"Yesterday, the Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 -- agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety. It held that even if the government violated Arar's Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him. Why? Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" (p. 39). In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

Reflecting the type of people who fill our judiciary, the judges in the majority also invented the most morally depraved bureaucratic requirements for Arar to proceed with his case and then claimed he had failed to meet them. Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have. As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement: it "means government miscreants may avoid [] liability altogether through the simple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury" (p. 27; emphasis added).

The commentary about this case from Harper's Scott Horton perfectly captures the depravity of what our Government has done -- and continues to do -- to Arar. His analysis should be read in its entirety, and he concludes with this:

When the history of the Second Circuit is written, the Arar decision will have a prominent place. It offers all the historical foresight of Dred Scott, in which the Court rallied to the cause of slavery, and all the commitment to constitutional principle of the Slaughter-House Cases, in which the Fourteenth Amendment was eviscerated. The Court that once affirmed that those who torture are the “enemies of all mankind” now tells us that U.S. government officials can torture without worry, because the security of our state might some day depend upon it.

I want to add one principal point to all of this. This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war. So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror. The permanent claims of existential threats from an endless array of enemies means that secrecy is paramount, accountability is deemed a luxury, and National Security trumps every other consideration -- even including basic liberties and the rule of law. Worst of all, the President takes on the attributes of a protector-deity who can and must never be questioned lest we prevent him from keeping us safe."

Vera the French Bulldog

"A wildfire in Santa Barbara, California last month helped forge some unlikely bonds. Rescued from the Jesusita Fire, a 3-week old bobcat kitten and 3 day old fawn became fast friends. The animal rescue in California brought predator and prey together. But these babies simply took comfort in each other's company, snuggling under a desk at a dispatch office for hours."

" And now there are five -- five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called"talent," and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn't know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. Now they do. And like a giant, gawking adolescent who's just discovered he can crash the Lexus convertible his rich dad gave him and the next morning have a new one waiting in his driveway courtesy of a dad who can't say no, the biggies will drive even faster now, taking even bigger risks.

What to do? Two ideas are floating around Washington, but only one is supported by the Treasury and the White House. Unfortunately, it's the wrong one."

"Bernal Haydon-Rumi is the executive assistant to a wealthy socialite, Muriel, who funds eccentric projects such as resettling mammoths on the Great Plains and needs Bernal's management skills to respond to the resulting burnings in effigy by the local citizens. On the way back to Boston from South Dakota, Bernal stops by Muriel's house to spend the night and catch her up on the results of numerous potlucks and football games.

By the next morning, Bernal's been knocked out, Muriel has stolen a car and disappeared, and the local artificial intelligence project she's been funding, a self-guiding probe to explore the surfaces of terrestrial planets, has proved to be way stranger than it seemed on the surface.

Before he can figure out what's going on, Bernal has to deal with an anti-AI activist toting a handmade electronic arsenal, a local serial killer with a penchant for bowling bags, a street-level drug dealer with marketing problems, a cryonic therapist who claims to have figured out a way to strengthen the human personality, Freon-smuggling junk dealers-and someone who wants Bernal dead.

In part an homage to 80s movies like Repo Man and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Brain Thief is a fun, literate speculative fiction adventure set somewhere between the Berkshires and Boston, and includes, at no extra charge, a 30-foot fiberglass cowgirl."

Squee!

Jablokov has 2 earlier books, Carve the Sky and Nimbus, that I cannot recommend highly enough.

It's an old thing, It's a soul thing, But it's a real thing.

Lee Dorsey - Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further? (YouTube)

Via My Modern Metropolis

"Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers."

Yea, good luck with that.

Because making food shaped liked genocidal robots makes us feel better in the face of inevitable death.

Even the camera angles are vintage blaxploitation.

"When The Man murders his brother, pumps heroin into local orphanages, and floods the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor, BLACK DYNAMITE is the one hero willing to fight all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House. Michael Jai White (The Dark Knight) stars as BLACK DYNAMITE, a gun-toting, nunchuck-wielding, ladies man and soul brother. Written and directed by Scott Sanders (Thick as Thieves), BLACK DYNAMITE also stars Tommy Davidson, Nicole Sullivan, Bokeem Woodbine, Arsenio Hall and John Salley. Black Dynamite in theaters on Oct. 16th. "

Thick as Thieves was good; a smart, understated crime movie.

