I’m learning to choose NOT to do certain things and be OK with the decision – I don’t have to place equal importance on every task or fix every problem. That’s why the blog has sat and collected dust for a while. I’m still paying for it because I want to log my thoughts periodically but other people and things take precedence.
School is pretty intense right now. I’m half-way through a course in business law and two things jump out at me: 1) every stupid corporate policy or government law is due to a lawsuit and 2) it scares the crap out of me that people conduct business for corporations without a basic understanding of the things I’ve learned in the past 6 weeks. It’s a wonder businesses don’t get sued MORE.
Segue: I’ve been following the disclosure of the CIA torture memos via RSS feeds from Andrew Sullivan. I have to admit, I delete every other torture-related post because it’s just too much to take in. He posted a link to this gem by Philip Zelikow that outlines the legal connection between the Geneva Conventions and our own constitutional protections. The bottom line seems to be if someone in law enforcement – CIA or county sheriff – thinks you're planning an attack, they can legally suspend your constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure (4th amendment), rights of due process and protection against self-incrimination (5th amendment), cruel and unusual punishment (8th amendment) and civil rights guarantees (14th amendment). His closing comment:
So the Office of Legal Council must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail. In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest -- if the alleged national security justification was compelling.
Speaking of Sullivan, he’s been running an interesting series of posts called The Cannabis Closet in which readers send in their personal experiences with cannabis, good or bad, past or present. A couple of posts were keepers including this from a widower who bought it for his dying wife. My favorite line in the series came from this one:
Drug addiction is never about the drug, it’s about people coming to grips with the pain of existence.
The original entry is here. Radley Balko has a keeper on the lethality of current marijuana laws here.
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