Yesterday, SCOTUS ruled that the federal government cannot use a law implementing an international chemical weapons treaty to prosecute a private citizen. Garrett Epps describes what the court called “this curious case”:
This is the second installment of the soap opera of Carol Anne Bond. Bond’s husband and her best friend conceived a child. When she found out, Bond, a trained laboratory technician, turned to the hostile use of 10-chloro-10H-phenoxarsine and potassium dichromate, both deadly poisons. She smeared them on various doorknobs and car doors at Hayes’s house, on one occasion giving Hayes’s thumb a nasty burn. She also unwisely smeared them on Hayes’s mailbox, which is by law part of the U.S. Postal System. Postal inspectors posted security cameras and caught her on video. Federal prosecutors proclaimed this “a very serious, scary case,” because Bond had stolen four pounds of potassium dichromate from her workplace. They charged her with theft of the mail—and violation of 18 U.S.C. § 229, the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998.
On Monday a six-justice majority, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, told the government it had misread the statute to “sweep in everything from the detergent under the kitchen sink to the stain remover in the laundry room,” and “make[] it a federal offense to poison goldfish.” Roberts was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. All nine justices agreed that the government had gone too far in prosecuting Bond. The majority said the indictment violated the statute; Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito would have held the prosecution unconstitutional.
Amy Howe explains how the justices split on the constitutional question:
Because the Court held that the federal ban on chemical weapons does not apply to Bond, it left for another day whether Congress – relying on its constitutional power to approve treaties – can also pass laws to put a treaty into effect in the U.S., even if no other provision of the Constitution would have given it the authority to do so. (The Court will often refrain from deciding a question involving the Constitution if it can decide the case on some other, non-constitutional ground – a principle known as “constitutional avoidance.”)
But Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito all would have weighed in on that question, because in their view it was “clear beyond doubt” that the federal chemical weapons law applied to Bond. They would have struck down her conviction for another reason: that the mere fact that the Constitution authorizes Congress to approve treaties does not automatically mean that laws passed to put the treaties into effect are constitutional. And here, in their view, the federal ban on chemical weapons is not.
Noting that “the court was unwilling simply to say that it was interpreting the law flexibly to avoid an absurd result,” Noah Feldman worries that the ruling, though narrower than Scalia, et al. would have liked, will still have broader consequences than it ought to:
See, Congress’s power to pass the chemical weapons law derived from its authority to pass laws implementing treaties. Everyone agrees such authority exists, even though it isn’t expressly stated in the Constitution. But not everyone agrees on whether Congress can use this power to pass laws that might trench on states’ rights. And arguably, the authority to regulate ordinary assaults is within the states’ exclusive power. Drawing on all this, the court, in a 9-0 decision, announced that the law must be found ambiguous in what it called “this curious case” because read literally the statute would be improbably broad, even “boundless,” and would potentially impinge state prerogatives. It held that it would have needed a “clear indication” that Congress intended to apply the law to this conduct — and indication the court found lacking.
If this sounds fine, it isn’t. Despite the court’s apparent preference to cabin its holding to these strange facts, the decision will probably be read to limit Congress’ ability to legislate based on its power to implement treaties. In the future, it can be argued that a given statute shouldn’t be applied because Congress hasn’t been “utterly clear” that it does. This may not bother the states’ rights justices, but it should bother anyone who cares about the U.S. fulfilling its international treaty obligations.
Posner reads Scalia’s opinion as a strategic move meant to head off a very particular threat:
The unstated target of the opinion is the international human rights treaty. Those treaties ban all kinds of police-powers-related stuff. The Senate ensured that they were not self-executing, but I suppose that the next time Democrats control the government, they could pass laws that implement them. At least in theory, a Democratic sweep could result in ratification of a human rights treaty that bans the death penalty, and then implementation of it through a federal statute. Not likely to happen anytime in the next few decades if ever, but you can’t fault Scalia for failing to think ahead.
Grace Wyler reviews how some well-armed gun rights advocates took their activism so far that the NRA asked them to tone it down:
For the past few months, zealous Second Amendment lovers, led mostly by the group Open Carry Texas, have been staging demonstrations at various chain restaurants, arriving en masse at places like Chipotle and Chili’s and demanding to be served while brandishing long guns. In some towns, Open Carry Texas members have also taken to wandering around busy intersections armed with rifles and handing out tiny copies of the Constitution to passing drivers.
It’s not totally clear what these protests are supposed to accomplish, but it’s safe to say that they’re not working. Mostly they’ve managed to frighten fast-food workers and customers and get guns banned from eateries that had previously tolerated firearms. … Perhaps sensing a backlash, the NRA is now asking the open carry enthusiasts in Texas to please tone it down before they ruin the Second Amendment for everyone. In a statement released Friday, the notorious pro-gun organization applauded the Lone Star State’s “robust gun culture,” but pointed out that ordering a burrito with an assault rifle slung across your chest is “just not neighborly.”
Morrissey agrees that OCT’s antics were simply unnecessary:
It’s a little unclear exactly what point OCT had in staging these demonstrations at retailers who either supported or at least tolerated firearms on their premises. The protests made them a target for anti-gun activists, and raised their profile to the point where they had little choice but to respond. Whatever one thinks of carry issues, few dispute that private-property owners have at least some legitimate rights in setting conditions for service and access. and these protests made it significantly more difficult for common-sense gun owners to do so in these establishments for no real clear purpose … other than gaining attention.
[NRA leader Wayne] LaPierre has detailed the overwhelming threats Americans face from “terrorists, home invaders, drug cartels, carjackers, ‘knockout’ gamers, rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse as a society that sustains us all.”
Is it any wonder that open-carry advocates would fear going into a Chipotle or Starbucks without a loaded semi-automatic rifle to keep themselves safe from the horrors LaPierre so exhaustively describes? Yet here is the NRA last week discouraging Texans from being on their guard at every moment.
Dara Lind stresses that the NRA’s objection was pretty circumscribed:
The blog post, posted on the website of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action — its lobbying arm — lumps the Texas open-carry demonstration in with proposed “smart guns” legislation. Both of them, the post says, make it harder to be a responsible gun owner. But while the case against “smart guns” takes up most of the post, the NRA doesn’t mince words in dressing down the Texans for showing up to Chipotle armed to the teeth. In fact, the NRA calls that (emphasis in the original) “downright weird.”
