Somebody's Paying Attention

Yesterday, I posted on the Jose Padilla competency trial. Even with the appaling arguments made by the US prosecutors, the judge ruled that Mr. Padilla was competent to stand trial in the civilian courts. The NY Times weighed in with an editorial on the case as it stands right now.

There were so many reasons to be appalled by President Bush’s decision to detain people illegally and subject them to mental and physical abuse. The unfolding case of Jose Padilla reminds us of one of the most important: mistreating a prisoner makes it hard, if not impossible, for a real court to judge whether he has committed real crimes.

...That still leaves the far bigger question of whether Mr. Padilla was tortured, as he has claimed. For there to be a trial, Judge Cooke will have to rule that Mr. Padilla was not tortured, and she made a point of saying yesterday that her ruling on his competence was not a judgment on the torture claim. [Emphasis added]

In other words, the government is not off the hook yet in this case. The editorial concludes with one of the really tragic side-effects of this and other cases:

So far, this trial has been a reminder of how Mr. Bush’s policy on prisoners has compromised the judicial process. And it has confirmed the world’s suspicions of the United States’ stooping to the very behavior it once stood against.

I think at this point, the term "suspicions" is a bit pallid. The head of the UN's Human Rights Commission went on record yesterday as deploring US policy on "detainees," according to an Associated Press report.

The U.N. human rights chief expressed concern Wednesday at recent U.S. legislative and judicial actions that she said leave hundreds of detainees without any way to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.

Louise Arbour referred to the Military Commissions Act approved by Congress last year and last month's federal appeals court ruling that Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot use the U.S. court system to challenge their detention.

What is significant here is that not only do we have an administration that is comfortable with denying even the most basic of human rights, that of the right to not be tortured and the right to challenge in court indefinite detention, we also had a Congress apparently comfortable enough with the administration's stance to codify that position.

And here is the stunner: Democrats in the last Congress were complicit, if only by their silence, in that bargain with the devil. Yes, the Supreme Court will have to rule on the Constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act, but, thanks again to the Democrats silence, our Supreme Court as it is currently constituted, may not rise to the occasion.

If that happens, that perfect storm, than all we have left is that great repository from which all powers in a democracy flows: We, the people...