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In a decision that made me want to make out with certain Justices, the Supreme Court has issued a bitch slap to Bush, ruling that using military tribunals for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay violates both the Geneva Convention and American military law.

In the majority opinion, Justice Stevens declared flatly that “the military commission at issue lacks the power to proceed because its structure and procedure violate” both the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs the American military’s legal system, and the Geneva Convention.

Justice Stevens rejected the administration’s claims that the tribunals were justified both by President Bush’s inherent powers as commander in chief and by the resolution passed by Congress authorizing the use of force after the Sept. 11. There is nothing in the resolution’s legislative history “even hinting” that such an expansion of the president’s powers was considered, he wrote.

I not only love the substance of this opinion (due process is sort of an important concept to me), but I truly love that the Court put Bush and his dangerously enormous head in its proper place. Michael Greenberg, a terrorism law professor, told the New York Times that the decision could have come out the same way based on “technicalities,” demonstrating that the Court chose to make a statement by so broadly rebuking Bush and his abuse of executive power.

My guess is that most of the talking heads are going to start spewing crap about terrorists and threats to the American people and that they should be punished, for fuck’s sake! But that just misses the point entirely - if the prisoners are the horrible terrorists that the administration claims they are (and there is a lot pointing to the fact that they are not), then come to that conclusion through the proper process of law. Bring them to trial, with lawyers, evidence, and all the processes that the American legal system has in place. If a fair trial results in a finding of terrorism, then deal with it then. But proclaiming them to be terrorists is not enough. To just say they are terrorists and are thus not deserving of legal processes is to puke on the Constitution and the American legal system in its entirety. And thankfully, the Supreme Court has recognized that.

Today, the United States Supreme Court simultaneously boosted my faith and broke my heart. Sadly, my anger at the decision that the Kansas system of imposing the death penalty was constitutional far outweighed my slight happiness that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel was expanded just a hair.

In 2004, the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the state’s practice of allowing the death penalty to be imposed even when a jury finds that mitigating circumstances are exactly equal with the aggravating circumstances in a capital case. Call me crazy (and liberal!), but I think that if the needle is precisely in the middle, the state should err on the side of “not death.” But no, they don’t have to, according to the US Supreme Court. And the swing vote was none other than newbie Alito, a practicing member of the Catholic Church (which, last time I checked, tended to frown upon the death penalty wholeheartedly). But, oh, Justice Souter - I adore your fighting, geriatric heart. You refuse to give up.

“In the face of evidence of the hazards of capital prosecution,” he said [in dissent], “maintaining a sentencing system mandating death when the sentencer finds the evidence pro and con to be in equipoise is obtuse by any moral or social measure.”

Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, apparently took exception to this passion, stating that there has never been a single case of an innocent person being executed. Great, Scalia - so as long as the person is guilty and the mitigating circumstances of his or her situation are exactly equal to any aggravating circumstances, it will be your thumb on those scales of justice, sending him straight to the gallows (or the surgical table with a needle as the case may be). I’m glad you can be so righteous about that.

In one of the other cases the Court decided today, though, the Justices held that a criminal defendant who has been denied their choice of lawyer and forced to have another one can have a conviction overturned. The Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel (one of my personal favorites) is so basic that such a denial can only be remedied with the resulting conviction being overturned. In a bizzaro world of SCOTUS, Scalia wrote this decision as well, stating that the right to counsel “commands, not that a trial be fair, but that a particular guarantee of fairness be provided — to wit, that the accused be defended by the counsel he believes to be best.” Perhaps Scalia can sleep because he is so satisfied that he is ensuring the fairness of proceedings that, if it comes down to death anyway…bring it on.

I spend a lot of my time in Newton, Massachusetts, which was named the safest city in the entire United States last winter. After a particularly grueling bar exam class today, some friends and I went to Newton Center for well-loved Thursday half-price (veggie) burgers. Because I had gotten frustrated trying to find parking, I had just grabbed my wallet out of my bag and realized halfway through lunch that I had left my computer bag in plain view on my front seat. My friend replied that we were in the safest city in the US - no one was going to break into my car and take my laptop. And no one did, of course. But earlier this very evening, the mayor of Newton held an emergency town meeting to discuss the presence of…the Crips gang? Yes, apparently the infamously violent LA street gang is threatening to take over the boutiques and multi-million dollar homes of the safest city in the country. Their first mark was the elementary school…perhaps Coldstone or Bloomingdale’s will be next.