The NRA thinks the Texas gun owners’ true faux pas was the type of guns that were used, not the demonstration itself. Apparently, it’s not “bad manners” to brandish a pistol in a Chipotle, but brandishing a “tactical long gun” crosses the line.
Nonetheless, Open Carry Texas responded by slamming the NRA as unfriendly to gun rights:
“The more the NRA continues to divide its members by attacking some aspects of gun rights instead of supporting all gun rights, the more support it will lose,” the group wrote. “Already, OCT members are posting pictures of themselves cutting up their life membership cards. If they do not retract their disgusting and disrespectful comments, OCT will have no choice but to withdraw its full support of the NRA and establish relationships with other gun rights organizations that fight for ALL gun rights, instead of just paying them lip service the way the NRA appears to be doing.”
Yesterday, Spanish King Juan Carlos de Borbón abdicated the throne in favor of his son, Felipe. Fernando Betancor offers a detailed look at the abdication, its timing, and why it matters in a country where the monarchy is nowhere near as popular as it once was:
[A] generation of Spaniards grew old with Juan Carlos as the king that restored democracy; and another generation grew up with no direct experience of Franco’s rule, only of the monarch’s light touch in daily political life. The monarchy enjoyed widespread support across most segments of the population and especially among the survivors of the fascist regime. Even most supporters of Republic were perfectly willing to let Juan Carlos conclude his reign before pushing for change. That base of support has been eroded in recent years. …
The King has abdicated to save the monarchy and pass his inheritance intact to his son before his waning popularity gave out; but the action has sparked the most intense debate in the nation over the future of Spain. Demonstrations were organized immediately through social media in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Bilbao and other major cities. Supporters of a Third Spanish Republic came out in large numbers last night, waving the republican flag and calling for a referendum on the future of the monarchy.
They will not get their wish before Felipe becomes King; but if Felipe is more popular today than his father, he also enjoys gets none of the credit for the transition to Spanish democracy. Popular discontent with the monarchy and calls for its abolition are not going to go away.
Jon Lee Anderson reviews the scandals that led to Juan Carlos’s fall from grace, beginning with an incident two years ago in which he broke his hip on a secret elephant-hunting expedition in Botswana. These scandals, he observes, have been accompanied by a change in the attitude of the Spanish press:
Spain’s media had been generally obsequious toward the royal family. When I published an article about Juan Carlos for this magazine, in 1998, I mentioned that the King was known to have had an affair; a Spanish journalist who had spoken to me for the story was so worried about his career that he called the chief of the royal household to apologize. Another Spanish newspaper editor told me that he and his colleagues “exercise self-censorship on the subject of the King.” Now the media began a kind of inquisition, investigating hitherto untouchable matters with relish. In addition to Elephantgate, there was a scandal involving Juan Carlos’s daughter Princess Cristina and her husband, Inaki Urdangari, a former sports hero accused of using a charitable foundation as a personal slush fund. (They have denied the charges.) In the past couple of years, hardly a week goes by without some new suggestion of royal nefariousness from the ensuing court case.
Spain’s political environment is also in the midst of what might be some very big changes:
Since 1977, Spain has been, for the most part, a two-party state. The Socialist Party has represented the center left, while since the late 1980s the People’s Party, and before that the Democratic Center have represented the center right. Last week, both parties were punished at the polls in European elections, taking less than 50 percent of the vote for the first time since the return to democracy.
It’s a mistake to read too much into European elections – populations tend to use them to register protest votes and then drift back to mainstream candidates for national elections – but the numbers here are particularly dramatic. It also seems significant that voters seem to have drifted more toward the anti-austerity leftist Podemos Party – an outgrowth of the indignados protests that pre-dated the rise of Occupy Wall Street in 2011, rather than the kind of right-wing anti-immigrant parties that made gains in many other European countries. The country’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 26 percent, 55 for youth. On top of that, Catalonia is experiencing a new wave of nationalism, with independence parties pushing for a referendum this fall.
And so he has. But the old king’s gesture was not enough to stop thousands of indignados filling squares in Madrid, Barcelona, and other cities on Monday evening to demand a referendum on the future of the monarchy in Spain.
Bershidsky credits the old king for acknowledging that it was time to go:
The realities of modern monarchies are nothing like “A Game of Thrones”: There’s no point for kings and queens to hang on to power when people are tired of them. King Juan Carlos may have gotten attached to his title in his 39 years on the throne, but he is nothing if not a responsible statesman in a country he helped turn into a democracy. Unlike Franco, he can admit he is now frail, tired and no longer able to work his old magic. He doesn’t have to die on the job like the dictator he succeeded. There are plenty of dictators still left in the world whose countries would benefit if they followed Juan Carlos’s example.
Ishaan Tharoor takes stock of Europe’s monarchies, noting that Spain’s isn’t the only one whose relevance has been called into question:
Across the continent, a new generation of princes and princesses have been at pains to style themselves as frugal, ordinary citizens. But this betrays a weird tension: If the royals are just like anybody else, why do they need to exist? Ordinary citizens are not blessed with a divine right to kingship. Ordinary citizens do not exist on public expense. It’s the monarchs’ role to be living anachronisms. But can Europe afford that? …
The king’s abdication will probably not be Europe’s last. It’s rumored that after Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II eventually passes, her son Prince Charles may abdicate in favor of his son Prince William. One wonders how many more generations of costumed royals will have to ponder the same choices.
Syrians in government-controlled areas vote today in a presidential “election” that pits incumbent Bashar al-Assad against two pre-approved, token opposition candidates with no chances of winning. Steven Heydemann explains why the regime bothered to hold the sham election at all:
[A]s tempting as it might be, it would be a mistake to dismiss the election as a farce — it has already caused real harm. It has accelerated the resignation of U.N. special envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, who said on March 14 that “holding elections [in Syria] would doom prospects for future talks by negating the need for an interim government.” Without a swift and compelling response from the United States and other lead FOS governments, the election will continue to muddle the international case against Assad. Election results will be hauled out at every opportunity to justify regime intransigence, continue to stymie the efforts of the U.N. Security Council to act on issues such as the regime’s obstruction of humanitarian assistance, and undermine possibilities for a negotiated settlement based on the internationally-agreed Geneva Protocol of June 2012.
