THE PLOT THICKENS

hmmmm. Now they are claiming that Mr. Latif died of an overdose of psychiatric medicine....and in the fantasy world of the military that proves it was an apparent suicide. Problem is that is no way on earth that Mr. Latif could have hoarded the medicine- sounds to me like they overdosed the guy -either to subdue him or kill him. anyway you can read more here.
And emptywheel has more here.
And Jeff Kaye has more here.

In other News....

In Algeria the criminal court refused to find the former gitmo detainee guilty once again- this being the second trial by prosecutors against former Gitmo detainee Sofiane Hadarbache. Both times the court found him innocent of ties to terrorism. I know very little about Mr. Hadarbache except that he had head injuries from a military strike in Afghanistan and his habeas attorney is fellow Chicagoan Tom Durkin. Funny how the somewhat dysfunctional government of Algerian can manage to have these trials when we can't.....I guess that just proves that our courts are more dysfunctional than Algerian's.
Odd thing but I had to go to Canada for that news story.....
Speaking of dysfunctional- I hope that one day my remaining Guantanamo client- who also hails from Algeria- will reach a similar fate....that is if he can ever get the hell out of Guantanamo. I have been working on his appeal over the last month and things will be slow here over the next week or so as I finalize and file his brief.

HIDING THE CAUSE OF DEATH

As Jason Leopold reported today- the government is now claiming that Latif died of apparent suicide. We do not know what makes it "apparent" after three months while at the time of his death the cause was unknown and was not an apparent suicide. We do know more about Latif's last few days and they were troubling days- he was not getting his medication and threw a rock at a spotlight. That being a big military threat the powers to be came out in full force to show their strength against Latif and the other men locked up on the Island military base -with no where to go....good show guys...Seems somehow the military was able to subdue him.
emptywheel has some commentary.

yeah ...well the election is over, after all......

Speculation was that after the election the autopsy report for Latif would be available- right on schedule I would say...
of course they aren't releasing the report publicly- not unless forced to I guess.
Anyway, click on the link and read the latest from Jason Leopold.

Emptywheel has more here.

Maybe he will live up to his 2008 promises now....?

Just wonderin....
not expecting much- but wondering...

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

Supreme Court timebombs

ROGER FITCH ESQ • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012

New term for US Supremes ... Certiorari petitions ... Critical mass theory of constitutional change ... Presidential election and the court ... Judicial techniques ... Conspiracy as a war crime ... The CIA agent who didn't torture winds-up in jail ... Our Man in Washington, Roger Fitch, reports 

THE Supreme Court's new term has started and it's well-covered, as usual, by ScotusBlog, the brainchild of Tom Goldstein.

The court has begun grants of certiorari petitions (including a rare handwritten one), but the vast majority are denied, such as the attempts by two Republican statesto thwart voters.

However, in Texas voter cases, the court could decide to use voter litigation to throw out a whole section of theVoter Registration Act, i.e. the provision that is applied to (mostly) southern states with a history of discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities.

Balkinblog has more.

One case likely to be granted certiorari is the "Pay for Delay" generic drug case.

The government wants the court to  consider the "reverse payments" drug companies make to potential competitors.

Then there's "marriage equality" cases. Eight different petitions concern the federal Defence of Marriage Act.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST

Because they can....(updated)

The drone king's "justice" department filed an appeal yesterday to Judge Lamberth's ruling in September allowing men at Guantanamo who lost their appeals to continue having visits with their attorneys under the existing protective order. I wrote about the Judge's ruling here. In a nutshell the drone king would like to turn Guantanamo back to the good old days when attorneys were not allowed- Judge Lamberth in a surprisingly strong decision shut the government's request down.
This appeal is just another example of the drone king's gutlessness.
Update:
ScotUS has more here. According to scotus sources the appeal cannot go forward unless the solicitor general approves and that hasn't happened yet? So perhaps the notice of appeal was put in as a place marker while the solicitor ponders the ramifications.....or maybe there is a little battle going on and the DOJ decided to put some pressure on the solicitor...all just speculation on my part. I never heard of this "rule" before.