Facts About Donald Trump And His Administration

Some of the major themes of Trump 2.0's agenda are quite simply contrary to the law and Trump is just such as bad President and bad person.

* Opposition to the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians is not antisemitic.

* The U.S. Supreme Court has specifically held for decades that antisemitic speech is protected the First Amendment. National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977).

* Equity and inclusion have been legally required in employment, at least since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in public education since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

* Diversity achieved by breaking down barriers to employment and education for women, people of diverse sexual orientation, minorities, and people with disabilities is legal, and arguably mandated by U.S. Civil Rights laws.

* Diversity achieved by favorable treatment of women, people of diverse sexual orientation, minorities, and people with disabilities, relative to a meritocratic standard is legal to overcome past discrimination.

* No U.S. law is a valid basis for removing books and websites that laud the achievements of historical women, people of diverse sexual orientation, minorities, and people with disabilities, or depict these individuals in fiction. Indeed, multiple court cases applying existing U.S. law have held that this kind of censorship in public libraries is illegal, such as a recent case involving the Elizabeth school district in Colorado.

* None of the Trump 2.0's political appointments have been remotely meritocratic, contrary to his claim that he wants to end affirmative action.

* There is no legal basis for the U.S. federal government to prohibit educational institutions, public or private, at any legal, from teaching critical race theory.

* Discrimination against white, straight men in employment and education is modest at best, and mostly, non-existent.

* Discrimination against Christians in the U.S. is basically non-existent, and, instead, for the most part, the U.S. sees significant discrimination against non-Christians.

* Christian religious freedom is not a valid basis for discrimination against homosexuals and transgender people by organizations that are not religious organizations.

* All levels of government in the United States are strictly forbidden from supporting any particular religion, or religion at all, by the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

* It has been illegal since the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 for the President to refuse to spend Congressionally appropriated funds.

* Generally applicable rules and regulations of the Executive Branch of government in the United States can only be adopted after notice and hearing according to the procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act.

* Speech, legislative lobbying, and legal action against President Trump are protected by the First Amendment and it is illegal for President Trump to retaliate against law firms and individual for doing so.

* Federal employees who are not political employees or lawyers cannot legally be fired by the President without good cause.

* The President has no constitutional authority over employees of Congress or the judicial branch or employees of non-profit corporations formed by the U.S. government, and has only the authority granted to him by federal statutes to do so.

* The President has absolutely no legal authority to defy a court order, even if the legal basis for issuing that order was incorrect and it is later overturned on appeal. Despite this, President Trump has intentionally defied court orders more than once in his first four months in office.

* The U.S. Constitution requires the directors of federal agencies to be nominated by the President and approved by the U.S. Senate, or, when a Congressionally approved law provides otherwise, by a federal judge or a U.S. Senate approved officer of the United States.

* It is illegal for the President to use his office to promote a private business in his official capacity.

* The U.S. Constitution expressly prohibits federal employees, including the President, from receiving gifts or other private benefits from holding a public office without Congressional approval on a case by case basis.

* The international war crime of "aggression" prohibits the U.S. from invading Canada, Greenland, or Panama at this time.

* White South Africans are not facing genocide in South Africa and do not meet the legal criteria to be classified as refugees. The claims that White South Africans are been systemically murdered on account of their identity in South Africa are not true, and the most compelling pieces of evidence the President Trump presented in support of that claim in a White House meeting with the President of South Africa were actually evidence of mass killings of black women in the Democratic Republic of Congo and evidence of symbolic political protests in South Africa in which no one was physically harmed.

* Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, is not a gang members and evidence relied upon by President Trump to support that claim was photoshopped onto a picture of Mr. Garcia.

* The Alien Enemies Act relied upon President Trump for man deportations is not a valid legal basis to deport anyone because the U.S. is not experiencing an invasion within the meaning of the act as President Trump claims, as multiple judges, some appointed by President Trump himself have held, and as an investigation by U.S. government intelligence agencies that he commissioned established.

* The Alien Enemies Act does not legally authorize deportation without due process.

* Only Congress may authorize the suspension of the right to seek a writ of habeas corpus, and only in places where the federal courts are unable to operate. See Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2 (1866).

* A core principle of federal law is that every person, whether or not that person is a U.S. citizen, and whether or not that person is a criminal or terrorist, is entitled to due process before being detained or deported.

* It is a core principle of U.S. constitutional law that every person born in a U.S. state, who does not have diplomatic immunity at the time, is a U.S. citizen. This includes the children of illegal immigrants. No U.S. court has ever ruled to the contrary since the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave rise to this right, was adopted.

* It is illegal for the President to fire members of an independent agency board without cause. Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled that the U.S. Constitution allows the U.S. Congress to enact laws limiting the ability of the President of the United States to fire the executive officials of an independent agency that is quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial in nature.

* The President's authority to unilaterally impose tariffs without an act of Congress doing so is very doubtful, and mere trade deficits with a country are not a valid legal basis for doing so.

* The President has a legal duty to faithfully execute the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States.

* Every public official in the United States has a sworn duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

* The fact that the President has been held to have immunity from criminal and civil liability for his official acts does not mean that the President is legally entitled to violate the law, it just limited the legal remedies that are available when he does.

* The fact that the President has been held to have immunity from criminal and civil liability for his official acts does not mean that the President's subordinates charged with carrying out the President's orders also have immunity from criminal and civil liability for their official acts, if they are not judges or prosecutors and the claims are related to their participation in the legal process.

* Trump admitted on TV shortly after he announced tariffs to helping his billionaire friends engaged in insider trading on his tariff news. Many members of his administration and many Republicans in Congress have engaged in insider trading.

* Trump has sold access to the White House to mostly foreign investors in a meme coin he introduced after taking office for a second time. The coin has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump, enriched rich foreign investors, and produces big losses for almost all ordinary investors in the meme coin.

* Trump had basically a commercial for Tesla cars on the White House lawn after Elon Musk's political involvement (an advisor of the President so close that he has been called the co-President) with Trump and Nazi and far right, and Trump has quashed about a dozen federal investigations of Musk's companies, awarded Musk's companies many billions of dollars of government contracts without the usual government bidding process, and has insisted that countries do business with Musk's companies in trade negotiations.

* Members of Congress have an express legal right to inspect immigration detention facilities without notice even if the President orders the officials there not to allow them to do so.

* The President does not have the legal authority to revoke a non-profit organization's tax exemption without good cause, and may not do so for legally authorized good cause specific to eligibility to receive non-profit status for reasons not specific to eligibility for non-profit status under the Internal Revenue Code.

* The President does not have the legal authority to deny a higher educational institution the right to admit and teach international students entitled to student visas under the Immigration And Nationality Act without good cause specifically set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act that is specific to eligibility to do so under the INA.