David Kenner interviewed Assad’s two opponents and was surprised to find that they actually had some non-sycophantic opinions toward the regime:
“The age of the sole ruler has come to an end,” [businessman Hassan Abdullah] Nouri told FP. Assad’s rule has resulted in the emergence of a “100 family economy” that controls the preponderance of the country’s wealth, he said, while the middle class has collapsed.
Nouri framed his efforts to combat corruption and improve the country’s economy as a strategy for strengthening Syria’s struggle against both the United States and Israel. “The U.S. administration knows full well that there is no way to breach Syria militarily,” he said. “The United States can only breach Syria socially, because of its scientific supremacy” — which, he noted, Damascus can circumvent through internal reform and deeper cooperation with Russia.
When it comes to political reform and the regime’s ongoing crackdown on its domestic enemies, however, Nouri had nothing but praise for Assad. He heralded the country’s new “modern and balanced” constitution as opening the door for political pluralism in the country, and said that the coming election would be “honest and democratic, in the Syrian way.”
Nicholas Blandford expects Assad’s election victory to forestall an end to the conflict for years to come:
Assad will feel vindicated by his reelection and will likely reject any proposed meaningful negotiations with the opposition. On the battlefield, Assad’s forces will continue to systematically seize territory from the fragmented, poorly equipped armed opposition. The regime has regained control over the critical corridor linking Damascus to the Mediterranean coast via Homs and has either pushed rebel forces away from the suburbs of Damascus or surrounded and bombed them in a brutal but effective strategy of “surrender or starve.” The military is attempting to reverse recent rebel gains in the Golan Heights and Deraa province in the south and continues to chip away at rebel quarters of Aleppo.
Nevertheless, Assad’s military forces – the army, Hezbollah fighters, Iraqi Shiite paramilitaries and the National Defense Force militia – are badly overextended. When they concentrate their forces on a specific target, such as the recent offensive in the Qalamoun region north of Damascus, they can usually triumph, but it is by no means certain that the regime can hold the ground after it redeploys to a new objective. As for regaining the country as a whole, that is not a realistic scenario for now. Neither side is strong enough to decisively defeat the other.
(Photo: A Syrian student shows her ink-stained thumb after casting her vote in the country’s presidential elections at a polling station in the Baath University of Homs, north of Damascus, on June 3, 2014. By Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)
As a 23-year-old transgender woman and a big fan of yours, I’ve struggled with your clear misunderstanding and discomfort with the topic. I no doubt agree that from a strategic standpoint, a marginalized community has to be patient with folks who are struggling to understand.
Having said that, I think you are dead wrong that the public is entitled to know about Laverne Cox’s medical history simply because she is talking publicly about being transgender. If Laverne is comfortable talking about her privates, that’s fine. That is everyone’s individual decision, but the notion that 1) journalists think this is a totally okay question to ask, and 2) that people feel entitled to the answer even after a person explains that it’s personal, is both disturbing and reveals an inappropriate double standard. I would venture to say that any non-trans person’s genitals are just as important to them and their experience of their gender as any transgender person’s genitals, and yet no one would dare ask a similar question to a non-trans person.
Perhaps you view this as too prudish. Maybe. But that’s not the point. It’s the fact that a general dignity is granted to non-trans people that is not granted to trans people. Would you seriously chastise Tammy Baldwin or Ellen DeGeneres for refusing to answer questions about intimate details about their sex life? Trans people shouldn’t be expected to bare all in order to achieve equality.
Finally, RuPaul has been “cast aside” because her show mocks trans people and she refuses, as a non-trans identified person, to stop using an objectively derogatory slur. Reminds me of your disgust at Will & Grace.
One small rebuttal: I don’t think I’m “uncomfortable” with this subject. I find it fascinating. I’ve just become nervous in discussing it because of the extreme defensiveness and anger that many – but not all – in the trans community seem to be stuck on. Another:
As a former long-time reader, a founding member of the Dish, and a trans woman, I hope you’ll take the time to read my response to your recent, rather frustrating piece on transgender activism. Hopefully my response will help you to understand the details of why we’re so frustrated.
You wrote: “No writer wants to unleash the hounds of furious, touchy trans activism.”
If trans activists are touchy, it’s only because we’ve been treated so poorly over the years that we’ve effectively developed PTSD (recent estimates put the incidence of PTSD rate in the trans community at 1 in 6). There’s a reason “tranny” is considered a slur by the trans community, and it has nothing to do with RuPaul using it and everything to do with the fact that it’s what many of us hear as we’re beaten to a pulp, raped, and murdered.
Take, for example, the two trans women who were assaulted last week on public transit in Atlanta. What were they repeatedly called? “Tranny.” This is the same reason the gay community does not wish to be called “faggots” and takes offense when the word is used by people who do not consider themselves gay.
Returning to the so-called “language police,” RuPaul has been repeatedly asked, for years now, not to use slurs in his show. He has repeatedly ignored these requests, often responding with violent, misogynist, hateful language towards those who would dare question his choices.
You wrote: “Any minority […] has […] to explain itself to the big, wide world […] there is no need to be defensive about it.”
And the first few times we have tried to explain ourselves, we were perfectly civil. But at some point, when your repeated explanations are ignored, a change of tactic might be necessary. Had we not gotten upset, this conversation would never be happening, and we would continue to be thrown under the bus by the rest of the GLB community, just like we were after the Stonewall riots (many of the rioters were trans women of color, a fact which some members of the gay rights movement later tried to erase from history), with federal employment non-discrimination protections under ENDA, numerous other cases, and most recently, very nearly with the recent non-discrimination ordinance in Houston.
Moving on to the question of whether random strangers have a right to know about the genitals of every trans activist, I think the answer should be clear, but apparently, it wasn’t.
You wrote: “Laverne Cox […] refused to answer a question about whether she had had her genitals reassigned as too ‘invasive.’ Sorry, Laverne. But if you’re out there explaining yourself, you’ve gotta explain all of it.”
On a similar front, as a gay activist, do you feel obligated to explain intimate details of your sex life and anatomy? When you have sex with your husband, do you top or bottom, or is that off the table as too invasive? You have also repeatedly lobbied for an end to circumcision; have you had foreskin reconstructive surgery yourself? When did you first realize you were unhappy with being circumcised? I’m only asking because the public is curious and wants to know.
