View from a Farley The Current Events and Opinion Weblog of Chris Farley

Internet Safety

Internet safety means so many things. Password choice, protecting your wireless network, etc. All important, but they don’t get soccer moms across the country as excited as Today show segments about kids posting something on Facebook and turning up dead in a river the next day. Yes, I’m exaggerating, but Internet safety “experts” are much happier when talking about how the Internet will kill you, your children, and you family than when they forced to talk about what the Internet does well. To tell you the truth, I’m not interested in password choice or wireless network protection any more than the soccer moms who watch The Today Show because I know that I’m fine on both counts. But I do hope to draw on my experience and speak directly to the thousands of teens on the Internet and parents who want to keep their kids safe by striking a balance between using the Internet to its potential and being safe on the Internet.

This would be so much easier if everyone used common sense, of course. If every teen used common sense, there would be no stories about sexual predators on the Internet, Chris Hanson would be out of a job, and parents wouldn’t be spying on their kids. This would fix a lot of problems, but it’s obvious that those who do use common sense are forced to follow the same rules as the people who don’t, even if those rules were created because of the people who are without any sense, common or otherwise.

My experience with the Internet undesireables is a bit different than many others, perhaps because I’m a little bit more visible than the average Internet teen. (I’m no Michael Arrington, but most teens just read blogs; they don’t write them). I get the occasional interesting e-mail and one person who was dressed in the guise of friendship, but turned out to be a pedophile, using Web 2.0 services to select, then contact victims.

For Teens

I did a Google search for ways to protect yourself online and so many resources focus on parents and not teens themselves. There seems to be a feeling, never explicity stated, that teens are unable to manage themselves online, that parents are the only ones who can protect their children from the dangers of the Internet. Perhaps that’s because the “experts” have assumed teens are incapable of handling themselves appropriately online and have spent time arming parents with spy tactics rather than giving teens tools to help themselves.

For teens, I have just a few pieces of advice. First, don’t talk to people you don’t know, unless that’s what you’re aiming for (i.e. if you’re a blogger), but keep in mind that when you do distribute your e-mail, the undesireable people on the Internet will eventually start talking to you. The second is not to be afraid to use services like Facebook and Twitter, so long as you don’t give away personal information. The first two have been said before, but my last point isn’t said enough. You don’t have to give away your street address to be a vulnerable target. Some people have a tendency to spill out their life stories on the Internet and predators are just as coercive online as they are in person.

For Parents

Unfortunately for parents, this section will have to focus a bit more on what not to do than what you should do. Parents, or at least the ones I have come into contact with, will instinctually try to protect their child’s privacy and put trust in their child. “Experts” (I’m not going to name names because there are too many to single out just one or two).

1. Do Not Put Blocking, Spying, Parental Control Software on Your Child’s Computer

There should always be some basic trust. If you want to know what you child is doing, talk to them, not deploy spy software to read every conversation you child has. Teenagers deserve privacy and the ability to talk freely with friends.

2. Do Not Force Your Child to Keep Their Computer in a Public Area

We deserve to have computers in our rooms, but this is an area where I admit parents have a reasonable argument. If a parents suspects inappropriate online activity, this should be the first right rescinded. I would encourage teens to be as open about their computer use as possible. For example, I have my computer in my room because that’s where I have my printer and textbooks, but I’m writing this post with my door wide open.

3. Don’t Assume All Online Activity is Sinister

Remember the Internet is, on balance, good.

Or everyone could just be more like me.

Let me know in the comments if there’s anything I didn’t cover. I know it exists, the Internet is a very big place.

How Big Should Middle School Graduation Be?

A few weeks a go, I wrote about my middle school graduation. It was a big accomplishment for me – completing my first year at my new school and graduating successfully. My school recognized how important it was and they celebrated our graduation with a nice ceremony, a formal dance, a breakfast, and an appropriate appreciation of my grade’s collective accomplishments.