* The President does not have the legal authority to revoke a student visa, or any other person's immigration status, based upon the lawful free speech.

* It is a crime for IRS officials to share confidential tax information with the government to enforce non-criminal laws.

* It is a crime to use military personnel to enforce the laws within the United States. The law that says so is called the Posse Comitatus Act.

* The President does not have the legal right to blacklist a news reporting agency because he doesn't agree with the views expressed by that agency.

* Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

* Donald Trump is a legally adjudicated rapist.

* Donald Trump has been found repeatedly by the courts to have engaged in fraud, defamatory conduct, and illegal racial discrimination.

* Donald Trump is wealthy in large part because he inherited a large sum of money from his father.

* Six companies, including casinos, that Trump has owned have filed for bankruptcy.

* Trump's University had to settle a civil case against it for fraud for a large sum of money for fraud that Trump personally participated in.

* Trump's main business organization and one of its main executives were criminally convicted of tax fraud in New York during the most recent Presidential campaign.

* Trump and organizations he is affiliated with are notorious for not paying their bills when due. He is also notorious for not paying his lawyer's bills.

* Donald Trump has multiple multi-million dollar money judgments from courts that are currently enforceable outstanding against him.

* Donald Trump and his current wife have both acted in pornographic films. His current wife's primary employment prior to meeting Donald Trump was as an actress in pornographic films and her visa was obtained in the "genius" category despite the fact that she had no other meaningful professional or educational expertise, and she was not even a particularly success porn star.

* While they are not legally separated, Trump is de facto mostly separated from his wife and is notorious for subtly disrespecting her in public settings.

* Donald Trump paid $100,000 in hush money in an attempt to silence a prostitute he hired and then misreported it on financial statements.

* Donald Trump has repeatedly engaged in adultery during each of his many marriages.

* Donald Trump has publicly stated that he doesn't know if he has a legal duty to obey the U.S. Constitution despite twice swearing oaths to uphold it as President of the United States.

* Donald Trump is legally prohibited from operating any business or charity in the State of New York as a result of separate business and charitable fraud cases.

* Donald Trump was legally found by a Colorado trial court, in a decision whose factual determinations were affirmed by the Colorado Supreme Court, and which were not found to be incorrect on the merits by the U.S. Supreme Court, to have engaged in an insurrection against the United States that would bar him from holding federal office. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court only on the ground that the provision of the 14th Amendment which bars people who have engaged in insurrections against the United States from holding federal office is not self-executing and must occur in Congressionally authorized legal proceeding (contrary to strong arguments from the language of the U.S. Constitution, the legislative history of the 14th Amendment, and past precedents applying that constitutional provision).

* There is no legal or constitutional way that President Trump can hold the office of President for a third-term.

* There was no credible evidence that President Trump won the Presidential election in 2020, many attorneys who brought claims challenging that election where sanctioned or disbarred for bringing groundless and frivolous claims, and at least one elections official in Colorado was convicted of multiple state election law crimes in an effort to create that impression. Fox News paid more than $800 million to settle defamation claims to that effect in a lawsuit filed by a voting machine maker on the brink of trial in connection with those claims and another very strong defamation claim against it from another voting machine maker is currently pending.

* In President Trump's first four months in office, approximately four dozen court rulings have held that one or more of his Executive Orders is illegal. No President in U.S. history has issued Executive Orders at such a high rate, or had such a large percentage of his Executive Orders held to be illegal.

* Trump has, in a conspiracy with his physicians, repeated made grossly false statements about his height and weight.

* Trump dodged the draft multiple times during the Vietnam War by procuring a false medical excuse claiming that he had "bone spurs" from a doctor that conspired with him to do so.

* Trump was a transfer student to Wharton Business school whose admission was obtained with donations to the college from his father. It is know for certain that he was not a top student as he has sometimes claimed as he was never on the honor roll. He has jealously kept his academic records from Wharton secret but one of his past professors there characterized him as one of the least academically competent students that he ever had.

* Trump's father was a Ku Klux Klan member and a Nazi supporter.

* Despite Trump's America First trade stance, almost all of the merchandise he sells in his various businesses and for his political campaigns is made outside the United States, mostly in China.

* Many members of Trump's family and some of Trump's businesses have been greatly enriched personally in one-sides transactions meant to curry political favor with him.

* Trump was a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, a famous procurer of child prostitutes for the rich and famous including British Prince Andrew, who died in prison after being convicted of related crimes, and Trump was a repeat visitor to Epstein's "sex island" and is shown in pictures surrounded by child prostitutes.

* Trump bragged in a recorded interview of sexually assaulting women.

* Trump has made sexually suggestive comments about his own daughters and was known to have abused his authority as a sponsor of beauty contests for minor girls to watch them undressed in the changing rooms associated with those contests.

* Trump on the campaign trail has mocked a disabled man for being disabled, denigrated veterans and prisoners of war (including Republican Senator John McCain) for being losers, and has encouraged people at his campaign rallies to use violence against hecklers at his rallies.

* Trump went out of his way, prior to being formally involved in politics, to denigrate five teenager who were wrongfully convicted of assault and rape of a jogger in a case occurring in Central Park in New York City in 1989, who were later exonerated by DNA evidence after serving prison terms (New York City later settled the civil case arising from the wrongful convictions for $41 million), and Trump stood by his actions (which may have contributed to their wrongful convictions) after the men were unequivocally exonerated.

* Despite being particularly popular with the Christian right to the point of being viewed as a messiah or saint by some, promoting bible sales to raise funds, and appointing an Evangelical Christian advisor, Trump is not at all religious and knows almost nothing about the Bible or Christian doctrine.

* Both Trump's FBI director and his attorney general in his current term were on the payroll of the Qatari government receiving large amounts of compensation from the Arab oil monarchy shortly before taking their current offices. The Qatari government recently gave Trump a $400 million jet liner for his personal use which his attorney general claimed did not violate constitutional or federal law limitations on receiving personal gifts from foreign governments. Trump's company has been pursuing a multi-billion dollar resort development project in Qatar at the time of this gift.

* No politician in U.S. history has ever publicly made false statements of fact at a rate as high as that of President Trump. Indeed, no one else even comes close.

* Vaccines do not cause autism.

* The measles vaccine is safe, effective, and the most effective way to prevent death or serious long term negative effects from measles.

* Trump's actions since he took office have significantly reduced the number of federal employees available to carry out air traffic control.

* Trump's actions since he took office have significantly reduced the number of federal employees and resources to predict the weather and response to weather related emergencies.

* No President in U.S. history has declined to provide emergency relief authorized by U.S. law to natural disaster victims at the rate that President Trump has in his second term.

* Trump has essentially dismantled federal enforcement of federal laws protecting the civil rights of women, racial minorities, homosexuals, and transgender individuals.

