Consider the Out-Source

Go figure, on the same day that the Senate Judiciary Committee votes 8-10 to confirm Sam Alito as associate justice of the Supreme Court, a report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, who heads up European investigation into U.S. human rights violations for the Council of Europe, concludes that the U.S. has been outsourcing torture throughout Europe. What's more, as Senator Marty maintains, the Americans have established pervasive "cells," not unlike what Al Qaeda is alleged to have been doing on U.S. soil.

While this is not news, of course, The Washington Post broke the story about secret detention facilities that our military has set up in Europe weeks ago, it is especially troubling in light of this administration's argument for the NSA, and now the TSP (Terrorist Surveillance Program) as, indeed, it takes a cell to know one. With respect to this administration's new policy of playing legal peeping Tom, and finding the cells in your breakfast cereal, what we have here is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. That said, the report does reveal some new findings: 6 Bosnians were recently abducted, by U.S. agents, on Bosnian soil, and taken to Guantanamo Bay despite the ruling of a Bosnian court which prohibited their exportation.

Now that Sam Alito's confirmation, by the full Senate, later this week is all but assured, we. as a country, may soon find ourselves outsourcing justice and torture alike.