Justice Stevens makes some good points in Rasul v. Bush

(from The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin)

 The Bush legal team, led by Ted Olson, the solicitor general, brought the same moral certainty to the Supreme Court that the Republican political operation put forth to voters. The issues were straightforward, the choices binary: the United States or the terrorists, right or wrong. Standing up to argue in Rasul, Olson laid the same kind of choice before the Court. "Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: The United States is at war," Olson began with heavy portent. "It is in that context that petitioners ask this Court to assert jurisdiction that is not authorized by Congress, does not arise from the Constitution, has never been exercised by this Court."

But if this kind of talk was intended to intimidate the justices, as it cowed so many others, the tactic did not work. Indeed, it backfired. "Mr. Olson, supposing the war has ended," Stevens jumped in, "could you continue to detain these people on Guantanamo?" Of course we could, Olson said. In other words, the military could detain Rasul and the others whether or not there was a war.

"The existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue," Stevens said.

"It is not irrelevant because it is in this context that that question is raised," Olson replied weakly.

"But your position does not depend on the existence of a war," Stevens insisted, and Olson had to concede it did not. So in just the first moments of the argument, Stevens had shown that the Bush administration was claiming not some temporary accommodation but rather a permanent expansion of its power for all time, in war or peace. And Stevens was showing further that Olson's rhetorical flourish--"The United States is at war"-- was nothing more than posturing. (p. 231)

...

So, it turned out, was the preposterousness of the administration's key argument in Rasul. Olson had maintained that the navy base in Guantanamo was really Cuban soil and to allow a lawsuit there was inviting litigation on a foreign battlefield. But as Stevens put it in his opinion, "By the express terms of its agreements with Cuba, the United States exercises "complete jurisdiction and control' over the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and may continue to exercise such control permanently if it so chooses." The entire reason that the military took the detainees to such a remote outpost was because the base offered total freedom from outside interference. Allowing lawyers to visit prisoners in Guantanamo and letting them conduct litigation offered no risk at all of escape or disruption--something that could not be said for many prisons within the United States. (p. 235)

Thinking about my dad, two years on

I don't think about him too often. But it's been a bit over -- two years? Is that all? It feels like at least four--since he died.

I just finished working with a student on one last waitlist essay for college. And it reminded me that, last year, I had once written a sample application essay to try to illustrate the tone, pacing, humor, and emotional notes that I wanted that student to hit. In retrospect it wasn't fair -- a 30-year old has simply lived more life than an 18-year old. More things have happened, good and bad, and it's easier to write about influential people and moments once their influence has become pronounced over the years. I honestly don't know if the kid got anything out of it, though the mom thanked me for the essay and complimented me on my writing.

Upon a re-reading, I grimaced. It wasn't quite true -- it was my uncle that asked people to pull his finger. My father was usually content to make fart jokes. But my memories of him have been shaped by so many things -- especially, blessedly, time, which dulls wounds and through which the retrospective mind creates order and a logical story where there was none. It was him, in any case, and the rest of it was true.

I don't even know if it would have been a good essay. It is past-focused, and not focused enough on the qualities of character I did develop that would serve me in the future. It might be more of a red flag than a story of overcoming difficulty. And the last paragraph is a bit schmaltzy. But it was a first draft, and I didn't have time to polish it -- I must've worked on fifteen essays for that kid.

I'm too tired or reluctant to come up with a two-year anniversary set of thoughts. It would have been a recycled version at the one-year mark. So it seems strangely appropriate I take something I had written a year ago for the purpose. For it must be marked. I've been  a bit down lately, possibly because I'm seeing these seniors get ready to leave. And I want to leave with them, to give college and my twenties another crack. Or maybe because they remind me that I, too, have moved on from the past, and with equal parts ignorance, optimism, and fear, look toward the future.

“Pull my finger!”

That’s how my dad started every meeting. He was crazy like that, and crazy in other ways. He was bipolar, and I, thankfully, grew up without him in the house. But I did see him regularly – every two weeks. He was, at times, scary, or genial, or grouchy, or energetic – the combination of medications, occasionally illicit drugs, and, most importantly, life. He had enjoyed success as an aerospace engineer at the height of the Cold War, and lost it all – the house, the family, even his freedom.

But it was there, in the institutions, with minimal spending money and limited means of transportation, he developed his relationships, and, if I can be hopeful, some measure of wisdom about how he got there, and what he still had to offer the world.

My father taught me many things. I learned to fear emotion, as that was associated with manic depression. I learned to fear my intelligence, as that was also linked with mental illness. But I also learned the value of laughing, whether to forget, or to share. He could make me laugh, and as he grew older, was better able to laugh at himself, and his past. (And his gas.)

I remember the day he died. I remember his cold form, his mouth agape, stretched in a hospital bed in the care facility where he had spent the last ten years. In life, he had been a terror and an inspiration, a source of merriment and perpetual stress. He was gone, and I didn’t know with what, or how, I would fill the place in myself that was now empty.

Yet even here, there was humor. My aunt came in, and talked with me. After about ten minutes, I realized that she didn’t realize she was standing next to a dead man, and informed her of the fact. The mortician, a young, eager man obviously desperate to keep his job, pleaded with me to rate him highly on the survey that would be mailed to me in a week. “Tens, please!” I couldn’t help but laugh, and I know my Dad would have done the same.