It never struck me that anybody thought eighth grade graduations being a “big deal” was problematic until I saw this New York Times article.

My interest was piqued when I discovered that the principal of my former school was quoted in the article (towards the end).

So I read the article and I’m now sufficiently annoyed at those who say middle school graduations are overblown. The naysayers’ rationale is that completing middle school is not a big enough accomplishment to warrant a big celebration. Even Barack Obama said, “Let’s not go over the top. Let’s not have a huge party. Let’s just give them a handshake. You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.” I disagree with you on this, Senator Obama. You are supposed to graduate from eighth grade, just like you’re supposed to live to see your next birthday. Just because it’s expected of you is no reason not to celebrate. The supposition that we will live to see our next birthday does not mean that we won’t have a birthday party when that day rolls around.The fact is that graduation is a big deal. When you accomplish something, it is right to celebrate it.

The Times quotes Dr. Timothy Knowles who is the director of the Uniiversity of Chicago Urban Education Institute as saying, “…if the impression that’s left is that you have croseed the stage, the threshold, rather than, ‘You’ve have made it halfway through the trajectory to college,’ then we risk those kids walking away from the ceremony thinking they have accomplished something — when they haven’t.” I think Dr. Knowles should spend some time in one of the four charter schools he oversees to look at the accomplishments students make everyday. Middle school is a time of transition and celebrating that the transition has been completed seems logical. I do agree with Diane Ravitch, an education scholar, who says, “I don’t think anyone should say, ‘Hey, it’s only eighth grade.’ Lots of parents celebrate their kids’ accomplishments and we don’t say, ‘Hey, it’s only Little League.’ At least we have parents celebrating their children’s educational achievement. It says, ‘There are good rewards to staying in school.’” She’s absolutely right.

What drives me even crazier are the schools (like my former school) that don’t call middle school graduation “graduation,” but instead “moving-up.” Those people need to take a look at a dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines a graduation as “the receiving or conferring of an academic degree or diploma; the ceremony at which degrees are conferred.” Graduates do receive diplomas so call the ceremony what it actually is!

It’s disappointing to see that more than a few schools are trying to diminish the accomplishments of graduates. Some people look back on middle school with fondness, others with hatred, and most with mixed feelings. But it cannot be denied that the eleven-year-old who enters sixth grade is worlds apart from the fourteen-year-old who leaves eighth grade. The pressure of school, both academic and non-academic, at the very least warrants a ceremony. A graduation is a graduation and there should be no effort to diminish its power by changing its name or changing the ceremony. No eighth grade graduate is confused. We know that we celebrate now, then start an uphill climb towards college in September.

But some schools still don’t get it. Ann Edwards, principal of the school I used to attend takes the watering-down of school ceremonies a step further, and is pretty careful to imply that eighth graders are incapable of attending elaborate dinners. Traditionally, graduates were given a formal dinner, but it has since been reduced to a casual lunch. Edwards said of the dinner, “…the kids looked so awkward, it was so age-inappropriate, it was ridiculous.” That’s frankly insulting. Graduates deserve a nice dinner, but quite apart from that, how is such a meal “age-inappropriate” and “ridiculous”? When asked about the parties that parents give to celebrate graduation, Edwards said, “We’re fighting the culture of the communities in which we work.” Yes! How terrible that parents give their children a party! I’m also surprised at the combative nature of the comment that educators are “fighting” the more formal takes on graduation.

I’m glad that my school handled graduation well. It was tastefully done, called by its proper name, but not overdone. As for the schools that don’t handle graduation so well, I’m appalled.

An Advertisement Alternative

Computer users are bombarded with ads. It’s hard to go to a website and not see ads. Even websites like nytimes.com or cnn.com have ads. Google has filled search results with so many ads that most of us have been conditioned to just ignore them. Ads and content sites seem to be synoymous.

