Supreme Court Blocks Guantanamo Tribunals: “The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration’s plan to put Guantanamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law.” (New York Times ) Justice Stevens’ majority opinion warned Bush that “the executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction..,” as if expecting him to try to weasel out of it, Human rights advocates were jubilant. Part, but not all, of the basis for the ruling was that the administration had not consulted Congress in establishing the tribunals. Bush vowed to “find a way forward” and there are indications of bipartisan interest in crafting legislation authorizing tribunals that would withstand judicial scrutiny. The ruling fell short of requiring the full range of protections for detainees that defendants have in the civilian judicial system, but it made it clear that necessary protections are missing from the administration’s rules for the military commissions. “The flaws the court cited were the failure to guarantee the defendant the right to attend the trial and the prosecution’s ability under the rules to introduce hearsay evidence, unsworn testimony, and evidence obtained through coercion.” The ruling also reaffirmed the US obligation to abide by the Geneva Conventions in our treatment of WoT® detainees, in coontradiction to Bush’s assertion that the rules do not apply. Repudiating as it does Bush’s broad use of the congressional “authorization to use force” resolution in the days after the Sept. 11th attacks, the ruling also has broader implications for the administration’s other illegal activities in its WoT®-Without-End., including the NSA’s secret wiretapping program.

Although journalist Ron Suskind is on the right side — the only side — of the issue, NPR dignifies his opponents by including an interview with him on his new book in a series debating the merits of the use of torture. Debating the merits? I know there are all sorts of situational ethical frameworks, usually discussed in undergraduate philosophy courses, in which hairs can be split about the ends justifying the means in this situation but not that, but there are also some moral absolutes. Indeed, Suskind’s argument, that torture backfires in terms of weighing the costs and benefits accruing to the US from our practices, misses the boat and leaves a door open to the Dershowitzs who simply weigh the costs and benefits differently. We have become the animals we detest.

Previous aroma generators have been limited by the number of canned smells they are able to reproduce, but the new technique does away with pre-prepared smells and synthesizes each odor to order from a set of 96 odiferous ingredients. Of course, the greatest application of this work, if it proves successful, will be in subliminal (or not-so-subliminal) marketing.