news coverage.
So has William Viverette, who is representing another one of the VUU students.
"The two cases are being treated differently, that's for sure," Viverette said. But he's grateful the case, and his client, hasn't been dragged through the national media.
Also pleased is Henrico County's top prosecutor, Wade Kizer.
"When the media takes over a case, it takes on a completely different life," Kizer said. "The best thing for all parties is when that doesn't happen."
We get oh-so caught up in these national sagas of the missing, the murdered and the accused. We hungrily consume the details. We feel real passion about the players.
What can we learn from it?
The Duke/VUU cases may show that columnist Pitts has it backward -- that we're more alert for white-on-black, rich-on-poor crime.
That's a natural swing of pendulum from its past position.
Let's hope someday soon it'll settle in the middle.
Meanwhile, we'll continue to be surprised at what we wind up caring about, and what we don't.

Resource for an online education

http://www.eliteskills.com/free_education/
A huge resource page with tons of links.

The Pirate Bay plans to buy island

Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy its own nation in an attempt to circumvent international copyright laws.The group has set up a campaign to raise money to buy Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a 'micronation', and claims to be outside the jurisdiction of the UK or any other country.
The Pirate Bay says it is the world's largest 'bit torrent tracker', and is a popular way of sharing music, films, software and other copyrighted material online. It has been under the scrutiny of authorities in Sweden and around the world for some time. The site was briefly closed down after raids by the Swedish police last May. After initially moving to the Netherlands, the site returned to Sweden in June. Swedish authorities have been put under pressure to do more to stop the site. The Motion Picture Association of America, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and the US government have all lobbied for The Pirate Bay's closure. According to a website set up to secure the purchase of Sealand, The Pirate Bay plans to give citizenship of the micronation to anyone willing to put money towards the purchase."It should be a great place for everybody, with high-speed Internet access, no copyright laws and VIP accounts to The Pirate Bay," the organisation claims on its website www.buysealand.com.The "island" of Sealand, seven miles off the coast of southern England, was settled in 1967 by an English major, Paddy Roy Bates. Bates proclaimed Sealand a state, issuing passports and gold and silver Sealand dollars and declaring himself Prince Roy.When the British Royal Navy tried to evict Prince Roy in 1968, a judge ruled that the platform was outside British territorial waters and therefore beyond government control.The British government subsequently extended its territorial waters from three to twelve nautical miles from the coast, which would include Sealand, but Prince Roy simultaneously extended Sealand's waters, claimed that this guaranteed Sealand's sovereignty.The island is now being put up for sale by Prince Roy's son, Prince Michael, who styles himself head of state. A firm of Spanish estate agents has valued the island at £504 million (about 7 billion kronor), although Prince Michael told The Times of London that it is hard to gauge how much it will fetch in reality.The Pirate Bay says it is looking at alternatives to buying the former naval platform."If we do not get enough money required to buy the micronation of Sealand, we will try to buy another small island somwhere and claim it as our own country," the organization says on its website.
James Savage

