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~~ Nikon Camera

On June 29th, 2006, noting in passing that there was no international recognition of the existence of any such status or thing as "Enemy Combatant", the Supremes found that no competent judicial authority had declared those incarcerated in GITMO to be other than prisoners of war, meaning that they were still covered by the Geneva Conventions. Accordingly, they wound up holding that Bush The Lesser's plan for some cock-a-mamie extra-judicial military pseudo-tribunals violated both the UCMJ and the Geneva Conventions. Further, relying upon the seemingly plain, simple and direct language of Article VI, paragraph II of the US constitution, they contradicted the Court of Appeals and held that the The Geneva Conventiona are enforceable in US courts of law.

Knowing full well the the Bush Regime's entire panoply of outlandish ideas and procedures violated not only common decency, but both US and international law, Congress had already leaped into action in order to prevent anybody from interfering with it. The Center for Justice and Accountability summarizes their actions as follows:

Before the Supreme Court issued its opinion, Congress passed the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which stripped all courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas petitions or any other action against the government and its agents relating to the detention of a detainee at Guantánamo. To reinforce the DTA, Congress later passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) which added a retroactive component to the DTA and stripped federal habeas jurisdiction from all pending Guantánamo cases. This legislation effectively eviscerated the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdan.
~~https://cja.org/what-we-do/litigation/amicus-briefs/hamdan-v-rumsfeld/

That is all perfectly true, but omits the minor detail that this egregious perversion of law and justice was, like all of the Shrub's warmongering and war crimes, fully bi-partisan. They probably assumed that everybody would just take that for granted because USA!USA!USA! and Exceptional! and all that shit. How very, very sad. Perhaps they will find room for it in the Empire's epitaph.

On this day in history:

1613 – The Globe Theatre in London burned to the ground.

1786 – Over five hundred Roman Catholic highlanders left Scotland to settle in Glengarry County, Ontario.

1880 – France annexed Tahiti.

1881 – Muhammad Ahmad declared himself to be the Mahdi

1916 – Roger Casement was sentenced to death for his part in the Easter Rising.

1927 – A U.S. Army Air Corps Fokker tri-motor, completed the first transpacific flight.

1956 – The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 was signed by Ike.

1972 – The Supremes ruled that arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. (Furman v. Georgia ) A bit late in the day it would seem, but who am I to say.

1974 – Isabel Perón became Acting President of Argentina,

1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union to Canada

1975 – Steve Wozniak tested the first prototype of the Apple I computer.

1976 – The Seychelles became independent from the United Kingdom.

1995 – The first docking of a Space Shuttle (Atlantis) with the Mir space station

2006 – The Supremes ruled that GWB's plan to try GITMO detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

2007 – Apple Inc. released its first mobile phone. i can't recall what they called it.

2014 – ISIL self-declared its caliphate in Syria and northern Iraq giving the US an excuse for its criminal war against Syria..

Some people who were born on this day:

“If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.”

~~ Stokely Carmichael

1787 – Lavinia Stoddard, poet, school founder
1793 – Josef Ressel, inventor, invented the ships propeller (
1801 – Frédéric Bastiat, economist and theorist
1818 – Angelo Secchi, astronomer and academic
1835 – Celia Thaxter, poet and story writer
1858 – George Washington Goethals, general and engineer who co-designed the Panama Canal
1858 – Julia Lathrop, activist and politician
1861 – William James Mayo, physician and surgeon, co-founded the Mayo Clinic
1868 – George Ellery Hale, astronomer and journalist
1873 – Leo Frobenius, ethnologist and archaeologist
1888 – Squizzy Taylor, businessman
1900 – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, poet and pilot
1901 – Nelson Eddy, singer and actor
1912 – Émile Peynaud, oenologist and academic
1922 – Ralph Burns, songwriter, bandleader, composer, conductor, arranger and pianist
1941 – Stokely Carmichael, activist
1943 – Little Eva, singer
1948 – Sean Bergin, saxophonist and flute player
1948 – Ian Paice, drummer, songwriter, and producer
1953 – Don Dokken, singer, songwriter, and guitarist (Dokken)
1953 – Colin Hay, singer and guitarist
1957 – María Conchita Alonso, singer and actress
1962 – Bobby Gillespie, musician, singer, and songwriter
1965 – Tripp Eisen, guitarist
1971 – Matthew Good,singer, songwriter, and guitarist

Some people who died on this day:

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

~~ Thomas Huxley

0520 – Moctezuma II, Aztec tlatoani
1860 – Thomas Addison, physician and endocrinologist
1861 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet and translator
1895 – Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist
1900 – Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin, mathematician and academic
1940 – Paul Klee, painter and illustrator
1941 – Ignacy Jan Paderewski, pianist, composer, and politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Poland
1964 – Eric Dolphy, saxophonist, composer, and bandleader
1975 – Tim Buckley, singer, songwriter ,and guitarist
1979 – Lowell George, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1993 – Héctor Lavoe, singer and songwriter
2002 – Rosemary Clooney, singer and actress (

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

National Camera Day
National Waffle Iron Day
World Scleroderma Awareness Day
Haro Wine Festival (Haro, La Rioja)

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

open thread, Camera Day, Little Eva, Ian Paice, María Conchita Alonso, Paderewski m Eric Dolphy, Lowell George