what's going on here (part XXI)...

can someone explain...

1. New Generation of Qaeda Chiefs Is Seen on Rise

As Al Qaeda rebuilds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a new generation of leaders has emerged under Osama bin Laden to cement control over the network’s operations, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials....

Top American officials said that, despite the damage to the structure of Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks, concern is still high that the group is determined to attack globally.

There is an Aesop fable that immediately comes to mind. This is the end:

"We'll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning," he said, putting his arm around the youth, "Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth!"

Sad, isn't it, that we have become a country who operates at two extremes: fear for the worst and doubtful of a possibe reality? My father always told me to never tell a lie - no one believes the truth anyway...


2. Supreme Court Denies Guantanamo Appeal

he Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from Guantanamo detainees who want challenge their five-year-long confinement in court, a victory for the Bush administration's legal strategy in its fight against terrorism.

This is not as bad as it seems.

The victory may be only temporary, however. The high court twice previously has extended legal protections to prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Cuba....

At issue is whether prisoners held at Guantanamo have a right to habeas corpus review, a basic tenet of the Constitution that protects people from unlawful imprisonment....

But the administration said that because of changes in the law since 2004 there was no need for the justices to hurry. Congress has authorized military hearings to assess whether the prisoners are being properly detained as enemy combatants. Those decisions can be appealed in a limited fashion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the same court that ruled in the administration's favor in February.

In other words, because of a change in the law after earlier court cases, the procedure is in place. So...

''There is no need for this court to assess the adequacy of the...review before it has taken place,'' Solicitor General Paul Clement, the administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote.

The revisions in the re-worked law haven't been tested yet. SCOTUS is saying that they would be jumping the gun, if they ruled right now. The article ends by saying the court will have to hear the cases eventually. Though the bushies are claiming this as a victory, it is not. They will still have to go through the process and the court, in those cases having followed the process, have basically sided with habeaus corpus and the detainees. This shows that the court system is functioning, even though it does not like the knots the administration has put it into. It is going to take years for the U.S. to get out of the messes that King George W and Crown Prince Cheney have gotten us into.

3. Justices: EPA Can Control Car Emissions

The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars....

The Bush EPA has refused to determine if greenhouse gases are a threat to the environment. Massachusetts, eleven other states and thirteen groups brought suit against the EPS.

The dissention, written by Chief Justice Roberts, didn't focus on the issue of global warming. Rather, he put his attention the the right of states and groups to file suit:

In his dissent, Roberts focused on the issue of standing, whether a party has the right to file a lawsuit.

The court should simply recognize that redress of the kind of grievances spelled out by the state of Massachusetts is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts, Roberts said.

That's it. Don't face the issue - work harder to give the imperial presidency more power to expand its empire and wealth...


4. Briton tells of his four-year ‘nightmare’ at Guantanamo just some highlights from the timesonline -

A former Guantanamo Bay detainee spoke yesterday of the sense of hopelessness he felt during his 4½year incarceration at the internment camp.... Mr al-Rawi was detained in The Gambia in 2002 while on a business trip and flown to Afghanistan and then Guantanamo by the CIA.

“The hopelessness you feel can hardly be described. You are asked the same questions hundreds of times. Allegations are made against you that are laughably untrue but you have no chance to prove them wrong.

“There is no trial, no fair legal process. I was alleged to have participated in terrorist training in Bosnia and Afghanistan. I’ve never been to Bosnia and the only time I visited Afghanistan was thanks to the hospitality of the CIA in an underground prison – the Dark Prison – outside Kabul.”

“Bisher has been through almost unimaginable difficulties . . . kept in an underground prison, beaten, subjected to temperature extremes and to extended isolation.”

We are quite a democratically civilized country. aren't we?


5. "Don't ask, don't tell" is a strictly Christian policy.
Holy Orders

And, if we want to incorporate the entire Judeo-Christian tradition into current policy, it is true that the Old Testament does say harsh things about sodomy. So, just as--following Biblical tradition--they don't mix milk and meat, observant Jews, for instance, should be pretty tough on gay people. But why do Christians pay the Old Testament's commandments any mind? After all they stopped keeping Kosher centuries ago, when Jesus wiped the rulebook clean except for the ethical code--e.g., the Ten Commandments. And the Judeo-Christian ethics don't say anything about sodomy. The whole apparatus of condemnation rests on three letters from Paul, decades later, in which he called homosexuality "against nature." Homosexuality thus presents the purest instance of whether a democratic republic should enforce a purely theological (rather than ethical) prohibition--one with not the slightest secular defense. It's as if Pace had said the Army would not take people who eat bacon.

Paul = closet case? think about it. who else is so vehement against gays? ted haggart et alia, anyone? just asking...


Sources: New York Times, New York Times, Huffington Post Wires, The Times Online, The New Republic Online