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

Ebocha, Nigeria — Justice Eta, 14 months old, held out his tiny thumb.An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Justice squirmed in his mother's arms. His face was beaded with sweat caused either by illness or by heat from the flames that illuminate Ebocha day and night. Ebocha means "city of lights."The makeshift clinic at a church where Justice Eta was vaccinated and the flares spewing over Ebocha represent a head-on conflict for the Gates Foundation. In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.In Ebocha, where Justice lives, Dr. Elekwachi Okey, a local physician, says hundreds of flares at oil plants in the Niger Delta have caused an epidemic of bronchitis in adults, and asthma and blurred vision in children. No definitive studies have documented the health effects, but many of the 250 toxic chemicals in the fumes and soot have long been linked to respiratory disease and cancer."We're all smokers here," Okey said, "but not with cigarettes."The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day and contribute to global warming than to sell it. They deny the flaring causes sickness. Under pressure from activists, however, Nigeria's high court set a deadline to end flaring by May 2007. The gases would be injected back underground, or trucked and piped out for sale. But authorities expect the flares to burn for years beyond the deadline.The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.Indeed, local leaders blame oil development for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.Oil workers, for example, and soldiers protecting them are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy, both targets in the Gates Foundation's efforts to ease the ills of society, especially among the poor. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting.Investigators for Dr. Nonyenim Solomon Enyidah, health commissioner for Rivers State, where Ebocha is located, cite an oil spill clogging rivers as a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The rivers, Enyidah said, "became breeding grounds for all kinds of waterborne diseases."The bright, sooty gas flares — which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium — lower immunity, Enyidah said, and make children such as Justice Eta more susceptible to polio and measles — the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate him against.Investing for profitAT the end of 2005, the Gates Foundation endowment stood at $35 billion, making it the largest in the world. Then in June 2006, Warren E. Buffett, the world's second-richest man after Bill Gates, pledged to add about $31 billion in installments from his personal fortune. Not counting tens of billions of dollars more that Gates himself has promised, the total is higher than the gross domestic products of 70% of the world's nations.Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest.It invests the other 95% of its worth. This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates' personal fortune. Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said the investment managers had one goal: returns "that will allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making." Bill and Melinda Gates require the managers to keep a highly diversified portfolio, but make no specific directives.By comparing these investments with information from for-profit services that analyze corporate behavior for mutual funds, pension managers, government agencies and other foundations, The Times found that the Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices.One of these investment rating services, Calvert Group Ltd., for example, endorses 52 of the largest 100 U.S. companies based on market capitalization, but flags the other 48 for transgressions against social responsibility. Microsoft Corp., which Bill Gates leads as board chairman, is rated highly for its overall business practices, despite its history of antitrust problems.In addition, The Times found the Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in:
read the rest here at the LA times site http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/la-na-gatesx07jan07,1,6295205.story?coll=la-headlines-business-invest&ctrack=1&cset=true

Revealed: how Scientologists infiltrated Britain's schools

Insight: Drugs charity is front for ‘dangerous’ organisation
Devotees of the Church of Scientology have gained access to thousands of British children through a charity that visits schools to lecture on the dangers of drugs. A Sunday Times investigation has found that Marlborough College is one of more than 500 schools across Britain where the charity has taught.
Critics of the charity, Narconon, say it is a front to promote the teaching of Scientology — the controversial “religion” founded by L Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer.
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Schools contacted last week said they knew nothing about the charity’s links with Scientology. There is no apparent reference to the church in its drugs education literature.
Narconon’s UK website states that its work is based on Hubbard’s “drug rehabilitation technology” and displays his photograph; but it refers to him as an author rather than the founder of Scientology.
Narconon promotes a number of unorthodox theories and treatments — based on Hubbard’s work — which experts say are not backed by scientific evidence. In California, where Narconon has its international headquarters, the state department of education has advised schools against using the charity.
The UK prisons ombudsman has warned governors to ban it from jails because of its Scientology association. Narconon’s international website claims: “The ministry of health in England (sic) has also directly funded Narconon residential rehabilitation.” But the Department of Health denies any knowledge of this.
Last week, during a conversation with an undercover reporter, the charity named eight of the schools it has visited. They included Coombe Girls, a state school in New Malden, Surrey, Golden Hillock, a secondary school in Birmingham, the Arts Educational London Schools (AELS), a private school in Chiswick, west London, and Ricards Lodge, a high school in Wimbledon, southwest London.
A number of the schools, including Marlborough, refused to comment on their use of the charity. Those that did said they were unaware of its Scientology background.
Parents, a senior MP and a mainstream drug advisory group expressed concern that it was being allowed to teach children.
John Gummer, the former cabinet minister, said: “Scientology is a dangerous organisation. It doesn’t stand up intellectually and scientifically. It is rather bad science fiction. If Scientologists have been getting into schools under the guise of a drug charity it is very worrying. Schools must know exactly who they are letting in and should not have anything to do with Scientologists.”
An undercover reporter approached Narconon last week posing as a businessman interested in hiring the charity to work in a number of schools. Lucy Skirrow, the Narconon director dealing with schools, is a Scientologist from west London. She named Marlborough College — the Wiltshire school whose former pupils include Kate Middleton, Prince William’s girlfriend — as a reference to endorse Narconon’s work.
Skirrow said: “We lectured to about 56,000 students and teachers last year and we did 38,000 the year before . . . It has an effect . . . Kids say their viewpoints actually do change.” She went on to claim: “A lot of behaviour in kids is because they are not getting the right nutrition, then they might end up taking drugs. Then, of course, drugs destroy vitamins in the body and it becomes a worse thing.”
Her description of the charity’s philosophy appears in more detail on the Narconon website. Here it claims that drugs stay in a user’s fatty tissue for years but can be flushed away using a regime of vitamins and saunas. This is derived from the works of Hubbard and is hotly disputed by mainstream drug therapists and scientists.
Perhaps these unorthodox views — and Hubbard’s name on the website and in Narconon’s annual report — should have rung alarm bells with teachers at Marlborough and the other schools that pay the charity £140 a session to lecture their pupils. But it was not until this weekend — when contacted by The Sunday Times — that the schools appear to have become aware of how controversial Narconon is.
The charity, based in St Leonards, East Sussex, claims to be an independent organisation. But Professor Stephen Kent, a Canadian academic who is an authority on Scientology, said: “The connection between Narconon and Scientology is solid. Of course, Scientology tries to get non-Scientologists involved in the programme, but the engine behind the programme is Scientology.”
THE disclosures come as the Church of Scientology is engaged in a push to win new disciples and gain acceptance in British society.
Its critics claim it is a cult that uses hard-sell and mind control to separate devotees from their money and, in more serious cases, from their families. Scientologists reject this and claim to have a good record in resolving family conflicts.

