criminal justice, non-christmas cards, the cold, and the cubs...

the suit filed by a german man against the united states based on his detention and alleged torture at the hands of the cia a few years back highlights the problems with things like capital punishment and throwing human rights out the window...human error. people make mistakes, especially when in an intense and stressful job like hunting down evil-doers. it is inevitable, we are going to pick up innocent people in our worldwide manhunt, we are going to detain some whose only crime may be their name and country of origin. seems when we picked up the wrong german it took a few months of inhumane treatment before we realized that (oops) we had the wrong guy. so we dropped him off in albania, just to pour some salt on the wounds (which probably actually happened) we didn't even take him home...what the hell is he going to do in albania?

this is exactly why a culture allowing human rights abuses is a bad, bad idea. the cia isn't perfect, the fbi isn't perfect, the military isn't perfect...human error, it's inevitable. and if we allow our guys to do really bad shit, we are going to do it to some innocent people. just like we found out in recent years that when you allow government sanctioned killing of individuals convicted of crimes, the government is going to put plenty of innocent people to death...juries get it wrong too. if you don't care about innocent folks suffering in order to "protect" you from crime and terrorism...then how about the effect on our collective psyche when we find out that completely innocent people have been put to death or put through horrific ordeals in our name. it isn't a happy thought...

the religious has their collective panty in a bunch again...seems the bush's holiday greeting card failed to mention christmas. the balls on that man...doesn't he know that his role as the top public official in this country means he should promote a specific religious view...i mean...oh yea...nevermind...

it is finally getting cold down here in the southwest. it isn't the good cold though, not that nasty, biting, painful, feel it in your bones cold of the great lakes. god i miss that. piles of dirty snow along the roads, grey skies, wind so strong it will flip semitrailers, temperatures so low frostbite sets in within minutes...that is cold...that is good shit. i need to leave this town.

on a lighter/forget-about-the-horrible-things-that-matter note...my cubs are making their off season moves. sent florida (soon to be vegas) a few more pitchers that will come back to haunt us for a lead-off hitting center fielder even though we have one in our system that will do...but if we can hold off for only a couple more years we'll hit the century mark of futility...how grand a party that will be.

it takes fighting day and night to make such a good thing die...