* No President in the history of the United States has made as many absurdly wrong statements of historical fact as Donald Trump (e.g., that there were air based during the American Revolution, or that the U.S. was an ally of the Roman Emperor, or that Mattel is a country).

* In his 2024 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly made knowingly false claims that Haitian refugees in Ohio were stealing and eating cats and dogs, that that public schools were providing free sex change surgeries to transgender children at those schools.

* Many of the pardons issued by Trump have been to people who contributed to his political campaigns.

* Many of the people whom Trump pardoned for January 6, 2021 capitol riot charges have subsequently committed crimes in the four months since he pardoned them.

* President Trump has nominated a convicted felon, who is the father-in-law of one of his children, to be the U.S. ambassador to France.

* No President has had more subordinates and affiliates convicted of crimes than Donald Trump.

* No one other than Donald Trump has been impeached two separate times by the U.S. House of Representatives although neither of those impeachments were upheld by the required two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate (in both cases the vote was largely on party lines, although a number of Republican Senators joined Democrats to convict in the second impeachment trial). In the second impeachment of Donald Trump, 57% of Senators voted to convict, the highest percentage other than the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868 which failed to convict in the face of 35-19 votes to do so in the U.S. Senate when 36 voters were required to convict.

* Trump, in both his first and second terms, was the least popular President in the history of modern polling.

* Trump's anti-vaccination rhetoric, and pseudo-scientific medical claims about COVID-19, and his downplaying of the severity of the COVID-19 led to hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., primarily among elderly Republicans.

* Trump was indicted in four criminal cases which were still being tried during his 2024 Presidential campaign: a federal case arising from his involvement in the January 6, 2021 capitol riot, a federal case arising from his refusal to return top secret nuclear weapons information to the government that he was storing in a bathroom in his Florida resort, a Georgia case involving his illegal attempts to cause election officials there to engage in election fraud to elect him, and a New York State fraud case in which he was convicted of 34 felonies (but given no substantive criminal sentence in a sentencing hearing conducted after he was elected). The confidential records case was presided over by a federal judge he personally appointed in Florida, and dismissed on the legally dubious grounds that the special prosecutor statute was unconstitutional, with the case dismissed because Justice Department policy prohibits pressing criminal charges against a sitting President. The January 6 case was appealed on the grounds that he had absolute immunity from criminal charges for his official acts, which lower courts unanimously denied but the U.S. Supreme Court with had three justices he personally appointed who did not recuse themselves made the unprecedented decision over a strongly worded dissent that the President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecutions for his official acts. The charges in that cases were revised on remand to limit the case to Trump's unofficial acts (with considerable damning evidence revealed in a final report from the case) and then this federal case was dismissed because Trump was elected President and Justice Department policy is to not prosecute a sitting President.

* Trump routinely dresses inappropriately for state funerals and fell asleep in public during the funeral for Pope Francis.

The Biggest U.S. Military Justice Overhaul In 70 Years

On December 27, 2021, President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022 which contained the biggest overhaul of the U.S. military justice system in 70 years (effective December 27, 2023 assuming that the new regulations mandates by the Act are in place by then). This was driven by Congressional concern that the military has mishandled sex offenses and sex discrimination within its ranks. 

The Lawfare blog explores in detail what has changed. The big points are as follows:

The act creates a novel independent Office of the Special Trial Counsel for each service (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Space Force) except the Coast Guard, reporting directly to the civilian secretary of that service, not to the judge advocate general or chief of staff of that service.

This office has primary jurisdiction over all military justice matters concerning someone alleged to have committed a "covered offense" defined as:

wrongful broadcast or distribution of intimate visual images (Article 117a); murder (Article 118); manslaughter (Article 119); rape and sexual assault, including of children, and certain other types of “sexual misconduct” (Articles 120, 120b, 120c); kidnapping (Article 125); domestic violence (Article 128b); stalking (Article 130); retaliation (Article 132); and producing, processing, receiving, viewing and distributing child pornography (Article 134); as well as conspiring to, attempting or soliciting any of the above (Articles 80, 81, 82).

It creates a new sexual harassment offense: 

but only under Article 134. This means such behavior (also defined by this act) is not criminalizable conduct unless the sexual harassment is, under the case-by-case circumstances, “of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces” and/or is “prejudicial to good order and discipline.” Both of these elements are highly fact-dependent and, in the latter case, must have a “direct and palpable” negative effect on something clearly germane to military readiness or mission accomplishment.

Sentencing in court-martial cases is reformed more generally: 

Military judges, not panels, will now make the sentence determination for all noncapital convictions, regardless of type of offense, at special and general courts-martial.

Sentencing determinations are to be made within certain new “sentencing parameters;” a judge may depart from the parameters if he or she includes the factual basis and reason for that departure in writing in the record of trial. The sentencing parameters, as well as “sentencing criteria,” shall be prescribed by the president, based on recommendations devised by a newly established Military Sentencing Parameters and Review Board reporting to the secretary of defense. These parameters, having the same purpose as the federal sentencing guidelines, must be prescribed within two years of this section’s enactment.

"Finally, Article 133’s “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman” offense is revised to strike “and a gentleman.”"

The analysis also explores at length what distinctive features of the military justice system remain unchanged to make the point that these changes are not a wholesale "civilianization" of the military justice system.

Accountability Works

There are consistently no penalties for routinely killing large numbers of civilians in the United States defense-intelligence complex:

According to the nonprofit organization Airwars, the U.S. has conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes in seven major conflict zones since 2001, with at least 22,000 civilians killed and potentially as many as 48,000.

How does America react when it kills civilians? Just last week, we learned that the U.S. military decided that nobody will be held responsible for the August 29 drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children. After an internal review, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin chose to take no action, not even a wrist slap for a single intelligence analyst, drone operator, mission commander, or general. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby bizarrely said, “We acknowledge that there were procedural breakdowns” but that “it doesn’t necessarily indicate that an individual or individuals have to be held to account.” . . .

U.S. bombings since 2014 have consistently killed civilians but that the Pentagon has done almost nothing to discern how many were harmed or what went wrong and might be corrected. As Khan noted, “It was a system that seemed to function almost by design to not only mask the true toll of American airstrikes but also legitimize their expanded use.” . . .

Impunity tends to begin at the top. No American general has been disciplined for overseeing the catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor for lying to Congress about these disasters. The opposite has occurred: Stars have usually been added to their shoulders, and when they retire from the military, they tend to march into well-paid positions as board members in the weapons industry or elsewhere (even though they are not strapped for resources, thanks to pensions that can reach $250,000 a year). The reputation-protection racket is so galling that an Army officer who served two tours in Iraq wrote a now-famous article in 2007 that noted: “A private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” . . .