But now the ads are spreading! Desktop apps are being eaten by them too. Weatherbug swallows your screen with huge, obtrusive ads and videos. Twitterific is more tastefully ad supported (it displays just one small ad every half hour and it doesn’t take up your whole screen).

The good part about both Weatherbug and Twitterific is that they give you the option of paying to opt-out of the ads. For $19.95, Weatherbug gives you more features and no ads. Twitterific is ad-free for $14.95. This is an excellent solution. They can still fund future projects, but they don’t have to give users the inconvenience of ads.

But I think that no matter what options developers give users regarding ads vs. no ads, developers need to keep their ads unobtrusive. Users don’t like ads, but we tolerate ads to an extent. When you pass the threshold of reasonable advertising, users hate the product. A bit like I hate Weatherbug.

Websites are a bit more complicated. Twitter, for example, is not ad-supported yet, but in order to be a profitable company, it will probably have to be. Facebook already went down that road. That’s because there are really only two options to make a website, service, or app profitable: ads or payment of some sort. Twitter has indicated that it wants to be a global communication utility. It’s a lot harder to be global when you cut out the millions of people who can’t pay. So most websites turn to ads, but I really wish they wouldn’t!

I would much rather pay for Twitter than see it go down the ad-supported road. In fact, I would pay to have Google searches with no ads. While a pay-for-no-ads solution seems to be taking hold in the desktop app community, it has not yet reached online services and that’s annoying. In the past year, The New York Times discontinued its paid TimesSelect service which presented articles by certain columnists without ads. It was discontinued for a variety of reasons, but I strongly believe they should have an ad-free version of The New York Times online. I would pay a steep price for it too, if I continue to like The New York Times as much as I do now. There’s really no downside to doing this, unless I’m not thinking of something.

So I have suggestions for ad-supported apps, services, and sites. Number one: Don’t make the ads huge, like Weatherbug. It makes me want to uninstall the app and erase every trace of the disgusting over-adness. Take a leaf out of Twitterific’s book. Number two: Always give people the option of opting-out of ads for a fee.

If the end result is the same for the content or service provider (the end result being revenue), then giving the users more choice is better.

And one more thing in support of my plan, though it’s hard to measure or prove. As I mentioned above, we’ve been conditioned to ignore some ads (in Google searches, for example), so if ads become less common, then the value of the ads that we do see would go up. Whether or not this would actually make a measurable impact on ad values is impossible to ascertain.

If View from a Farley ever has ads (certainly in future plans), I will offer a paid alternative. I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

The Catcher in the Rye

I don’t like the way The Catcher in the Rye is written. I really don’t.

The Catcher in the Rye is one of the books I knew I’d have to read eventually for school, so I didn’t even bother to read it before. I’m never sure if I would have liked something better had it not been required reading, but it’s too late now!

My first problem with The Catcher in the Rye is about style. I’m a bit of a writing snob, to tell you the truth. I don’t always write as well as I’d like to, but I recognize good writing in others. The Catcher in the Rye is not well written, but it’s saving grace is that it wasn’t intended to be a great specimen writing style. Most of the writing in the book is structured exactly as the first paragraph of this post is. It’s jarring and disturbing to the reader.

“It has a very good academic rating, Pencey. It really does.”

“They can drive you crazy. They really can.”

“I don’t blame them. I really don’t.”

You get the picture. I understand the author’s desire to make the book conversational, but Salinger sadly over-conversationalizes. Nobody talks like Holden does in the story. Used sparingly, it might be effective (and partially forgivable because it was written over fifty years ago and I don’t know how people had conversations those many years ago), but Salinger liberally used this particular device, which Holden would probably say was “annoying” and “depressing” were he to read his own story.

The plot is…meandering. Holden’s adventures across New York City are unpredictable, but quite odd. It’s hard to empathize with a character who is so “out there.” If I were to run away from school and bumble about New York, I would probably reserve a room at the Waldorf instead of stumbling into a cheap hotel. The lack of purpose to Holden’s time in the city is indicative of how screwed up he is. (I used “screwed up” because, according to Wikipedia, the novel popularized that phrase).

