The latest on Guantanamo

From today's news at NPR:

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to take a second look at how its 2008 decision on the rights of detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is being carried out.

Monday's move comes almost four years to the day after the court's last significant statement on the war on terrorism, its 5-4 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that detainees have the right to meaningful review of their detentions in U.S. courts. That decision launched a flurry of filings by detainees seeking to have federal trial courts declare their detentions unconstitutional and order their release.

Almost immediately afterward, federal trial judges in Washington, D.C., began detailed reviews of the detainees' legal claims.

In the first two years, detainees won relief in 19 out of 34 cases heard by the trial courts....But in 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit began overturning those decisions, eventually declaring that even the government's second- and thirdhand hearsay evidence should be presumed accurate unless there was clear contrary evidence.

The appeals court eventually overturned every single favorable decision that the trial courts had handed down...

I am deeply appalled by this. We're giving the benefit of the doubt to hearsay? Who thinks this is justice?

Guantanamo is a blight on this nation. And I don't have the moral luxury of washing my hands of it because, you know, I didn't vote for Bush. I voted for the administration that appealed those 19 cases in which the courts ruled the detentions unconstitutional and ordered the prisoners freed. That makes me accountable above and beyond my default accountability as a citizen of the country that Obama's administration represents.

I never thought I would say this, but I may have to sit this presidential election out or vote for some hopeless, obscure third candidate. Guantanamo may be non-negotiable for me.

Or I may shrug off the drama and my moral qualms and be a bleeding hypocrite, justifying it with some comment about how you can't be pure in an imperfect world.

You shall appoint magistrates and officials...
in all the settlements that the LORD your God is giving you,
and they shall govern the people with justice.
You shall not judge unfairly:
you shall show no partiality...
Justice, justice shall you pursue...
(Deuteronomy 16:18-20, JPS)