If you have ever kept a diary or journal of any sort, you know how cringe-inducing it can sometimes be to go back and read your entries which, in my case, are usually about some boy I had a crush on or my thoroughly angsty teenage existence. Rarely, however, do you have the chance to read someone’s reactions to their own re-readings. This is key, though, to Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek. In this age of the ubiquitous internet, journals are no longer handwritten and private - they exist on screens and are open to everyone. When Wil reprints his blog entries and then reflects upon his embarrassment, along with tales of what he was really thinking and feeling when he wrote them, it is disarmingly intimate. And it is that sense of intimacy - along with the seemingly real time growth that we get to share in - that makes the book so thoroughly enjoyable.

Some people are famous just because they blog. Wil is unique in that almost everyone knows who he is before delving into his (sometimes very personal) blog and subsequently into his further reflection of that blog in his book. I had the pleasure of working alongside Wil on the SuicideGirls Newswire, where he writes witty commentary about Geek news that I don’t always understand. But I like it anyway. And that is a testament to Wil himself because he is just so damn likeable. In every page of this book, you just want to be his buddy and hang out with him at Hooters (the setting of an early, pivotal, and relatively heartwrenching scene in the book). To reveal such a persona to the wide world at large is admirable, especially when there are so many reasons to put up barriers and utilize the internet as a tool to hide or create a new character for yourself, particularly when everyone knows who you are. But I know Wil isn’t putting up a persona because he has been kind to me directly. Upon being removed from the SG Wire, a time when I was genuinely devastated, he encouraged me to keep writing and let me know that he wanted to keep reading what I was writing. And to hear that from a real writer meant a great deal to me.

Just a Geek is a great book because it combines a naked personal genuineness with true writing skill. I liked Wil a lot before picking up his book - I like him even more now.

Well, apparently it doesn’t matter how you say “cheesesteak” in Spanish, at least not if you want to get that bun of cholesterol at Philadelphia institution Geno’s. Joe Vento, owner of Geno’s and grandson of Italian immigrants, has placed a sign in his window stating that all orders must be in English. Is this because none of his employees can speak Spanish (or Mandarin or whatever)? No, not necessarily. The sign demanding English is prefaced by “This is America,” bringing all sorts of xenophobic sentiments into the carcass-and-cheese mix.

Vento, 66, is the product of immigrants himself and he insists he has no ill will toward immigrants. His grandparents arrived from Sicily without speaking a word of English. Vento said they paid the price, and it was not until the second generation, his parents, when to school and learned English, that the family truly realized the American Dream.

So he’s not racist…just paternalistic and kind of a jackass.

Juntos, a Hispanic community group in the now largely Mexican (as opposed to Italian) neighborhood, is going to try a legal challenge to the rule by sending people to order in Spanish. The group anticipates that they will be denied service and hope that will lead to standing for a discrimination suit.

So being the little grassroots activist that I sometimes am, I wrote an email to Macy’s expressing my extreme displeasure that they would pander to a anti-gay group and alter their Gay Pride Week window display (see story below). The response I got really doesn’t make any sense at all.

Macy’s has a long-standing and respected history of support for diversity. Our company policy is deeply-rooted in diversity and inclusiveness. As such, we support a variety of causes in the communities that we serve. Our commitment and celebration of Gay Pride has been traditionally commemorated in our window displays. Our annual support of Gay Pride week in Boston and in other cities where we operate clearly demonstrates our commitment to diversity. Macy’s commitment to diversity will continue to be an important part of our company and community outreach as we celebrate Gay Pride festivities this month and in the future.

