Some time in the middle of last year my interest in politics and government checked out.  I think I just got annoyed to the point where I just raised my white flag and gave up.  I just couldn’t take any more of the impressive combination of hollow blathering, hypocritical yapping, and fear-mongering that has become the staple of Washington discourse.

The only news I’ve been watching/reading these days has to do with sports, tech, and international affairs.  Unfortunately, my blissful ignorance was interrupted on my way home by the tail end of a conversation on NPR discussing what to do with the knucklehead that tried to blow himself up on a plane on Christmas.

Paraphrasing as best as I can: Conservative David Rivkin believes that Mutallab (attempted airline bomber) should not be tried in a criminal court and should be moved to a military tribunal.  (I’ll take issue with that in a minute)  The interviewer asks him why Mutallab shouldn’t be tried in a criminal court like Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, given that the circumstances are almost identical.  His reply, essentially, was that trying Richard Reid the way we did was a mistake and we shouldn’t make that mistake twice.

Now what kind of freaking standards are we living by when a conviction of a terrorist and a sentence of life without the chance for parole is a mistake and a failure of some sort.  I mean, is this guy serious?  What does Rivkin want instead of that sentence?  Is he only going to be happy with a death sentence or torturing him while he’s in jail?  The guy is out of the game.  He’s never going to commit another act of terrorism, just be happy with that.

Going back to declaring him an enemy combatant.  What logic do you use to name him an enemy combatant in this situation?  If you’re declaring someone on a commercial airliner in US airspace an enemy combatant, then you’ve essentially defined the battlefield as anywhere in the world at all times.  By that logic, anyone in the world at any time, for virtually any reason can be considered an enemy combatant and falls under military jurisdiction.

If that’s the way you’re going to approach it, why do we even need terrorism laws in the country?  And should we consider anti-government militia members enemy combatants, given that their primary objective is the overthrow of the US government?  Are we going to ship some dude stockpiling weapons on a ranch in Montana who tries to bomb a federal building off to military tribunals in Guantanamo?  I guess I just don’t understand Rivkins self-serving, arbitrary line that he’s drawn yet.

I’ll work on that.  Or maybe I’ll just try to start ignoring the yapping again.