My last issue is with the over-use of “annoying” and “depressing.” I cannot accuse Salinger of innacuracy here. Indeed, fifty years later, the words “annoying” and “depressing” are still among the most-used words in the vocabulary of an average teenager. For precisely that reason, the novel annoys me. Much of my free time is spent playing therapist for friends who need assistance. It’s a task that I don’t mind at all, but hearing the constant cries of annoyance and depression, then reading about it becomes too much.

Yet somehow I can still muster some fondness for The Catcher in the Rye. I respect the book, even if I don’t like the writing. The book’s weaknesses may not even be weaknesses. Salinger was not trying to create a coherent plot or write a refined story. It appears to be his style, which I happen to dislike. I’m a very logical person (it may not seem like it, but I am) and this type of disorganization is unacceptable from a novel that’s trying to be a perfect specimen. Salinger is just willing to be imperfect, I suppose.

I’m also inclined to like The Catcher in the Rye just because it’s one of the most banned books. (The thirteenth most challenged book between 1990 and 2000, according to the ALA). The book is really not as bad in terms of language and adult topics as I had been led to believe. It is certainly no worse than what one would hear walking down the hallways of an average high school. Book censors are very strange, but that is an entirely different blog post.

Ron Adams

Many readers have become familiar with the frequent commenter, known as Ron Adams. I often like to reach out to frequent commenters as a sign of my appreciation for their comments, but when I started talking to Ron, I found his life to be an amazing story and a great blog post.

The Early Years

Ron was born into a family of steel workers and movers in Pennsylvania. His parents, Estelle and Paul, were not wealthy by any means, but they instilled in him a sense that education was a good thing. I’m particularly glad to hear about this because so many kids are being taught that education is something upon which to look down. He put himself through a local community college, but unfortunately, things took a rapid turn for the worse.

A Brief Crisis

It was a miracle that Ron managed to escape the undesireable forces around him for so long, but finally in college, he succumbed to peer pressure. It started with marijuana, but quickly turned into a crack cocaine habit. He was caught by an undercover agent and spent some time behind bars, but eventually recovered. By the time he turned 30, his new wife, May, was helping him stay away from what she calls his “past with the ‘puff-puffs.’”

The Good Part

I was astounded when I heard about just the first few years of Ron’s life. (Ron’s brother Juan was also there). But now Ron owns a trucking company and has turned his life around.

Editor’s Note

Have you ever written something really well, then had a computer problem and lost the whole thing? Believe it or not, I actually wrote this post by hand and it succumbed to an unfortunate run-in with a paper shredder. You really do not want to know the details. I talked to Ron when I couldn’t write this post as well as I did the first time, and he told me to publish it anyway. If I had more time, I’d try to save this and do it justice, but I’ll be the first to admit I’m in a crazed frenzy.

First Job

I started my first job on Monday and it struck me that I never wrote a post about it. I’m getting old and things are just slipping my mind.

To make a long story short, the day job is going quite well. Admittedly, there is a lot of filing and other not-so-interesting tasks, but I get a kick out of answering phones. People call to ask the most amusing questions like “What’s the weather?” My private answer is “Look out the window,” but courtesy prevails so I dutifully find the exact temperature.

I’ve been working eight hour days, and it can get tiring towards the end of a shift, but the satisfaction of getting paid is quite nice. ($9 an hour for a 14-year-old in a first job is not bad).

Parallels in Elections Both Real and Fictional

I often remark to a friend that I feel like I’m in a TV show of my life or somebody should make a TV show out of the more amusing conversations that I have. I never really expect world events to follow the path of TV shows I’ve seen (I don’t actually pay attention to many TV shows anyway), but this election season certainly seems to be going exactly the same way as season seven of the The West Wing. This has been remarked on by others before me, but something John McCain said today makes me think that the real-world TV show in which I am living may not end anytime soon.

