Recommendation: Glenn Greenwald

The blogroll isn't really the best way to introduce other bloggers. I'll try to do posts like this one occasionally, where I recommend other people.

Today: Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald is a constitutional/civil rights lawyer who works for Salon as a blogger. He is distinguished by being absolutely relentless in his pursuit of justice for the horrors of the Bush years and their ongoing obfuscation by the failure of the Obama presidency to prosecute them. He is in my opinion the most interesting voice in the blogosphere on issues of torture, extraordinary rendition, legal black holes, Guantanamo, etc. as well as other issues, like drug policy, foreign policy, civil rights/human rights issues in general, and so on. He is a skilled dismantler of government or media hypocrisy. He is very much not hoped up by the Obama administration. Which, on these issues, is extremely refreshing.

His recent post, "A court decision that reflects what type of country the U.S. is", is a blistering attack on a court decision right out of Kafka. You've probably heard the story of Maher Arar already:

Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent. A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old. In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured. He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured. Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing.

And now the court basically says -- incredibly -- that they can't grant Arar his rights, because the president might need to mess with said rights because of national security. I think I agree with Greenwald that there are substantial holes in their line of reasoning. A must-read.

I want to write a book called Speaking Truth to Power - how the rise of citizen journalism and the blogosphere changed everything

Former White House communications director and counselor to the president (Bush jr. that is) Dan Bartlett (no relation to Jed Bartlet) in an interview with Texas Monthly:

Yeah, or what if [conservative blogger] Hugh Hewitt called?

That’s when you start going, “Hmm . . .” Because they do reach people who are influential.

Well, they reach the president’s base.

That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.