A simple point: since reassignment surgery is often intrinsic to a full trans identity, it is relevant to understanding that identity in a way that the appearance of one’s junk is not relevant to the question of being gay. Another sends the above video:
My friend Kris came and stayed the night at our place (I first new him as Kristen) and I was getting used to his new identity. In the morning I drove him to the University of Richmond campus – a fairly conservative town and college – and dropped him off with his “Ask A Tranny” sign in the quad where he was holding it up with a smile. I couldn’t help be a bit worried about him, or think, “what position are you putting yourself in?” The thing is, he didn’t care. He was happy and out there just engaging and answering questions – open to ANY question, brave, and engaged, and above all, happy in the world. He’s at peace with who he is and any questions other people might have. I’m sure I asked some questions that might make me seem ignorant to some, but that is what he puts himself out there for. To take a gendered phrase, he has balls on him, but coupled with real good will towards others.
An Iranian reader flags this leaked video of Mohammed Ali Jafari, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, addressing a group of Iranian officials. In it, he seems to acknowledge a role “interfering” with the 2009 election:
If there is anyone out there, Leveretts aside, who still thinks the 2009 election was legit, this video is the single best piece of evidence yet that it was fixed. The two most important revelations:
1) Jafari says that their “red line” was the reformers (Mousavi et al) returning to power. By calling it a red line he is implying that they would not allow it to happen.
2) Jafari also remarks that in the days before the election, it was clear that Ahmadinejad was going to be forced into a second round, at which point they wouldn’t be able to predict what would happen (i.e. they couldn’t guarantee him a victory). Again the implication here is that they then did something about that.
“The sensitivity of the [2009] presidential elections is clear for all of you,” Jafari says at the beginning of the approximately five-minute Facebook video. “The concern and worry that existed, and the red line that existed for the forces of the revolution, is again the return of those opposed to the revolution and the values of the revolution, that during the 2nd of Khordad found an opportunity and penetrated the government, for them to return to power once again.”
By “2nd of Khordad,” Jafari was referring to the 1997 election won by Reformist President Mohammad Khatami in a landslide victory.
Also:
Jafari said that the Reformists had planned their return through Mousavi, saying, “In these elections and the events afterward, it became clear why they insisted so much that Sepah and Basij and the security forces should not interfere in the elections. That the [Revolutionary Guard] shouldn’t interfere so that they could their thing … This pattern was so worrying that everyone assessed that if this process continued, the elections would go to the second round and in the second round, it was not clear what the result would be.”
If any candidate had failed to receive 50% of the vote, the elections would have entered a second round. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the 2009 presidential elections with over 62% of the vote. Candidates Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who, along with Mousavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard are currently under house arrest, contested the results.
Jafari’s statement complements other evidence — from the IRGC itself — that the Guards used detention, repression, and disruption of communications to stop Mousavi. In summer 2010, a leaked audio and Power Point documented a presentation by a “General Moshfegh” outlining the IRGC’s strategy before and after the ballot. [link]
A few days before the vote, the head of the IRGC’s Political Directorate, Brig. Gen. Yadollah Javani, accused Mousavi and other reformists — who had adopted Green as their symbol of trying to start a “color revolution”. He warned that the Guards “will suffocate (the movement) before it is even born.”
Reza HaghighatNejad highlights another part of the video:
Jafari’s speech provides new information about Revolutionary Guards tactics following Khamenei’s criticism of Mousavi and Korroubi: street rallies were to be crushed even if they were peaceful; reformist movement protesters were to be arrested; and Green Movement activists’ telephone and online communication was to be disrupted. Jafari tells his audience that the Revolutionary Guards successfully carried out all three tasks. Through creating confusion and organizing widespread arrests among Mousavi supporters, they effectively drove him out of the competition. Jafari also dismisses protesters, claiming they are from affluent northern Tehran neighborhoods, people who are unable to cope with even minimal hardship.
It appears that the speech was made some time before July 19, 2009. Only two days before, on July 17, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani spoke at Friday Prayers, calling for “unity” and for trust to be restored. Mir Hossein Mousavi’s was also present. The film suggests that, even before protests gathered real momentum, the Revolutionary Guards were determined to stifle dissent.
You may recall the kerfuffle recently when the UN Rapporteur on Torture tried to indict the Vatican for “crimes against humanity” because of the widespread scheme, orchestrated by the church hierarchy, to facilitate and cover up the mass rape and sexual abuse of children. Many argued that the very term “crime against humanity” was over the top, fueled by anti-Catholicism or secularism, and effectively undermined itself by its extreme language.
In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam. Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children were not so fortunate.
More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.
A mass grave for eight hundred children, buried with no dignity, no humanity, no trace of decency. And the mass grave may well have been facilitated by rampant, disgusting and callous neglect:
According to documents Corless provided the Irish Mail on Sunday, malnutrition and neglect killed many of the children, while others died of measles, convulsions, TB, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. Infant mortality at the Home was staggeringly high. “If you look at the records, babies were dying two a week, but I’m still trying to figure out how they could [put the bodies in a septic tank],” Corless said. “Couldn’t they have afforded baby coffins?”
Special kinds of neglect and abuse were reserved for the Home Babies, as locals call them. Many in surrounding communities remember them. They remember how they were segregated to the fringes of classrooms, and how the local nuns accentuated the differences between them and the others. They remember how, as one local told the Irish Central, they were “usually gone by school age — either adopted or dead.” According to Irish Central, a 1944 local health board report described the children living at the Home as “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” and with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs.”
Let us call this what it is: a concentration camp with willful disregard for the survival of its innocent captives, a death camp for a group of people deemed inferior because of the circumstances of their birth. When we talk of mass graves of this kind, we usually refer to Srebrenica or the crimes of Pol Pot. But this was erected in the name of Jesus, and these despicable acts were justified by his alleged teaching.
To my mind, these foul crimes against women and children, along with the brutal stigmatization of gay people as “objectively disordered”, remain a testament to how the insidious, neurotic and usually misogynist fixation on sex has distorted and destroyed Christianity in ways we are only now beginning to recover from. For what we see here is the consequence of elevating sexual sin above all others, of fixating on human sexuality as the chief source of evil in the world, and of a grotesquely distorted sense of moral priorities, where stigmatization of the sexual sinner vastly outweighs even something as basic as care for an innocent child.
