Politics

From The Week, September 15, 2006:

Strasbourg, France Two elderly sisters are suing the British government for the same right to inherit each other's property that gay couples enjoy. Joyce and Sybil Burden, ages 88 and 80, have lived together in their Wiltshire home all their lives. When one of them dies, the other will have no choice but to sell the home to pay the inheritance tax. If they were gay civil partners, though, they would be exempt from the tax. The Burdens have appealed to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, arguing that British law discriminates against siblings. Even if the court eventually rules in their favor, it could be too late to save the house. Human-rights cases generally take years to reach a verdict.

Via Today's Papers on Slate.com, from an editorial in the NY Times:

Here's what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans' fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws - while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser... These are some of the bill's biggest flaws: Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of "illegal enemy combatant" in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted. The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret - there's no requirement that this list be published. Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence. Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial. Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable - already a contradiction in terms - and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses. Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence. Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

Also via Today's Papers on Slate.com, from an article titled "Legal Battle Over Detainee Bill Is Likely" in the LA Times:

The measure's most disputed provision would block foreign prisoners held by the military from turning to the federal courts to end their imprisonment. By preventing detainees from challenging their confinement in court, it sets up a potential constitutional conflict before the Supreme Court... "This legislation will give the president the tools he needs to protect American lives without compromising our core democratic values," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said. But some lawmakers, Republicans as well as Democrats, called the move to suspend habeas corpus - the demand for legal justification of one's imprisonment - a historic mistake, and one that could cause the entire bill to be struck down. "This is wrong; it is unconstitutional; it is un-American," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The judiciary panel's chairman, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), said, "Surely as we are standing here, if this bill is passed and habeas corpus is stricken, we'll be back on this floor again" grappling with a future ruling against it by the Supreme Court. Still, Specter was one of 53 Republicans who joined 12 Democrats in voting for the final bill. Leahy was among 32 Democrats who opposed it, along with one independent and one Republican - Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who is locked in a tough fight for reelection in his Democratic-leaning state.

Without compromising our democratic values, Sen. Coburn? What a joke. Last night I watched the first half of "On Native Soil," the "documentary of the 9/11 commission report" which aired recently on courtTV. I learned some things I didn't know...e.g., that the port authority, responsible for the WTC, had no plan for rescuing people trapped on floors above a fire and that people in the second tower who tried to leave after the first tower was hit were told to go back to their offices. It was so sad seeing the elderly couple talk about the phone call from their son just before UA Flight 175 hit the second tower. It's tragic that such a horrible event has led to so much more tragedy (hundreds of thousand of dead civilians in Iraq and Americans justifying torture).

This week's episode of the The Hill was really interesting...watching Wexler and his staff trying to decide whether or not to vote for the Republican-introduced bill to withdraw immediately from Iraq (which they introduced after Murtha called for withdrawal to basically force Democrats to vote to stay in Iraq) and what a game the whole process was.

From The Week, September 15, 2006, p 8:

The Bureau of Land Management admitted this week it had failed to track the environmental consequences of oil and gas drilling on public lands. When the Bush administration first opened the Rockies to drilling six years ago, the BLM promised to monitor the activity's effects on water and wildlife. But in a confidential report obtained by The Washington Post, the bureau said its inspectors were too busy reviewing drilling applications to perform environmental studies.

The Washington Post article is here. Wonder why some folks are skeptical about the government's commitment to properly balance business and environmental concerns?

Via Today's Papers, from an article of the same title in the LA Times:

As Democrats drive to extend their power in Congress, holding on to Debbie Stabenow's Senate seat is a must. And the Michigan incumbent is currently ahead in the polls. But Republican strategists are working hard to upset Stabenow, in part through a low-profile appeal to a group that most politicians rarely think of as a voting bloc - snowmobilers. And the stealth campaign to woo the thousands of working-class, historically Democratic Michiganders whose cold-weather passion is snowmobiles is just one small example of a technique known as "micro-targeting" that GOP strategists are using across the country as they try to pull off another election day victory against the odds. By most measures, the November elections offer Democrats their best chance in years. If anti-Republican sentiment turns out to be a tidal wave, strategic and tactical brilliance may not be enough to protect the GOP majorities in Congress. But if control of Congress comes down to three or four dozen closely contested races, as now seems likely, then micro-targeting and the other technologies that Republicans are using in battleground states could make a difference. The GOP system - built around a database nicknamed Voter Vault - combines huge amounts of demographic, financial and other personal information on individual voters with the data-mining techniques used by direct-mail advertisers to deliver surgically targeted appeals to voters identified as likely to respond, including many who might be considered part of the Democratic base. In Michigan, for example, the GOP contacted snowmobilers by mail, telephone or other personal communication suggesting that Democrats' environmental views stood in the way of greater opportunities for snowmobiling. Though details of the GOP system are secret, snowmobilers and other categories of voters are identified from such diverse sources as credit card transactions, product warranty files, magazine subscription lists, consumer surveys, vehicle registrations and other public records.