Courts With No Law

They make for exciting and unpredictable courtroom drama and testimony. In the Guantanamo Military Commissions "trials," you can invoke the Geneva Conventions one minute; and dispense with them the next. Hey, we're America. We may have invented the Geneva Conventions, but, under Bush, they only apply when Rummy feels like it. He's the Decider! Money quote from the ACLU's highly readable eye-witness blog on Rummy's "trials":

As the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. It's fair to say that the Commission proceedings have been a public relations disaster for the U.S. not because the congenial military spinners lack skill, but because they have such a lousy product to sell. When former members of the prosecution characterize the Commission system as a "fraud on the American people"; when a Commission member, sitting as judge and jury, concedes under questioning that he is unfamiliar with the Geneva Conventions; when the Commissions feature the extraordinary spectacle of a shouting match between two colonels in the U.S. military one the Presiding Officer, the other defense counsel over the lack of clear guidelines for these proceedings; the problem is not one of communications.

If you care about the fate of the American justice system, bookmark this blog.