Last Friday, hot on the heels of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their imprisonment in the US Court System, Sen. John McCain called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

Really, John?  Was that hyperbole, like when your mom orders the Monte Cristo and calls the lunch “the worst I have ever had” because the cole slaw had too much mayo?

Or the type of “worst decision” that one would apply when discussing the needless squandering of international political capital in the Arab world in the face of an extensive McClatchy Newspapers investigation which shows the Gitmo boogeymen were (and are) not, as you and your misinformed brethren insist, “the worst of the worst”?

If the former detainees whom McClatchy interviewed are any indication — and several former high-ranking U.S. administration and defense officials said in interviews that they are — most of the prisoners at Guantanamo weren’t terrorist masterminds but men who were of no intelligence value in the war on terrorism.

In addition to claiming that legislation he helped passed all but assured the civil treatment of detainees at Gitmo — or en route there — McCain also claimed that of the people let go, several were apprehended attacking US forces in Iraq, proving their nature as dangerous individuals.

Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.

While he was held at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, Akhtiar said, “When I had a dispute with the interrogator, when I asked, ‘What is my crime?’ the soldiers who took me back to my cell would throw me down the stairs.”

The McClatchy reporting also documented how U.S. detention policies fueled support for extremist Islamist groups. For some detainees who went home far more militant than when they arrived, Guantanamo became a school for jihad, or Islamic holy war.

Oops.  The McClatchy artice is a doozy.  Give it a read and shed some light.

*****

Meanwhile, Obama pulled a Cosby and indicted African-American men for shirking their duties as fathers, saying that they have “abandoned their responsibilities” and are weakening family foundations in the black communities as a result.  Using rhetoric similar to Bill Cosby’s “Unsweetened Jell-o” tour (I made that up), Obama let loose with some comments that — in their worst applications — will piss off inertia-challenged people in the African-American community be used as racist fodder for ignorant Whiteys:

“We can’t simply write these problems off to past injustices,” Obama said to applause Sunday. “Those injustices are real. There’s a reason our families are in disrepair, and some of it has to do with a tragic history, but we can’t keep using that as an excuse.”

Obama urged black parents to demand the best from themselves and their children.

“Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father,” he said. “It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

Of course, he’s dead-on despite the tightrope act, but unbridled idealism isn’t the magical fuel for the social reform train.  It’s gotta start at an even more fundamental level than the nuclear family: the justice system.

(It will also take Fox News refraining from ever using the term “baby’s mama” again.  Ever.)

*****

Here, Bob Barr, “formerly the War on Drugs loving, Wiccan mocking, Clinton impeaching Republican,” in his own words, writes a bizarre op-ed for the Huffington Post.  He manages to simultanously announce his candidacy as the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee, call the War on Drugs a failure, and use the WWE to tie both elements together.

Impressive.  I think.

*****

ABC News offers up a piece detailing how “7,389 federal tax returns with $200,000 or more in adjusted gross income reported no federal income taxes in 2005.”  I have regularly heard Republicans speak of how the rich are taxed enough and that increasing taxes on them will only serve to exacerbate this nasty little “economic downturn.”  Screw economics, however.  Let’s talk about fair.

That’s a 161% jump from the 2,833 comparable returns filed in 2004.

Additionally, 4,224 of the over-$200,000 earners reported no worldwide income tax liability on their 2005 returns, the IRS data show. That represents a 75% increase from the 2,420 comparable returns filed in 2004.

The data are the most recent available from the IRS. It shows a rising number of high-income earners have avoided the alternative minimum tax, which was intended to ensure that tax shelters, deductions and loopholes wouldn’t exempt wealthy Americans from paying at least some federal income tax.

If the sinking feeling isn’t too much to bear for all of you middle-classers out there, read the rest of the article to find out how a loophole in Katrina donations and taxes paid to other countries fascilitated this lunacy.

*****

Two slightly less depressing notes to leave you on:

1. Steve Lopez (of the Los Angeles Times) writes a thoughtful rumination on mortality (told you it was uplifting) and

2. The Top 25 photoshop creations of May 2008.  These are badass.