Live from the Nuke Free Zone

Continuing the Zone’s practice of keeping a close eye on new and improved interpretations of civil liberties in the course of the War on Terra, we note that the Supreme Court of the U.S. has found (in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui) that the government can seek the death penalty against a suspect charged with terrorism, and is not obliged to give defense lawyers access to relevant witnesses if the witnesses are themselves such suspects. Check any major news site for details.

Caveats: the government is obliged to provide summaries of relevant unclassified information from classified interrogations of the witnesses demanded; presumably, information that someone is not a terrorist would not be classified. Also presumably, the government would act in good faith in producing documents which by definition have no sources of corroboration available.

Offhand, I wouldn’t want to stake my life on those presumptions.