Gunmen Attack National Guard Border Patrol Site in Arizona

TUCSON, Ariz. — National Guard troops working at an observatory post near the Mexican border were forced to flee after being approached by a group of armed individuals, authorities said.
The event occurred about 11 p.m. Wednesday at one of the National Guard entrance identification team posts near Sasabe, said National Guard Sgt. Edward Balaban.
He said the troops withdrew safely, no shots were fired and no one suffered injuries.
U.S. Border Patrol officials are investigating the incident and trying to determine who the armed people were, what they were doing and why they approached the post before retreating to Mexico.
The incident occurred in the west desert corridor between Nogales and Lukeville in the vicinity of Sasabe, Balaban said.
"We don't know exactly how many because obviously it took place in the dark," Balaban said. "Nobody was able to get an accurate count."
The Guard troops are not allowed to apprehend illegal entrants.
"We don't know if this was a matter of somebody coming up accidentally on the individuals, coming up intentionally on the individuals, or some sort of a diversion," said Rob Daniels, spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.
The west desert corridor has been the busiest in the Tucson Sector for marijuana seizures since last year.
Agents have seized 124,000 pounds of marijuana there since Oct. 1, Daniels said.
With more Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops patrolling the Arizona section of the U.S.-Mexican border, it has become more difficult to smuggle drugs and people across and "that heightened frustration may have been connected to what took place last night," Daniels said.
Officials will make a decision following the investigation about whether changes need to be made in regard to the entrance identification teams, Balaban said.
Since arriving in mid-June, the Guard has assisted the Border Patrol by manning control rooms, doing vehicle and helicopter maintenance, repairing roads and fences, constructing vehicle barriers and fences and spotting and reporting illegal entrants in entrance identification teams.
There are dozens of National Guard entrance identification teams along the Mexican border, including east and west of both Nogales and Sasabe and on the Tohono O'odham Nation.
The troops stand post on hilltops next to army-green tents and serve as extra eyes and ears for the Border Patrol.

Texas Man Stages Pig Races to Protest Islamic Neighbor's Plans to Build Mosque

KATY, Texas — When an Islamic group moved in next door and told Craig Baker the pigs on his family's 200-year-old Texas farm had to go, he and his swine decided to fight back.
In protest of being asked to move, Davis began staging elaborate pig races on Friday afternoons — one of the Islamic world's most holy days.
• Video: Oinkers Are Off to the Races
Craig's neighbors, the Katy Islamic Association, have plans to build a mosque and community compound on the 11 acres they purchased alongside his farm.
Baker, 46, a stone-shop owner whose family has owned the farm for two centuries, says the association knew about the pigs when they bought the property, and it's not fair for them to ask him to get rid of the animals.
"I am just defending my rights and my property," Baker said. "They totally disrespected me and my family."
Initially Baker and Kamel Fotouh, the president of the 500-member Islamic Association, were on good terms. But things turned sour at a town meeting, where Baker says Fotouh insulted him by asking him to move.
"That was the last straw for me ... calling me a liar, especially in front of three or four hundred people at that meeting," Baker said. "Mr. Fotouh said it would be a good idea if I considered packing up my stuff and moving out further to the country."
Fotouh says his group has to construct the mosque because the others in the Houston area don't provide the kind of environment they are looking for.
"We feel that these mosques are not fulfilling the needs of the community as they should. So, our vision is to have an integrated facility," said Fotouh.
He said the pig races no longer bother him or his members, and they're going ahead with their plans to construct the mosque.
Muslims do not hate pigs, he added, they just don't eat them.
Neighbors have been showing support for Baker's races, even coming in the pouring rain and giving donations ranging from $100 to $1000 to sponsor the events.
Last Friday, more than 100 attended the pig races, and many say they don't want the mosque either. Some fear it will appear out of place and hurt their property values.