It seems to me that we have to move past the church’s current doctrines on sex if we are to fully seek justice for the victims of this pathology and if we are to ensure that never again is a phrase that actually means something. It is not enough to ask for a change in governance (and even that has been hard); what this evil signifies is the need to root out this pernicious obsession with sexual sin. This pathology – perpetuated by Benedict and the sex-phobic theocons – perpetuates the mindset that led to this barbarism. The nuns – and yes, this was abuse practised by women as well as men – did not ever seem to realize that Jesus himself was conceived, to all intents and purposes, out of wedlock – in a manner that may well have led his contemporaries to stigmatize him as illegitimate as well. They did not for a moment internalize Jesus’ emphatic insistence on the holiness of children as those most likely to enter the kingdom of Heaven. No, these precious images of God were consigned, after years of abuse and neglect, to unmarked early graves in a septic tank.
That is not a sign of a church gone astray. It’s a sign of a church given over to evil. A church that leaves young children to die of malnutrition and then dumps hundreds of them into a mass grave is not a church. It’s an evil institution that robs the word “church” of any meaning, and twists the Gospels into their direct opposite.
We failed these children in their short lifetimes. Never, ever forget them if we are to have a chance at restoring a Christianity worthy of Jesus.
I think I may be on a winner here. The photograph is of the Derwent River in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The tall building across the body of water is the Hobart Casino. My hunch is that the photograph was taken from the Bellerive or Rosny neighbourhoods near Kangaroo Bay, on the other side of the river bank (but I don’t have OCD and won’t be pinpointing the exact location). I once drove around Tasmania with my family when I was a teenager. It’s a beautiful Island.
Another spins the globe:
This looks to be New York looking south along the Hudson. Maybe Stony Point.
And back again:
Yoros Castle, Istanbul, Turkey. I know that’s wrong, but this is somewhere on the Bosphorous, right?
Nope. Maybe it’s in South America:
I so wanted this view to be taken from somewhere around the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio de Janeiro in the shadow of the Christ the Redeemer statue. It looked so much like what I remembered when I visited there – from the high rise condos, to the rounded, partially bald mountains rising from the water.
I looked for hours for the possible angle, but the pieces just wouldn’t fall into place. I searched the Internet for ages to try an located the viaduct looking bridge on the side of the mountain. I looked for the oddly out of place Germanic looking building on the right hand side. No luck.
So, alas, since I have no better guess I will stick with it even though I am pretty sure it is in vain.
Another throws up his hands:
Dammit, Sullivan. A weekend wasted, yet I am completely stumped this week.
My first reaction to the picture was that the geographic features remind me of Lake Como, though the buildings are all wrong. I doubt it’s in the US, especially after two weeks in a row having American locations, though I can’t find anywhere else in Europe that matches. It somewhat reminds me of Canadian utilitarian architecture, but again, I can’t pinpoint where it might be. So I am going to go with a complete shot in the dark and say that it’s somewhere on Lago Maggiore in Italy.
Please: Consider starting some sort of support group or rehabilitation program for those of us who are completely obsessed with this game, but who don’t have the amazing capacity to find the location every week. (That and maybe marriage counseling for spouses who wonder why their lesser half spends the entire weekend staring at their screens trying to divine the clue that will unlock the solution.)
And that’s if you even want to find it:
This has got to be the saddest lakeside town I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it looks completely desolate and deserted. The architecture is very austere, nothing frilly or happy about it. I see something looking like a pseudo-castle-like structure on the bottom right, probably a some sort of hotel or restaurant. The most interesting feature is the ruined aqueduct on the hill. I searched for aqueducts throughout Europe, found no pics of that one. Above it, there seems to be a hotel, casino or cement factory. Again, uninspiring architecture, reminiscent of countries in the former Eastern block. I sincerely hope this is not one of the Italian lakes, even though I did guess that.
Another gets to the wrong lake in the right country:
Precarious rock ledge, Lake Rigi, Lucerne, Switzerland.
This reader, like most entrants this week, nails the correct lake, castle, and town:
This week’s VFYW contest picture was taken from a window in the stunning Château de Chillon on Lake Geneva in Veytaux, Switzerland. I visited it in February 2010 and took a similar picture from (probably) a different window looking toward the city of Montreux:
And here’s a photo I took from the shore in the contest picture, looking back at the Château, with my best guess on the window:
Indeed, many readers were delighted to revisit the Alps this week:
The photo is taken from the Chateau de Chillon in Veytaux Switzerland, looking North along the shore of Lac Leman toward Monteux. I haven’t been there since the early spring of 1983, but I recognized it instantly. I remember heading for Geneva by train from Rome. I was a few months shy of 19. It was a gorgeous day, with a full view of the Alps coming through the Rhone Valley. I happened to be out in the passageway gazing at the Lake and the mountains beyond when we passed the Chateau on the way into Montreux. I grabbed my backpack and hopped off the train there, and walked back to Veytaux, where the castle is located. I was very into castles in those days, but had never heard of Chillon. So I just happened upon one of the most beautiful in the world, and on a day that did it full justice. What a great day.
An impressive visual entry:
Another reader:
Wow. Just saw the VFYW picture for this week, and I knew instantly where it was taken. Just offshore on Lac Leman in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. My family relocated to Lausanne, Switzerland, for a few years back in the 1980s and my parents brought every visitor, every out-of-town guest (and of course, us kids) to experience the Chateau. How many times did I look out a window like the one in the picture and try to imagine what it was really like back in the day! I was around 12 years old back then, and seeing that photo was kind of thrilling. Thanks.
But this reader trumps everyone:
I didn’t see this weekend’s contest until Sunday evening, having just come back from an afternoon’s walk to Chateau-de-Chillon! Obviously the view is from the top of the chateau looking towards Montreux.
So that’s a hat trick of on-the-spot windows for me. First was a bit further down Lac Leman at Lausanne in VFYW #8. Second was the amazing coincidence of Double Bay in Sydney in VFYW #33. And then today here is a photo of me (on the right) at the Chateau and the boat going past:
It is a great coincidence but to be honest it is now feeling a bit like stalking.