Black Dynamite Official Site

So I'm watching FlashForward. Let's go to Wikipedia for a semi-quick synopsis:

"The premise of FlashForward is that a mysterious paranormal event causes everyone on the planet to simultaneously lose consciousness for 137 seconds, during which people see what appear to be visions of their lives approximately six months in the future - a global "flashforward". A number of people saw newspapers or calendars and it is established that every vision occurs on April 29 or April 30, 2010 at the exact same time, depending on time zones at 5 am UTC. It is also established that the precognitive visions were shared; if one character sees another in their vision, the other character also reports the same events in their vision. The event results in deaths from accidents and leaves the survivors wondering whether what they saw will really happen.

In the pilot, a team of Los Angeles FBI agents, led by Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) and spearheaded by protagonist Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), begin the process of determining what happened, why, and whether it will happen again. Benford is in a uniquely valuable position to lead this investigation because during his flashforward, he was looking at a project board of the investigation. The board was covered with pictures and notes, and Benford was able to remember several significant details, including a note that said "D. Gibbons". At the end of Mark's blackout, he sees a bunch of masked gunmen (one with a three-star tatoo) trying to kill him. He also notices a woven friendship bracelet on his wrist that he does not recognize. Shortly thereafter, he is given a bracelet of that design by his daughter. With the help of his team, Benford creates a website database of people's flashforwards from around the world. He calls it the Mosaic Collective after the case he saw himself investigating during his own flashforward."

Besides why and how the blackout visions occured, one of the major mysteries of the show is whether the future shown in the visions is inevitable or not. What's been irking me is that it never occurs to anyone, and particularly Mark Benford, to try making the future they saw impossible. All Mark has to do is change the investigation project board from the way he envisioned it to prove that the future they saw is not preordained, at least in small ways.

And it's very strange that future-Mark, who's had a vision that armed men are going to attack his office on April 29th at 9pm is just sitting there alone in the dark waiting for them, unless he has reason to believe that changing the future is bad. I would theorize that the visions are of a future that doesn't include the visions.

17 tables of Lego Zombie mayhem at BrickCon.

Collection of professional wrestling mistakes, blunders, and misspeaks. Warning: NSFW-Bad Language.

Personal favorite: The guy in the giant-headed dragon mascot costume at 5:20 - "Somebody's gonna get fired".

"Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.

Reality:Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates."

Iranian Funk in the 70s

I suppose it was only a matter of time before they developed a taste for human flesh.

Sniffing flowers B

Her name is Dahlia. She knows more commands than I was able to remember, including sit, shake, up, rollover, and the mysterious "under". She doesn't like handtrucks because of a car accident with a handtruck in the back seat. She's enlarged her dislike to include most things made of metal, including wire clothes hangers.

• Disney has announced Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides.

  The good news: The movie almost certainly has some connection to the excellent Tim Powers novel and this hopefully means Disney is throwing large chedder in Mr. Power's direction. Now if only someone will make a movie out of Declare.

  The bad news: Keira Knightley's mouth will only be making a guest appearance.

• Shooter is pretty good, but the novel is better. Danny Glover always makes a great villian.
• Blade III is a great case study of a bad movie that should have been much better.

  Short reason: No Guillermo Del Toro, not enough Dracula (What a waste of Dominic Purcell) , too cute dialogue, and my own personal shark-jump: making a big point of how Jessica Biel's character wears her Ipod into combat-which is just dumb.

Two tweets from the 9/12 teabagger march, ironically next to each other:

kfrendling Obama...it's not safe to return to DC...better to stay away..I'll let you know when you can return....wait for it....wait for it....

DivineMoments Why do Liberals see millions coming together in Freedom and Liberty as Hate?

Real-time results for #912dc (Twitter)
Via The Stranger: Slog

• Twitter cross-posts to Facebook if I use the #fb hashtag.
• Utility Fog Blog cross-posts to Facebook. This is why 29 Facebook posts suddenly appeared yesterday.
• Twitter posts have their own sidebar in the blog.
• Google Reader shared items (they really need to come up with a better name) have a blog sidebar.

I think what I really need is for the blog to take RSS feeds and turn them into posts. Then I could move Twitter and Google Reader out of the sidebar and into the big show. And since the blog is mirrored on Facebook, so would Twitter and Google Reader.

Hitler finds out about another Downfall parody
Via Richard Kadrey (Twitter)

Testing Base of the Emergency Control Ministry of Belarus
Via Warren Elllis