Catching up on sleep

Fell asleep almost immediately after dinner last night and kept on going for nearly 12 hours. Didn't realize Cassandra had been disconnected from her power cord until I realized she had gone into sleep mode spontaneously - which she never does due to her Energy Settings (and the fact that AOL IM interferes with it somehow thanks to the new OS X 10.1.5 update).

The usual odd dreams within dreams last night. This time, people in my dream asking me to describe a dream I had inside that dream. Which was about how one day computer screens and television sets began to emit a strange light pattern that induced aphasia in ninety percent of the world's population, leading to a complete breakdown in communications as this not only affected speech but comprehension of written language. Wackiness ensues. Lead in to post-holocaust world where everyone needs to communicate through grunts and sign.

Not particularly original - the JLA dealt with a similar plot by Ra's Al Ghul a couple of years back ("Tower of Babel", written by Mark Waid).

Anyway, catching up on tons of LJ friends' entries.

Maybe it's the special sauce...

Fast food sends schoolgirls into sexual feeding frenzy

A tendency for getting their lips around a Whopper has turned Japanese schoolgirls into Nippon's naughtiest nymphomaniacs, according to Shukan Gendai (6/29).

Kazuo Sakai, head of the Stress Hibiya Clinic in Tokyo, says fast food is to blame for the promiscuous behavior of today's schoolgirls.

"Sex addiction, which involves having sex with numerous different partners over a short period, is related to bulimia. Fast food so popular among young people is absorbed unnaturally quickly by the body, making it easy for bulimia to develop," Sakai tells Shukan Gendai. "Bulimia makes it harder to control the central nervous system and a chain reaction makes it easier to develop other addictions. Sex addiction is a case in point."

All a bunch of steaming crap, of course, but, um... So, how about Mickey D's for dinner?

Render unto me a fucking break here

'Combatants' Lack Rights, U.S. Argues

Prisoners declared enemy combatants do not have the right to a lawyer and the American judiciary cannot second-guess the military's classification of such detainees, the Justice Department argued yesterday in a brief to an appeals court.

The filing in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, the U.S.-born man captured with Taliban forces and being held at a Navy brig in Norfolk, provides the most forceful enunciation yet of the Bush administration's position that those declared enemy combatants in the war on terrorism have no right to counsel and can be held indefinitely. The strongly worded brief signed by Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement also argues that the civilian courts have no standing to intervene.

Read the whole thing, and then come back here. I'll wait.

Back? Okay. The problem here is not so much that the Justice Department is arguing this. Sure, it can argue this - it's their job, after all. The problem here is whether the Court will accept that argument explicitly in its ruling. The JD's argument actually goes like this:

(1) Enemy combatants have no right to counsel and can be held indefinitely.
(2) The military can declare anyone they want an enemy combatant and the courts cannot review that decision.

I don't think anybody really has a problem with proposition (1) - on the assumption that there is a war going on, which I say is still arguable. The real concern is proposition (2). I don't know the Supreme Court ruling that the JD cited - if anyone can point me to it I'd be grateful - so I can't comment on its applicability to the current case situation, but I find it ludicrous, not to mention an incredible usurpation of powers, that the executive can indeed declare a person, by fiat, an enemy combatant without any evidence or objective standard that can be reviewed. There has to be some kind of reasonable standard.

I'd watch what the court says very carefully, since if it comes down on the side of the Justice Department, it should give its reasons why. There can be many permutations on this. It may agree that Hamdi is an enemy combatant and leave it at that, leaving it silent as to whether the court can determine a person's status as an enemy combatant or not. It may agree that Hamdi is an enemy combatant and say that this is due to evidence presented, which would probably be used to then assert in future that the court has explicitly reserved its right to determination of the question. It could agree entirely with the JD and explicitly so on both counts, which would be my greatest nightmare. There can be other results.

I suspect, though, that the court in making its final determination will remain silent on the issue of determining enemy combatant status, neither explicitly rejecting nor accepting the Justice Department's arguments on this point, because in this particular case it is probably going to allow the further detention of Hamdi without counsel and the issue of determination is not absolutely vital to allowing the JD's appeal. But remember, this is because he was captured on the battlefield and there is no real doubt he is an enemy combatant.

Now, Jose Padilla, on the other hand...