PARIS HILTON, liar, alcoholic, and whore

Partying heiress tells British GQ magazine that she’s ‘very shy’

So shy she sucked n fucked Rick soloon on tape and then sold it worldwide? oooo k ????

LONDON - Paris Hilton, the 25-year-old who gained international fame when a former boyfriend posted a videotape of the couple having sex on the Internet, denied leading a promiscuous lifestyle in an interview with the British edition of GQ magazine.
“I’m not having sex for a year. ... I’ll kiss, but nothing else,” says Hilton, who told the magazine she has had sex with only two men during her lifetime. {Sucking cock counts as sex paris jeeeesus}
Of the videotape with Rick Solomon that became one of the most searched-for items on the Internet in 2003, she said: “I never received a dime from it. It’s just dirty money and he should give it all to some charity for the sexually abused or something.”
The Hilton Hotels heir and uber-socialite told the magazine she is “very shy” and relates to the late Princess Diana, who was hounded by photographers. {when the diana sex tape surfaces i will belive this shit}
“I’ve been in cars trying to get away from speeding paparazzi before and it’s horrible {your drunken driving or the paparatttttziiiii}, so I can relate to Diana and the problems she had,” Hilton is quoted as saying.
Who's Tony Blair? Hilton asks During the interview, Hilton also displayed some political illiteracy.
When asked about British Prime Minister Tony Blair, her response was: “Who? ... Oh, yeah, he’s like your president. I don’t know what he looks like.”{but im sure id fuck him" she commented im sure}
Hilton also told the magazine she collects $500,000 in fees just to show up at parties and other events from Las Vegas to Tokyo. Her best-paying gig, she said, was a recent Austrian appearance. {proving once again the austrians are completely without taste and insane}
“I had to say ‘hi’ and tell them why I loved Austria so much,” she is quoted as saying.
And why does she like Austria? “Because they pay me $1 million to wave at crowds!”

Red Bull Not the Best Mixer

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2759942&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

click the link above and read about the dangers of mixing alcohol and red bull and other stimulants.

Prison gadgets

Entertaining look at prison gadgets. Pics and video also :

http://crimesift.com/2007/01/01/cagy-criminal-and-their-investions-to-cope-with-challenges-in-the-prison/

Iranian censorship of magazines

A man finds censorship examples in modern magazines purchased on a trip thru iran. A very interesting read with lots of pictures. go read it here:

http://jturn.qem.se/2006/more-pictures-of-iranian-censorship/

Stephen King's top ten movies of 2006

When the movie studios think about selling their product, do baby boomers still play a part in their calculations? Sure. Am I a good representative of that particular target audience? I think so. Still violently in love with motion pictures? Check. Got some extra time each week to go catch one? Check. And while I may be getting on a bit, I'm still not eligible for the Golden Ager discount at the box office and still like the things I always did: a drama that engages the brain and the heart (The Prestige), a belly laugh that bypasses the brain entirely (Borat, Jackass Number Two), a horror movie that scares the hell out of me (Hostel, f'r instance), and rip-ass action films (Déjà Vu, Waist Deep).
But if I am Mr. Ideal Baby-Boom Moviegoer, the studios may be headed for rough water, in spite of this year's uptick in grosses. The boomers aren't getting any younger, and it's not as easy to get us off our couches and out of the house. Complicating the problem is this simple fact: These days it's much more entertaining to stay in than it used to be. The Dukes of Hazzards are gone, sweetie. In their place have come shows like Jericho, Heroes, and Prison Break. Not to mention a certain bunch of castaways on an endlessly fascinating tropical isle...and this amusing guy named Earl.
Plus, there are intriguing new ways to get this TV bonanza (Bonanza's long gone too, replaced by the vastly more entertaining interstellar cowboys of Battlestar Galactica). And one of the old advantages the eightplex held over TV — multiple viewing opportunities — has been erased. Thanks to TiVo and iTunes, Constant Viewer is no longer a slave to the schedule. Even if you miss a whole season, no problem — there's the boxed set. Put it on your Christmas list. Viewers with HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax are even freed of the tyranny of network censorship (not that there's much anymore — check out this season's run of 24, where I keep expecting to see a theme park called Torture World).
As a result of the above, my own moviegoing has taken a drastic plunge since last we met for this particular year-end list: just 45 movies from Dec. 7, 2005, to about that same date in '06. Many were great, but not one had the cumulative effect of 13 back-to-back-to-back Prison Break episodes. The PB story may spend a lot of time in Gooney-Bird Land, but the cumulative effect is riveting...like watching a Sam Peckinpah maxiseries.
So watch out, studios. There's trouble in paradise. And if you don't believe it, look at the grosses of the latest Clint Eastwood picture...and consider this: I write for an entertainment publication and never even saw it. I could have; I had the time, I had the money, and I loved Big Clint's last two pictures. Bu-ut...I was busy at home. Watching Jericho on my computer.
That said, here's my list of the best I've seen since last December. Not a critic's list, remember; I'm just another schlub in the popcorn line.
10. The World's Fastest Indian Anthony Hopkins as a motorcycle racer. What else do you need to know? Oh, the movie's great — funny and moving.
9. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada Frakkin' horrible title. Great movie. Tommy Lee Jones channels Cormac McCarthy...and it works.
8. Waist Deep This is old-school urban action, honey, the way they don't hardly make 'em no more. Starring the immensely likable Tyrese Gibson.
7. Snakes on a Plane You got your basic snakes on a plane, you got Samuel L. Jackson doing his thing, and a good-humored, high-tension script that recalls the first two Bruce Willis Die Hard pictures. So, hey — what's not to like?
6. The Illusionist Two movies featuring magicians from the early 1900s came out this year. I saw both, liked both. What made The Illusionist special for me was Edward Norton dueling with Paul Giamatti, and an ending that compelled me back into the theater at once to see how I had been tricked.
5. The Descent The best horror movie of the year, beyond doubt. Possibly because the main characters are all adults, for a change? The sense of doom-laden claustrophobia this movie generates is intense and remarkable.
4. Casino Royale I came out of the theater thinking it was the best Bond since Goldfinger. A subsequent viewing of Goldfinger — for this column — has convinced me it's the best Bond ever.
3. The Departed Ensemble ''star power'' movies hardly ever work, but when they do, they can be cool. The Departed is can't-take-your-eyes-off-it entertainment. Matt Damon continues to amaze me with his versatility.
2. United 93 If this emotionally wrenching docudrama isn't nominated for Best Picture, the Academy should be ashamed of itself.
1. Pan's Labyrinth I happened to see this in July and was completely seduced by its beauty and emotional ferocity. Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Mimic, Blade II) directed, and to call this his best work isn't enough. I think this extraordinary R-rated fairy tale for adults is the best fantasy film since The Wizard of Oz. And while it's much darker than Wizard, it still celebrates the human spirit. Your Uncle Stevie thinks you will see this movie.
The question for studios and filmmakers remains, however: How many others will you see in the next 5 to 10 years?