Another:
Really fun one this week. I took a tour of ancient and medieval architecture of the Mediterranean and southern Europe before finding the spot. The puzzle was solved with my favorite image search yet: “switzerland lonely highrise,” which yielded this picture as the 4th result:
Another explains the unsightly tower seen above:
The town you can see a kilometer or two away is Montreux, Switzerland. Can I give a shout-out to the Tour D’ivoire, that godawful 25-story apartment block in the middle of downtown Montreux? The town would look a lot prettier without it, but it was the only easily identifiable landmark. Without it I would still be scrolling randomly through thousands of pictures of alpine lake-towns.
But Montreax has a musical history as well:
A couple of nights ago I watched a biography on Queen, and Montreax was where the band lived in tax exile from the insane tax rates of the late 1970s in the UK. With a 75% tax rate on high earners and a further 15% surcharge on investment income, can you blame them?
I grew up in the ’80s and Freddie Mercury was the first person that I knew who died of AIDS. Up to that point in my life, AIDS was a disease that affected other people – people who I did not know. Actors from my parents generation like Rock Hudson or people in faraway places. I was 18, gay, and deeply in the closet when Freddie died. His death scared the hell out of me. To this day, I still can’t listen to “These Days Are The Days Are Our Lives” without crying:
The video is the last time Freddie Mercury appeared on camera and was visibly frail. It was released on the 5th of September in 1991 on Freddie’s 45th birthday. He passed away on the 24th of November, 1991.
I’m not going to go looking for the correct window. Somebody else can waste a beautiful Saturday afternoon doing that. But I do hope you will post a picture of the Freddie Mercury statue that is located in the town of Montreux and overlooks the Lake Geneva:
Another was also inspired by Queen:
I have read VFYW submissions regularly for the past two years, but this is the first time that I felt a personal connection to the location of the contest photo. In the fall of 2011 I rode a bike along Lake Geneva from Lausanne to the Chateau de Chillon, in Veytaux, Switzerland. I stopped to take the photo of the castle, and my guess of which window the contest photo was taken from is circled:
I made the bike ride on September 3, 2011, which happened to be during the annual Montreux Freddie Mercury Festival. Once I realized what was happening, I stopped my bike to dance to the sounds of the tribute bands. It was a beautiful and surreal bike ride along the lake, and the combination of the scenery and festival made it one of the most memorable days of my life. Now when I think of the Chateau de Chillon, the first Queen that pops into my head is not the one that is normally associated with a 12th century castle.
Another rock fan:
What interested me is the giant statue of Freddy Mercury in Montreux, which is just a bad-ass thing to learn exists. I knew of Mercury’s interesting parentage and upbringing, but didn’t realize that he settled in Montreux (home of the famous jazz festival) and recorded the last Queen record near the end of his life in a studio he bought.
Also of rock & roll history interest is the Montreux casino (the big high-rise sits in front of it), which was a popular venue for the jazz festival and in 1971 burned to the ground when some jackass sent up a flare during a Frank Zappa concert. The event was the basis for the Deep Purple song “Smoke on the Water”, a classic rock song best known (and well-parodied by Kids in the Hall) as being one of the first (read: easiest) songs any kid for several decades learned to play when they picked up a guitar.
And the Chateau has a cultural heritage as well:
While I would love to call myself a first-time player, that would be discounting the many times I looked at the VFYW contest and after 5 minutes sighed in despair over the so much more gifted players. But the last couple of days I just happened to be researching movies that concern the summer in 1816 when while staying with her then-boyfriend Percy Shelley and Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, Mary Shelley conceived of the story of Frankenstein.
So I look at the contest this week and go: that’s definitely Old Europe. And it sure looks like a lake. Could it be … ? So I take a drive with Google maps around the perimeter of lake Geneva and happen quite quickly upon some of those buildings and sights in the background. Which leaves me with some triangulation to do in order to determine the window.
How could it have been anywhere else? The picture of course was taken from a window of the Castle Chillon, which inspired Lord Byron’s poem “The Prisoner of Chillon”. I yield to better players to determine exactly which one. I will say that at first it looked like one of the arrow slits near the water surface on the north side. But then there was this triangular black shape just outside the window… maybe a rooftop covered in shadow? So I’ll attach a guess:
What a rush finally recognizing a view. To quote Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise: Now I know what all the fuzz is about!
Another on the castle:
It was made famous to English speakers by George Gordon, Lord Byron, who wrote “The Prisoner of Chillon”. There was a time when people committed huge chunks of poetry to memory. My 96-year-old mother just recited the following verse to me:
Lac Leman lies by Chillon’s walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thanks for the “views” – and the memories.
Another shares their pic from the same exact window:
My wife and I were there in April and she took a photo from the same window. The window is indicated by an arrow in the attached photo. Chillon Castle dates from the 12th Century. It was built to control movement between the north and south of Europe through the upper Rhone valley. The prison in a lower level of the castle was made famous by Lord Byron in his poem “The Prisonier of Chillon”. Byron left his mark on a pilar in the prison.
Another finds the inside view:
The online floor plan of the museum shows no indication that this part of the structure is publicly accessible, but the window would be above #27 “Clerks’ Room”:
Great, so I’ve got the flu in June and some Dish viewer’s running around the Alps touring real life Disney castles. Not fair! At least there was some fun to be had in finding the room where the picture was shot. Figuring out the layout of hotels is one thing; doing the same for a 900-year-old castle is a whole different ball of wax.
Speaking of balls:
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And this week’s collage of guesses:
The winning entry this week comes from a husband-and-wife team that has now correctly guessed nine contests in a row:
Our guess is that the contest photograph was taken from the Château de Chillon, a castle in Veytaux, Switzerland. The castle is located on a small island in Lake Geneva, and its address is listed on its website as Avenue de Chillon 21, CH – 1820 Veytaux. (Yes, these days even medieval castles have websites.) The photograph was taken facing north-northwest. We are guessing it was shot from the turret window circled in the photograph below:
Normally we would specify which floor, but given the history of the castle (a hundred independent buildings gradually connected over centuries of construction) we’re not sure the ordinary logic holds. (Is a turret a “floor”? Do you count the dungeon?)
