Vincent Dellamaria grew up in Queens New York, the son of Sicilian immigrants. When he was tapped to be a Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 2001, he tacitly consented to be guided by the Administration's neoconservatives on major cases. Years later, Dellamaria's former college roommate, Patrick O'Connor, a law school dean, found out about Dellamaria's corrupt deal from a former CIA agent. O'Connor organized a team to kidnap Dellamaria in order to break his corrupt connections. Through a combination of psychotherapy, conversation, and soul-searching, Dellamaria grudgingly came around. A year after the snatch, the kidnappers covertly returned Dellamaria to Washington and the Supreme Court, just in time for him to participate on five major cases: abortion, torture, gay marriage, Miranda warnings, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Vincent Dellamaria grew up in Queens New York, the son of Sicilian immigrants. When he was tapped to be a Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 2001, he tacitly consented to be guided by the Administration's neoconservatives on major cases. Years later, Dellamaria's former college roommate, Patrick O'Connor, a law school dean, found out about Dellamaria's corrupt deal from a former CIA agent. O'Connor organized a team to kidnap Dellamaria in order to break his corrupt connections. Through a combination of psychotherapy, conversation, and soul-searching, Dellamaria grudgingly came around. A year after the snatch, the kidnappers covertly returned Dellamaria to Washington and the Supreme Court, just in time for him to participate on five major cases: abortion, torture, gay marriage, Miranda warnings, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Universally condemned and everywhere illegal, torture goes on in democracies as well as in dictatorships. Nonetheless, many Americans were surprised following the attacks of 9/11 at how easily the United States embraced torture as well as the supposedly lesser evil of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Nothing seemed extreme when it came to questioning real and imagined terrorists. Extraordinary rendition—sending people captured in the “war on terror” to nations long counted among the world’s worst human rights violators—hid from the public eye cruel and bloody interrogations. “Torture lite” or “torture without marks” became the norm for those in American custody. In Rendition to Torture, Alan W. Clarke explains how the United States adopted torture as a matter of official policy; how and why it turned to extraordinary rendition as a way to outsource more extreme, mutilating forms of torture; and outlines the steps the United States took to hide its abuses. Many adverse consequences attended American use of torture. False information gleaned from torture was used to justify the Iraq war, adding potency to the charge that the war was illegal under international law. Moreover, European nations and Canada aided, abetted, and became thoroughly enmeshed in U.S.-led torture and renditions, thereby spreading both the problem and the blame for this practice. Clarke offers an extended critique of these activities, placing them in historical and legal context as well as in transnational and comparative perspective.

Gerald Pfalzgraf is the founder of an exclusive NY architecture firm. All he wanted was to be adored. And to possess his wife Morcilla's vast fortune. Was that too much to ask for? Gerald tries his hand at architecting a complex enterprise of mayhem thru deception, manipulation and opportunism. He knows that men who seek to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.

The second of two collections of short stories and humorous outtakes on life. Sometimes sad, sometimes scary, but always readable and entertaining. Nothing to interpret and no "secret" messages, jut good reading!