Is it legal to purposely drive someone crazy?

Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush ordered him detained…but he does now.

That’s it in a nutshell, folks. The smartest and best scientists we have confirm that our country’s policies are literally driving people crazy. Warren Richey has a tremendous three-part series spelling it out. (Part 2 here, Part 3 here.)

If this were a movie, we’d call it Gaslight. But in the final act, someone would come in and save the heroine.

For Jose Padilla, there is no final act. His family and friends can hardly bear to see him; his lawyers are focused on keeping him alive. And our government is busy arguing that extreme solitary confinement and other elaborate, prolonged tortures are somehow going to save us.

They’re not.

This is not fiction

I remember a time when when this stuff was only to be found in dystopian novels:

SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 — At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.

Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

More terrifying details await in the rest of the NY Times article.

No one person should have this much power

I wrote earlier about a judge in Pakistan who was standing up for the rule of law. Today he was reinstated:

Pakistan’s Supreme Court today reinstated the country’s Chief Justice unconditionally in a blow to the Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf, who had suspended him.

The historic ruling – the first a Pakistan court has ever made against a military ruler – comes after four months of unrest in Pakistan since Iftikhar Chaudhry’s suspension on allegations of misconduct and corruption.

Judge Chaudhry refused to quit, despite pressure from the president and his intelligence chiefs, and became a symbol of resistance to General Musharraf, lionised by supporters in rallies round the country.

In contrast, today the White House made a stunning declaration that our president has supreme rights over Congress.

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration’s stance “astonishing.”

“That’s a breathtakingly broad view of the president’s role in this system of separation of powers,” Rozell said. “What this statement is saying is the president’s claim of executive privilege trumps all.”

No one person should have this much power. The founders of our country knew that no president could ever be so perfect that he (or she) should have the rights of a king. But the current president is making wilder and wilder claims about the power to which he is entitled.

Let’s go back to Pakistan, a nation with which we have had profound differences:

“The president has said the judgement of the Supreme Court will be honoured, respected, and adhered to,” said retired Major General Rashid Qureshi, the president’s spokesman.

There’s a critical difference to note: The White House claims are being made anonymously. That means that our president isn’t quite sure enough to stand up and say in public that he has the right to overrule Congress like this. Letting his staff speak to the Washington Post is a way of testing to see if Americans will swallow this outrageous claim.

If you agree that nobody should have this much power, call your senators. Or better yet, write them.

“He’s my president, and I hope he does a good job”

Transcript and video of Keith Olbermann’s sharp and righteous July 4th commentary on the pardon of Scooter Libby.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Mr. Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously:

“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.

But in one night, Nixon transformed it.

Watergate — instantaneously — became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law. Of insisting — in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood — that he was the law.

Not the Constitution.

Not the Congress.

Not the Courts.

Just him.

Just – Mr. Bush – as you did, yesterday.

Brings to mind the unmatchable Representative Barbara Jordan during the Watergate hearings:

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, “We, the people.” It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”

Today, I am an inquisitor; I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

Transcript. It’s even better if you listen to her uniquely majestic voice.

Too good not to post

One of the better policy initiatives I’ve seen in recent months:

Steve Ahlenius, president of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, sent out an e-mail to 140 media outlets nationwide Tuesday morning with the subject line: “McAllen, Texas calls for wall around Washington D.C.”

“We feel the need to protect ourselves from bad legislation, bad ideas and a waste of tax money,” Ahlenius wrote.

“A wall around their homes and businesses will give the legislators and Washington bureaucrats a better understanding of what kind of message this action will send.

“Let’s see if they decide to climb over it, tunnel under it, or walk over it.”

Link to complete article (Found via Cato @ Liberty).

Where’s the outrage?

I don’t know how long this has been around, but I just stumbled upon it recently. The market-liberals^[1] at the Cato Institute have compiled an interactive map of botched police raids. It appears to be both well-researched and thorough, and shows that the scourge of police invasions on innocents and nonviolent offenders is not limited to the years under the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, Cato’s ideological brethren over at Reason have this video interview with Regina Kelly, who was wrongly arrested and jailed based upon a “tip” from a police informant. Ms. Kelly tells harrowing tale.

