What's that You're Hiding behind your Back?

The Supreme Court refused to hear a case featuring Khaled el-Masri and his litany of woes. Back in 2003, this poor German shmuck was confused with bad guy Khalid al-Masri and subsequently "disappeared" into one of our foreign detention centers where he was kept from his family and generally disrespected until someone realized they were waterboarding the wrong man.

The Supreme Court, I may point out, can be called "The Catholic Court", as the five most conservative members are Catholic. That the current Pope had been head of the office of Inquisition rather makes the decision of this court not to hear this case either very ironic, or very conspiratorial, depending on your political point of view.

In any case, the refusal is based on a state secrets rule which was issued back in the days of the cold war. The ruling came as a result of a suit brought on by the widows of group of Air Force pilots. A plane crashed on a secret mission in the early fifties. The nature of the mission was deemed inadmissable as evidence due to security concerns.

I suspect that the overuse of this ruling in subsequent years might hinge on not quite being able to define "state secrets". It's kind of a broad little phrase, imprecise, and kind of yummy if you happen to be someone in power. Secrets can be kept for a variety of reasons. You have an affair, you don't want to upset your wife. You coach a football team, you don't want the other team to learn your signals. You have a bad case of diarrhea, you don't want your dance partner to know.

There's a secret about Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts which I've been curious about. He adopted two six week old, blonde, blue-eyed babies within six months. This is quite impressive, considering a good friend of mine just unsuccessfully spent two years trying to adopt a red haired blue eyed Russian kid. Exactly how does one get not just one six week old blond haired, blue eyed baby, but two? What is Justice Roberts' secret? More bluntly, did he pay for the kids?

But this is Justice Roberts' secret. If it's important to have a guy on the Supreme Court who plays it square, who doesn't bend the rules for his personal benefit, then we might just have to waterboard the guy in order to get any answers. Otherwise, we just just have to trust him.

That's all pretty stupid, isn't it, waterboarding a Supreme Court Justice in the same way that Khaled el-Masri had been mistreated, just to find out whether or not he obtained a couple of kids illegally? Some things just ought to stay secret.