We should not be surprised. We are a society that excels in elite unaccountability. Just look at the number of bank CEOs who faced criminal charges after the 2008 financial collapse (zero), or the number of Sackler family members who were criminally charged after their company, Purdue Pharma, started the opioid epidemic with OxyContin (also zero), or the number of billionaires who avoid paying income taxes (lots of them). And let’s not forget the politicians and pundits who goaded America into an illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and suffered no consequences. . . . .

Military impunity is somewhat unique because it stretches downward, too. If an intelligence analyst or drone operator or fighter pilot follows orders and procedures for an airstrike that kills dozens of civilians in a wedding party — which has happened — they need to be excused of wrongdoing. After all, who gave the orders, and who set the procedures? These questions would require looking up the chain of command, and for that reason, they are not asked with any intention of finding the answers. That’s why it was with no sense of alarm that secret military documents published by The Intercept in 2015 noted that in a two-year campaign called Operation Haymaker, 9 of 10 Afghans killed in U.S. drone strikes were not the intended targets. For the U.S., this was the acceptable cost of doing business.

The Pentagon’s culture of impunity for killing civilians stands in contrast to its zealous pursuit of soldiers for other offenses.

The Pentagon’s culture of impunity for killing civilians stands in contrast to its zealous pursuit of soldiers for other offenses. Unlike the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the financial industry, or the IRS, which oversees taxpayers, or the Senate and House ethics committees, which keep an eye on members of Congress, the U.S. military has wide authority and deep resources to impose an array of penalties, from pay reductions to loss of rank and death sentences. The military avidly uses these powers, too. In 2020 alone, there were more than 37,000 cases of discipline in the armed forces, and since 2001, there have been more than 1.3 million cases.

Yet these powers have been used sparingly or not at all when it comes to airstrikes that kill civilians. One of the worst massacres in two decades of warfare occurred not long ago, on March 18, 2019, when U.S. warplanes dropped bombs that killed scores of civilians, mostly women and children, in an Islamic State enclave in Syria. The carnage was immediately apparent. As the Times reported last month, an analyst who watched the attack on a drone video typed into a secure chat system, “Who dropped that?” Another analyst wrote, “We just dropped on 50 women and children.” A quick battle assessment settled on 70 people killed.

A legal officer flagged it as a possible war crime that warranted an investigation. . . . “but at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike.” The Pentagon’s inspector general looked into what happened, but even its report was “stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike.” An evaluator who worked on the inspector general’s report, Gene Tate, was forced out of his job after complaining about the lack of progress and honesty. Tate told the Times: “Leadership just seemed so set on burying this.”

I could go on for thousands of words describing other airstrikes that killed civilians and resulted in no discipline or slight reprimands that were issued only after embarrassing reports from news organizations and human rights groups. For instance, there was a 2015 airstrike on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed 42 patients and staffers; the military’s reluctant discipline included counseling and retraining for some of the personnel involved. The point is this: A military establishment that has enthusiastically enforced requirements for things as petty as wearing a reflector belt while jogging has consistently failed to discipline soldiers for wrongful bombings that its own battle assessments acknowledge have killed civilians.

The machinery of impunity actually has two missions: The most obvious is to excuse people who should not be excused. The other is to punish those who try to expose the machine, because it does not function well in daylight. That’s why Daniel Hale, an Air Force veteran whom the government accused of leaking those classified drone documents to The Intercept, was sentenced under the Espionage Act to nearly four years in prison. It is not the act of killing civilians that will result in definite and heavy punishment, but exposing the act of killing.

In 1992, I interviewed a Muslim girl in Bosnia who had been raped. “The Višegrad warlord took a fancy to her,” I later wrote, “and one night dragged her and her younger sister away from their mother, who of course was crying hysterically and holding onto the legs of the warlord, who kicked her away and shouted, ‘I am the law.’”

The warlord’s name was Milan Lukić, and he was one of the most evil men in a war that had a surplus of them. He killed women and children with particular ruthlessness, one time setting fire to a house in which 59 civilians were sheltering; they all perished. But Lukić was saying one honest thing when he kidnapped the sisters: He was the law. His paramilitary thugs had a monopoly on violence in Višegrad and the full support of Serb political and military authorities. At the time, I didn’t imagine that their crimes would catch up with any of them. . . .

Yet the impunity that seemed eternal in Bosnia turned out to be short-lived, at least for the elites of criminality. Lukić is now in prison with a life sentence, thanks to his conviction at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity. Key wartime leaders were extradited to the Hague too. Slobodan Milošević, the president of Serbia, died of a heart attack before his trial concluded, but Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, the political and military leaders of Bosnia’s Serbs, were convicted of genocide.

America in 2021 is not Serbia in 1995. Our machinery of impunity is not susceptible to pressure from larger nations. But the journalists, whistleblowers, and researchers who have done the hard work of exposing its lies — they are still at work. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the more these people uncover, the harder they toil. I wouldn’t bet against them.

The good news is that an empirical analysis shows that ending abuses by the military-intelligence complex has a fairly straightforward solution: accountability. 

Decision-making in intelligence matters is often assumed to be an extra-legal process. This article however shows that the determining factor in compliance is a legal one: the likelihood of the state being held effectively accountable for a breach of international law. Through a behavioural analysis of state conduct in intelligence matters and the modelling of intelligence decision-making, the article demonstrates that state behaviour in intelligence matters can be explained and predicted. Taking compliance as the standard for assessing the effectiveness of regulation, this finding has strategic implications for the actors of the international legal order attempting to enhance compliance. Specifically, increasing the likelihood of effective accountability increases the probability of compliance and decreases the weight given to extra-legal and domestic considerations in decision-making, regardless of the activity and state considered. Hence, rather than focussing on the regulatory framework itself (international law), regulatory approaches aiming to enhance compliance should focus on improving accountability.

Sophie Duroy, State Compliance with International law in Intelligence Matters: A Behavioural Approach (2021).

Gitmo Detainee Ordered Released

As the scope of the conflict in Afghanistan involving the U.S. narrows, so does the U.S. legal authority to detain people as enemy combatants.  This reality recently resulted in a court order to release someone who has beeb detained at the Guantanamo Bay military base as an enemy combatant for the last fourteen years. Other releases could follow.

An "enemy combatant" may be detained indefinitely merely because he has part of the other side's military in a military conflict with the U.S., in this case one authorized by the Authorization To Use Military Force (AUMF) adopted by Congress shortly after the 9-11 attacks on U.S. targets in 2001. But, when you cease to be in a military conflict with the military force the detainee belongs to, that authority ends. As the Lawfare blog explains at the link above:

On Oct. 19, Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did something we have not seen in many a year: He granted a Guantanamo detainee’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, ordering the man’s release.