The seventh (and final) season of The West Wing starts with young, charismatic Matt Santos challenging the Democratic party establishment and going up against several candidates with many more years of experience. The Republican contender, Arnold Vinick, became the presumptive nominee very early on in the race with a reputation for being a reasonable, liberal Republican. After a long battle with the incumbent vice president, Santos wins the Democratic nomination in a dramatic convention fight.

Compare that to the 2008 presidential election, in the real world. Our election season started with young, charismatic Barack Obama going up against tall odds and going up against many more experienced candidates. Few people expected him to win! John McCain became presumptive nominee months ago and, at the beginning of the race, he had a reputation for being a trailblazer and being a reasonable, liberal Republican. McCain has largely squandered that reputation (particularly the reasonable part), but the similarities are striking. According to this New York Times article, The West Wing’s writers even used McCain as a model for Vinick! The battle for the Democratic nomination didn’t go all the way to the convention, but it got pretty close. There was certainly no shortage of drama either.

All of that could be put down to coincidence, but sometimes I wonder if party strategists are planning this race by looking at old scripts. Today, I saw this news article about John McCain putting his support behind nuclear power and calling for 45 new nuclear reactors. In The West Wing, Santos wins the election largely because of Vinick’s support for nuclear power. A technical failure nearly leads to a meltdown at a nuclear plant Vinick pushed to get approval for, damaging his reputation and sabotaging his campaign. Let’s hope the similarities don’t get that far, but this is seriously starting to scare me!

I will save further explanation of my views on The West Wing for another post. I’m just glad the fictional nuclear plant is in California – several thousand miles away.

Terror

Some words are hard to say and some are hard to understand. I don’t think anybody can find any meaning in the word “eleemosynary,” for example, without either knowing the word or having training in Latin or Greek. The word, which means charitable, is one that would need to be known, it could not be figured out, and quite understandably so. It’s less understandable when the word is not so alien and certain people still can’t find any meaning.

The world’s population (especially Americans) have seen the word terror in all its glory. We have a War on Terror, terrorists, and terrorism. Sadly, those words and phrases have been construed to mean something other than what they’re supposed to. So, back to the basics.

Terrorism

Dictionary.app defines terrorism as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” I partly agree. More simply, I believe the purpose of terrorism is to create terror (defined as “extreme fear; the use of such fear to intimidate people, esp. for political reasons”). Terrorists will certainly use violence, but for the purposes of intimidation because terrorists are not stupid (well they are, but not that stupid). They know that there is no way they can kill every single enemy. It’s probably not the individual people they’re after anyway – it’s the ideology. But we are paralyzed by fear so if a terrorist wishes to derail our society, creating fear of being killed will work just as well as actually being killed.

So the goal of a terrorist act is to create that paralyzing terror. It’s not always about killing. Certainly, from a terrorist perspective, the more people killed the better, but that is not the goal of their actions.

Incorrect, Malicious Usage

I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with coverage of the War on Terror because I don’t think we’re actually fighting terror. We’re fighting different enemies now than we were on 9/11. The intent of the enemies of today is not always to reach some broad political justice or even to create terror. We’re not fighting just one enemy either – there are thousands of different people fighting us for hundreds of different reasons.

Unfortunately, the coverage (largely, I believe, fueled by the Bush Administration’s manipulation of the press and the press’s negligence in following the story) would have a reader or viewer believe that the world is split into good people and terrorists. That’s a huge oversimplification! The Administration is throwing “terror” and its derivatives around to create terror in order to make their job easier. I am even so bold as to say that the Bush Administration has played the role of accessory to terrorism by using that word for their political goals.

