Not Good Enough

How dare you take advantage of MY blithering idiot!
--Ren and Stimpy


Nixon. . .was blessed with a mixture of arrogance and stupidity that caused him to blow the boilers almost immediately after taking command. By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers, and fascists to run the Government, he was able to crank almost every problem he touched into mind-bending crisis…

--"Fear and Loathing in the Bunker," Hunter Thompson (1974)

________

To the late Mr. Thompson: It's deja vu, all over again.

The Jose Padilla trial should be of interest to all Americans, yet recently it only rated a page 12 mention in the New York Times, as part of a reporter's impressions of the trial's progress (Mysteries, Legal and Sartorial, at Padilla Trial).

Reporter Goodnough mentions the training camp application which prosecutors are having trouble making stick,

"because they have no witnesses who saw Mr. Padilla fill out the form, and the phone recordings [which] make him sound more troubled than malign. They suggest Mr. Padilla, a former gang member in Chicago and fast-food worker in South Florida, struggled to fit in and learn Arabic in Egypt, where he moved in 1998.

“'Basically, he is a slow learner,' one of Mr. Padilla’s associates told another in 1999, five months after he arrived in Cairo. "

Mr. Padilla and co-defendant Adham Hassoun are escorted to their cells each night by a "phalanx of marshals," while a third defendant Kifah Jayyousi--a Jordanian-American -- goes home with his family.

It seems we treat foreigners betters than we treat U.S.-born citizens, like Padilla. Though his guilt--of something--seems a forgone conclusion at this point, Padilla remains in fact not guilty until proven so by a jury's decision.

"The government has not linked any of the defendants to specific violent acts. So unless a bombshell is pending, the jurors will have to decide whether the government’s interpretation of the intercepted calls is credible. . ."

"On July 3, the first row [of jurors] wore red, the second white and the third blue, leading bloggers to wonder whether they were worrisomely frivolous or unified — or so patriotic as to condemn all accused terrorists."

Ranger cannot begin to understand how a judge would allow such an obvious jury statement. This wordless "Bring it on," is a repugnant phony patriotic partisan display, and should be the basis of a mistrial, or at least the rationale for an appeal, should Padilla be convicted.

What a fine example of the joke the Department of Justice has become.

What Happens in Secret Detention, Stays . . .

[U]nless the American democracy figures out how to control the
Presidency in war and peace. . .our system of government will face grave troubles.''

--The Imperial Presidency (1973), Arthur M. Schlesinger


If boxes could be stolen in America,
one could surely tell a lie now and then as well.
–Amerika, Franz Kafka


Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind
only the slime of a new bureaucracy
--Franz Kafka

___________

Padilla may be getting his day in court, but he is playing against a stacked deck (''Padilla Trial Judge Getting Good Marks.'')

News reports note, ''Padilla, 36, a U.S. citizen, was accused initially of plotting to detonate a radioactive 'dirty bomb' inside the United States, but those allegations are not part of the Miami indictment.''

Why mention the irrelevant initial accusation? He was not accused because he was never charged with that offense. It did not hold, yet he is being tarred with that brush.

It is a lesson well-learned in this administration--innuendo and suggestion can go a long way in an atmosphere of paranoia. More bang for your buck. Deliberate consideration of the facts seems to have become a antiquated construct banished to the arcane legal realm of the courtroom.

Attorney General Ashcroft was not hampered by the absence of a jury conviction when he publicly convicted Padilla of his alleged participation in this alleged crime. All while Padilla was arrested in Miami and promptly disappeared down a rabbit hole of secret imprisonment without charges or trial, decencies which have been erased from our federal court system.

''Siding with federal prosecutors, [Judge Marcia] Cooke would not permit the torture allegations to become part of the case and found Padilla mentally fit to stand trial. She also refused to dismiss the charges on claims that his lengthy detention violated constitutional speedy trial rights, ruling that what happened to Padilla before he arrived in Miami was irrelevant.''

How could it be irrelevant that Padilla was illegally imprisoned and tortured?

''Padilla's entry in 2005 brought many complications, including defense claims that he was tortured while he was held at a Navy brig as an enemy combatant and that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder because of it.''

Solitary confinement and open-ended imprisonment are pretty good definitions of torture in themselves. All other claims of torture in the Padilla case are frosting on this cake.


"The judge in this type of case is under enormous pressure because every action is so closely scrutinized by the attorneys, the press and the public." It is about time somebody scrutinize this case. It outrages this Ranger that my government behaves in an outrageous, dictatorial third-world manner.

It is hard to act the paragon of virtue, exporting democracy to sand pits, while plying the dungeon trade this side of the pond.