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Who the fuck are these people?

By branding the fiercest arm of the Iranian military as a terrorist group, the US government has made the first obvious and deliberate step towards confrontation with Iran.

Thing #812764 that is better about Canada:

Canada’s Parliament votes to scrap two contentious anti-terrorism measures

TORONTO: Canada’s House of Commons voted Tuesday to end two anti-terror measures adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, one that allowed for preventive arrests and another that permitted forced testimony.

It was defeated 159-124 when all three opposition parties opposed it on Tuesday.

Opposition Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said the measures are an unnecessary infringement on civil liberties. Dion rejected conservative Tory charges that he is soft on terrorism.

“These two provisions especially have done nothing to fight against terrorism, have not been helpful and have continued to create some risk for civil liberties,” Dion said.

Note that this includes thing #412973: Multiple parties providing flexibility in political action without being tied to the master plan of one of two parties, and thing #120984: Legislators that identify with their constituents, which ties into thing #98521: Citizens that give a fuck about things like actual liberty and freedom and associated principles.

Compare to the U.S. congress’s action, which opted to keep its laws keeping us free by removing our freedoms.

Tidbits from my skimming of the Supreme Court decision relating to Guantanamo detainee trials:

1. The Detainee Treatment Act specifically removes (or tries to remove) judicial review of pending Guantanamo military trials, and limits review of closed trials “exclusively” to the DC Circuit Court — excluding the Supreme Court from jurisdiction in any matter related to the trials.

2. The DC court ruled that violations of the Geneva Conventions can’t be dealt with because they are not enforceable. Contrarily, the Supreme Court ruled that they are, since armed forces regulations require following them.

3. You cannot be put on military trial if you are a POW. If you may be a POW, then you must be treated as a POW until a commission determines that you are not a POW.

4. Even if you are not a POW, “conspiracy” (the vague crime which Hamdan, Osama’s former driver, is charged with) is not a war crime under the Geneva conventions. As such, it must be decided by a court following a civilian-minded format (I’m paraphrasing), not a military tribunal.

5. Justice Thomas believes that you can’t make a Geneva claim about the violations of your trial until your trial has completed.

6. The government (and Justice Thomas) contend that Hamdan is not a POW, but he IS an enemy soldier, and therefore he can be tried for acts he committed. In any case, Thomas and Scalia seem to think the court’s job is to shut up and trust the president.

7. The government’s long-standing line that Geneva doesn’t apply because the enemy is al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda is neither a nation nor a Geneva signatory, doesn’t wash. Firstly, territory is relevant, and the territory of conflict on which Hamdan was captured was that of Afghanistan, a signatory. Further, even if the parties in a conflict are not signatories, those that are signatories are compelled to uphold a minimum set of provisions for those who are not actively fighting (e.g. surrenderers).

For the daring, the 185-page ruling is here.

The blogworld is abuzz today with the story that Karl Rove believes he will be indicted very soon. If so, he will resign. This would be the latest in a string of mid-term losses by the Bush White House, after Libby, Card, and Goss.

The question is, can the neocon machine really handle the loss of Bush’s main puppet master? I have a hard time believing that it can’t. After all, anyone who can rationally look at the policies and acts of this administration would have to agree that America wasn’t going to really swallow it. If anything, the machine is probably a bit astonished that it has taken this long for the chinks to appear in the Bush armor and his bishops and ministers to be deposed one by one. Which would mean that they’re prepared for such a contingency. Maybe they weren’t prepared for the loss of Rove, but I bet they are prepared for a lot.

Of course, this is all stemming from the belief that the neocons really realize the negative effects their agenda will have, and aren’t just massively, ridiculously, mind-numbingly convinced they are serving a great utilitarian good. If the latter is true, then maybe they are not ready for this, and will crumble like a deck of cards. I find that really hard to believe.

I for one expect that the Bush administration or the engine behind it is prepared to withstand the loss of every single person currently there, all the way to the top. How could you run forward with a record like theirs and not be prepared to handle a severe backlash?

It’s just far too optimistic to think that a single independent counsel investigation — the same thing that brought down Clinton — would be able to bring this house down so easily.

The big number in the news today was 29. Not only because the NASDAQ dropped by that many points (which frankly isn’t news, it’s chump change), but because it’s GWB’s current approval rating, his first under 30 and apparently the worst since his father’s in 1992. In fact, his numbers are lower than they were back in mid-2001, pre-9/11, when he was widely seen as a pretender to the office.

Of course, the Democrats are pretty encouraged by this. And the numbers just seem to keep going down, despite the fact that Fox News’ ratings are still as strong as ever. There’s a disconnect here — Fox News certainly hasn’t changed tack on its postive coverage of the GOP or the president, so how is it that more people are watching it yet less people are aligned with its politics?

An important thing to remember about polls is that they are only as good as the corpus of their polling sample. And a big part of what determines that sample is the set of people who agree — or more to the point, don’t agree — to answer the poll.

Not to invoke the VRWC, but after the heyday of Freeping, is it insane to think that, perhaps, Bush supporters are taking it upon themselves to deliberately not answer political polls? Worse, could they be stuffing them with anti-GOP answers? Polls mean nothing in and of themselves; their only possible effect is how political engines choose to direct their campaigns (and whether people go and vote). And if the GOP can lure the Democrats into a false sense of overconfidence, lowering the Dems’ defenses, they could pull off yet another upset. And chaos would rule the center-left as they finally conclude that everything they know is wrong.

Bush’s poll numbers were lower than his opponent in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, Granted, they weren’t this lopsided, but the point is, they consistently undermeasured the pro-GOP population.

Maybe it’s paranoia. Maybe it’s easy to be paranoid after 6 years. But maybe the polls have been wrong long enough to make me think twice about how much to trust them, even when they’re good.