“Secretary Rumsfeld’s energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation.” In response to the growing calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation among retired top brass, Dubya chooses instead, as per his usual M.O., to hug Rummy tighter to his breast. (full text.) And, in related news, Salon‘s Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin argue that Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in at least one questionable interrogation at Gitmo in 2002.
Category: Civil Liberties
Jose, can you see?
“‘Even if the Court were to rule in Padilla’s favor,’ Kennedy went on, ‘his present custody status would be unaffected. Padilla is scheduled to be tried on criminal charges. Any consideration of what rights he might be able to assert if he were returned to military custody would be hypothetical, and to no effect, at this stage of the proceedings.” By a margin of 6-3 (Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter dissenting), the Supreme Court punts on Padilla, on the grounds that Padilla’s dilemma has been rendered “hypothetical” now that he’s been transferrred into the normal justice system.
Justice Ginsburg disagrees: “This case…raises a question of profound importance to the Nation. Does the President have authority to imprison indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on United States soil distant from a zone of combat, based on an Executive declaration that the citizen was, at the time of his arrest, an ‘enemy combatant’? It is a question the Court heard, and should have decided, two years ago. Nothing the Government has yet done purports to retract the assertion of Executive power Padilla protests.“
Topic of Cancer.
“‘We know the president broke the law,’ Leahy said. ‘Now we need to know why.'” With the Dems — except for Feingold and Leahy — AWOL yet again, the Senate Judiciary Committee debates Feingold’s censure resolution and hears testimony from former Nixon counsel John Dean, who is back before Congress for the first time since Watergate. Said Feingold at one point: “If you want the words ‘bad faith’ in [the censure resolution], let’s put them right in, because that’s exactly what we have here…The lawbreaking is shocking in itself, but the defiant way that the president has persisted in defending his actions with specious legal arguments and misleading statements is part of what led me to conclude that censure is a necessary step.” Said the rest of the committee Dems (Kennedy, Biden, Kohl, Feinstein, Schumer, Durbin): Nothing.
Hearing Hamdan.
“The president’s consistent refusal to try the Guantanamo detainees before criminal courts or courts-martial leads a reasonable observer to conclude that the government’s case would fail if it were subjected to scrutiny by an impartial adjudicator. And if that is the only justification for military tribunals, it must be rejected. No one denies that the war on terror presents new challenges to the rule of law. But prosecuting someone with a crime that does not exist, before a commission that does not have rules, simply does not constitute justice under any set of circumstances.” Slate files several dispatches on the important case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which the Supreme Court (without Chief Justice Roberts, who has recused himself…as should probably Scalia) will hear today. Emily Bazelon finds that GOP Senators Kyl and Graham seem to have tried to deceive the Court about the legislative history of their Detainee Treatment Act, while Ariel Lavinbuk suggests a compromise solution: the Supreme Court could “find that ‘conspiracy’ — the only charge against Hamdan — does not violate the law of war.“
Update: The Court hears the case, and it seems a majority — Scalia and Alito notwithstanding — are not amused with the Dubya administration: “Without Chief Justice John Roberts…the argument seemed lopsided against the government.” Still, as was expected to be the norm on the Roberts Court,”the outcome of the case will likely turn on moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.”
The “Black Room.”
“Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, ‘NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.’ The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: ‘If you don’t make them bleed, they can’t prosecute for it.'” In related news, the NY Times exposes more allegations of shameful and disturbing Abu Ghraib-like detainee abuse conducted by “a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26.” “Task Force 6-26 was a creation of the Pentagon’s post-Sept. 11 campaign against terrorism, and it quickly became the model for how the military would gain intelligence and battle insurgents in the future…Military and legal experts say the full breadth of abuses committed by Task Force 6-26 may never be known because of the secrecy surrounding the unit.”
Would it help to confuse them if we run away more?
“‘I haven’t read it,’ demurred Barack Obama (Ill.). ‘I just don’t have enough information,’ protested Ben Nelson (Neb.).” As Senator Tom Harkin signs on as a co-sponsor of Russ Feingold’s censure resolution — which, word has it, is also now backed by John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and Robert Menendez — the Post‘s Dana Milbank watches the rest of our party head for the hills. “Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.). ‘Ask her after lunch’ offered Clinton’s spokesman, Philippe Reines. But Clinton, with most of her colleagues, fled the lunch out a back door as if escaping a fire.”
Framing a Guilty Man?
“In all the years I have been on the bench, I have never seen such an egregious violation of a court’s rule on witnesses.” In keeping with this administration’s penchant for cutting corners on civil liberties (and playing right into the hands of America’s critics), the trial of Al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker,” appears on the verge of mistrial after it comes out that government lawyer Carla Martin blatantly coached witnesses. Said Judge Leonie Brinkema: “This is the second significant error by the government affecting the constitutional rights of this defendant and, more importantly, the integrity of the criminal justice system in this country.” Update: Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick tries to explain the strange “medical malpractice” reasoning at work in this death penalty case.
Rubber Stamp Roberts.
“Far from ‘reasserting responsibility and oversight,’ Congress is putting itself out of business. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., suggested that, after this week, the intelligence committee will sink ‘further into irrelevancy.’ The Times went a step further today and declared the committee dead.” Century Foundation fellow Patrick Radden Keefe takes issue with the Pat Roberts “compromise” over the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps.
Report Card: Incomplete.
By way of a friend, the State Department releases its mandated yearly human rights report for 2005 (here), finding cause for alarm in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Burma, North Korea, Belarus and Zimbabwe and (surprise, surprise) progress in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report doesn’t delve into human rights violations here at home (although China tries to fill that gap in response every year), but it does unequivocally state — in bold, no less — that “countries in which power is concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers tend to be the world’s most systematic human rights violators.” Hey y’all might be on to something. Deadpans the head of Amnesty International: “The Bush administration’s practice of transferring detainees in the ‘war on terror’ to countries cited by the State Department for their appalling human rights records actually turns the report into a manual for the outsourcing of torture.”
Night (and Day) Watch.
“I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan.” With the recent release of detainee names, the NYT looks more closely at exactly who’s being held at Guantanamo Bay, including several folks, it seems, who were guilty of the heinous crime of wearing the wrong timepiece, a “Casio model F-91W watch. According to evidentiary summaries in those cases, such watches have ‘been used in bombings linked to Al Qaeda.’“