The truth is that some people are terrorists, some people are good people, many people don’t like the United States, and some of those people are going to get violent with their hatred. That doesn’t make them terrorists. We will know terrorists when we see them, just as we knew the true meaning of terrorism on 9/11. But pretending that every enemy is a terrorist or opponents of the Administration are assissting terrorists by making reasonable inquiries is terrorism in itself. It’s deceitful and dishonest, disingenuous at best and treacherous at worst. It’s insulting to the true victims of terror and we best safeguard against our own government becoming a vehicle of terror, maliciously maintaining a state of fear for its own benefit.

The News

“I am not in the entertainment business.”

-Jim Lehrer, Host of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer

In the past few years it’s become almost cliché to attack news organizations. Politicians attack news organizations because their coverage isn’t favorable. Non-profits will make charges of bias. Comedians target the theme music TV news will cook up in a matter of hours. News organizations will attack other news organizations because the audience enjoys it when Katie Couric, for example, bashes the rest of the industry.

I’ve been watching the news for a long time. Not as long as some others (there was a time when I was in elementary school), but it’s not hard to draw a few conclusions from coverage today. Here’s what I’ve discovered:

1. Bias is a problem.

On the upside, it’s not as widespread as people might think. Fox News is hopelessly biased and does not practice journalism, but rather thinly veiled editorialization of the news and twisting of facts in order to push their own agenda. Other news organizations suffer from other problems or, at the very least, their bias is driven by something else, such as ratings (see below).

2. TV Networks need good ratings.

This one doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out. News networks are ratings driven and this is where theme music, flashy sets, and reporters who could be models come into play. People watch things by which they are entertained, so if news networks want people to watch the news, they need to make their coverage entertaining. But they will also follow public opinion more carefully than a politician. Few reporters were brave enough to be critical of, or question, the Bush Administration shortly after 9/11 and heading into the Iraq War. Their criticism now only stems from the unpopularity of the Bush Administration.

3. Investigative journalism appears to be a thing of the past.

Once a journalist has a story, it’s rare that they search for the deeper meaning. Maybe it’s just me, but I think investigative journalism is declining. Reporters are becoming well-paid scribes.

4. The ultimate goal of news organizations is not to report the news.

This is a sad but simple truth. News organizations are largely corportations and corporations (at least the for-profit variety) exist to make money. If they can make money by doing the news, then everyone’s happy, but it seems that the big news corpoations (Disney, Viacom, News Corp, etc.) have been turning to entertainment news.

5. These are broad generalizations.

This is not true for every news organization or even every program or service of that organization.

So where do I turn for real news? PBS! I’ve grown up with The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and while I didn’t appreciate it when I was younger I do now. It does not have a bias towards any side ever and it does not try to turn news into entertainment. (See above quote). Because it’s publicly funded, ratings don’t matter. The news is really the news and it’s better than any of the other news networks I’ve ever seen.

I’ve run into several people who say that they just don’t pay attention to the news. It’s everyone’s social responsibility to pay attention to the news! It doesn’t matter if it’s entertaining or not, everyone should be paying attention to the news.

The Decision, the Dissent, and the Candidate

This issue makes me angry. When angry, I don’t always write coherently. I’m happy to clarify.

There are some news stories that I look at and wonder how the people named in the story could possibly be so stupid. But I’m used to those stories being about people who defenestrate themselves or other Darwin Award-worthy activities. It’s very rare (though becoming more common) that I ask myself this question when reading an article about public officials.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners (about 270 of them, taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan armed conflicts) held at Guantánamo Bay as “enemy combatants” have the constitutional right of habeas corpus. The “enemy combatant” status and the fact that they are being held in Cuba had prevented them from having hearings. Approximately 250 of the 270 were being held with no charges having been filed. The Bush Administration, in their persistent efforts to circumvent long respected laws for political gain, had chosen Guantánamo specifically because they believe that U.S. laws would not inconvenience them in their destruction of the Constitution.

