The map to the left shows the trend.
Any challenges to the trend will be handled in the First Interstate Starchamber of Amurka, previously designated as the FISA court.
One thing that the new right-wing star chamber will not do is the required prosecution for torture, even though it is in our law so clearly that once upon a time even police officers were indicted and prosecuted for doing water boarding (President Reagan Puts Cheney In Jail).
But now, we have devolved from that kinder and gentler place to the far right, where now the police can murder in open public and not even be charged by state officials.
A place where international treaties and US laws against torture are systematically ignored:
Readers don't have to go far into the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report before their stomachs start to turn. Detainees pushed to the edge of death, threatened with sexual assault, made to wear diapers and force-fed by way of a rectal tube -- and that’s just in the first few pages.(No Torture Prosecutions, cf. Torture is a Crime). Officials in the agencies doing that torture lie about it in public on camera without accountability.
But despite the gruesome details, nobody at the CIA or in the military has been prosecuted for any wrongdoing related to the brutal interrogations. And it doesn't appear that's about to change.
It's up to the Justice Department to decide if legal charges should be brought. Beginning in 2009, John Durham, a special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder, looked into allegations of people being mistreated while in the custody of the U.S. government after the 9/11 attacks and ended up conducting two criminal investigations. But the Justice Department declined to prosecute in either case on the grounds that the admissible evidence wasn't sufficient "to obtain and sustain convictions beyond a reasonable doubt," according to a department spokesman.
Public figures such as Cheney and Bush II are in denial about there being anything wrong with them torturing people.
Meanwhile, drones that are piloted and navigated from Nevada kill innocent people (and perhaps some guilty people too) even as the current Obama administration sees nothing wrong with that (we don't know if those victims are innocent or guilty because they are not charged and tried as our constitution requires, rather, they are blown to bits).
All this is a stain upon the reputation of the U.S. and its people, which makes foreign policy much more difficult.
The loss of reputation comes at a time when we are clearly in decline in other areas (Phases Of An Empire Freezing To Death - 2, Economic War Of The Pacific - 4, Another Sign of Another Layer in the Oil Wars? - 2).
The elephant in the room is that the Senate Torture Report is written history posing as oversight, yet we know that true oversight must be at least done in real time, but it's even better when there is foresight in the oversight.
Otherwise, it is as if the ship of state is being steered by looking in the rear view mirror to see where we have been, instead of steering by looking out the front wind-shield to see where we are headed (Titanic Mistakes Using The W Compass).
This kind of psychotic official thinking is what destroys the fabric of once-healthy societies, because good governing requires vision and good morals.
The previous post in this series is here.
"Revolution", The Beatles (lyrics)