The Supreme Court of the United States in a one page decision has ordered that Jose Padilla be moved from military to civilian custody after the U.S. Government dropped its charges that Padilla was a "dirty bomber", charges the government used to justify holding Padilla without trial in a military prison for three years, even though Padilla is an American citizen arrested on American soil. The government's new charges against Padilla are that he was helping to finance foreign terrorists but this time the charges are filed in a civilian court. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had tried to stop Padilla's transfer to a civilian court in order to force the Supreme Court to review Padilla's appeal against his military custody and so determine if his custody was legal. Although the Supreme Court has now ruled that Padilla be moved to civilian custody the decision did say that the Supreme Court would consider Padilla's original appeal against his military custody "in due course."

I had previously reported that Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested on American soil and held in solitary confinement in a military brig as an "enemy combatant" without charge for three years was going to be charged with a civilian crime and transfered from military to civilian authority. But the 4th circuit appeals court which had previously granted Bush the right to arrest anyone he wants with only a kangaroo court to review (note, however, that the president even objected to this ruling saying he has the right to arrest and hold anyone he wants, for any reason he wants, for as long as he wants without review from anyone) has apparently got its nose out of joint.

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After three years of rotting in prison with no charges as an 'enemy combatant', American citizen, Jose Padilla, arrested on American soil, has finally been charged with a crime and transfered from military to civilian authority. Lawyer's on Padilla's behalf had appealed his status as an 'enemy combatant' leading to a variety of legal cases including a Supreme Court Decision and a recent decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a sense I'm almost sorry that the George Bush decided to back down and not continue to assert the government's line that it could hold anyone, anywhere, for however long it thought appropriate. It would have been useful to have had a Supreme Court ruling reminding Mr. Bush that he is President, not Emperor. Of course given the new Justices that Mr. Bush is appointing I suppose I should be happy the case ended now before the new Supreme Court had a chance to rule that we have no rights other than the ones that Mr. Bush decides to give us.

In any case Mr. Bush has demonstrated that the U.S. government can steal three years of a citizen's life without any charges, judicial review, nothing. That alone is scary enough.

"This is an industry, it's a business. We exist to make money. We exist to put commercials on the air. The programming that is put on between those commercials is simply the bait we put in the mousetrap." – Ted Koppel, retiring anchor, ABC New, Nightline

Obvious? Yes. But still worth remembering.

Quote taken from Washington Post article "His Night in the Sun – After 25 Years, Ted Koppel Is Leaving the Show That Did It His Way", 9/8/2005 by Howard Kurtz.

In an article I wrote about TOR I mentioned that one of the reasons to use TOR is that you don't know what you have to hide. Things you do today, like reading certain materials, visiting certain websites, exchanging e-mails with certain persons could, in the future, prove to be enough to destroy your life. Just ask Muslims who made the mistake of visiting the wrong Mosques, giving money to the wrong charities or buying the wrong books. None of their actions were illegal or problematic before 9/11 but now those entirely innocent actions are being used to ruin their lives. So it is with justifiable fear that American citizens should read the Washington Post's article on the massive abuses the government has been making of National Security Letters (NSLs).

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Daniel Gross in a great article in Slate lays out the case for getting rid of the Mortgage Tax Deduction. I couldn't agree more. The mortgage tax deduction is highly regressive and it causes America to mis-allocate capital on a grand scale.

Jose Padilla is an American citizen arrested on American soil and accused by President Bush of being an enemy combatant. To that end he was thrown into prison three years ago where he has rotted ever since. In October of last year the Supreme Court ruled that Padilla's appeal against his status as an enemy combatant had been filed in the wrong court and ordered his case retried in a different court district (one that just happens to be much more conservative than the one that heard his original case). Nearly a full year later a decision has just come down from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The details of the situation make for interesting reading.

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John Stossel has an excellent article explaining why 'price gouging' is a wonderful thing. It is a beautiful example of one of the more counter intuitive aspects of Capitalism. The market can work, if we would ever let it.

Recently Sanjiva Weerawarana wrote in his blog how awful it was that settler homes in Gaza are being destroyed when the settlers leave. He further accuses anyone who believes the stated reason for the homes' destruction, that the Palestinians have better uses for the land, of being idiots. One wonders what Sanjiva would think of the Palestinian Authority's housing and public works minister Mohammed Shtayyeh who said "If Israel does not destroy settlers' homes, we will destroy them."

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I suppose some of my readers may have noticed just a tiny change in the way my blog looks. The biggest change is actually a move from Blosxom to WordPress driven mostly by the fact that my hacked together kludge of a Blosxom website was becoming unmaintainable. I'm really impressed with WordPress, not only could I set it up in less than 5 minutes but it did just about everything I wanted right out of the box. I realize the color scheme is a bit extreme but I like it and I love the way the text flows to fill the screen size. Since my blog entries tend to be articles this is a much more natural way to present things. Now I just have to figure out how to work in the Google AdSense ads without them looking unpleasant.