THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America: A Harris Interactive poll conducted for World Vision in late October found that seven in 10 adults plan to spend less money on holiday presents this year, but about half say they are more likely to give a charitable gift instead, reports The Associated Press. According to Melissa Brown, associate director of research for The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, charitable contributions have increased 39 of the past 40 years in today's dollars, that 69 to 72 percent of Americans give routinely, and that charitable giving has been historically recession-proof.
For many of us - especially those whose forebears left their families and friends behind in faraway lands so they could give their own children the gifts of freedom and opportunity - pride in America is a cradle-to-grave thing. By her own admission, the sentiment is new to Michelle Obama so The Stiletto is volunteering to help her become accustomed to the feeling by publishing examples of the inherent goodness and bravery of the American people that she comes across.
† All The News That’s Fart To Print (third item): A student at Spectrum Jr./Sr. High School in Stuart, FL, was arrested for “Disruption of a School Function” after he “deliberately” farted, reports The Smoking Gun. The arresting officer’s report also notes that the perp confirmed his teacher’s accusation that he “continually disrupted his classroom environment by breaking wind and shutting off several computers” while others were using them. He was released into his mother’s custody.
† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Why We Need Gitmo): As the Bush administration before it the Obama administration will face the seemingly intractable problem of what to do with a group of committed jihadis who make up nearly half of the detention facility’s inmates, reports The Washington Post:
Despite intensive diplomatic discussions in recent months, and the Yemeni government's promise to put released prisoners through a rehabilitation program, the Bush administration remains unconvinced that the impoverished Arab nation is capable of absorbing a group of men that officials believe includes hardened extremists. …
Of the 250 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, , including two who have been convicted in military commissions and two who are charged with war crimes for participation in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"The remaining 97 are an eclectic group of intentional unrepentant combatants and accidental warriors," according to a forthcoming report in the CTC Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. "Yet separating the detainees into two groups and determining where different individuals fall on a spectrum of past and potential violence is a nearly impossible task."
Obama has never offered any details on what he plans to do with Gitmo detainees when he shutters the detention facility.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to take up Ali al-Marri’s challenge to President George W. Bush's authority detain him indefinitely as an enemy combatant without being charged or tried, reports The Associated Press:
In the event the dispute makes it as far as a court hearing, the new administration's lawyers would have to argue the same basic position urged by Bush's team, despite Obama's repeated criticism during the presidential campaign that Bush was too aggressive in asserting executive authority.
Or Obama's lawyers could reverse course in the middle of a complex legal dispute that would essentially have the new president arguing for limits on his powers. …
Brad Berenson, a former Bush administration lawyer who went to law school with Obama at Harvard, said the new president is likely to discover that al-Marri's case is not easily resolved. …
“Al-Marri is one of those cases where the rhetorical necessities of the campaign are likely to collide with the security necessities of governing,” Berenson said.
Al-Marri came to the U.S. from Qatar on a student visa with his wife and five children on Sept. 10, 2001, and was arrested three months later by the FBI. In June 2003, the Bush administration declared him an enemy combatant and ordered him transferred to military custody, charging that he had trained in al-Qaida camps, met with Osama bin Laden and Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and had coded E-mail messages and lectures by bin Laden on his laptop.
Al-Marri has been held in a Navy brig near Charleston, SC for nearly 5½ years under conditions so harsh, according to his lawyers, that they feared he’d go mad. These were the “harsh” conditions to which he was subjected:
[S]everal prison cells have been converted for al-Marri into areas for sleeping, living and studying, including a nearly 400-volume personal Islamic library. He has access to exercise machines and cable television, although news of U.S. military activities is censored.
Maybe if those Yemenis get wind of how “harsh” al-Marri’s confinement is, they’ll all be clamoring to join him at that Navy brig. That will be a win-win: Obama can close Gitmo, and the rest of us don’t have to worry about terrorists roaming our streets looking to commit mass murder and mayhem.
† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Michael Vick Is Like Richard Nixon, But Leona Helmsley Is No George Bush): Former Atlanta Falcons QB Michael Vick was transferred from the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, KS, to the Hopewell Regional Jail in VA to face state dogfighting charges, reports The Associated Press. Vick is expected to plead guilty to two felony counts in return for a suspended sentence and probation. Had he not cut a plea deal with prosecutors, he could have faced up to five years imprisonment on each charge of beating or killing a dog, causing dogs to fight other dogs, and engaging in or promoting dogfighting. Vick is currently serving a 23-month sentence for a dogfighting conspiracy conviction.
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