A few weeks ago, Truthout published an article that examined a number of instances of water torture, including evidence of near-drowning, on prisoners held by the Department of Defense. A second article, with further documentation, including cases other cases of submersion in water and also extreme forms of “water dousing,” will be coming out soon. But not everything can be squeezed into even two articles.

The conditions at Security Housing Units (SHU) at Pelican Bay Prison, and other Supermax prisons, clearly constitute torture and/or cruel, inhumane treatment of prisoners. It relies on the use of severe isolation or solitary confinement, the effects of which I’ve written about before in the context of the Bradley Manning case (see here and here). At Pelican Bay, the prisoners in “administrative segregation” are locked in a gray concrete 8′X10′ foot cell 22-1/2 hours per day. The other time (if that privilege is granted) is spent alone in a tiny concrete yard. There is no human physical contact. No work, no communal activities. If the prisoner has enough money they can purchase a TV or radio. Meals are pushed through a slot in the metal door.

Just a few years ago, the national debate over the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, indefinite detention, secret renditions and other legal elements of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror” happened openly in American courtrooms and in the daily newspapers. Increasingly, those debates have receded into the rearview mirror as we content ourselves with the illusion that these issues are no longer urgent, or no longer affect us. In his thoughtful new book, Habeas Corpus After 9/11, Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall University School of Law, reminds us that these and other legal innovations in the War on Terror are neither resolved, nor isolated, nor benign. We are still living in the legal universe that was constructed on the fly after 9/11. We just don’t want to admit it.

Next week is the State of the Union address, and I thought I’d offer a little last minute, unsolicited advice to the president and the White House speechwriters. Some may think it presumptuous, but as one of “we, the people,” I think it’s allowable. It’s not like they have to take the advice, after all . . . but it sure would be nice to see and hear something like this.

Father and son, Charles Fried (former solicitor general of the United States under Ronald Reagan, legal scholar at Harvard University and author of Modern Liberty) and Gregory Fried (chair of the Philosophy Department at Suffolk University and author of Heidegger’s Polemos) have undertaken the daunting task of examining the limitations and excesses of modern day Presidential power to gather intelligence by torture and surveillance. In order to reach their ultimate conclusions as to the interplay of law, morality, civil community and political leadership, the Frieds review sources and thought from Aristotle to Machiavelli to the Bible, including principles from epieikeia to “dirty hands” to religious and secular precepts relating to human dignity. They have deliberately kept the conversation, “as wide as possible” in recognition that “ours is a nation founded in philosophy.”

First Gitmo Habeas Case Makes Way To SCOTUS; it will be an important bellwether to see if the Court accepts cert and, if so, what they do with the case.

The government appealed its loss in the habeas petition of Mohamedou Ould Salahi today; Judge James Robertson’s ruling hewed very closely to the terms of the Authorization for Use of Military Force in his decision.

The President’s statement at the Pentagon on September 11 mirrored in many ways his impromptu statement at yesterday’s press conference against Islamophobia and being captured by fear. Let me quote at length (I’ve taken a paragraph out of this, but I’ll return to it).

Welcome to the lonely battle of fighting for the rule of law, right winger Andrew Napolitano. But the time for the right wing to make these arguments was probably 2004, not 2010.

That’s right, 3 out of every 4 habeas cases of Guantanamo prisoners have found no reason to hold them in custody. These, we were told, are the “worst of the worst” prisoners, the ones that simply cannot be released into civil society. But 3/4 of them are innocent of any crime, according to federal judges which historically give a lot of deference to the wishes of the government.