Ah, is it October already?
Time for playoff baseball and all the rest? As a NY resident, I had a "oh come on already" feel about the time, since both teams basically were assured some time ago. The Yanks had a bit of a lapse, but it did not take anywhere as long as last year to ensure a spot. In fact, even with all its injury problems, it ultimately played better than it did for a few years. Well, at least offensively. The pitching is more suspect and is the weak link. As to the Mets, fans have long been greedy -- the division seemed assured by mid-June. The amazing nature of it all over by mid-Summer. It's as if anything less than the World Series would be a failure! This from a team happy to be over .500 last year.*
Chief Justice Roberts' first full year as a Chief will start soon enough as well. Fittingly, I received my latest Cato Supreme Court Review in the mail. Looks pretty good though I will have to bear a John Yoo essay. Likewise, the Forward is by Roger Pilon, who despises the New Deal (ignoring all the libertarian aspects, such as various privacy rights, that grew out of it), and clearly has a Yoo-like view of executive power (especially over foreign affairs). IOW, I found his comments mostly crap, though I sort of do agree with his view of campaign finance (but it was not somehow invented in the mid-1970s).
Luckily, the opening essay is by Nadine Strossen (ACLU), and the other Hamdan essay is pro-liberty. The pending legislation is in large part a response to the opinion. On one level, it was expected and beneficial -- Congress authorized things, which was a major concern in the opinion. The problem though, Yoo/Pilon aside, is that they delegated too much power here, some of which they simply do not have to give. Cato generally is concerned with such over-delegation, and overall, is deeply concerned with the "war on terror." Generally, many of its non-authoritarian friendly sorts would agree Hamdan was a good thing ... legislation was not needed to overturn its force.
As I did in the Spring, I am taking some time off the Slate Fray (will continue here) during October, but I was sure to end with some final thoughts on the detainee bill. BTW, I agree that we must consistently reaffirm we are not dealing with faceless "detainees" here, but people. Anyway, one rejoinder is that "torture" is hard to define, at any rate the government did a fairly good job doing so, and cries of "torture" tend to be rather overblown. See this thread.
I don't quite find this as much of a dodge as some people, but don't find it too convincing given what is going on. There is no "clean hands" situation here. The "solution" is not clarity -- it does remove judicial oversight, give more power to the executive, and by some unclear measure remove basic rights from people who the executive etc. just cannot honestly admit often are mistreated, selected wrongly, and so forth ... by quite intentional procedures. As to clarity, I tend to agree with "Degme" that on some level it is present in the minds of those doing the torture, but it is harder to judge by third parties. But, nothing is crystal clear all the time -- the rub is how you judge things.
The path, suggested by D, is to define things so that there is a good margin of error safeguarding those handled; also, you need judicial oversight, and some incentive to be concerned, some incentive to restrain one's natural implications to act in a certain fashion. This includes enough openness so the general public and the Congress in particular can judge your actions. [No secret memoranda etc.] Overall, the message sent by this legislation is quite the opposite.
This is so even though just how bad it is can be open to some dispute. One assumes there is some wiggle room (is the "law of war" implied in the "enemy combatant" provisions? an implied constitutional limit on acting on citizens? some more judicial oversight that can be sneaked in? After all, Hamdan surprised some people). Thus, what the executive defines as violations of Geneva, or rather, the reduced version covered by the bill, is open to much discretion. [Such discretion is part of the fear -- look who we are dealing with.] You use what you have, even if it might be a somewhat weak thread.
There also are international concerns such as how our partner the Brits are supposed to act. As noted here, they are now in sort of a bind.
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* This year, two sets of teams are going to the last day knowing they will either lead their division (avoiding the NY team in the first round) or be a Wild Card team. Detroit, after dominating them all year, failed to beat KC twice, but given years of failure, probably feel like they are playing with house money either way. Still, be nice if they won the Central. If the Astros win, the Cards lose, the Cards lose a make-up game on Monday, and then lose a one game tie-breaker (at Houston) ... the Astros win the NL Central!