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US: Immigrants May Be Held Indefinitely
By MATT APUZZO
Forbes

Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.

Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He has been labeled an "enemy combatant," a designation that, under a law signed last month, strips foreigners of the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

That law is being used to argue the Guantanamo Bay cases, but Al-Marri represents the first detainee inside the United States to come under the new law. Aliens normally have the right to contest their imprisonment, such as when they are arrested on immigration violations or for other crimes.

"It's pretty stunning that any alien living in the United States can be denied this right," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for Al-Marri. "It means any non-citizen, and there are millions of them, can be whisked off at night and be put in detention."

The new law says that enemy combatants will be tried before military commissions, not a civilian judge or jury, and establishes different rules of evidence in the cases. It also prohibits detainees from challenging their detention in civilian court.

In a separate court filing in Washington on Monday, the Justice Department defended that law as constitutional and necessary.

Government attorneys said foreign fighters arrested as part of an overseas military action have no constitutional rights and are being afforded more legal rights than ever.

In its short filing in the Al-Marri case, however, the Justice Department doesn't mention that Al-Marri is being held at a military prison in South Carolina - a fact that his attorneys say affords him the same rights as anyone else being held in the United States.

The Justice Department noted only that the new law applies to all enemy combatants "regardless of the location of the detention."

The Bush administration maintains that al-Marri is an al-Qaida sleeper agent. The Defense Department ordered a review of Al-Marri's status as an enemy combatant be conducted if, as requested, the case is thrown out of court

Rev. Haggard was former Delaware County resident

This guy is from my town. Well, they call it Yorktown, but it's really just another neighborhood of Muncie where I'm from.
Oh- ever wonder why I'm such a bitter fuck?
Part of it was growing up the town featured in the "Middletown" series from PBS.
That was the series that claimed to expose life in Muncie from a supposed very clinical view.
What it seemed to do from my point of view, was give the the rightwing, self-righteous crowd from around here a chance to decry and bad mouth anyone who didn't attend their church.
Turns out this guys father was featured in the series as founder of a big evangelical group.
The problem came when the series aired ( the year before I started high school) it featured a total hatchet job on MY HIGH SCHOOL, supposedly exposing what horrible sinners we were. The amount of heat was so instant and so heavy after the series that being a kid in the following years was so hellish, so put under a goddamned microscope that it can't be described. During those years, it was how white, rich and clean cut you could look- how quickly you could become an "Alex Keaton" and start praising the Lord as well. Trouble is, almost everyone I knew who were the "very clean cut" young men and women turned out to be the biggest coke dealers/coke sluts, closeted gay or lesbians or in many cases even true "uncle pervy" types who jack-off in parking lots and in front of the co-ed dorms.

The pressure cooker environment created by this fucker and his dead dad is a place that nobody should ever have to live under. But I grew up there. I suppose I did the best with what I had. I did end up a bitter and outspoken critic of what's wrong. But due in no small part to the traditional and REAL christian upbringing that my parents gave me, at least I didn't end up like THEM.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil -- President Bush.

No new news here, but thanks G.W.- since this oil and it's use as a "tool" or a "weapon" now rests in your hands. If we say it, we're traitors. But if you say it, it must be true. Every once in a while the truth slips out! Even from you.

Conservatives Challenge Iraq Policy

From the "fairs fair" department:

Since I'm a left wing wacko, not a polite democrat, I've been waiting to say this to someone for awhile. (sorry abut the yelling.)

"YOU FUCKING TRAITORS! DON'T YOU KNOW YOU'RE GIVING COMFORT TO THE ENEMY??!!
DON'T YOU KNOW YOU'RE SENDING THE WRONG MESSAGE?
IMAGINE HOW SHITTY YOU'RE MAKING THE OUR BRAVE SOLDIERS FEEL BY ATTACKING THEM AND THEIR CAUSE!
NOW THAT YOU'VE DECIDED THAT THE WAR IS A BAD IDEA, SOMEONE NEEDS TO TREAT YOU LIKE YOU TREATED US! FUCK YOU, YOU UN-AMERICAN BASTARDS!"