After I had taken care of that business, I looked at him one last time. I recited the words of “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. I sat for a while.

And on my way out, I pulled his finger.

My father learned to laugh because it felt good. He laughed to escape the doubts and regrets that plagued him. Honestly, I laugh for the same reasons. But I also value laughter as a way of really understanding and appreciating the human condition. When we laugh, honestly and fully, we begin to open ourselves, to make ourselves vulnerable – and that, perhaps, is the beginning of wisdom.

I have not fought in war. I have not discovered a new technology, or written a novel, or performed in Carnegie Hall. My triumphs, and my tribulations, have been necessarily smaller, more private. They do not capture the imagination, but they echo in my memory. They inform my character, and give me both courage and caution, combining in what I hope to be wisdom. I have faced those old, old fears. And I have learned how to laugh at them, at myself, at the frustrations great and small. He was, in his absence, at least as influential as in his occasional, unstable presence. But he trained me well. For even in that last hour, I laughed a large, wonderful laugh, and thanked my father for his imperfect love.

I am endorsing Ted Cruz for President

I have not made this decision lightly. I have thought long and hard about who is best suited to lead America. My thoughts on the nature and demands of the presidency have been informed by the history I have lived, and the history I have read. And I have decided that Ted Cruz has what it takes to be President of the United States, and to be a good one.

At present, we have five options between the Democrats and Republicans. All of the other four are fundamentally, and fatally, flawed candidates, and would bring ruin to us all.

On the Democratic side, we have Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, whose loyalty to the Democratic party run only as deep as the duration of his presidential run. His plans for free college, free healthcare, free everything, represent the apotheosis of our contemporary "gimmie-gimmie" culture. In his quest to make us Sweden, he would bankrupt us and turn us into Zimbabwe. He fails to take seriously that our present is not our own -- it is inherited from our parents, and borrowed from our future. America is not for sale for thirty pieces of silver. Despite his rhetoric, he has demonstrated by his appeals toward individual selfishness and class warfare that he is the most cynical of the candidates.

We also have Hillary Clinton, who has more baggage than an international airport. Her husband took credit for an economic boom inspired by the conservative budgets and tax policies pushed through by a Republican Congress. Despite his claims to humanitarianism, as president, he ignored a genocide in Rwanda, and exacerbated ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia. I won't even get into his personal character--that is a matter of public record. Don't believe for a second that his fumbling, corrupt hands would be idle during the presidency of his wife. As to Hillary -- she presided over the Obama State Department, and it is on her doorstep we leave the wreckage of Syria and Iraq, the nightmarish metastasizing of Islamic State, the expansion of Russia, the chaos of Yemen, and, yes, the assault on our Western allies. She is uniquely characterized by horrible judgment, changing her views more times than people change their socks. Bernie would simply bankrupt America -- Hillary would continue Obama's strategy destroy American power and sacrificing our allies for promises from nations who demonstrate neither trustworthiness nor stability.

And what of the other Republican? John Kasich? A man whose sheer ambition and arrogance has kept him in this race, even though he has won only one state, even though he has no chance at a nomination? John Kasich, who may make a deal with the devil himself for a vice-presidential spot to satiate his pride? John Kasich, whose endless pretense of bonhommie tries and fails to conceal his general grouchiness, poor temperament, and provincial small-mindedness -- none of which makes him capable of handling the job of the Presidency.

Donald Trump is no Republican. He is a creature of the media. They love him because he makes them money. He loves them because he's a narcissistic buffoon. His views are a mishmash of convenience and drug-addled somnambulence. He is the most depraved man to ever seek the presidency. It is only out of desperation that so many have turned to him -- as if to say, "We exist! Hear our voices!"

Ted Cruz hears their voices. He understands their suffering in this fake economic recovery, which has benefited the celebrities like Trump, but left behind decent, hardworking people. He understands that people are tired and angry about the desecration of American promise. He shares their anger at the academic-media-entertainment complex, who tell us constantly, be ashamed, apologize, and you deserve nothing.

They push a narrative of American weakness and attack values that have kept America safe and whole for centuries. They expect us to abandon what is good and true about our unique nation and change in response to the whims of celebrities, so-called-activists, and other braying asses, who are absent and silent when America is attacked and our citizens slaughtered. Finding no strength of their own, they seek to make the rest of us weak, and I'm sorry to say they have partially succeeded.

Ted Cruz is not afraid to ask Americans to sacrifice. He knows that, while many of our countrymen seek only handouts and attention, there are many of us, a moral majority, who know that this country is worth personal sacrifice. He is not afraid of asking us to be adults, to make hard choices needed to manage our deficits. He has fought these battles, sometimes alone in the Senate, and earned the scorn of the political class he threatens.

He is highly intelligent. He has the energy of youth, and the wisdom of a close student of history. He will not flinch to defend our country from enemies foreign or domestic. He will restore the values of our faith, in our government and in our God, to the center of American life. He is the last, best hope for a world spiraling out of control.

I ask all right-thinking Americans, all Americans who love their country, who believe that our lives are a gift from the Almighty, who believe that salvation requires sacrifice, who believe that we must fight today, tomorrow, every day for a better future, to fight for Ted Cruz. He's been fighting for you. He's been fighting for us all.

America is ours. Fight for it.