E pur, si muove.

I have, once again, circumnavigated the globe, and confirmed Galileo's scandalous assertion that the earth might be round.
After a flight to Europe, followed by a visit to Singapore , San Francisco and a last flight to Washington, I am back to square one, Springfield , Virginia.

My last stop in California was a delightful end to my trip. In spite of Santa Ana winds, et brush fires, I had the pleasure to cross the San Francisco Bay, enjoy the beautiful landscape, and take advantage of the hospitality of my left coast family, the Pascos in Fairfield, and the Amadors in Roseville.

But as Apollinaire said about the water under the Seine bridges, the bridge may be the same, but the water under it is different. I returned to Washington in time to see the regrettable passage of the law allowing the US to torture and deny habeas corpus to anybody suspected of being an "enemy combatant", and that includes you and I. No presumption of innocence, no right to know why you have been arrested, no right to evidence, admission of hearsay, legalization of torture. Politicians of BOTH sides of the aisle capitulated in order to save their seats. Shame on them. They have knocked the statue of Liberty off its pedestal more surely than we knocked off that of Saddam Hussein. They have handed Bin Laden a greater victory than that of 9/11.

The Nurnberg trials were categorical, nobody can have the excuse to say : "I just obeyed orders". Jodl was hanged, Keitel was hanged, Streicher was hanged, etc..
Uncle Sam just did a huge step backward to the Middle Ages with this vote.
It raises moral questions for somebody like me, about to become a US citizen: do I want to ecxchanged a country where torture is banned for one where it is OK ? A country where the death penalty is abolished for one where you can be executed without the right to know why?
In 1998, General Aussaresse, an 83 year old French General published his memoirs on the Algerian war. He confessed to having supervised the torture of arab urban guerillas. He was sentenced to life imprisonment after this revelation , for crimes against humanity......
An interesting parallel.