The Arar Disgrace

The Supreme Court, to put it mildly, did not cover itself in glory this week when it refused to hear Maher Arar’s appeal.    (This is not to say that I necessarily blame the Court’s  four three more liberal members + Kennedy (?)* for not voting to grant cert: a Supreme Court decision affirming the executive’s ability to arbitrarily serve up innocent people for torture would be even worse than refusing to hear the case, and they would have good reason to believe that this would be the most likely outcome.)    But it should be noted that while this is a case where the Court should intervene, this doesn’t relieve the relevant public officials of responsibility.   The primary responsibility for this disgrace rests, of course, with the Bush administration, which ordered the arbitrary torture of an innocent man.

But by refusing to admit responsibility and by actively opposing Arar his day in Court, the Obama administration must now be counted accessories after the fact, and this just isn’t acceptable.    And it’s not isolated; Obama’s record on these issues continues to be very poor, and there’s no way of defending it.

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