The man in question is Asadullah Haroon Gul (aka Haroon al-Afghani), an Afghan citizen who was captured alongside six other men in an operation by Afghan government forces in early 2007. All the men, it appears, were members of the armed group known as Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) commanded by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Though not formally part of the Taliban, Hekmatyar’s political movement and its armed expression, HIG, were aligned theologically and politically with the Taliban. And after the fall of the Taliban, HIG became one of the armed groups fighting against the new Afghan government, U.S. forces and other allied forces. In short, HIG for many years was a paradigm example of an “associated force” engaged in hostilities against the United States in connection with the larger conflict with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Indeed, in 2011, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit opinion authored by now-Attorney General Merrick Garland expressly affirmed as much in Khan v. Obama.

But here’s the thing about military detention authority: The scope of that authority will grow or shrink in accordance with the scope of the underlying armed conflict on which the claim of military detention authority is based. And thus it mattered a great deal when, in fall 2016, the then-government of Afghanistan reached a peace agreement with HIG. Thus, even without the eventual U.S. decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and end the fight against the Taliban too, the legal foundation for military detention in cases predicated solely on membership in HIG appeared to be going or already gone by late 2016. . . .

In 2018, the Justice Department responded by abandoning its claim of authority to detain based on HIG membership alone. It argued that Gul still could be held, however, based on the distinct claim that Gul separately had been involved with al-Qaeda itself. (See this 2018 Lawfare post from Harry Graver for those details and relevant links.) Gul denies that argument on factual grounds, and for a time that was the central issue in the case. 

Then, with the recent full withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, Gul appears to have expanded his argument to include a much broader claim about the expiration of the legal grounds for detention. That claim, if accepted by the court, could have sweeping implications for other Guantanamo detainees.

Afghanistan Reflections

* The Taliban seized control of almost the entire territory of Afghanistan, including Kabul, its capitol, rapidly as U.S. forces withdrew. Some of this may have been symbolic and due to the collapse of morale it caused. But, a few thousand well disciplined and trained U.S. military personnel, mostly in training and support roles, and providing reconnaissance and close air support for Afghan National Army troops (in theory, numbering about 100,000 and greatly outnumber the Taliban forces who took greater casualties, were less well trained and were less well equipped), were also a tipping point. 

* It is beyond any reasonable doubt that the U.S. did a dismally bad job of ending the operation in Afghanistan. It failed to get its own people, other friendly foreigners, and its Afghan allies out of the country in good order. It didn't manage to deny the Taliban access to its advanced weapons and equipment. Its abrupt departure that was ill-coordinated with Afghan National Army forces was deeply disheartening to them and contributed to their utter collapse as U.S. forces left, rather than leaving them in the strongest possible position, despite months and years of advanced notice that this was in the works. The U.S. departure may have been a bipartisan political necessity, but it didn't have to end in an ugly rout.

* The very small initial force in Afghanistan in 2001 with heavy air support was extremely successful at turning the tide of an ongoing civil war then.

* The close air support wasn't terribly advanced. B-52s aren't all that different from their 1950s version. The AC-130, is a short haul cargo plane with a big artillery piece hanging out the side. The A-10 is a Vietnam era, subsonic, non-stealth aircraft. More modern armed drones and more modern fighter aircraft were involved too (even the B-1B bomber was pressed into service in close air support in what was largely a debacle), but weren't particularly pivotal. On the other hand, this was far superior to the nascent Afghan air force made up of a couple dozen or so glorified Cessna class general aviation aircraft, modified to fire missiles designed for helicopters or to drop smaller bombers.

* Despite the fact that this was predominantly a ground war, ambushes by light infantry were the main threat. There was some improved explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan, but not nearly as many as in more economic developed Iraq. The Taliban had few vehicles more advanced than pickup trucks and jeeps with heavy machine guns mounted on them. The Taliban had essentially no armored vehicles. The Taliban had essentially no modern missiles. The Taliban had no air force. The Taliban's most potent weapons were suicide bombers and truck bombs. (Afghanistan is landlocked, so, of course, neither side had any naval forces, although some U.S. Navy personnel served in the conflict.) The U.S. and its allies deployed few (if any) heavy tanks to the conflict.

* The Taliban survived two decades, after having ruled most of Afghanistan for five years and coming to the brink of running the entire country. They collapsed when U.S. forces arrived in 2001 because the Taliban had allowed a terrorist group the conducted the 9-11 attacks to operate there, but retreated to Northern Pakistan and regrouped. Pakistan cooperated with the U.S. enough to allow U.S. Special Forces to assassinate Osama bin Laden there during the Obama Administration, but did not cooperate enough to allow the U.S., Afghanistan, and its allies to take their fight against the Taliban to their new base of operations.

* The U.S. won battle after battle, but the U.S. means of fighting this war was very expensive and without sufficient nation building, created dependency rather than an Afghan National Army that could stand on its own feet. The number of troops involved was never huge and the casualties per year were modest for a civil war being actively fought, for the vast majority of the U.S. military presence. But the cost of the operation approached $300 million per day, it was the longest foreign military engagement in U.S. history (the "Indian Wars" on the U.S. frontier, collectively, lasted longer), and the U.S. eventually grew tired of it, allowing the Taliban to win the war of attrition which it fought at a higher cost in lives, but a vastly lower cost in treasure. The U.S. never managed to figure out how to conduct this "small war" on a more proportionate budget.

* The Afghan government was, as a matter of constitutional law, a government in which the supreme law of the land was Islamic law. Almost everyone in Afghanistan except the foreign troops are Muslim. Yes, the Taliban are Muslim too, but they were one Sunni Islamic faction fighting are Sunni Muslims.

* The Taliban were organized and obtained the money that made them possible in significant part from Saudi Arabian elites who don't fully support the ruling monarch's foreign policies. The notion that the U.S. was the primary driving force behind the Taliban, as claimed in some memes, is false, although the U.S. did support anti-Soviet insurgents (who were Muslim, like everyone in Afghanistan is) in Afghanistan back in the Reagan administration.

* Afghanistan has been almost continuously at war since the late 1970s. The last twenty years have been characterized by an ongoing Taliban insurgency, but it was not by any means the most violent or deadly period of ongoing civil war over the last forty plus years. But you have to go all of the way back to the 1970s to find a time when the future looked bright and people were at peace in this country.

* Forty years of wars and enduring wave after wave of refugees have left Afghanistan without the human capital it really needed to return to a functioning civic society. It is the most wretched and impoverished country outside of Africa as a result of the endless war.

* The Afghan warlords whose cause the U.S. took up against the Taliban in 2001 when they were on the verge of total defeat were no angels, although they were still probably better than the Taliban.