the bill of wrongs

The Bill of Wrongs

The 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006.By Dahlia LithwickPosted Saturday, Dec. 30, 2006, at 6:30 AM ET
I love those year-end roundups—ubiquitous annual lists of greatest films and albums and lip glosses and tractors. It's reassuring that all human information can be wrestled into bundles of 10. In that spirit, Slate proudly presents, the top 10 civil liberties nightmares of the year:
10. Attempt to Get Death Penalty for Zacarias MoussaouiLong after it was clear the hapless Frenchman was neither the "20th hijacker" nor a key plotter in the attacks of 9/11, the government pressed to execute him as a "conspirator" in those attacks. Moussaoui's alleged participation? By failing to confess to what he may have known about the plot, which may have led the government to disrupt it, Moussaoui directly caused the deaths of thousands of people. This massive overreading of the federal conspiracy laws would be laughable were the stakes not so high. Thankfully, a jury rejected the notion that Moussaoui could be executed for the crime of merely wishing there had been a real connection between himself and 9/11.
9. Guantanamo BayIt takes a licking but it keeps on ticking. After the Supreme Court struck down the military tribunals planned to try hundreds of detainees moldering on the base, and after the president agreed that it might be a good idea to close it down, the worst public relations fiasco since the Japanese internment camps lives on. Prisoners once deemed "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth" are either quietly released (and usually set free) or still awaiting trial. The lucky 75 to be tried there will be cheered to hear that the Pentagon has just unveiled plans to build a $125 million legal complex for the hearings. The government has now officially put more thought into the design of Guantanamo's court bathrooms than the charges against its prisoners.
8. Slagging the MediaWhether the Bush administration is reclassifying previously declassified documents, sidestepping the FOIA, threatening journalists for leaks on dubious legal grounds, or, most recently, using its subpoena power to try to wring secret documents from the ACLU, the administration has continued its "secrets at any price" campaign. Is this a constitutional crisis? Probably not. Annoying as hell? Definitely.
7. Slagging the CourtsIt starts with the president's complaints about "activist judges," and evolves to Congressional threats to appoint an inspector general to oversee federal judges. As public distrust of the bench is fueled, the stripping of courts' authority to hear whole classes of cases—most recently any habeas corpus claims from Guantanamo detainees—almost seems reasonable. Each tiny incursion into the independence of the judiciary seems justified. Until you realize that the courts are often the only places that will defend our shrinking civil liberties. This leads to ...
6. The State-Secrets DoctrineThe Bush administration's insane argument in court is that judges should dismiss entire lawsuits over many of the outrages detailed on this very list. Why? Because the outrageously illegal things are themselves matters of top-secret national security. The administration has raised this claim in relation to its adventures in secret wiretapping and its fun with extraordinary rendition. A government privilege once used to sidestep civil claims has mushroomed into sweeping immunity for the administration's sometimes criminal behavior.
5. Government SnoopingTake your pick. There's the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program wherein the president breezily authorized spying on the phone calls of innocent citizens, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FBI's TALON database shows the government has been spying on nonterrorist groups, including Quakers, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and Veterans for Peace. The Patriot Act lives on. And that's just the stuff we know about.
4. Extraordinary RenditionSo, when does it start to become ordinary rendition? This government program has us FedEx-ing unindicted terror suspects abroad for interrogation/torture. Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen, was shipped off to Afghanistan for such treatment and then released without charges, based on some government confusion about his name. Heh heh. Canadian citizen Maher Arar claims he was tortured in Syria for a year, released without charges, and cleared by a Canadian commission. Attempts to vindicate the rights of such men? You'd need to circle back to the state-secrets doctrine, above.
3. Abuse of Jose PadillaFirst, he was, according to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, "exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States." Then, he was planning to blow up apartments. Then he was just part of a vague terror conspiracy to commit jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya. Always, he was a U.S. citizen. After three and a half years, in which he was denied the most basic legal rights, it has now emerged that Padilla was either outright tortured or near-tortured. According to a recent motion, during Padilla's years of almost complete isolation, he was treated by the U.S. government to sensory and sleep deprivation, extreme cold, stress positions, threats of execution, and drugging with truth serum. Experts say he is too mentally damaged to stand trial. The Bush administration supported his motion for a mental competency assessment, in hopes that will help prevent his torture claims from ever coming to trial, or, as Yale Law School's inimitable Jack Balkin put it: "You can't believe Padilla when he says we tortured him because he's crazy from all the things we did to him."
2. The Military Commissions Act of 2006This was the so-called compromise legislation that gave President Bush even more power than he initially had to detain and try so-called enemy combatants. He was generously handed the authority to define for himself the parameters of interrogation and torture and the responsibility to report upon it, since he'd been so good at that. What we allegedly did to Jose Padilla was once a dirty national secret. The MCA made it the law.
1. HubrisWhenever the courts push back against the administration's unsupportable constitutional ideas—ideas about "inherent powers" and a "unitary executive" or the silliness of the Geneva Conventions or the limitless sweep of presidential powers during wartime—the Bush response is to repeat the same chorus louder: Every detainee is the worst of the worst; every action taken is legal, necessary, and secret. No mistakes, no apologies. No nuance, no regrets. This legal and intellectual intractability can create the illusion that we are standing on the same constitutional ground we stood upon in 2001, even as that ground is sliding away under our feet.