Readings on government run amuck

Accessible law blog: Balkanization

I find the arguments written by the stable of lawyers at Balkanization to be cogent and readable. These recent posts tell a lot about what is happening in our govenment while it rapidly engorges itself with wartime powers.

Read here about the ``unconscionab[le] attempt to insulate such Executive `interpretations' [of War Crimes statutes] from any effective judicial and legislative review''

Read here about how, according to FOX/White House mouthpiece Tony Snow, on the Military Commissions Act, ``[T]here won't be a written signing statement! Because, you know, unlike all those other bills that have prompted hundreds of objections and `constructions,' this one is entirely pellucid and unambiguous, and doesn't raise any constitutional questions.''

Read here about ``termination of the writ of habeas corpus with respect to the claims of detainees and its sweeping grant to the Executive of rights to label persons enemy combatants and thereby leave them without legal rights which can be vindicated in courts.''

Finally, read here about ``Rights against torture-- without remedies... Any CIA official who acts in good faith will probably conclude that waterboarding, hypothermia, stress positions, and related techniques violate one or more of these features of American law.

``What the new Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) did, however, was to make these legal norms effectively unenforceable.''