* The U.S. and its allies were not very successful at nation building. In part, this was because they disavowed it, framing their task as a strictly military mission. In part, this was due to a lack of human capital to run a full fledge system of national, regional, and local governments in this fashion properly, even with $ 4 billion a year in foreign aid supplementing its budget. In part, this was because the Western style parliamentary governmental system put in place with an Islamic flavor chose uninspiring leaders who weren't up to the job and whose lack of experience and competence gave rise to a deeply corrupt system that reached even its military.

* The corruption was probably not entirely unrelated to high rates of cousin marriage and a heavily clan based civil society in Afghanistan, which is ill suited to an impersonal state.

* The Taliban's message of strict Islamic law, ruthlessly enforced in a manner that was also mindful of its own ability to control people by doing so, despite meager financial resources and inferior military training, won the war of ideas over the Western-style democratic republic model offered up by the U.S. and its allies. A more Western-style model may have improved the lives of many Afghans, especially women, but it didn't win over many die hard defenders and advocates at the grass roots. Afghan troops vanished in the face of serious Taliban offenses, rather than fiercely defending their truf from the insurgents.

* Delaying Taliban rule by twenty years was not meaningless. It temporarily but seriously disrupted the leading anti-Western terrorist organization and there was no subsequent major successful Islamic terrorist attacks on the U.S. again after 9-11. It changed the lives of a generation, mostly for the better. It delayed it to a time period when Islamic fundamentalism, while alive and well in various parts of the world including Afghanistan, is certainly less of a clear and present danger to the Western world than it was in 2001. Early indications are that the Taliban of 2021 has also moderated itself at least a little relative to what it was in 2001, although the Taliban's conduct effectively terrorizing smaller cities and town and rural areas in between leaves one wondering how sincere this front really is right now. The past twenty years has also dented Afghanistan's status as the biggest source in the world for illegal opium. Afghanistan has also provided the U.S. with battle hardened military veterans and advances in weapons and tactics arising from that experience, but at the cost of life shattering physical and mental disabilities for many soldiers who served there.

* Still, the reasonable expectation is that life under Taliban rule in Afghanistan will get much worse (especially for women and girls, but also economically and for the country as a whole), compared to the status quo in the short to medium term. This is so even though, Taliban hegemony might ultimately bring the absence of war necessary for progress and moderation if it persists for a long enough time spent governing to moderate this Islamist movement to the extent. A best case scenario, for example, might be similar to the Shi'ite theocracy in Iran has done so over the last four decades after the Islamic revolution there. But Saudi Arabia and other Islamic monarchies in the Persian Gulf strongly suggest that highly repressive regimes on their model can persist for a very long time.

* A key reason that a Western-style republic model lost the war of ideas was because it was a message that Afghanistan wasn't ready to receive yet. This was a country that needed a more basic democratic model than the one that it tried to adopt, and that maybe should have had a transition period of more competent, civilian, non-democratic rule to provide people with a lived example before leaving people who have mostly never known functional democratic government in times of peace to try to govern themselves. On the other hand, it isn't as if the Soviet style one party state that preceded the pre-U.S. invasion Taliban fared any better. The monarchy that preceded that, while longer lived and more peaceful, was hardly a shining model of success. The 1970s was pretty much the only time in modern history that Afghanistan was in good shape and seemingly on a track of a better future.

* Early in the conflict, the U.S. tried to use military and CIA led approaches to detaining, punishing, and interrogating people suspected of being connected with al-Qaeda. This effort was a dismal failure. It undermined the integrity of the U.S. justice system and U.S. "soft power" in favor of dubious military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees who were mostly small fry when they were first detained that resulted in few actual convictions. Using civilian U.S. District Courts for terrorism prosecutions has been far more fruitful.

* The Authorization for the Use Of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress after 9-11 in 2001 with an eye primarily towards what became the war in Afghanistan has justified U.S. military action against violent Islamist organizations all over the world since then. With its original justification spent, there is some chance that the AUMF will be repealed by Congress and reduce the authority of the President to deploy U.S. military forces on these kinds of missions outside Afghanistan going forward. The other military operations have involved very modest numbers of U.S. troops with armed drones and less advanced military equipment.

* After the Vietnam War, the military tried to discourage political leaders from fighting more wars like it by restructuring its forces to be less well suited to those kinds of conflicts. Political leaders mostly ignored this fact and kept deploying the military to low intensity, counter-insurgency conflicts with a military that was intentionally not well equipped and trained to fight in this kind of conflict. This was a mistake and should not be repeated. Military leaders may prefer to plan for major international wars against "near peer" opponents, but that kind of preparation does not translate well to having force components who can prevail in asymmetric "small wars" against non-near peer opponents like the Taliban. But, the U.S. will almost inevitably be drawn into fighting conflicts like the Afghan War in the future.

Dystopian Policy Ideas Are Worth Pondering

From here.

Most people who think about public policy reform are prone to focusing on how to make the world a better place and assume that all people who actually make policy think likewise. But history shows that bouts of bad policy making are common. 

Indeed, we are in the midst of one of those historical moments right now. How many goo-goos would have predicted that:

* The Governor of the State of Georgia would ban localities from adopting face mask requirements in the midst of a pandemic at its peak number of new cases in the state?

* The President would prohibit state health departments from providing updated coronavirus information to the Centers for Disease Control?

* The Douglas County, Colorado Commissioners would adopt a resolution declaring that they would never find an alleged violation of constitutional rights and excessive force by a law enforcement officer to have been committed in bad faith amidst national outrage over excessive uses of force by police?

* A President who would repeal regulations preventing people who had been involuntarily committed for being a danger to themselves and others from buying guns as school shootings reach record highs?

* A President who would attempt to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a global pandemic that no nation is suffering from more severely than the U.S.?

* A President who would support a policy of keeping refugee children cages without access to hygiene and with intentionally uncomfortably cold temperatures?

* An administration that would indiscriminately attempt to repeal almost every environmental regulation on the books (most recently, the protections of the Migratory Birds Treaty)?

* An administration that would try to get the U.S. Supreme Court to repeal health care coverage for tens of millions of Americans in the middle of a pandemic.

* An administration that would attempt to deport medical professionals who are trying to provide healthcare at hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients?

* A President that has attempted to buy Greenland and sell Puerto Rico?

* A President who thinks that windmills cause cancer, that American forces “took over the airports” during the Revolutionary War (which started in 1776 CE), suggests in a coronavirus press conference that people should drink bleach, and thinks that preventing forest fires is about raking forest floors?

* A President who pardons war criminals and then appears publicly with them to praise them for their crimes?

* A Supreme Court justice who would conclude that it is constitutional and does not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment to execute an innocent person who was wrongfully convicted of murder?

* A Presidential would support a government that tortured and murdered a journalist for an American newspaper and that one of his senior advisors and family members would have helped facilitate the killing?