Ok, thanx. I don't really mean it personally. When the war started, most of us knew it was a bad idea, but the few in power made sure the war happened.
We just couldn't debate it. It had to be a "football game style" shouting match- and the more reasoned and rational the argument against the war, the more likely you were to be called a traitor. Fairs fair.

In Kansas, 9 former Republicans run as Democrats

"it doesn't really matter, since we're a defacto "one-party system" anyway. As long as POWER is the only party; compromise, representation, equality, justice and accountability (justice and accountability or someone other than the poor and middle class I might add) are gone and will never return. In the end, Republicans and Democrats behave as one party anyway."

A Letter To Bartcop-

Recently I made the foolish move of expressing my opinion about Madonna to online pundit Bartcop.


It's pretty useless to take this any further, but in my reply email I'm just going to send him the third paragraph below. If it still doesn't make sense to him then, I think it's a lost cause. It's like he thinks I'm either for Madonna or against her, and if I'm against her, I must be defending the media. Whatever!
I've put the whole letter below, just so my ranting and raving will offend both my readers!
--------------------------------------------------------------



Bart-
Ouch. I made it into my own shame page.


I suppose I'll never sway you from your defending Madonna's right to steal a guys baby, `just because he happens to be dirt poor. Wow, did I say that?
Such heavy handed rhetoric seems appropriate, since with no futher evidence than I have, you've concluded that I somehow support the media in it's quest to "steal the baby's future" or whatever.
The conduct of the media in America is mostly un-acceptable. Period. I'd never imply otherwise.

I was only pointing out that Madonna is a person of questionable ethics in the first place and to believe her "chapter and verse" only on faith is a little hard for me, since she self-admittedly "slept her way to the top" (good for her!). I, for one, think her and her Guy are under no more scrutiny than if anyone else did a similar stunt.

We have laws to keep adoption safe. It’s never as easy as, "who can give the child a better or richer life". Real, legal adoption takes time. Not because the government wants to put adoptive parents through hell, but because the reasons some people have for adoption are less than wholesome. You can’t just give kids away based on the adoptive parents ability to pay for them. You also can’t be sure that wealth will benefit children in the way we want it to. No one can doubt Madonnas ability to pay the childs way, but has anyone from any childcare system evaluated Madonnas reasons for doing this, or is it just a case of stardom opens doors that are closed to everyone else? ( my friend in child protective services would be so proud of me for remembering all this.)

If Madonna wanted to please me? She would have adopted a "real orphan" missing both parents from somewhere like New Orleans. Then any "future" that gets "stolen" from some kid would at least be an American kid. In fact, I see Madonna as the essence of the "too hip" person that you try to paint the "Oprah Haters" out to be. She's globe trotting, new money, who can't bestow herself fast enough on some poor country in order to drum up whatever hype she's after, or save the world. Then she runs as fast as she can to said Oprah to say smirky things like "I knew people would cynical, but Oh- my-". Oh Please!

If we're all so down on the monkey boy for always smirking (and we are), check out Madonna on Oprah. What a fucking smirk. ( I'm just calling it as I see it BTW.)
If Madonna wants to impress me? Take a stand on the Iraq war, not some obviously poverty stricken country. It would be so much easier to help the entire country, and all the kids there, if someone like Madonna put her clout behind an anti-war message, in order to oust the current regime here at home. But since the Dixie Chicks have already proven that it costs real dollars to take a stand here at home, Madonna must go around the world the make her stand (or to save a child I might add !).

No Bart- if it looks, smells, walks, and talks like a cheap stunt, it probably is. If your blind hatred of the media stops you from seeing that, I'm sorry.

BESIDES- if it's your way: Madonna goes adopts a kid with big stars in her eyes, but fails to check out the details (like he has a Father!)- Then we’ve just proven she's an idiot.My way: at least I'm giving her credit for being smart enough to know what she's doing, and to use it in a mult-level media attack to get her point across, help a kid, sell herself, and get what she wants in the process (an adopted baby). The media steps and fetches for Madonna and always has. To think that the media is now treating her any way other than the way she wants to be treated, seems a little naive. After all- rather than stay at home raising baby, she's out on the talk show circuit telling everyone how great she is. POOR MADONNA! (Pity party here)

Still your friend,
the grand wazoo