1. This is, I believe, the label they prefer. For an interesting read, check out How to Label Cato, where they explain why they shouldn’t be called a good number of other things.↩

We need an icebreaker

That’s what they say on public radio during fundraisers: “We need an icebreaker.” That means they want one caller to break the silence and encourage other listeners to call in and donate money.

I was thinking of that when I read this extraordinary article about how one man’s resistance has inspired thousands to march in the streets of Pakistan:

[T]he Pakistani bar was first stirred into action with remarkable effect on March 9, when Musharraf tried to force Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to quit, alleging that he had misused his office for personal gain. Yet despite reports of a five-hour private showdown, in which [President] Musharraf – in full military dress – called in generals and politicians to intimidate Mr. Chaudhry, the chief justice did not buckle.

Musharraf ended up tossing him off the court anyway, but the judge’s defiance rallied a nation. Like most experts here, Pakistan’s lawyers were outraged, arguing that Musharraf wished only to silence a judge who had been ruling against him. “This was the first time a person resisted all alone against the Army,” says Iftikhar Qasi, president of the Karachi Bar Association.

At issue, lawyers say, was the independence of the judiciary and the last check on Musharraf’s authority, and their response was immediate. The following day, bar associations from Karachi to Lahore called emergency meetings, in which tens of thousands of lawyers chose to fight the only way they knew how. “Lawyers know the law, and the law says everyone has a right to express themselves,” says [Lahore Bar Association president S.M.] Shah.

The article says that many ordinary Pakistanis are supporting the lawyers’ protests against the president’s power grab. I am far from an expert on Pakistani politics,^[1]but it seems like a generally terrible idea for the military to be in control of a former democracy. Yet without an “icebreaker” like Mr. Chaudhry, it is hard to see how resistance would have begun.

Pretty remarkable.

1. Much could be said about the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, particularly with regard to military operations. This is not the post for that discussion.
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Important stuff said by other people

First, and most significantly, the U.S. government is disappearing people. (Report.) As if this slide towards totalitarianism wasn’t disturbing enough, two of them appear to be children:

In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during an attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Extensive citation at Obsidian Wings, along with this analysis:

The evidence that our government held Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s sons is not conclusive, and I do not mean to suggest that it is. Still, if you had told me, six years ago, that I would find myself seriously entertaining the possibility that my own government had detained children [...] I would have thought you were insane. Disappearing people of any age, without charges or trial or anything, is what two-bit dictators do; not what we do. But disappearing children, not seventeen year olds about whom one might have interesting debates about when exactly childhood ends but seven- and nine-year olds — that’s so far across the line that it would have been unimaginable to me. And the fact, if it is one, that they are supposedly “handled with kid gloves” and “given the best of care” does not begin to make up for this. Detention is not “the best of care” for anyone. It is certainly not “the best of care” for a young child.

Second, from Pandagon, a fantasy response on an explosive issue. I’d be very interested in any politican brave enough to say something like this:

“Abortion is not fun for any woman, which is why we’d like to keep them rare. I would also like to keep heart surgery rare, if I can help it. But just as we’ll never wipe out heart disease completely, we will never wipe out unplanned pregnancy completely, because women are human and sometimes they have circumstances outside of their direct control. I support prevention in health care. We can reduce the number of abortions and number of heart surgeries by helping Americans have better access to prevention. In the case of abortion, the best prevention is contraception and comprehensive sex education. I’d like to empower women to have the fullest range of options available so they can make the best decision for themselves.”

And finally, a rare example of a judge losing his temper in a stinging footnote to a ruling in the Lewis Libby case. What is most interesting to me is who the judge thought his audience was. I don’t read legal cases as a rule. Do judges write these sorts of insults as a shout-out to their clerks or buddies?

Do they do it as a wink and nod to say “Yeah, I have to rule this way on procedural grounds, but don’t worry, I’m not buying their baloney”? Or is there a more substantive purpose, a way of putting yourself on the record so that there is no later misunderstanding about your allegiances?

(Yes, it’s an annoying PDF, but it’s one paragraph. Click through and read it already.)

Via How Appealing.

(Folks, as most of you have probably figured out, I’m not Nicholas. He’s kindly given me posting privileges, and I’m going to do my best to avoid becoming the kudzu of his blog.)