I'm currently at a conference of education professors concerning the Bush administration's radical executive power theories, and normal blogging will resume tomorrow. One of the points I attempted to emphasize this morning as part of the presentation I made was that as much as we think we know about the range of controversial Bush policies, it is almost certainly the case that what we do not know, what remains concealed, vastly outweighs what we know.
On a break from the conference, I see that Hilzoy this morning is discussing an amazing new report (.pdf) issued jointly by six human rights groups concerning 39 individuals whose whereabouts are unknown and at least some of whom, it seems quite likely, the U.S. has simply "disappeared," secretly holding in detention. Among the disappeared, Hilzoy highlights, are likely children as young as 7-9 years old. I have a lot to say about this issue -- as I hope everyone would -- but am unable to write anything now, but Hilzoy's post is superb and ought to be read widely.
We will undoubtedly hear at the next GOP debate from Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and company as they explain -- in the face of wild cheers from the "base" -- that they not only favor the disappearance of the children of Terrorists, but think the minimum age of detention ought to be halved from 8 to 4, and the number of secretly detained children doubled at least. Terrorists, after all, are Evil, and we need to imprison their young children in secret in order to defend civilized norms.
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