Our first impression of the contest photo was that the placid waters and the nature of the shoreline suggested we were looking at a lakefront. The rough surface of the window “frame” suggested an older stone structure such as a castle. Combined with look of the foliage and presence of mountains close to the lakeshore we thought of the Italian Lake District (Lake Garda, Como, etc.) or of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
Going on Google Earth we searched the Italian Lake District, hoping in particular that we would find that the contest photograph was taken from George Clooney’s island castle in Lake Como. (Perhaps George is a Dishhead). Sadly, the terrain was not a match. Also, the buildings in the contest photograph appeared too modern to fit what we were seeing in that part of Italy.
Moving on to Plan B, Lake Geneva, we quickly found the Château de Chillon, and from there the nearby city of Montreux which has a white high-rise structure matching the one that features prominently in the contest photo. Locating the below photograph taken from the Château de Chillon which is nearly identical to the contest photo clinched our choice.
An impressive guess from an impressive pair of players. From the view’s submitter:
I am very excited to see my picture in this week’s contest. I am travelling around southern Europe for four weeks and Switzerland was my first stop. This picture was taken on a cloudy but beautiful day, looking north-west out of the north-most tower in the Chateau De Chillon, onto Montreux city on the shores of Lake Geneva.
This is technically not one of the four watch towers but the view from the north-most watch tower would probably look the same. The Chateau is an island castle on Lake Geneva and was made famous by Lord Byron’s poem “The Prisoner of Chillon”. It is located a couple of kilometers from Montreux, famous for its Jazz festival and other music links. The song “Smoke on the water” by Deep Purple refers to a fire in the Montreux casino.
Back in January, Pew asked “US residents whether they support new carbon dioxide emission rules for power plants — the exact sort of rules that were proposed Monday”:
Most American adults don’t agree that these sorts of emissions are causing the climate to change. But strangely, majorities supported these rules. This cut across party lines: 74 percent of Democrats supported the rules, but 67 percent of Independents and 52 percent of Republicans did as well.
Ben Adler lists “nine things you need to know about Obama’s new climate rules.” Here’s #4:
What do states have to do? Each state will be required to submit its own plan for complying with the rules by June 2016, although they can request a one-year extension, until June 2017. States can also create a multi-state plan, thus encouraging more interstate compacts like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system in Northeastern states; for such multi-state plans, they can request a two-year extension. If states don’t submit a compliant plan, EPA will make one for them.
EPA lays out four main approaches that states can use: make coal plants more efficient (for example by reducing their heat loss), increase natural gas-burning capacity, increase non-carbon energy producing capacity (that’s mainly renewables, but also nuclear), and reduce demand for electricity through improved efficiency. States don’t have to pick just one. “There is no one-size-fits-all option,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy when announcing the rules at EPA headquarters Monday morning. “It’s up to states to mix and match to meet their goals.” They can also submit a plan with a whole other approach, such as a carbon tax.
Jonathan H. Adler doesn’t think the EPA rules will accomplish much:
The stark reality is that the world will not come close embarking on a course toward stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of [greenhouse gases] until it is [cheap] and easy to do so. And this, even more than meeting the 80 by 50 target, requires a technological revolution in energy production 0r carbon mitigation. Such transformations are possible — consider how fiber optics and then satellite and wireless replaced traditional copper wire for telecommunications — but they are rarely driven by regulatory mandates. And although tradeable emission credit schemes are supposed to incentivize innovation, there’s little empirical evidence that such programs have actually achieved this goal.
Elizabeth Kolbert sighs that “it is entirely possible for the new regulations to be the best that can reasonably be hoped for from Washington these days and at the same time for them to be woefully inadequate”:
The President’s goal of cutting power-plant emissions thirty per cent by 2030 leaves only two decades to meet the second part of his pledge—the reduction of total emissions by eighty per cent by 2050. It could be argued that the new regulations will spur such a torrent of innovation that reducing emissions another fifty per cent will become much easier, but it’s tough to find anyone who actually believes this. And it’s only with such dramatic declines in emissions that there’s any reasonable chance of holding the eventual temperature increase to two degrees Celsius.
Sally Kohn thinks Obama’s long-game politics are at work:
Only 3 percent (PDF) of voters under 35 don’t believe climate change is an issue—far less than the 11 percent among voters overall. And polls show young voters favor action on the environment at rates greater than older generations. In fact, even among young voters who oppose Obama, a strong majority (PDF) support the President taking action to address climate change. Going forward, the future voters of America will flock to the party that stands for equality and takes action against pollution. The Democratic Party needs to reassert these beliefs—and put action behind them—to win the future.
And the Republican Party will keep alienating these voters. One study found that voters under 35 think that politicians who deny climate change are “ignorant,” “out-of-touch,” and “crazy.”
And Chait sees the EPA move as part of Obama’s “bid to become the environmental president”:
Obama’s climate agenda may well ultimately fail. If it does, it will be because it was thwarted by actors he cannot control: All five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices may nullify his proposal, or a future Republican president may dismantle it, or the governments of China and other states may decide not to enter an international treaty. A president cannot save the planet. But it can no longer be fairly denied that Obama has thrown himself entirely behind the cause.
Earlier Dish on the EPA announcement here and here.
Fred Kaplan clears up a few misconceptions about this weekend’s exchange of five captured Taliban leaders for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl:
First, while Obama and his diplomats made the deal on their own (in line with his powers as commander-in-chief), it’s not true that he left Congress out of the picture. He briefed a small group of senators in January 2012, when a deal first seemed in the offing. Sen. John McCain reportedly threw a fit, objecting that the detainees to be released had killed American soldiers, but after talking with John Kerry (at the time, still a senator and a friend), came around to the idea. (This may be why McCain, though displeased with the detainees’ release, is not raising his usual hell in public appearances now.)
Second, it’s not the case—at least if things work out as planned—that the five detainees, some of whom were high-level Taliban officers in their younger days, will go back and rejoin the fight. The deal requires them to remain in Qatar for one year; after that, Americans and Qataris will continue to monitor them—though it’s not yet clear what that means; in the coming days, someone should clarify things.
“There’s one more potential bit of good news,” he adds:
This whole exercise has demonstrated that the Taliban’s diplomatic office in Qatar does have genuine links to the Taliban high command. (A few years ago, when fledgling peace talks sputtered and then failed, many concluded that it was a freelance operation unworthy of attention.) And the fact that the exchange came off with clockwork precision (see the Wall Street Journal’s fascinating account of how it happened) suggests that deals with the Taliban are possible, and that a deal signed can be delivered.
