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The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA detention and interrogation program has quickly stirred up a white-hot debate on the use of torture to extract information from our enemies.

And though there is great passion on both sides, this is not a new topic to be argued.

In the late 16th century, some 200 years before the formation of our republic, the French nobleman Michel de Montaigne shifted the centuries-old debate about the use of torture from the question of its effectiveness to the question of its inhumanity. That is, while earlier writers had worried above all about the reliability of testimony extracted from tortured suspects, Montaigne was horrified that a civilized society would make use of such a barbaric practice.

Montaigne's new perspective would come to exercise considerable influence over the ways in which intellectuals and political elites viewed torture down to our own time.

But it was above all a thin volume titled Of Crimes and Punishments, first published anonymously in 1764, that served as the clarion call for the abolition of torture. The secret of the author's identity was not held for long. The Milanese philosopher Cesare Beccaria had completed this revolutionary work at the age of 26.

Beccaria's text would have a cascading influence. Its translation into many languages paralleled an era that saw regime after regime dismantle the use of torture: Prussia in 1754, Denmark in 1770, Poland in 1776, France in 1789, the Netherlands in 1798 and Portugal in 1826.

Beccaria was influential in the United States as well. Thomas Jefferson read him with appreciation, as did James Madison and John Adams. When the Founders crafted the Bill of Rights, Beccaria's ideas made themselves palpable. We see this in the Eight Amendment, which prohibited the use of "cruel and unusual punishments" one of the enduring bases to the principle that neither the courts nor the federal government may use torture.

But the Fifth Amendment, with its stipulation that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," was perhaps an even clearer constitutional obstacle to the use of torture. If a person suspected of a crime could not testify against himself, then torture could really play no role, since one of the key aims of torturers is to extricate self-incriminating evidence from a suspect, whether of a common criminal or a terrorist.

Historians are right therefore to stress that the period running from the Renaissance (the age of Montaigne) to the Enlightenment (the age of Beccaria) witnessed the emergence of new ideas about the person. These ideas would shape many contemporary values, as reformers drew on them not only to end torture but also slavery and religious repression.

These same ideas were, not incidentally, fundamental to shaping democratic and open institutions. This doesn't mean the ideas were always successful or without contradictions, but they unquestionably enabled a new notion of the human person and the political community to emerge. It is within this cluster of new ideas that men and women came to see torture not merely as ineffective but as fundamentally wrong. Torture degrades both the victim and its perpetuator. It strips both of their dignity and their humanity. The ends cannot justify the means.

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History foreshadows against the use of torture

Refugees from Africa line up at a makeshift immigrant processing center in Bnei Brak, the only one open to them in Israel. Photo by Simone Wilson

One hour before the 19th Israeli Knesset, or parliament, dissolved forever on Dec. 8, its members made a last-ditch effort to save Holot, the open desert prison they created one year prior to detain undocumented Eritrean and Sudanese immigrants.

On the table was a fifth amendment to the half-century-old Anti-Infiltration Law created to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning to Israel, but amended in recent years to govern the fate of 50,000 Africans who trekked to Israels southern border seeking work and asylum.

The latest amendment comes in response to a Supreme Court ruling in September that found Holot to be unconstitutional. Instead of closing it completely, Knesset members proposed that individual prison terms be limited to 20 months, and that prisoner check-ins be cut from three times per day to once each night.

After the final tally on the night of Dec. 8, the bill passed 41 to 29.

Members of the 19th Knesset, known for their high-drama plenum battles, used the vote to stage a final showdown of ideals.

[We must] keep this country as the nation-state of the Jewish people and not invite a situation in which thousands of infiltrators come here to find work, said right-wing Knesset member Miri Regev, a member of the prime ministers Likud Party. Its a disgrace that parties who call themselves Zionist, like the Labor Party, opposed this bill.

Knesset member Nitzan Horowitz, a former TV reporter belonging to the leftist Meretz Party, fired back. Its too bad Regev and the interior minister didnt read the High Courts first verdict overturning the law, he said. They would have understood that in a democratic state, it is impossible to imprison people without a trial. It doesnt matter whether theyre Blacks from Africa, blonds from Sweden or people from Tel Aviv or Yeruham.

The goal of the new legislation, as stated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when it was drafted on Nov. 30, is to continue driving undocumented Africans out of Israel.

