Apparently one in which government officials can torture totally innocent people with impunity if they think the person might be a terrorist and one in which prosecutors are granted complete immunity to frame someone for murder.  Hyperbole?  Sadly, no-- just today's news.  Truly, truly depressing.  Each of these totally deserves their own post, but I thought I'd combine because it truly says something about the sad state of our democracy.  

First, the torture bit.  The facts, courtesy of Glenn Greenwald:

  Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent.  A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old.  In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured.  He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured.  Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing...

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation.  That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed  Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent.  A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old.  In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured.  He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured.  Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing...

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation.  That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense...

So, what did the American 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decide?  Sorry, despite the fact that Canada published two phone books worth of material on this case, Arar could not sue the U.S Government in order to protect "state secrets."  Sorry, it is no secret how craven and dismissive of liberty our government has become.  Like the constitutional scholar he is, Greenwald sums it up brilliantly:

In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.  (emphasis mine)

Reflecting the type of people who fill our judiciary, the judges in the majority also invented the most morally depraved bureaucratic requirements for Arar to proceed with his case and then claimed he had failed to meet them.  Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have.  As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement:  it "means government miscreants may avoid [] liability altogether through the simple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury" (p. 27; emphasis added).

If you are not disgusted, you don't deserve your rights.  On a similarly, though not quite as depressing note, the Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in a case in which prosecutors knowingly framed two innocent men and sent them to jail for life, but they argue, and the Obama administration joins them, that prosecutors have absolute immunity in such matters.  Hey, maybe we just need to let prosecutors loose on terrorists.  They can waterboard them, threaten family members, all sorts of good stuff.  That would surely bring in lots of credible and valuable confessions!  Anyway, NPR had a a agreat story on the matter today.  You can listen or read it at the link.  Please do.  Really.

The bright side on this one, is that maybe, just maybe, the US Supreme Court will rule that prosecutors are not actually a law unto themselves.  I'm not holding my breath on that, though.  Sigh.

Generally speaking, I quite like the auto-complete feature on google.  Here's a fun article in Slate that's a bit of amateur sociology, e.g., the different suggestions you get typing in "how 2" versus "how do I" etc.  Pretty interesting.  A sample

vs.

One of my former colleagues and current facebook friends asked for my "trenchant election analysis."  Here goes...

1) There's too damn much election analysis going on!  We are talking about governor's races in 2 states.  Yes, there are some suggestive ideas from this, but to draw broad, meaningful conclusions is folly.  That said...

2) Bad time to be an incumbent, especially a Democratic one.  Let's face it, the economy is still pretty weak and people have not seen the Democrats do all that much for them (most people don't really appreciate that we narrowly escaped a genuine economic catastrophe). Corzine was a really unpopular incumbent in a bad economy-- this is no great Republican victory.

3) McDonnell won Virginia handily by running as a can-do pragmatic moderate Republican.  His record suggests he is, in fact, a fire-breathing, social issues conservative.  I didn't follow the election enough to see how he pulled that off successfully, but hey, nice work.  The most interesting commentary I read on the VA race was TNR's Jason Zengerle who suggested that the rural VA Deeds was never a comfortable fit for Northern Virginians and Dems win Virginia state-wide races by running up huge margins in NoVa.  No matter how much gun-loving, good ol' boy Deeds was, he was never going to pick up a ton of Dem votes south of Fredericksburg and he didn't play particularly well where the Dem votes are.

4) Republicans are angry and energized.  Democrats are complacent.  No surprise that Republicans turned out in dramatically better numbers.  Republicans should also fare better in 2010 as many of the 2008 Obama supporters remain home, but we should not make too much out of this year, because, ultimately, it all depends on...

5) It's the economy stupid.  What yesterday's elections tell us is that if the economy is in roughly the same shape in a year, the Democrats are in for a world of hurt.  Of course, there's more reason than not to expect it to be substantially better.  Regardless, what happens in 2010 will be much more reflective of the economy next Fall than any political undercurrents that the 2009 VA and NJ governor's races reveal.

6) Nate Silver takes a nice statistical approach to it all.

So, recently, I wrote about the Supreme Court hearing a case about whether it was Constitutional for a 13 year-old to receive a life sentence without parole for a crime short of murder.  Turns out there's lots of reasonable doubt as to whether this 13 year old is actually guilty of anything more than burglary, but he was horribly treated by the justice system of Florida-- starting with a pathetic excuse for a lawyer who has been suspended from practicing in Florida.  The whole sorry is pretty shameful.  Questionable witnesses with strong ulterior motives, a victim who thinks the voice her assailant "could very well be his," and a judge who seems somewhat clueless.  Slate's Amy Bach summarizes the travesty.