Kangaroo Court

If the Republians are so enamored with the rule of law, why do they always feel the need to avoid following it? "Just following orders" isn't an acceptable defense if you're German or Japanese, only if you're an American. Arming insurgents is fine when the US does it in Central America, but bad if Iran is doing it in the Middle East. The ICJ should have jusrisdiction over people from other countries, but obviously not Americans. Secret courts to approve spying on American citizens aren't secret enough, so they'll just skip the whole approval process. The Geneva Convention only applies when they want it to apply. And apparently, the American justice system is only good enough for Democrats. The Republicans created one military tribunal system that was declared unconstitutional, and now their new version is swinging into action.

David Hicks is going on trial today in Guantanamo after 5 years. Not satisfied with just playing fast and loose with the Constituition, the prosecution will be using a host of dirty tricks from the great (submitting hearsay evidence, which is not allowed in most other courts, and evidence obtained through torture, ditto, and also notoriously unreliable) to the petty (the defendant will not be allowed to shave before the trial). In a monumental piece of understatement, his lawyer said "He doesn't have a lot of confidence in the process." Neither do we.

This administration has bleated on at length about returning the rule of law to Iraq. How about we start with returning it to the United States?