Happy Birthday, Gitmo!

"Torture is a grotesque piece of compensatory drama," writes Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain.

Tomorrow marks a grim anniversary. Five years ago, the first detainees were transferred to the Guantanamo Bay facility, contravening not only international law, but our own laws as well.

Guantanamo Bay is emblematic of the unabashed lawlessness of this administration. The President wiretaps without warrants. Habeas corpus is no more. The PATRIOT ACT allows for violations of the Fourth Amendment. And at every step, they are alarmingly upfront about the contravention of laws.

And although they don't want us to know what they are, members of the administration admit to "alternative interrogation techniques."

Illegal detentions and alternative interrogation methods and warrantless searches not only violate the victims, they create an atmosphere of threat and uncertainty.

Scarry argues that torture objectifies pain and makes it visible in order to translate it into a "spectacle of power." She writes that it is "precisely because the reality of that power is so highly contestable, the regime so unstable, that torture is being used."

It sounds a lot like terrorism. And it's unsettling to think that this now means us. Not Chile or Cambodia, but us.

The march on the White House was yesterday, but for all of us who couldn't make it to DC, here's a list of local events.

This isn't about politics. This isn't even about the war. It's about demanding that the government obey its own laws.