Habeas corpus itself is generally uncontroversial. In fact, it’s routine in for criminal trials in the United States. It is simply the process by which a prisoner can challenge why they’ve been imprisoned and to require the accuser to provide adequate proof that they had reason to detain the person. It is not, as Justice Scalia and John McCain would have you believe, letting a terrorist go for two reasons:

1. The government cannot prove that many of the detainees are terrorists or are guilty of anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
2. Habeas corpus does not mean letting someone go! It means that the government has to produce proof that these people were detained for a good reason.

I am left, then, to wonder what the Bush administration is smoking. Habeas corpus is not a big deal. Why are they worried? It’s because they don’t have proof that most of these people did anything wrong. And the prospect of following the law makes Bush and his cronies shake in their boots.

All this decision really means is that detainees can go through the legal system so they can be brought to justice or found not guilty, instead of held indefinitely. What is the rationale for holding people without recourse? What does it accomplish? Absolutely nothing, but this Administration wants to sacrifice our core values in order to “win.”

Ultimately, in a very, very close 5-4 split in the Supreme Court (all too common in the Roberts court), the Supreme Court did the right thing. They provided a legal means for detainees to move the legal process along by having their cases tried in the United States. What angers me is not the decision, which I’m happy with. It’s the fact that this was an issue for debate at all. What state is the country in if we actually have to debate whether detainees get legal protection? These were not extraordinary circumstances either. They’ve been sitting in prison for years now; the government can’t argue they haven’t had enough time to collect evidence. This is simply based on the Bush Administration’s faulty rationale. Their argument is something like this:

1. These prisoners are terrorists. We lose if we give terrorists legal rights.

This argument is silly because, as I said above, these people are not necessarily terrorists. And by giving people legal rights, it is not at all a sign of weakness. The people who hate America don’t hate us just because of where we’re born, they hate us because of the principles we uphold. They hate us because we live in a country where women can drive cars and people have freedom. This administration has responded to that by cutting down and personal privacy and making this a political issue. But the destruction of our core values is what terrorists are looking for. Destroying what we hold dear is what shows terrorists they’ve won.

2. “[This decision] will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” -Justice Antonin Scalia, Dissenting

This is just plainly not true. Habeas corpus is meant to determine whether or not someone is threatening enough to remain behind bars, so if there is proof of wrongdoing, the prisoner will be detained. We need to trust the courts to make good decisions about who should be detained.

But going past the reason why Scalia is wrong, I should point out that Scalia should not be making comments like that. It is nowhere near his job description to be predicting how many Americans will be killed and, without further supporting his claim, his comments are irresponsible, but indicative of the unprofessional way Scalia uses his authority.

3. The courts will be overloaded by these detainees.

Not so much. In 2007, district courts alone saw 57,172 criminal filings, so I doubt 270 are going to make much of a difference.

Those reasons just scratch the surface. The Bush Administration even made the argument once that the Geneva Convetions don’t apply to our prisoners in Guantánamo (also struck down by the Supreme Court).

And now we arrive at John McCain. It positively baffles me that a person who was held in Vietnam could be in favor of a practice so clearly wrong. McCain said the decision is “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

When I hear John McCain, I’m witnessing the slow death of the country. (If McCain wins, by the way, we might as well break into the National Archives and tear the Constitution and Bill of Rights into shreds). Why is this even being debated? Why are we even debating that these people should get fair trials?

Everybody should get fair trials. If they are a serial murderer, a bomber, a terrorist, or any other flavor of criminal, they deserve a fair trial. We need to trust the justice system. If the Administration can’t produce proof, then these people should not be held. By keeping these prisoners in the dark, we’ve delayed almost 300 important trials. The world should know what these prisoners have done. The world should see that America won’t destroy it’s values for a few hundred terrorists. The world should see that, if they are terrorists, the prisoners are punished properly, humanely, and in accordance with our laws. This is should not be a political issue, but once again, this Administration has chosen to circumvent our laws for their messed up ideology.