(Note: this post has languished in my in-process queue for quite a while, and says little that I didn’t just say in a post earlier today. Regardless, I want to put it out there, because I think it’s a topic that can bear a little repetition. And hey…it’s even getting a little traction!)

The Right To Remain Silent: Silence is about the only right the Guantanamo prisoners have left — Recent Supreme Court decisions do nothing but throw salt on the most vicious wound that the United States has self-inflicted after 9/11. Beyond the PATRIOT Act, beyond the security theatre that now entangles our lives , the REAL ID Act, or even the Iraq War itself…what we have done at Guantanamo is unconscionable.

Make what legal argument you want…there is something intuitively wrong with the system when the country known as the greatest bastion of liberty in this world (which I continue to believe we are) holds people incommunicado, without habeas corpus rights, indefinitely, without charging them with a crime, in a legal no-mans-land where they can’t be reached. It’s wrong. If a legal case can be brought that it’s ok, then the law is wrong. We broke something when we lost our minds after 9/11, and we have to work to get it back. We’ve lost our way.