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.”
Tag: War on Terror
Mukasey Taps In.
Having survived his evasions on waterboarding, new Attorney General Michael Mukasey looks to start his tenure in the right direction by reopening the internal investigation into warrantless wiretapping, the same investigation that collapsed in 2006 because Dubya would not grant the department the necessary security clearances. “H. Marshall Jarrett, the OPR’s chief counsel, wrote in a letter to several lawmakers yesterday that lawyers in his office ‘recently received the necessary security clearances and are now able to proceed with our investigation.’“
Paul for Vendetta.
“‘The American Republic is in remnant status,’ he says. ‘The stage is set for our country eventually devolving into military dictatorship, and few seem to care.'” Remember, remember the 5th of November? The Ron Paulies do, raising over $4 million in one day for their man (with help from this site) to commemorate Guy Fawkes Day. “Mr. Benton clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. ‘He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education,’ Mr. Benton said, ‘but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.’” (Just to clarify, however much sense Paul makes occasionally on issues like the Wars on terror and drugs, I find him mostly wrongheaded and frightening.)
The Secret History of Torture.
“‘The administration can’t have it both ways,’ Rockefeller said in a statement. ‘I’m tired of these games. They can’t say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program.” Claiming only that the US “does not torture people,” the White House refuses to turn over Justice Department documents on torture policy, “contending that their disclosure would give terrorist groups too much information about U.S. interrogation tactics.” Those documents, announced by the NYT on Thursday, “provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures, and “show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.“
The Tao of Stevens, II.
“‘I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all,’ he told me during a recent interview in his chambers, laughing and shaking his head. ‘I think as part of my general politics, I’m pretty darn conservative.” A holdover link from last weekend (and a follow-up of sorts to this 2006 post): Jeffrey Rosen profiles Justice John Paul Stevens in the NYT Magazine. “In criminal-law and death-penalty cases, Stevens has voted against the government and in favor of the individual more frequently than any other sitting justice. He files more dissents and separate opinions than any of his colleagues. He is the court’s most outspoken defender of the need for judicial oversight of executive power. And in recent years, he has written majority opinions in two of the most important cases ruling against the Bush administration’s treatment of suspected enemy combatants in the war on terror.“
Here Comes the Judge.
“In making this selection, I think President Bush has made a very…deliberate effort to choose someone who would not be controversial,” Sidestepping the political firestorm a Ted Olsen nod would have unleashed, Dubya chooses retired judge Michael B. Mukasey to be Gonzales’ replacement at the Justice Department. While conservative, particularly on national security issues, Mukasey is “‘not an ideologue for the sake of being an ideologue,’ said Andrew Ruffino, a former law clerk of the nominee’s. Said Bruce Ackerman, a Yale law professor who was a classmate of Mukasey’s: ‘He is not a hyper-charged Federalist Society type. He is not a glad-hand networker.‘” (He does, on the other hand, have strong ties to Rudy Giuliani.)
NSL Countdown.
Another brick from the wall…A US District judge in New York declares that the FBI’s secret use of “national security letters” (NSLs) under the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment and the separation of powers clause. “Marrero wrote in his 106-page ruling that Patriot Act provisions related to NSLs are ‘the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.’“
Black Addington.
“We’re going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop,” Addington said at one point.” The Terror Presidency, a new book by disgusted conservative and former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith, further details the role played by Cheney henchman David Addington in this administration’s rolling back of the rule of law.”‘We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,’ Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.”
Democratic Disgrace.
“‘We’re hugely disappointed with the Democrats,’ said Caroline Fredrickson, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union. ‘The idea they let themselves be manipulated into accepting the White House proposal, certainly taking a great deal of it, when they’re in control — it’s mind-boggling.‘” Um, why did we put these jokers in office again? Surely not to support such flagrantly unconstitutional intrusions as this. Folding completely to White House pressure, a Democratic Senate voted 60-28 and a Democratic House voted 227-183 to sanction Dubya’s illegal wiretapping procedures. ‘The bill would give the National Security Agency the right to collect such communications in the future without a warrant. But it goes further than that: It also would allow the monitoring, under certain conditions, of electronic communications between people on U.S. soil, including U.S. citizens, and people ‘reasonably believed to be outside the United States,’ without a court’s order or oversight.” The Dems’ fallback position? They included a six-month sunset provision in the bill, so they’ll get a chance to revisit and repeat their capitulation to the executive throne early next year. But can we expect any more leadership from the congressional Democrats then? Really, this is beyond disgraceful. “‘The day we start deferring to someone who’s not a member of this body…is a sad day for the U.S. Senate,’ Feingold said. ‘We make the policy — not the executive branch.’“
When Dubya met Gordie.
“Call it the ‘special relationship’; call it, as Churchill did, the ‘joint inheritance’; call it, when we meet, as a form of homecoming, as President Reagan did. The strength of this relationship…is not just built on the shared problems that we have to deal with together or on the shared history, but is built…on shared values.” Wanna know who (is Mr Brown)? So does Dubya…The new British prime minister and Bush held their first joint press conference yesterday (transcript), and — so far — it’s all smiles. Still, “[t]he British leader did not hide his differences with the president, describing Afghanistan as ‘the front line against terrorism.’…[He also] avoided using the phrase “war on terror” in describing the effort to hunt down and defeat Islamic radicals. He referred to terrorism ‘as a crime’ and ‘not a cause,’ though he went on to say that ‘there should be no safe haven and no hiding place for those who practice terrorist violence or preach terrorist extremism.’“