I was having a good day until I started to peruse the news. There’s not one, but two articles today that reveal abuses of power extremely destructive to the United States reputation and present a slippery slope of irresponsible action and unaccountability by our government.

The First: The Italian government has issued 22 arrest warrants for United States CIA agents for illegally abducting and torturing Abu Omar in Milan without the consent or cooperation of the Italian government. I talked about this in my Track Records… post a while back. I wonder if the popular mass media outlets will admit that they never covered this story when it was first revealed back in December. A certain someone (you know who you are) poked fun at me for reporting this story in February. I specifically remember him saying I should put on a tinfoil hat and stop spreading “black helicopter theories”.

The Second: A 465-page report released by a coalition of “142 U.S.-based non-profits and organizations and 32 individuals” was just submitted to the U.N. for inclusion in their current investigation of human rights violations in the United States. The report is supposedly “the most comprehensive review of human rights violations in the United States ever produced.” Here are some of the highlights (taken from the article):

• Immigration: The physical abuse and poor detention conditions many non-citizens face when they attempt to enter the U.S., the failure of U.S. immigration law to adequately protect refugees, asylum seekers and immigrant families and respect their right to due process, and discrimination against migrant workers;
• Hurricane Katrina: The racially discriminatory evacuation of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and discriminatory policies in the hurricane’s aftermath that have restricted residents’ right to vote, ability to participate in the rebuilding process and access to basic necessities;
• Domestic Use of Torture: The failure of the government to prosecute Jon Burge, a Chicago police officer implicated in a torture scandal that advocates have labeled the “Abu Ghraib in the United States,” despite several federal investigations that conclusively found that the city’s police department routinely tortured suspects;
• Juvenile Justice: The sentencing of youth and teens to life in prison without the possibility of parole; and

• Prison conditions within the United States, such as shackling women prisoners during childbirth, limitations on prisoners’ access to courts, lack of access to adequate health care, rape and discrimination against minorities that violate international human rights standards.