* Who would have imagined that we'd be fighting a reinvigorated Nazi movement in 2020 and that the President would call them "very fine people"?

There's no way anyone could have predicted these events. Unless, that is, they put on their dystopian brainstorming hat and added a healthy dose of pessimism and cynical humor. 

So, it is a worthwhile exercise to consider dystopian policy ideas, because they aren't as impossibly unlikely as they may seem.

A New Atrocity In Syria

Thousands of people have been hanged at a Syrian prison in a secret crackdown on dissent by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a report by Amnesty International has alleged. 

The human rights group says up to 13,000 people have been executed at Saydnaya prison north of the capital Damascus in a "hidden" campaign authorized by senior regime figures. 

Amnesty's report, Human slaughterhouse, says prisoners are moved in the middle of the night from their cells under the pretext of being transferred. They are taken to the grounds of the prison, where they are hanged, likely unaware of their fate until they feel the noose around their neck, Amnesty alleges. 

The report is based on result of a year-long investigation, including interviews with 84 witnesses including security guards, detainees, judges and lawyers, Amnesty says. 

Most of those hanged were civilians "believed to be opposed to the government," the report found.

Via CNN.

The hangings have been conducted twice a week for five years and were allegedly authorized by a military tribunal.

There is also widespread torture at this prison as documented by photographic evidence.

Of course, the Syrian regime has also used chemical weapons against its own people and repeatedly bombed civilians.

This would be more executions than in any other country in the world except China, which has more than 400 times the population of Syria, and is unrivaled even by other Islamic countries who feel that Islamic law justifies executions and corporal punishment in circumstances where no other legal system does so.

Omar Khadr Was Released On Bail Last Year

In 2007, I recounted the plight of Omar Khadr, a Guantanamo detainee who was fifteen when he ended up in the military prison charged with offenses taking place as early as when he was ten years old, who had been detained for five years at the time. 

He pleaded guilty to war crimes before a U.S. military tribunal in October of 2010. Five years later, in 2012, after ten years at Gitmo, he was transferred to a Canadian prison. He was released on bail pending an appeal in the U.S. Courts in May of 2015. Per Wikipedia, linked above:

He was the youngest prisoner and last Western citizen to be held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay. He accepted an eight-year sentence, not including time served, with the possibility of a transfer to Canada after at least one year to serve the remainder of the sentence. Khadr was the first person since World War II to be prosecuted in a military commission for war crimes committed while still a minor. His conviction and sentence were widely denounced by civil rights groups and various newspaper editorials. His prosecution and imprisonment was condemned by the United Nations, which has taken up the issue of child soldiers. 

On September 29, 2012, Khadr was repatriated to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canadian custody. He was initially assigned to a maximum-security prison but moved to a medium-security prison in 2014. Khadr was released on bail in May 2015 (pending an appeal of his U.S. conviction) after the Alberta Court of Appeal refused to block his release as had been requested by the Canadian government. 

In 2013, Khadr filed a C$20,000,000 amended civil suit against the government of Canada for conspiring with the U.S. in abusing his rights. He said he had signed the plea agreement because he believed it was the only way he could gain transfer from Guantanamo, and claimed that he had no memory of the firefight in which he was wounded. Khadr's lawyers successfully challenged his incarceration in Canada as an adult offender. On May 14, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the federal government's position, ruling that Khadr had clearly been sentenced by the U.S. military tribunal as a minor. If he loses his appeal of the US conviction, underway in a separate action, he would serve any remaining time in a provincial facility rather than in a federal penitentiary.

He has served 4 years and 7 months of his eight year sentence, and apparently receives no credit for the eight years of time served he had at the time.

Sixteen years in prison for being a child soldier is absurd.

Ten Worthwhile TV Series Available On Netflix

The Thanksgiving holiday afforded me some rare quality time with my Netflix account.  Fortunately, there are some really worthwhile shows in my current rotation that I have been watching on and off for the last year or so.  Television has finally come into its own as an even more grand forum in which to make epic performances than the movie.  These shows demonstrate that trend in spades.

1.  Jessica Jones.

This Netflix original TV series based upon the Marvel Comics character is a brilliant but dark portrayal of a flawed hero, who few people who aren't total comics geeks are familiar with, who has the same problems that non-superheroes facing the challenges that she has faced deal with every day.

Jones is an alcoholic retired superhero working as a private investigator.  She has anger control problems, chronically bad judgment, and is haunted by the victimization she suffered at the hands of a super criminal who is still out there toying with her and ruining other people's lives as well.

2. NCIS.

NCIS stands for Naval Criminal Investigation Service, a scrappy underdog of the federal bureaucracy that solves navy related crimes with a mix of the gut instincts and guile of their team leader, a cute Goth girl and quirky British pathologist running their stunningly well equipped crime lab (given the low budget of the rest of their agency's operation), agents seeking second chances after missteps in their prior employment situations, and the team's remarkable ability to outwit bureaucratic obstacles that are ever present.  This is a police procedural in the tradition of Walker Texas Ranger, enhanced with war porn and a slightly more cosmopolitan cast.

This is more lowbrow than most of the other shows I watch regularly, but the ensemble cast works well together and strikes an excellent balance between being amusing and not being degrading or offensive, and the pacing and witty gambits they employ are amusing.  This is TV comfort food like a warm bowl of grits with a pool of butter melted on top.

3. The Flash.

OK, so I like superhero TV shows.  This one is a nice, balanced feel good melodrama with a strong supporting cast and a time traveling conspiracy theory that we experience with the wonders of dramatic irony while the rest of the characters soldiers on oblivious to the deeper forces at work.

Hey, I admit that it is a bit shallow, but sometimes, you want to watch something that you don't have to think too hard about.

4. iZombie.

This loose TV series adaptation of the DC Comics Vertigo imprint comic books series is a light police procedural comedy featuring a young doctor who is transformed into a zombie and maintains her good health by eating brains she secures from her job in the medical examiners office in Seattle (incidentally, I know a guy who used to work there, although he never mentioned the zombie employees).  Eating brains also allows our heroine to pick up some of the memories and personalities of the source of her dinner which she used to avenge the wrongs that caused their deaths.

The show is the brain child of the maker of the best TV show ever, Veronica Mars and has a similar dynamic and aesthetic to critically acclaimed but short lived series like Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me.   Fortunately, unlike those series, this one was renewed for another extra length season this past October, so there will be more to come soon.

This is perhaps my favorite new series of the lot.  Who knew that a TV show about Zombies could be zany, wise, reflective, and romantic?

