03/26/2006: "The Ministry of Funny Walks"

I used to love Monty Python. So when I heard that the each of the original Python cast members had put together compilations of their favorite Monty Python episodes, I was looking forward to seeing them. Sitting down to my first of them, I had a feeling of pleasant anticipation. And then it came on: my favorite, The Spanish Inquisition!

The episode starts simply enough: one man trying to explain to the other about problems at work. But when pressed for details, he exclaims "I don't know … I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!"

[JARRING CHORD]

At once, through the door bursts Cardinal Ximinez and two junior Cardinals, scarlet robes swirling. Cardinal Ximinez declares boldly: "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

And then of course, this being a comedy skit, they make fools of themselves. Cardinal Ximinez is unable to count: "Our chief weapon," he says, "is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again."

It degenerates from there, in a sequence I used to find very amusing, as the Cardinals exit to try again, and continue to bungle their lines.

The episode goes on. The Cardinals ask the men how they plead.

"We're innocent!" the men claim.

Ximinez: "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

[DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER]

Junior Cardinal #1: "We'll soon change your mind about that!"

[DIABOLICAL ACTING]

Cardinal Ximinez calls for the rack! Now back in the days of the real Spanish Inquisition, the rack was a torture device. But on Monty Python, Junior Cardinal #2 has forgotten himself, and instead brought a dish-drying rack. They try to make do, but when turning an imaginary crank on the dish drying rack fails to inflict suffering, Ximinez calls instead for the Soft Cushions with which to torture them. And when that still doesn't work, he cruelly calls for a Comfy Chair!

In retrospect, this episode is funny only if you DON'T expect the Spanish Inquisition. And if one doesn't actually know our Nation has used torture as a strategic device – even changing the definition of torture to allow practices that otherwise would have constituted torture – as though a rose by any other name wouldn't smell as foul [See my column "Sex, Torture, and the Definition Game" dated June 14, 2005.] Which sadly brings us to current events.

Yahoo! news reported on March 23rd that "Senior Muslim clerics in Afghanistan have demanded that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that "if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to ‘pull him into pieces.' …Cleric Abdul Raoulf said that ‘Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die.'" And this from a cleric who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001. You can't get much more Spanish Inquisition-ish than executing someone for changing religions.

Of course, that is overseas. Granted it happened in a nation that I thought we had freed, but even so, it is overseas. If we are to be safe anywhere, it would be here, in the land of the free, right? On March 11th, the New York Times reported that a federal judge had issued a ruling denying a motion to dismiss a case against an alleged terrorist. "Because the ruling was classified, the defense lawyers were barred from reading why the judge decided that way. … The classified order by Judge Thomas J. McAvoy of United States District Court for the Northern District of New York came only a few hours after the government filed its own classified documents to the judge. … The prosecutors asked the judge to review their papers in his chambers without making them public or showing them to the defense." The judge agreed. In other words, the judge issued a "classified" ruling based upon evidence that the defense was forbidden from examining! Think about that for a second.

The defense speculated that the evidence that the defendant was not allowed to see related to the National Security Administration's warrantless wiretaps of telephone lines that was brought to light recently in a New York Times article. And yet, as we all know, the Fourth Amendment forbids warrantless searches: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Once they start trying someone else based upon evidence they won't reveal to the defendant, how much longer until they get to you, or your children? "Absurd!" you say. "They are just after the terrorists, not me!" But who decides who is, or possibly may be, a terrorist? The same people, one presumes, who get to order the wiretaps.

Perhaps you are not old enough to remember Nixon's enemies list? As quoted from Wikipedia, "The official purpose, as described by the White House Counsel's Office, was to ‘screw' Nixon's political enemies, by means of tax audits from the IRS, and by manipulating ‘grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, prosecution, etc.'" If you trust the Bush Administration more than you trusted Nixon, you are a more trusting person than am I. And if they are wiretapping without a warrant, why not break-ins without a warrant? Why not seizures of property without compensation. Why not seizing people without arrest warrants, charges, or probable cause for arrest? Come now, you say, I'm being paranoid. Actually, it turns out we are doing just that.

Under a 22-year-old federal law, if an individual has information about another's crimes, the person may be held without charges for long enough to secure their testimony. Constitutional? I'm not so sure, but the March 22nd edition of the Seattle P.I. reports that this law is being badly abused. It quotes Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, as saying "individuals are being indefinitely detained who might be suspects. If that is the case, they need to be charged." Did you get that? Indefinitely detained. The P.I. reports that "lawyers for people detained as material witnesses say the law has been used to hold people who the government fears will commit terrorist acts in the future but whom it lacks probable cause to charge with a crime."

Take another moment to think about this: we're imprisoning United States citizens, indefinitely, not just without a trial but even without charges. Doesn't that sound to you just a bit Spanish Inquisition-ish to you?

I read in law school about the last time this happened. During World War II we locked up in internment camps anyone who was Japanese or of Japanese ancestry, without any proof that he or she was a security risk. I was taught in law school that the Court decisions authorizing those internments were an aberration. Apparently the Court system has (as Yogi Berra said) déjà vu all over again.

I finished most of the work on this column on the two hundred and thirty-first anniversary of Patrick Henry's famous speech on March 23, 1775, at which he singlehandedly convinced the Virginia House of Burgesses to pass a resolution delivering the Virginia troops to the Revolutionary War. He is known best for his famous line from that speech: "Give me liberty or give me death." But liberty isn't like a diamond, which either you have or – you don't. It is more like a salami, from which our government (if we let it!) can keep cutting slices as it gets smaller and smaller. Until one day, it is gone.

In that compilation of Monty Python episodes, I didn't get to see the Ministry of Funny Walks. Given the funny walks we've seen from this Administration, it might not have been funny any more either.