SUPREME COURT SAYS MILITARY ABOVE LAW
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ADMIRALS & GENERALS NOW RULE WITHOUT CHECKS & BALANCES
SOLDIERS HAVE NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS ARE IRRELEVANT, NO LAWS IN WAR
Judges Abdicate Responsibility Of Judicial Branch; Military Takes Up Slack
We might as well send those useless crypto-Nazi Supreme Court corporate shills home. They no longer have any legitimate function. The idiot Republicans have turned back the clock on our Courts to the 1800's. They live to strip away our most basic rights. They serve only as a rubber stamp for the powers that be. They justify and legally sanctify every heinous act of even a Bush Administration, regardless of the consequences.
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This is the sort of thinking that created Guantanamo. And the Bastille. And Auschwitz: "National Security" trumps all other concerns, the Commander-In-Chief is above the rule of law, the military can do anything it wants without justification. There is a self-correcting mechanism. It's called "the Judgement of History." (See: "Hitler;" "Stalin;" "Tojo;" "Mao") Or just, "Morals." "Ethics." "Principles." Words to that effect.
Eh, the law is just words, after all. We don't have to take them seriously. Not if we have enough guns. Of course, we have to be in the military, first. Then we can do anything, and use "National Security" as a catch-all excuse. It's like being invulnerable, legally. It's what they had in communist Russia and China, and Fascist Germany and Japan. It's the banana in banana republic. It means that some people are on a higher plane than the rest of us. And the rest of us better watch out.
Of course, if human life is meaningless, why should other species be safe from our military? Why should it matter if a species is ancient, or intelligent, or endangered? If they're in the way of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard or the Post Office, for that matter, it's OK to exterminate them. Even if we could just as easily not do so. Even if their extinction will not advance national security one inch. After all, that's a decision left solely up to our military commanders. They're the best judges of all matters, from environmental science to comparative religion, including their own conduct, according to SCOTUS. Even judges don't get to judge themselves. But Admirals and Generals do. Welcome to the new America, the one ruled by violent men in tin hats.
WIRED NEWS
"Supreme Court: National Security Trumps Whales, Environmental Law"
It's official: We now live in a National Security State.' The NRDC produced graphic evidence of whales beaching themselves in distress, their brains and ears bleeding, or suffering from "the bends" — an affliction known to deep-sea divers who surface too quickly. Sonar appeared to have disoriented the whales, which rely on sound to navigate, in much the way that unrelenting and blinding light might make life difficult for people. On it went to the Supreme Court, where the Navy won by a 5-to-4 margin. Critically, the court didn't address environmental concerns: It ruled that federal courts had abused their discretion in ordering the Navy to stop sonar training, or at least finding a better place to do it. Formally dissenting from the ruling were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter. All the Navy had to do, they argued, is draft an environmental impact statement, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act — but the Navy didn't bother, and then called in the President to exempt them from the law, even though he had no legal standing to do so. Even if the Navy wouldn't admit in court to hurting whales, wrote Ginsburg and Souter, their own Environmental Assessment — a less-formal version of an environmental impact statement — predicted that sonar training exercises would drive entire whale populations mad. "This likely harm," wrote the justices, "cannot be lightly dismissed.... There is no doubt that the training exercises serve critical interests. But those interests do not authorize the Navy to violate a statutory command." '
TALKING POINTS MEMO.COM
"Defying Subpoena, DoD Orders Sexual Assault Program Chief Not To Testify Before Congress"
No Sir, No Sir!' The Pentagon defied a Congressional subpoena yesterday by refusing to let the head of its sexual assault program testify at an oversight hearing about sexual assault in the military. An advocate for military victims of sexual assault tells TPMmuckraker that Whitley's office is under-resourced and reflects the Pentagon's lack of attention to sexual assault. '
YAHOO NEWS
"US general urges Obama to keep missile defense"
Shit-canned General gives new President his orders.' The Air Force general who runs the Pentagon's missile defense projects said that American interests would be "severely hurt" if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by the Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe. Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a group of reporters Wednesday that he is awaiting word from Obama's transition team on their interest in receiving briefings. Obering, who is leaving his post next week after more than four years in charge, said in the interview that his office has pulled together information for a presentation to the Obama team, if asked. "What we have discovered is that a lot of the folks that have not been in this administration seem to be dated, in terms of the program," he said. "They are kind of calibrated back in the 2000 time frame and we have come a hell of a long way since 2000. Our primary objective is going to be just, frankly, educating them on what we have accomplished, what we have been able to do and why we have confidence in what we are doing." Asked whether he meant that Obama or his advisers had an outdated view of missile defense, Obering said he was speaking more generally about people who have not closely followed developments in this highly technical field. '
[Cross-posted on blog me no blogs.]
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