Once upon a time there was a document called the Constitution. Then there were some people who decided to shit all over it. They were called the Angry White Christian Bigots, people so scared of everything that they were willing and unfortunately able to desecrate that immortal document piecemeal. Now we get to see the next big thing they have done, from fear and hatred.

A federal judge in Washington yesterday ordered U.S. officials to provide information on whether the U.S. government has had a role in the detention of a Northern Virginia man held without charges in Saudi Arabia for a year and a half.

In his written ruling, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said he needs the information so he can decide whether his court has jurisdiction in the case. He rejected the government's request to dismiss the petition filed by the parents of Ahmed Abu Ali, a 23-year-old Falls Church resident and U.S. citizen who was arrested by the Saudis in June 2003 while studying in the kingdom. (emphasis added)

Legal experts called Bates's decision an important one in the U.S. war on terrorism. They said the judge essentially found that U.S. courts can decide whether detentions of U.S. citizens by foreign countries are justified, as long as there is evidence that the U.S. government had a hand in those detentions.

The real deal? We should have cut off Saudi Arabia three years ago when 15 of their Nationals, financed by "interesting" money funneled around the world at the behest of the Saudi Wahhabist Mullahs attacked us. Instead, we attacked a country with no connection to 9/11 at all. But by golly, Preznit Yellow Stripe showed 'em he could best his Daddy at spending lives wantonly and expeditiously and lying about it faster than Big Pharma could score some more Hillbilly Heroin.

Now an American citizen, who has no chance except for a Federal judge to see the light of day or probably even know the reasons he was locked up in a Third World Petrogarchy, is languishing there for some indeterminate amount of time and our government, the one that's supposed to answer to us not the other way around, has done it.

If this keeps up, the successor to Preznit Corporate Cum Licker may inherit a moral wasteland run by an American Taliban where the documents of the Founding Fathers don't even rise to the stature of a comic-strip packed in with a piece of bubble-gum. Don't be surprised if before 2006 you have to take a loyalty oath to get your new National ID card, issued when you sign over your part of the Social Security Trust Fund to the All-American Christian Faith-Based Investment Officer from the Department of Imminent Miracles. It's how they'll distinguish us from those "other" Citizens...