Holy crap, people do have rights

Somehow I missed hearing about this for two days, but apparently the Supreme Court essentially overturned the Military Commissions Act. I practically fell out of my chair when I saw, I was under the impression we stopped caring about rights approximately the moment we elected a Republican President. The oral arguments are actually pretty interesting.

On page 31, Ginsberg says "in every practical respect, Guantanamo Bay is U.S. territory", which is one of those things the government tries to skirt. It's thoroughly enjoyable because unlike the typical forums you see these people at (press conferences, etc.) where they can just ignore questions they don't like, the justices don't let them dodge stuff; Souter in particular doesn't put up with their shit. Clement spends a good deal of time dancing around whether or not Guantanamo prisoners are "prisoners of war" or not; they obviously are, but the government has declared pretty emphatically that they're not so we can avoid the Geneva Conventions. Scalia -- and my approval of this one phrase shouldn't be taken to mean I in any way like any decision he's ever made -- says on page 49 "if we had to either charge or release these people, what would they be charged with? Waging war against the United States? Is there a statute that prevents non-citizens from waging war against the United States and provides criminal penalties?", to which Clement brilliantly responded "Not as such". I thought this was excellent, since he's essentially saying these people have broken no laws, and yet they're somehow still not prisoners of war; they're in that fun gray area where we can do whatever we want.

Ultimately this whole argument hinged around the idea of CSRTs. Before this decision, inmates got to go before a "Combatant Status Review Tribunal", which was a sort of laughable affair where officers decided if an inmate was an enemy combatant or not. While they're doing that, the inmate doesn't get a lawyer, doesn't get to see the evidence against him and really doesn't get to do much of anything. Most of the time if the inmate manages to win (i.e. are declared to be a non-combatant), another CSRT is convened so the officers get to decide again. Waxman's explanation of why this whole concept blows is good, starting on page 72. Breyer says it pretty succinctly on page 61: "it has been six years, and habeas is supposed to be speedy."

Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, had one of the better quotes I've seen come out of this court: "To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this court, say ‘what the law is,’"

Too true. And what did McCain have to say? "I think it's one of the worst decisions in history"

Do you know what flavor your kid's lollipops are?

As far as I can tell, this story is in fact not an April Fools joke. Georgia has banned the sale of marijuana-flavored candy to minors. Not candy with marijuana in it, which is what I thought it was originally talking about. Candy that tastes like marijuana, with absolutely no actual drug content.

This entry is going to ignore the many, many arguments about the safety of marijuana compared to legal things like alcohol or nicotine, or how it's considered less addictive than caffeine. That doesn't even matter at the moment, we'll pretend marijuana is more deadly than decapitation. I'm also going to ignore the war on drugs altogether, which I think is the stupidest waste of money since . . . well, actually there are lots of stupid wastes of money in this country, I think there are whole websites dedicated to enumerating them. But I'm going to pretend that it is indeed the government's job to tell us what drugs we can and can't do like we're all 5 years old.

There's still two things so very wrong with this. First, why would you want marijuana-flavored candy? What's the point of it if you don't get high, it's like something that's cough syrup flavored but doesn't actually fix coughing (apologies to people that enjoy the taste of cough syrup, that analogy probably made no sense to you). Second, how is marijuana-flavored candy possibly leading to marijuana use? Apparently the theory is if kids eat the candy and don't die, they rationalize that marijuana must be equally safe. Personally, I'm a fan of letting all the kids that find no problem with this line of reasoning go for it, it's probably better for the planet as a whole anyway. I'm going to go get a water pistol and shoot myself in the head, and when nothing bad happens conclude that shooting myself in the head with a real gun must also be safe. They're calling it, and this is the part where I thought for sure I'd been had by an April Fools day prank, a "gateway candy". And the bill, and again I stopped to verify this isn't a joke and ended up looking up the actual bill to be absolutely sure, was introduced by a guy named Doug Stoner. I am not making this stuff up.

This is the biggest problem I have with Democrats and why I would be tempted to be a Republican if they weren't all so completely out of their minds that they've forgotten what being a Republican even means. Democrats love laws, we just cannot get enough of them. I don't believe the government should have laws telling us we can't smoke marijuana, but I can't see how anyone would believe the government should have laws telling us we can't eat candy.