5.  Gotham.

In this DC Comics derived TV series, young Bruce Wayne, still reeling from the death of his parents, Cat woman as a streetwise homeless girl named "Cat", Commissioner Gordon and his wife back when he was a homicide cop working a beat and his wife was just his bisexual socialite fiancee try to get by and find peace in a city overrun with organized crime, corrupt cops, and super villains from the Batman universe like the Penguin hatching their criminal careers back in the days when they were just villains who hadn't yet earned a "super" moniker.

Like the Flash, this is a balanced melodrama, but like Jessica Jones, this series has some genuine emotional depth and is rarely campy like the low budget 1966-1968 television version of the story with Adam West and Burt Ward.  The integration of this prequel with the canonical Batman story is also artfully done. But, the youth of the some of the key characters, give this a lighter feel than the purely dramatic recent movie adaptations of the Batman franchise, even though it takes some visual cues from that series.

Despite the name of the city, which is generally considered an alter ego of New York City, this Gotham, as in most retellings of the Batman story, is a dead ringer for Detroit instead.

6. Hemlock Grove.

The latest season of this edgy Netflix original (a previous season resolved a love triangle with a very graphic threesome), continues to offer its dark, mysterious mix of gypsy tradition, soap opera relationship issues, vampires, werewolves, witchcraft, conspiracies, sex and violence in the tradition of made for cable TV shows like True Blood and Game of Thrones.

7. Jane The Virgin.

This earnest coming of age, late, comedy skirts the line between magical realism and the telenovela. If you liked Like Water for Chocolate, Amelie, Moulin Rouge, or Juno there is a good chance that you'll like Jane the Virgin as well.

8. Sense8.

Imagine that the scripts of The Tomorrow People and the TV series Heroes were produced by the most explicit cable TV director around while he was inspired from watching Requiem for a Dream, you'll be on the right track.  If repeated soft porn displays of gay and lesbian sex turn you off, this show is probably not for you.  But, this big concept ensemble piece featuring eight unrelated people from all over the world who start to share telepathic bonds with each other against the backdrop of evolving conspiracies is definitely one of the most intense experiences available on television.

If you crave the explicitness of soft porn and the campy violence of karate movies, but hate the utter lack of acting, plot or any other redeeming artistic value in anything else available in those genres, this is for you.  Like Hemlock Grove, this is a TV experience that simply did not exist in any form ten years ago.

9. Sherlock.

There are several modern updates of the Sherlock Holmes story out there, including one based on New York City, because it is out of copyright.  But, this London based mini-series of finely crafted episodes by the BBC is probably the best of them.

10. Ascension.

Back in the late 1960s, U.S. scientists designed a nuclear powered interstellar "generation" ship that could reach the nearest star under the direction of the grandchildren of the original crew a century later.  This short series imagines what would have happened if the crew, forever trapped in the 1960s cultural bubble they were a part of when they left because they lack the critical mass to transform their own culture very decisively on their own, actually made that trip.  Or, at least, that's what the people on the ship think in this series that has echoes of The Truman Show and Ender's Game.

Honorable Mention: Being Human

The TV series "Being Human" is about a twenty-something vampire, werewolf and ghost who end up sharing an apartment together as they try to live lives in the ordinary human world that are as ordinary as possible as they try to cope with the recent transformations that have made them into the respective mythical creatures that they are now.

Overall, its a reasonably well done slice of life melodrama that leans towards comedy.  But, what is really remarkable about this series is that it has been done twice, with almost identical scripts to start with, five seasons worth of it set in greater London, and a four seasons of a parallel universe version of the exactly the same show remade in a United States setting with a U.S. cast.

I've watched several parallel episodes and I have to admit that I enjoy the U.S. version better, even though it is a scene for scene identical remake of a very decent original, simply because as an American, I find it easier to digest.  It is truly remarkable how the change of setting and cast can give the show an entirely different feel with almost exactly the same plot, characters and modern setting.

Twilight/Life and Death Compared

The only other fictional experience that comes even close to "Being Human" is the 10th anniversary bonus material book version of Stephanie Meyers book, Twilight, which contains in the same hardback book volume, the full length book, Life and Death.  Both books start from one of the covers and work their way to the midpoint of the hardback book volume, and are rotated 180 degrees from each other.

Life and Death is a scene by scene retelling of the "Twilight" story, but with all but a handful of the characters gender flipped from the original (it is necessary to flip almost all of the characters because otherwise many of the complex and interlocking love triangles, pentagrams, trapezoids wouldn't work properly).  A few scenes from the original Twilight story, like an attempted rape scene form which our heroine was rescued following a long bout of homecoming dress shopping, had to be reworked significantly as a result of the gender flip, and some of the dialog had to be tweaked a bit to be realistic coming from someone of the opposite sex.  But, mostly, the project was a quite successful demonstration of the claim that the stereotypical damsel in distress dynamic of the original book wasn't necessary to make it work.

Life and Death works well enough and is a fascinating literary experiment.  But, honestly, some of the choices made in the original novel for our heroine, Bella, while they can be done with a male protagonist instead without seeming completely implausible, are choices really aren't actually the most natural ones that one would probably have made if one was working from scratch to write the book about, Beau, Bella's male counterpart in this alternative reality in love with a female vampire, instead. In contrast, Bella's choices in the original Twilight flow effortlessly from her distinctive personality, which while odd, never seems unfeminine.

Of course, Twilight is pretty much single handedly is responsible for the huge decade long contemporary vampire and werewolf fiction trend that gave rise to iZombie, Hemlock Grove, and Being Human in the list above, plus many, many more productions in novels, movies, television, graphic novels, and actual dead tree comics.  You could probably fill a long post just listing all of the fictional works that it has influenced.  Given that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, that is a pretty impressive feat for a young Mormon writer releasing her first book pieced together over the years in bits and pieces as sketches when she was a teenager.

Cowardly Chicken Little Colorado Sheriffs

I have pretty much no respect whatsoever for the 41 Colorado Sheriff's who have written a letter to President Obama explaining that they are terrified that Guantanamo Bay inmates held in a maximum security prison in Colorado would "significantly - and unnecessarily - endanger our citizens."

This simply does not pass any reasonable reality check and makes this prisoners out to be comic book supervillains, rather than the bunch of mostly low level, mostly Yemeni al-Queda functionaries who haven't even committed any war crimes, that most of them are in fact.

The notion that some dangerous al-Queda fifth columnists would try to spring these detainees from a Colorado prison is simply laughable.  They would stand out like a sore thumb and have a very long way to go to a safe haven, unlike the current site in Cuba, where the Cuban government would likely embrace with open arms any escaped detainee and could do so with impunity.

The letter says much more about how cowardly and detached from reality most of these local government elected officials in Colorado are, than it does about the realities of the policy issues involved.

This is simply partisan demagoguery at its worst.  The politicians, including a few Democrats, who have given any credibility to this argument, deserve similar scorn.