April 4, 2006, Hitteth and Runneth...
The Bug-man goeth... Former House Majority Leader DeLay will not be seeking reelection to his House seat. Who says Justice DeLay'ed is justice denied? While there's little good we can say about Mr. DeLay, we can all wish him a hearty, "Good riddance, Tom." You've spent your life bringing the level of discourse in Washington from bad down to the level of your other career killing the cockroaches.
Moussaoui to frieth... somebody's got to pay for 9-11, right? A federal jury found Zaccarias Moussaoui death-penalty-eligible. Moussaoui of course is the buffoonish French national who was nabbed in Minnesota and was held on immigration violations after he went to a flight school and told them he only wanted to fly the plane-- not learn to take off or land-- and just as the government's case was collapsing in front of him because of its own misconduct, Moussaoui insisted on taking the stand and implicating himself in a plot that may well have never existed, largely because he just likes the attention... The jury will now hear emotional pleas from 9-11 victims... let the games begin. Let's face it... Moussaoui... in a conspiracy with Richard Reid, the failed shoebomber? Somewhat laughable. Which is it... if we believe a word of what he said (the only possible legal basis to fry him is to accept his testimony on its face) then, we must accept that the fearsome Al Qaeda is sending (easily thwartable) stooges at us (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk...) If this is the case, then AQ can't be this fearsome all-competent- super-force that warrants killing thousands of our troops, trashing our constitution and handing over our economy to Halliburton and Bechtel and borrowing from Beijing and Tokyo to do it now, is it? The head explodeth... Unless you're willing to believe that this is all just a show-trial and circus... that the "terrorist threat" as it is has been wildly overblown to keep the public irrationally ired up so that they will continue not to think, and continue to vote for the bad-ass mean Daddy Party ("the party that does something, even if what it does is at best useless and at worse makes us more vulnerable") and let its leadership steal with impunity "to protect us"... Naaaaa....
The Supreme Court ducketh... by a 6-3 vote, review is denied in the most important case of our lives, that of ex-"dirty bomber" and detained "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilla. (For more background, try our interviews with Padilla lawyers Donna Newman and Andrew Patel.) Padilla was, of course, the only American citizen ever picked up in the United States and held purely in the manner of a police state, as a so-called "enemy combatant". The Government indicted him on a nebulous conspiracy, fearing it would lose before the High Court if it didn't do so. In this case, only Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer were willing to bet that Antonin Scalia had sufficient integrity to follow an opinion he wrote in dissent in Hamdi; the age-wise wily Justice Stevens thought otherwise, and didn't want to take the chance on Milligan (the case upholding the doctrine of habeas corpus for all against a power-mad government... i.e., the Constitution's clause that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended absent rebellion or invasion means exactly that) being formally overruled and our nation being formally declared a dictatorship... on balance, I'm not sure I disagree with him on that.