Sincerely,

Joanne Sacco, Manager Customer and Store Services

Sue McMahon’s Office, Macy’s East

Huh? I write a letter complaining about altering a Gay Pride display on the basis of a few hateful responses and you answer me by saying that you are committed to diversity and will continue to celebrate Gay Pride? Did you even read my letter, or is this some chameleon response you send to everyone that wrote about the window being taken down, no matter if the feedback was positive or negative? If you’re committed to diversity, then ignore the ridiculous anti-gay groups and move on. If your vision of diversity includes pandering to anti-gay groups, then don’t act like you’re triumphing the gays.

Massachusetts is the only state in the entire country in which same-sex marriage is legal. You would think that after two full years of gay couples getting married and the sky subsequently not falling and the institution of marriage not collapsing in on itself, that the anti-gay crazies would just drop the marriage issue and shut the hell up. But, perhaps fueled by the return of gay marriage to the national stage, they have piped up again, succeeding in getting Boston downtown department store Macy’s to take down a window display celebrating gay pride week.

The Macy’s store - which is the former flagship location of the Boston institution of Filene’s, recently replaced because Macy’s bought out the competition - had put up a window display with a list of gay pride week events (including the AIDS Walk) and two male mannequins, one of which was wearing a rainbow flag around its waist. A group that calls itself “MassResistance” (puke) called the display “offensive” and got Macy’s to cave into removing the mannequins. Macy’s offered a pathetic little answer:

“We believe in diversity, and our customers are very important to us,” [Macy’s spokesperson Elina] Kazan said. “But (the display) did offend a few of our customers, and we had to re-examine it.”

Come on, people. How could this possibly be offensive? It worries me that a major local business is so willing to give into paltry, whiny groups like this.

First, yes, I realize that his name is Senator Barack Obama, not “O’Bama,” but here in Boston, we like to give things an Irish twist whenever possible. And since I would like to advocate opening this city (and every city, town, and village in the country) to this man and his ideals, I would like to give him a little hometown flavor as a token of love.

Today, my younger brother graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, at which Sen. Obama was the keynote speaker. By a series of fortuitous connections, my family got to sit in the second row VIP section with Deval Patrick, the equally fantastic gubernatorial candidate here in Massachusetts. If these two men could lead the country with a 1-2 punch, I would be in bleeding heart heaven. Luckily, the two men are fast friends. And both have loveable senses of humor: yesterday, Patrick proclaimed that he wanted to win “every single vote on every single ballot” in the election for governor and Obama wrote a tongue-in-cheek epistle to comedian Stephen Colbert, who was delivering the commencement speech at Knox College, where Obama had spoken last year:

Before you deliver your remarks in front of literally millions fewer
people than you would at say, a nationally televised political
convention, I’d like to offer you a few words of advice. First, I know
you’re fond of your Peabody Awards, whatever those are, but I’d
recommend not bringing them. The students at Knox are down to earth and
not impressed by materials possessions like my Grammy Award for Best
Spoken Word Album.

Second, use hand sanitizer after the Pumphandle. Lots of germs there. I
cannot stress this enough.

And finally, don’t forget to bring the Truth. I’d recommend putting it
in your carry-on bag rather than in your checked luggage. O’Hare Airport
is notoriously unreliable.

Obama gave a truly perfect commencement speech and demonstrated why every other hopeful bleeding heart in this country is overly anxious to see him skyrocket in his political career. He spoke of never, ever ceasing to be amazed at the world and - most near and dear to my public defender heart - about taking the path that others may frown upon. He spoke of graduating from Columbia University (where I also happened to graduate from) and, rather than going to Wall Street as so many of his classmates, he set his heart on becoming a “community organizer,” ending up working for an organization of churches in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood for $12,000 a year. It may sound like typical commencement idealism, but it was the way he spoke those words that made me well up (part of that is also attributable to the fact that my little brother was graduating, of course). And it is that power, coupled with that true idealism, that makes Obama the amazing politician that he is. So here’s to hoping - Obama in ‘08 (or ‘12 or whenever).

So don’t let people talk you into the safe thing. Listen to what’s in you and decide what it is that you care so much about that you’re willing to take a chance.