Furthermore, Michael Crowley points out that Obama did not, strictly speaking, “negotiate with terrorists”:
[H]owever nasty the Taliban may be, it’s not really a “terrorist” enemy as we commonly understand the word. The group is not on the State Department’s official list of terrorist organizations and has has long been a battlefield enemy in the ground war for control of Afghanistan. It is not plotting to, say, hijack American airplanes—even if it does have sympathies with people who are. Ditto the Taliban leaders released over the weekend. They are members of a savage and deplorable organization. But unlike, say, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, they have no history of plotting attacks on the U.S. homeland. Given all that, the real debate isn’t whether Obama negotiated with terrorists—he didn’t. The mystery lies in the particulars of the deal.
Shmuel Rosner compares the swap to the deals Israel makes on a regular basis, sometimes trading hundreds of prisoners for one captured soldier:
So the U.S. got a captured soldier back in exchange for five Afghan inmates. Big deal. Five-for-one is a deal Israel would take in a heartbeat. But there’s truth to the claim that such deals increase the appetite of a terrorist organization in two ways. First, they encourage terrorists to adopt a policy of an abduction of soldiers in the hope of getting more inmates out. Second, they allow terrorists to worry less about being captured by the U.S., since they can hope for a later release.
Israel had been attempting for years to try to resist these exchanges. In 2008, following a heavily criticized deal in which Israel let murderers go in exchange for body bags, then Defense Minister Ehud Barak appointed a special committee, headed by former High Court Chief Justice Meir Shamgar, to make recommendations to the Israeli government on future exchange deals. The Shamgar committee pushed to put limits on prisoner swaps, for the reasons above. But a committee is little match for a mourning family.
But Elliott Abrams identifies a big difference between the US and Israel that, in his view, made this deal unwise:
The trade for Sgt. Bergdahl has given terrorists a real incentive to capture and trade American servicemen and women– and they are very vulnerable. Israeli troops are in Israel, where they are well protected. Occasionally someone tunnels under the border or raids over it, but not often; and Israeli troops in the West Bank take very special care to prevent kidnappings. Americans are in about 150 countries and there are thousands in places where they roam without much protection: 11,000 in Kuwait, 9500 in the UK, 40,000 in Germany. All three countries have significant extremist activity that keeps their police very busy.
Today they are at greater risk because they are more valuable to terrorists. That is a cost of this trade that comparisons to Israel do not correctly measure.
John Bellinger is correct that “it is likely that the U.S. would be required, as a matter of international law, to release [the Taliban detainees] shortly after the end of 2014, when U.S. combat operations cease in Afghanistan.” We are, after all, winding down this conflict, and the authority to detain Taliban forces—as opposed to Al Qaeda forces—won’t last that much longer than the end of combat. So what we may have traded here is one POW deserter (assuming that’s what Bergdahl was, for a moment) in exchange for hastening the release of five Taliban by an indeterminate number of months.
Was it the right move? I don’t know. I certainly don’t think, as Marty Lederman put it on Saturday, that it is “truly wonderful news.” Ask me in a couple of years whether it was a good idea—when we know if any constructive dialog with the Taliban developed out of these contacts, when we know how the US draw-down in Afghanistan went, when we know whether and how the released detainees reengaged with the fight, and when we know exactly what the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance really were. The people who did this deal didn’t have the luxury of remaining agnostic about its merits that long. I will not criticize them.
Keating doubts that the five baddies we released to Qatar will ever pose much threat to Americans:
The reason that the detainee recidivism rates have been dropping is likely not because Guantanamo has become so much more effective at rehabilitating detainees. It likely has more to do with the fact that as the U.S. has drawn down its troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are fewer opportunities to engage in hostilities against Americans in these countries. If all goes according to plan, by the time these five can get back to Afghanistan, they won’t pose much of a threat to U.S. troops because there won’t be that many U.S. troops there for them to fight.
Opponents of the deal are using Nathan Bradley Bethea’s piece from yesterday, which alleged that Bergdahl had deserted his unit, to make their case, but Bethea isn’t having it:
Zack Beauchamp suspects that Republicans trying to make political hay out of this exchange are probably not willing to make the case that we should have left a POW to die in Taliban custody:
Bethea’s distinction between Bergdahl’s disappearance and his release is significant. It’s one thing to think, as some veterans appear to, that Bergdahl should be now be tried by an American court for desertion (that appears unlikely, according to administration statements). It’s a different thing entirely to believe an American soldier should remain in the Taliban’s clutches indefinitely.
The problem with the emerging Republican position is that it implicitly forces the GOP to defend the latter; that Bergdahl should have been left. No amount of speculation about hypothetical future kidnappings or quibbling over legal niceties are likely, in political terms, to overcome the emotionally powerful support for captured veterans’ freedom. And after the initial wave of press coverage subsides, Republican leaders will probably get that. Bergdahl’s release will not remain a partisan flashpoint for very long.
Bing West advises the administration to manage the controversy by letting the Army court-martial Bergdahl:
By any reckoning, the release of five dedicated Taliban terrorists was a high price to pay for the return of a single American captive. It will be a price worth paying only if the Army is allowed to live up to its own high standards. Left to its own procedures, the Army as an institution will proceed with a thorough judicial investigation. Most probably this will result in a court-martial. The evidence is too compelling to be ignored. If there is a finding of guilt, a judge may mitigate the sentence.
But not to proceed with a judicial course would harm the integrity of the Army. There is a deep anger throughout the ranks about Bergdahl’s behavior. The administration would be well advised not have anything more to do with Bergdahl. Let the Army system work. The Army can be trusted to follow the correct course.
General Martin E. Dempsey statement makes clear that Bergdahl will be investigated:
In response to those of you interested in my personal judgments about the recovery of SGT Bowe Bergdahl, the questions about this particular soldier’s conduct are separate from our effort to recover ANY U.S. service member in enemy captivity. This was likely the last, best opportunity to free him. As for the circumstances of his capture, when he is able to provide them, we’ll learn the facts. Like any American, he is innocent until proven guilty. Our Army’s leaders will not look away from misconduct if it occurred. In the meantime, we will continue to care for him and his family. Finally, I want to thank those who for almost five years worked to find him, prepared to rescue him, and ultimately put themselves at risk to recover him.
The Dish 