I’m hardly what you would call a legal scholar–I took one class on constitutional law in my tenure as a University student–but it seems like everything interesting lately to me is happening in the courts.

First you have the decision by the Obama administration to finally bring 10 of the Guantanamo prisoners to trial, 5 in Civilian courts in New York and another 5 in modified military.  While it’s nice that we’ve decided to bring x number of the people we hold in a legal black hole to at least some semblance of a legal proceeding, I’m not terribly happy about the continuing of military commissions.  Though, on the other hand, I don’t really see how you can have foreign prisoners of war tried in civilian courts.  So if commissions and civilian courts aren’t appropriate, then you should give them a courts-martial right?

Oops!  Did I forget to mention that they’re *not* prisoners of war?  I think they’re enemy combatants, or unlawful combatants, or men from mars for all we know.  The important thing is that they’re not prisoners of war.  Despite the fact that we’re conducting a “War on Terror".  Confused yet?

It’s not surprising, that the handling of detainees has been so schizophrenic, given the precedents inherited by a declaration of war.  Which, in all honestly, is probably scarier in terms of legal implications for American citizens.  States of war tend to produce very sketchy behavior by the government towards civil liberties and press freedoms.  Compounded by the fact that we’ve declared war on an idea, which are notoriously hard to vanquish (see: racism, sexism, et al), you’ve got a perfect storm of totalitarianism.

Not to say that we’re actually anywhere close to that, but it’s unnerving to say the least; and who’s to say that another terrorist attack or credible threat won’t push us closer to that point.  At the beginning of the Summer, President Obama declared that “some detainees who are deemed too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute” will be held in indefinite detention.  Which as far as Western liberal democracies go, is a big no-no.  I understand the argument that:

1. They’re not US citizens
2. They’re probably f**king terrorists

To which I would answer that a) that’s a slippery slope, and b) who’s to say?  We already prosecute foreign nationals that commit crimes in the United States, or at least request their extradition.  But detaining them indefinitely flies in the face of rule of law and democracy.  It’s unfortunate that the Obama administration didn’t have the will to call an end to the war on terror in real policy terms, instead of merely renaming it to a “Overseas Contingency Operation”

First off, I have no idea what is in the stimulus bill.  I’ve heard wildly varying accounts, mostly from the Drudge Report, about mice in California and Tax Credits for illegal immigrants.  Since the final version isn’t finished yet, I’m not going to dig too deeply.  I did find this easily accessible text of the house bill.

I did find, through the graces of the Washington Post, this wonderful little video that a spokesman for Congressmen Eric Cantor sent to a reporter in response to his overlord’s position on the stimulus bill.  It may be safe to say ‘ex-spokesman’ at this point.

So here’s the scoop:  Anyone remember the Anthrax attacks of 2001?  The ones that happened the week after 9/11 and mailed by Saddam Hussein and Hitler?  Well, turns out that they were actually sent by a US Bio-Weapons researcher that committed suicide on Tuesday, before the Justice Department could indict him.

Now, I don’t mean to go all tin-foil hat on this one, but seriously?  The weird part is that no one is even trying to explain why this guy would send those letters in the first place!  Nevermind the doubt that should be cast on the people working in our bio-weapons programs!  Next thing you know, we’re all going to be fighting off the living dead that have escaped from some government research lab, where jimmy the janitor accidentally coats his pizza with ‘zombie-virus’ mislabeled as Parmesan cheese.  It would actually go a lot like this.

Follow this to be freaked out more by the Bush Administration

Alright, so now that it’s almost a week past the March 4th Primaries, it’s probably safe to write about politics

Of course I’ve been following this contest since it began about this time last year, but avoided making an opinion on candidates for quite awhile.  I’ve never been very enthused with the idea of Hilary Clinton as president.  Everyone has real fond memories of Bill, but I kinda remember the whole bomb-third-world-countries-and-starve-their-children part of his presidency as well.  That “Era of Good Feelings” can stay in the 90’s thank you very much.

But hey, Democrats a Democrat right?  At least there would be a reasonable assumption that the war(s) would be over sometime soon.  And who am I to judge her for her husband’s legacy.  Bad liberal, Bad!  I also didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to Obama, because I didn’t see him as having a chance against Clinton; besides, he ran about the same platform anyways so there was no need to work up a sweat and go to his campaign website.