It fits the reality, Netanyahu said of the law. It also fits the rulings of the High Court of Justice. I remind you that Israel has achieved the extraordinary, which Im very proud of, in blocking illegal migration across our borders zero illegal migrants. Part of this entails repatriating illegal migrants. This year we repatriated over 6,000 illegal migrants. This legislation is designed to enable us to continue this trend.

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19th Knessets dying wish: Drive Africans from Israel

Constitution: The Twenty fifth Amendment
This segment summarizes the twenty-fifth Amendment.

By: 21st century Education

Originally posted here:
Constitution: The Twenty fifth Amendment - Video

New Kensington Detective Lt. Jim Klein climbed up and down the emotional spectrum from anger to disgust to frustration Friday.

Frustration finally took hold as Klein sat in his office discussing how, about an hour before, police were forced to withdraw charges against two New Kensington men accused of trying to kill a third city man.

You feel like you've had your heart ripped out, and now you're fearful of what might happen next if this beef hasn't been settled, Klein said.

This is not on us, Klein said firmly. We're doing our job.

He said the charges were dropped because the shooting victim, Jadrian Race Toochy Wade, refused to testify, Klein said. We were even exploring the possibility of giving him immunity.

He said that was because Wade, 21, had indicated he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination if he testified.

But we were advised by Mr. Wade's attorney that he wasn't even able to meet with Mr. Wade to discuss what he was seeking immunity for, Klein said.

When we were at the magistrate's a couple of weeks ago, the victim had an attorney, and the attorney advised me the cIient would not testify on Fifth Amendment grounds, said Westmoreland County Assistant District Attorney Larry Koenig. In other words, him testifying might incriminate him on other matters, including the shooting, itself. He did not tell myself or Detective Klein that himself, but his attorney did, and we had to respect that.

Wade's attorney, Fred Rabner of Pittsburgh, did not return a Valley News Dispatch reporter's call seeking comment for this story.

A Woodmont Avenue resident, Wade was shot three times in Proctor Alley around 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 3.

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New Kensington shooting victim refuses to testify; charges withdrawn

LANSDALE >> A Lansdale man accused of a harrowing domestic assault last month during which police said he choked his pregnant girlfriend, threatened to kill her, and then tied her up and told her she was going to watch him die as he shot up heroin was ordered Nov. 20 to stand trial on several criminal counts after a dramatic preliminary hearing in which the alleged victim took the witness stand, unsuccessfully tried to plead the Fifth Amendment to keep from testifying, then recanted the statement she gave to detectives on the day of the alleged incident.

Steven DiPanfilo, 33, of the 800 block of Derstine Avenue, faces trial on two counts of misdemeanor simple assault, one count each of misdemeanor terroristic threats, misdemeanor recklessly endangering another person and misdemeanor false imprisonment, and summary counts of harassment and disorderly conduct.

Sitting at the defendants table inside Lansdale District Judge Harold Boreks courtroom next to his attorney, Robert McGuckin, DiPanfilo who is free on $25,000 bond drew Boreks ire early in the proceedings when, after McGuckin objected to a Lansdale police detective taking the stand to read the entire statement given by the victim but was overruled by the judge, DiPanfilo began to loudly object as well.

Youre going to get a $100,000 bail if you continue, Borek snapped as DiPanfilo sank bank into his chair.

The detective then read the statement in full while DiPanfilo and the victim, who had been subpoenaed to appear at the hearing and sat behind the prosecutors table, both stared at the floor.

According to the statement, the woman said that in the early morning hours of Oct. 30, DiPanfilo woke her up and began arguing with her about their relationship the altercation escalated to the point where he told the woman he was going to knock her [expletive] teeth in, then grabbed her, put his hand over her mouth and held her down on the bed.

After telling the woman to be quiet, DiPanfilo took his hand off the womans mouth and put both hands around her throat and started choking her, while getting on top of her and preventing her from moving.

He then grabbed the woman by the hair and yanked her to the edge of the bed, tied her hands together with a black T-shirt and told her she was going to watch him die because I was a liar and a cheater, according to the statement, as he prepared a syringe full of what she believed to be heroin and injected himself, then kept her tied up against the bed for a few hours while he nodded in and out from the effects of the drug,

During the entirety of the incident, according to her statement, the woman repeatedly begged DiPanfilo to let her go and to let her get her twin 11-year-old sons who were asleep in the house out of the residence, but he said to her, Sit the [expletive] down, you are not going anywhere and that he would kill her if she didnt shut up.

She finally got out of the residence with her two boys and officers responded to the home around 7:30 a.m., police said. Continued...

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Trial ordered for Lansdale man accused of harrowing domestic assault incident