Blue Earth, Black Eye

510 dead, almost surely more, in Peru, courtesy of an earthquake.

Hurricane Dean is picking up steam and will slam the Caribbean and quite possibly the Gulf coast.

Flooding in the Philippines.

God only knows how many dead in northern Iraq after four suicide bombers claimed the lives of perhaps 500 or more, wounding many hundreds more.

Growing worldwide panic over a crashing stock market here at home, in Brazil, India and elsewhere thanks to the imploding credit industry and its incestuous relationship to the home lending industry. People are defaulting on home loans given to homebuyers by the failing Countrywide and investors don’t want to offer them “commercial paper” which is short-term debt and it’s took risky for banks to take on as foreclosures soar.

The miners in Utah still have not been rescued after three drillings with a fourth being prepared and it doesn’t look good.

Another heat wave across the South and Midwest has killed 37 people so far.

And, to top it all off, Elvis died 30 years ago today.

But take heart, people: Jenna Bush has finally gotten up off the floor and is engaged! And to an old aide of Karl Rove! Someone who helped Daddy’s re-election campaign!

And al-Qaida’s master terrorist, former Chicago gang-banger and wouldbe tough guy Jose Padilla, will be off the streets for the rest of his natural life!

Well, I guess we can get that terror threat level back down to a nice Lucky Charms shade of Kelly green, right?

I’m usually a fan of stare decisis but not in this instance. Because God forbid that judges and juries in the future respect this abominable precedent (I almost wrote “respect this abominable president“, which essentially amounts to the same thing).

Because what does Padilla’s conviction today teach us?

That a United States citizen can be arrested because his name was mentioned by a psychopath with no record of divulging any useful intelligence and tried on charges that quickly turn out to be trumped-up as much as the case for war against Iraq (which also dried up yet nonetheless condemning Iraq to what could turn out to be decades of American imperialism).

That said citizen’s case can then be Velcroed to another case of a laughable “terrorist plot”.

That said citizen can be held for up to three and a half years suffering cruel and unusual treatment such as sensory deprivation even while on his way to the dentist, driving him to the point of insanity.

That said citizen can be convicted for aiding a terrorist organization by speaking in a code that thus far hasn’t been proven or vetted, which is obviously enough for jurors terrified of terrorists because, after all, how could federal prosecutors be wrong about the existence of such a code (just like how could Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell possibly be wrong about Iraq's WMDs? They're the government, too, for crissake, and if you can't trust the government, who can you trust?)?

That said citizen can then be spirited away and kept in prison for the rest of his life where he will no doubt continue to be interrogated by George Bush’s goons in black after said government kept changing the rules and stacking the deck until there was no way the defendant could win, including denying him legal presentation during his interrogations and not telling him his Miranda rights.

That the same thing could happen to you some day if the NSA or FBI overhears you say the word “zucchini” to someone of Middle Eastern descent or someone points a gnarled finger at you and whispers, “Terrorist” like some bad movie about the Salem witch trials.