However, a funny thing happened in Iowa.  Clinton didn’t win.  In fact, she didn’t win a couple of times.  Further, McCain started to pull ahead.&nsbp; Now that was a surprise.  I had said for years, that McCain had about the same chance as Ted Kennedy of getting a Republican nomination.  I’m not exactly in line with most of McCain’s politics, but you’ve got to admit there’s something likable about the guy.  He oozes straight-talk Eisenhower Republicanism.  Further, he’s someone that conservative Democrats and independents can jump for.

But then we have this Obama character, that I start taking an interest in.  Actually, I start liking some of his positions, particularly ones relating to intellectual property, education, and paid vacations.  Not that any of those would necessarily pass Congress, but it’s the thought that counts right?  Come “Tsunami Tuesday” and the race has become quite interesting.  It came out just about as I predicted, with Clinton snapping up California.  Further, I figured that Obama’s only hope was that because he was going to be winning for the rest of February, that it would might put him over the top enough to beat Clinton in Texas, which could be enough momentum to sink her campaign.

Well, that’s all ancient history now; so what about the future?

First, I don’t think Obama is going to pull this one off.  He may have more elected delegates sure, but that don’t mean squat to the Democratic party.  They are more then capable of screwing this up, and I don’t think they could really screw it up worse than it is right now anyways.  Barring the delegates of two gigantic swing states solved that.  Every Democrat is going to feel dirty and pissed off at the party, whether the Florida-Michigan delegation sits, the superdelagates decide, or anything sort of FDR’s rotting corpse rising from the grave to run for a fifth term (interesting Supreme Court case: does the 22nd Amendment apply to FDR’s rotting corpse.  New twist on debate about where ‘life begins’).

Anyways, Hilary has party support, and she’ll have an argument for winning big states (Because California is going Republican and Texas is going to vote Democratic,right? ), and something about Pop Tarts.  One thing seems sure is that we will not see a Clinton-Obama ticket, and I think that is a good move on Obama’s part.  And kudos to his campaign for making the Clintons look dumb for proposing it.

So Hilary-McCain head to head in November?  Looks alright for now, but don’t be surprised if the 2009 State of the Union is about a hundred years war.

It had occured to me recently that I had not posted in awhile.  So I thought I’d fix that

I read an interesting book over the break, Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig.  As a musician and a programmer, the effects of copyright are immediate and impact my livelihood to a good extent.  However, I had not devoted myself to a very in depth examination of my feelings on copyright.  It’s very easy to say ‘As an owner of a piece of software, I should have access to the source code’ or that you can make a backup copy of a CD; it’s much harder to account for what it means to use a copyrighted image in a YouTube video or a song in a mashup

He begins the book with a Supreme Court case brought by two chicken farmers from South Carolina, Thomas Lee and Tinie Causby.  They alleged that low flying military aircraft were causing their chickens to die because the sound made them fly into the walls of their coops.  Common Law property conceptions prior to this time (1945) had entitled ownership from the ground up to the heavens. So, the Causby’s said that the pilots had trespassed upon their property and caused this damage.  Lessig concedes that by all rights, the pilots had trespassed.  Aircraft were still a relatively new technology at the time, and the law was ambiguous on what to do about this centuries old understanding of property. Lessig aptly notes that “In a single paragraph, hundreds of years of property law were erased.”

“[The] doctrine has no place in the modern world. The air is a public highway, as Congress has declared. Were that not true, every transcontinental flight would subject the operator to countless trespass suits. Common sense revolts at the idea.  To recognize such private claims to the airspace would clog these highways, seriously interfere with their control and development in the public interest, and transfer into private ownership that to which only the public has a just claim."[Emphasis added]

This excerpt from the Supreme Court’s decision highlights an idea that seems to reflect the reaction of government and law to the idea of property, intellectual or otherwise.  Law and norms must mold to the emergence of technology, in the interest of the public and progress in general.  In my mind, Common Sense seems to revolt against the idea of expanding copyright infinitely, preventing all works (most no longer in publication/circulation)from entering the public domain in nearly 100 years.  In short, if you have ever given thought to the unusual copyrighted world we live in, it would behoove you to check out this book.  Pretty quick and simple read (and even a few pictures).

In another note, while looking for an online copy of a comic that he features in the book, I ran across this by the same author: