Reliable and Probative

This week the President announced a new proposal for courts to hear the cases of those imprisoned in the war on terror. This certainly marks an improvement in U.S. policy in that it approaches accountability, although it doesn’t seem to reach the threshold of constitutionality or wisdom. Key features of concern include the right of the accused to see the evidence against them and the freedom of prosecutors to use evidence which has been coerced if the evidence is “reliable and probative.” Probative just sounds dirty, but as the President is using the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the airplane attacks to seek sympathy for his plan, your correspondent thought he could harness the President’s proposal to encourage antipathy towards himself. So the topic for this week is the struggle against terrorism.
The words “reliable and probative” provide a good framework for discussing the struggle. So far, “reliable,” in the eyes of the United States Justice Department seems to denote connotation. Evidence is reliable if it produces suspicion, confirmed by an arrest. Your correspondent is touched that the administration accepts responsibility to standards of evidence and is unsurprised that these standards are vague.
Any agency relieved of transparency and restraint will fail to be reliable, either in the sense of “accountable,” of “dependable” or of “consistent.” The former is an immediate certainty, the latter forms of failure are merely eventual inevitabilities. Based on what little the public knows of the administrations efforts, this administrations prosecution of the war became undependable, only that it has and didn’t take long. The effort to acquire sanction from congress is certainly inconsistent while the kangaroo court for which sanction is sought is remarkably consistent with the past five years.
Probative in the sense that the Department of Justice uses it means relevant. In other words, the administration is prepared to humble itself before the standard that they will accept a prohibition on coerced testimony unless it helps the government’s case. In theory, a defendant could also use coerced testimony if it makes them appear innocent as long as the defendant has access to the pool of coerced testimony which, of course, the administration has asked to be forbidden in order to protect the administrations efforts in the war on terror. Passing the administration’s proposal fairly insures that innocent people can be convicted as we re-elected our President to do.
Probativity, which we who don’t practice law are pleased to call “relevancy” would make an interesting standard for the past five year’s policy-making. For now, I offer no judgement as to whether the war in Iraq was relevant to defeating terror, but we do know that the war in Iraq was never more relevant than available alternatives, nor did it ever seem to be. Warrantless surveillance differs from warranted specifically in that it needn’t be relevant. Most of the so-called war on terror has been fought between political parties and branches of government, competing ideologies and other distractions.
On September 11, 2001 the United States lost 3000 residents through no fault of its own. Some were no doubt detestable reprobates and some may have been glorious saints but every one was better than their murderers. Today the nation is manifestly weaker than the one that stood the attack. Less able to defend itself, less able to call for help. Since 2001, the arrogance of the administration, the cowardice of elected Republicans, the penis envy of Democrats, the collaboration of too many citizens agreeing to fear and the failure of the press to engage and prosecute the war on the war on terror has lead to the most grievous distraction of all- the false belief that the buildings in our cities are dearer than the edifice of our beliefs. Terrorism strengthened us but the self-inflicted wounds since lead to national sepsis. Our nation’s founders and wise men, women and hedgehogs since have warned us and we have forgotten that only threat that ever endangers the nation as a whole is from itself. Five years after the terrorism, it’s time to take the fight to the enemy.

The Prattler Wordbook
PROBATIVE, adj. Extrospective.
PROBE, n. Any of many instruments designed to shed sound where there is darkness.
PROBITY, n. The sincerity of a tree falling in the wilderness with no one around to hear.
RELATIVE, n. A parasite with the right of first refusal.
RELATIVE, adj. Legal rather than rhetorical.
RELAY, n. An event in which a baton is passed until it reaches an illustrious team-mate or an invisible enemy.
RELEASE, v.t. To delete.
RELENT, v.i. To be found out.
RELENTLESS, adj. Well towards the back.
RELENTLESSNESS, n. The source of attraction to an enemy, repulsion from a friend, or recognition of a neighbor.
RELENTLESSLY, adv. As described by a fellow non-participant.
RELIABLE, adj. Conceivable.

Saturday, September 9, 2006