The purchasing, stacking, and control of the Federal Courts by right-wing zealots has consequences for very ordinary people who get caught up accidentally in the craziness of the Dept. of Homeland Security. At center stage on display, there is the awful case of Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese with Dual German citizenship who had the innocent misfortune to have the same name as some terrorist suspect wanted by the CIA. Mr. el-Masri was on a trip to Macedonia, pulled off the bus at the border, and locked up. Eventually he was turned over to CIA men dressed in the obligatory black, blindfolded and chained, then flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, where he was beaten up, had various objects inserted into his rectum, and force-fed and tortured. This went on forever; when the CIA louts finally figured out that he was innocent, that they had literally picked up the wrong man, he was taken to a forest in Albania and turned loose there in the night. Have a nice life, Mr. el-Masri. We'll teach you to be born Lebanese.
So Mr. el-Masri, now badly scarred and suffering, is put in touch with a lawyer and they decide to sue the CIA overlords in the US Courts. To that end, he flies to America and his attorney, the famous Ben Wizner, sues the government. Now the kicker: the Federal Court dismisses his action for damages, acceding to the argument by the U.S> Dept. of Justice that allowing the case to proceed would "harm national security." And that, folks, is how corrupted the Federal Bench has become: even totally innocent people who are tortured and beaten to within an inch of their life cannot seek redress in Court for their injuries.
Mr. el-Masri is now confined to his bed, at age 60, unable to move around, walking creating a numbness and tingling sensation causing pain, a function of the neurological damage inflicted in the beatings. Basically, his life has been stolen from him. Penniless, he is kept alive by contributions from his sons, the governments in both Germany and the USA having abandoned him. Well, if you put fanatical right-wing ideologues claiming intellectual foundation from the ideas of Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and John Roberts of the Federalist Society, pumped by Lenny Leo, then this is the result: CIA goons can and will snatch you up, declare you an Enemy of the State, and imprison and torture you, even when they flat-out have the wrong man. And the Federal Court will close the court house doors to your claims for redress, on the grounds that CIA "secrets" might be cut loose.
I invite anyone to tell me how this dismal state of affairs is any different that that described by Franz Kafka in "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." And that, Lenny, is why your neighbors, bathed in the springwater of liberty, so loathe you.
At times like this one wishes "Time Machines" were not imaginary devices on Rod Serling's TV program "The Twilight Zone." I'd be willing to bet that if the Founding Fathers of this nation were able to attend Saturday's planned demonstration at Leonard Leo's home he'd soon be riding out of town on a rail, maybe even clad in a sticky uniform of tar and feathers? The almost complete takeover of our judicial system by "Dark Money" used by Leo's Federalist Society to purchase seats on the bench for right wing corporate zealots would be so repulsive to those who sacrificed and died in order to form a democratic nation as to defy description. Those Americans who haven't read Jane Mayer's excellent expose of Leo's Federalist Society scurrilous attack upon American Democracy should hasten to do so while there's anything left to defend! And to gain a deeper understanding of the absurdity of the supreme court's (lower case intentional) Citizens United ruling I highly recommend William Magnuson's "For Profit: A History of Corporations." Turns out that "Whoever has the most money wins and damn the interests of others!" wasn't part of the original concept of corporate licensing.
How fortunate for humanity that moral and political philosophies and ideologies run the spectrum.
Makes the world go ‘round.
The purchasing, stacking, and control of the Federal Courts by right-wing zealots has consequences for very ordinary people who get caught up accidentally in the craziness of the Dept. of Homeland Security. At center stage on display, there is the awful case of Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese with Dual German citizenship who had the innocent misfortune to have the same name as some terrorist suspect wanted by the CIA. Mr. el-Masri was on a trip to Macedonia, pulled off the bus at the border, and locked up. Eventually he was turned over to CIA men dressed in the obligatory black, blindfolded and chained, then flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, where he was beaten up, had various objects inserted into his rectum, and force-fed and tortured. This went on forever; when the CIA louts finally figured out that he was innocent, that they had literally picked up the wrong man, he was taken to a forest in Albania and turned loose there in the night. Have a nice life, Mr. el-Masri. We'll teach you to be born Lebanese.
So Mr. el-Masri, now badly scarred and suffering, is put in touch with a lawyer and they decide to sue the CIA overlords in the US Courts. To that end, he flies to America and his attorney, the famous Ben Wizner, sues the government. Now the kicker: the Federal Court dismisses his action for damages, acceding to the argument by the U.S> Dept. of Justice that allowing the case to proceed would "harm national security." And that, folks, is how corrupted the Federal Bench has become: even totally innocent people who are tortured and beaten to within an inch of their life cannot seek redress in Court for their injuries.
Mr. el-Masri is now confined to his bed, at age 60, unable to move around, walking creating a numbness and tingling sensation causing pain, a function of the neurological damage inflicted in the beatings. Basically, his life has been stolen from him. Penniless, he is kept alive by contributions from his sons, the governments in both Germany and the USA having abandoned him. Well, if you put fanatical right-wing ideologues claiming intellectual foundation from the ideas of Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and John Roberts of the Federalist Society, pumped by Lenny Leo, then this is the result: CIA goons can and will snatch you up, declare you an Enemy of the State, and imprison and torture you, even when they flat-out have the wrong man. And the Federal Court will close the court house doors to your claims for redress, on the grounds that CIA "secrets" might be cut loose.
I invite anyone to tell me how this dismal state of affairs is any different that that described by Franz Kafka in "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." And that, Lenny, is why your neighbors, bathed in the springwater of liberty, so loathe you.
At times like this one wishes "Time Machines" were not imaginary devices on Rod Serling's TV program "The Twilight Zone." I'd be willing to bet that if the Founding Fathers of this nation were able to attend Saturday's planned demonstration at Leonard Leo's home he'd soon be riding out of town on a rail, maybe even clad in a sticky uniform of tar and feathers? The almost complete takeover of our judicial system by "Dark Money" used by Leo's Federalist Society to purchase seats on the bench for right wing corporate zealots would be so repulsive to those who sacrificed and died in order to form a democratic nation as to defy description. Those Americans who haven't read Jane Mayer's excellent expose of Leo's Federalist Society scurrilous attack upon American Democracy should hasten to do so while there's anything left to defend! And to gain a deeper understanding of the absurdity of the supreme court's (lower case intentional) Citizens United ruling I highly recommend William Magnuson's "For Profit: A History of Corporations." Turns out that "Whoever has the most money wins and damn the interests of others!" wasn't part of the original concept of corporate licensing.
Considering Lenny lives in the rich part of town, with all this hubbub, his neighbors must just love him. Oh, well.
Leonard Leo.
It's not the Church.
It's not the Constitution.
It's the Cash.
Koch funded corrupt courts and climate denial. So Leo can live the high life in drag as the humble servant of Christ.
Democracy and the planet are just collateral damage to Leo's greed. And hypocrisy.