Category: Civil Liberties

Sebelius — and anti-Gitmo lawyers – step up.

“‘I think he represents the kind of leader that we need for the future of the country,’ Sebelius told The Associated Press. ‘I think he brings the hope and optimism that we really need to restore our place in the world, as well as to bring this country together and really tackle the challenges that we have.’” Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius endorses Barack Obama for president. (Sebelius also gave the Democratic SOTU response last night, and her upcoming endorsement was one of DC’s worst-kept secrets last week.)

And another intriguing endorsement via the Daily Dish: Obama gets the support of 80 volunteer lawyers of Gitmo detainees: “Some politicians are all talk and no action. But we know from first-hand experience that Senator Obama has demonstrated extraordinary leadership on this critical and controversial issue.” (Their full statement is here.)

The Commission, Stonewalled.

“There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.” From a few days ago, 9/11 Commission Chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton angrily accuse the CIA and Dubya White House of stonewalling their investigation. “As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.”

(Smoking Out) Eraserhead.

“Following a preliminary inquiry into the destruction by CIA personnel of videotapes of detainee interrogations, the Department’s National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter.” Gee, you think? Attorney General Michael Mukasey announces a federal criminal probe into the matter of the destroyed CIA torture tapes. It will be headed by John H. Durham, currently “the second-in-command at the U.S. attorney’s office in Connecticut.“

Tortured Reasoning.

“The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free.” As a follow-up to her 2006 list of civil liberties violations, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick surveys The Bush Administration’s Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

The Hoover Raids.

“In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus for apprehensions made pursuant to it.” Taking a page from his earlier mentor, A. Mitchell Palmer, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, recently declassified documents reveal, floated the idea of interning 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty in 1950, during the Korean War. [Hoover’s letter.] “Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to ‘protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.’ The F.B.I would ‘apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous’ to national security, Hoover’s proposal said.” Thank goodness our intelligence community is past such retrograde thinking and kneejerk trampling on civil liberties today…uh, right?

Delusional Decider.

“‘I believe we will keep the White House,’ he said twice at a pre-holiday news conference in the White House briefing room. ‘I believe ours is the party that understands the nature of the world in which we live and that the government’s primary responsibility is to protect the American citizens from harm…I’m confident we can pick up seats in both the Senate and the Congress.'”

Hey, Mr. President, how is the weather on Mars? At a news conference today, Dubya predicted a GOP presidential victory and GOP congressional gains come next November. (He also refused to comment on the CIA tapes debacle.) The good news here for the rest of us is that this man has been wrong about pretty much everything for the past seven years. Why stop now?

Congress/Judge to WH: Tear down the Wall!

So much for those early, hopeful signs of independence…Attorney General Michael Mukasey tries to stonewall both a Congressional investigation and a Judicial investigation into the destroyed CIA tapes, arguing it would impede the Justice Department’s own inquiry into the matter. “‘We are stunned that the Justice Department would move to block our investigation,’ Reps. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) and Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said in the [responding] statement. ‘Parallel investigations occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the Attorney General can stand in the way of our work.’“

And, in somewhat related news, conservative judge Royce Lamberth, who earlier butted heads with the administration over FISA, rules that — despite what Dick Cheney thinks on the matter — White House visitor logs are public records, meaning visits from “Casino Jack” Abramoff and/or religious conservatives can no longer be kept secret on account of (dubious appeals to) “national security.” Looks like it’s win-some, lose-some for Dubya’s imperial pretensions this week.

The Lost Langley Terror Tapes.

“[H]ere’s a different thought experiment: How would the national debate over torture have changed if we’d known about the CIA tapes all along? How would our big terror trials and Supreme Court cases have played out? Yes, this is also a speculative enterprise, but it’s critical to understanding the extent of the CIA’s wrongdoing here.” In light of the recent revelation that the CIA destroyed video evidence of their abusive interogation procedures in 2005, well after they’d become relevant both in many different legal cases and in the national discussion about torture, Slate‘s Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick survey the wreckage the CIA has made of our legal process. “Video of hours of repetitive torture could have had a similarly significant impact — the truism about the power of images holds. If we are right about that — and we think we are — this evidence that has been destroyed would have fundamentally changed the legal and policy backdrop for the war on terror in ways we’ve only begun to figure out.” If nothing else, an independent counsel should be named immediately. Even given the criminality and contempt for the rule of law we’ve come to expect from this administration, this sort of thuggish, gangland behavior is shocking news.

The War on Drugs is Lost.

“All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs – with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes – a twelvefold increase since 1980 – with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the government can claim is the decline in the number of Americans who smoke marijuana – and even on that count, it is not clear that federal prevention programs are responsible. In the course of fighting this war, we have allowed our military to become pawns in a civil war in Colombia and our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends. Those we are paying to wage the drug war have been accused of human-rights abuses in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. In Mexico, we are now repeating many of the same mistakes we have made in the Andes.“

To their credit, those left-wing hippie radicals at National Review said as much way back in 1996, and HBO’s The Wire has dramatized the dismal consequences of the conflict for several years now. Now, coming to the same dour conclusion in 2007, Rolling Stone‘s Ben Wallace-Wells explains how America lost the War on Drugs, and argues that continuing to perpetuate it in its current fashion — with its “law and order” emphases of crushing supply, international interdiction, and mandatory minimum sentencing — is tantamount to flushing money and lives down the toilet. “Even by conservative estimates, the War on Drugs now costs the United States $50 billion each year and has overcrowded prisons to the breaking point – all with little discernible impact on the drug trade…The real radicals of the War on Drugs are not the legalization advocates, earnestly preaching from the fringes, but the bureaucrats — the cops and judges and federal agents who are forced into a growing acceptance that rendering a popular commodity illegal, and punishing those who sell it and use it, has simply overwhelmed the capacity of government.” (Found via Jack Shafer’s endorsement at Slate.)

Townsend Acts.

The ranks of Team Dubya dwindle further as chief terrorism adviser Frances Fragos Townsend announces her resignation. “Townsend has been a key player in Bush’s circle, earning the president’s trust despite initial suspicion among Republicans because of her background in the Clinton Justice Department…As gatekeeper for intelligence wiretap requests [in the Clinton era], her office fought efforts to invoke the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in matters that could result in criminal cases, fearing that prosecutors would use warrants under that law instead of amassing the evidence needed to cross the more difficult threshold for obtaining a criminal wiretap…Townsend later said she fought ‘tooth and nail’ against information-sharing restrictions.”