Thursday, April 29, 2004

 

dahlia on hamdi and padilla

Cruel Detentions: The Supreme Court considers whether the president can throw away the key.

The most amusing lines: "And Stevens asks whether the president's power to indefinitely detain includes the power to torture. Clement observes first that there are international conventions prohibiting torture (there are also international conventions prohibiting what we're doing in Guantanamo, but we just say those don't apply) and, helpfully, that torture results in unreliable information. (Presumably once we master really effective torture, the president can order that, too.)"

The best observation: "Dunham surely knows [the Justices] don't generally take to all this emotionalism. But he's not arguing to the court anyhow. This part is for you."

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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

 

dahlia on public citizen v. cheney

I've Got a Secret: Dick Cheney's absolute right to know and not tell. Good quotes: "Today's case is a study in the evils of premature litigation. It's a lesson in why the cheerleader who doesn't make the squad throws everything off when she appeals to the gym teacher, then the principal, and then the secretary of education, instead of just sucking it up and joining the band." And "Justice Antonin Scalia wonders, 'Why would that be such an intrusion upon the executive, simply to require knowledge of whether anybody that voted on the various recommendations of the commission was a nongovernment employee?' Leading one to wonder, just briefly, if he's been out hunting with the people from Sierra Club recently."

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Tuesday, April 20, 2004

 

dahlia on the gitmo argument

The Prisoners' Dilemma: The Gitmo detainees get their day in court. Sort of. And I have to quote this because I have an iguana:

But in a few moments, it's Souter who's had it, now with the fiction that Cuba exercises control over Guantanamo. "We even protect the Cuban iguana. In bringing people from Afghanistan to Guantanamo, we are doing in functional terms exactly what we would do if we brought them to the District of Columbia."

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dahlia on schriro v. summerlin

Death Penalty: The Movie: The Supreme Court finds its happy ending. "There will be no more monkey sex in this story."

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Saturday, April 17, 2004

 

dahlia on the administration's approach towards terrorism

Trials and Terrors: These are our banner terror trials?

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Monday, April 12, 2004

 

dahlia on federal marshalls

Marshal, Marshal, Marshal: Scalia's goon squad.

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Friday, April 02, 2004

 

dahlia writes about average joe, adam returns

Average Jane: NBC's boring girls in captivity.

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