The Yoo “Exclusivity” Opinion: More Outrageous Hackery
After significant efforts, Senator Whitehouse has finally gotten the Administration to declassify the fourth of the four outrageous opinions John Yoo wrote to justify the warrantless wiretap program (the other three Pixie Dust provisions basically allow the President to write his own laws). This one pertains to the exclusivity provision of FISA, which states clearly that FISA was the "exclusive means by which electronic surveillance … and the interception of domestic wire, oral and electronic communications may be conducted."
Here’s what that purported genius, John Yoo, did with FISA’s exclusivity provision:
Unless Congress made a clear statement in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that it sought to restrict presidential authority to conduct warrantless searches in the national security area — which it has not — then the statute must be construed to avoid [such] a reading.
As it happens, DOJ actually appears to be somewhat cognizant of the legal hackery of this Yoo opinion. When he learned DNI had declassified the passage from the opinion, Brian Benczkowski sent a letter to Senators Whitehouse and DiFi, trying to claim that Yoo’s opinion is unremarkable:
The general proposition (of which the November 2001 statement is a particular example) that statutes will be interpreted whenever reasonably possible not to conflict with the President’s constitutional authorities is unremarkable and fully consistent with the longstanding precedents of OLC, issued under Administrations of both parties.
Then, after ignoring the question of whether Yoo’s interpretation of "reasonably possible" was itself reasonable, Benczkowski went on to stress that DOJ gave up Yoo’s opinion in 2006 and replaced it with more hackery.
However, as you are aware from a review of the Department’s relevant legal opinions concerning the NSA’s warrantless surveillance activities, the 2001 statement addressing FISA does not reflect the current analysis of the Department. Rather, the Department’s more recent analysis of the relation between FISA and the NSA’s surveillance activities acknowledged by the President was summarized in the Department’s January 19,2006 white paper (published before those activities became the subject of FISA orders and before enactment of the Protect America Act of 2007). As that paper pointed out, "In the specific context of the current armed conflict with al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations, Congress by statute [in the AUMF] had confirmed and supplemented the President’s recognized authority under Article II of the Constitution to conduct such surveillance to prevent further catastrophic attacks on the homeland."
As he did with Yoo’s opinion, Benczkowski also ignored the question of whether this claim–that the AUMF authorized Bush to ignore FISA’s exclusivity provision–was reasonable, particularly when Tom Daschle, who was Senate Majority Leader when the AUMF was passed, insists that Congress specifically refused to give the President war powers within the US.
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel’s office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas — where we all understood he wanted authority to act — but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
Pretty much, Benczkowski is stuck in the unenviable position of trying to claim the warrantless wiretap program was legal, when it clearly wasn’t. He ends his letter with a pathetic plea to the Senators not to circulate Yoo’s interpretation of exclusivity by itself.
Accordingly, we respectfully request that if you wish to make use of the 2001 statement in public debate, you also point out that the Department’s more recent analysis of the question is reflected in the passages quoted above from the 2006 white paper.
As if that makes ongoing DOJ hackery defensible.
I just don’t understand how Yoo can keep his law license. Not only is he weasling like a Mafia lawyer, but he’s flat out wrong. And he had to know that when he wrote those memos.
Boxturtle (And don’t get me started on “Professor Yoo”. Bleagh!)
Emptywheel:
Little boy, defending himself after pushing his sister:
.
Yep, right up there with ‘I never had sex with that woman’.
As all this comes undone, I’m beginning to see it as a sort of Enron mentality, which would make sense as Bush and Ken Lay were so close. Basically, the people in charge of all the departments thought they knew better than the law. When they broke the law, the blamed the law for being outdated. They believed that what they were doing was cutting-edge genius in the way it served those in charge. As long as they could report positive results back to the leader, Bush or Lay, they would be rewarded. When they couldn’t report positive results, they made them up. The difference between Enron and the Bush government is that it’s been able to hide behind first, the Republican Congress, and then, Executive Privilege (combined with a lot of stalling and classification). Obviously Enron didn’t have those defenses.
But this comparison cuts across the entire Bush reign. When the economy was tanking, they created the numbers. Those who said (or say) the tax cuts won’t work are simply behind the times, or don’t understand the complexity. Watch how the Bushies come into Congress and face Waxman with those hubristic denials. They still feel like they’ve done the right thing. How different is it than Skilling, who still doesn’t believe he did anything wrong? It’s staggering mismanagement – from the top down.
It’s more than mismanagement, I believe.
This is unbelievable. They almost stole America.
I get into this argument on here all the time. I’m not saying that they weren’t trying to expand their power. They had a willing Congress and they tried to get away with everything they could.
But, first of all, we have to remember that the reason we’re even talking about FISA (or torture, et al) is because they got caught. After the fact, they have tried to change the law, in most cases retroactively, so that they are not guilty of the laws they broke. Sure, they may have tried to justify legally what they were trying to do, but that’s part of the incompetence. Rather than try to do what they wanted within the framework of the law, they went around it every way they could think of.
Thanks ew
“Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided” the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.”
“Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words “in the United States and” after “appropriate force” in the agreed-upon text.”
##”hackery” dackery dock.
I wonder if Yoo has moved into the number one spot on John Deans “who would be number one on your impeachment list”? Dean mentioned that Addington would be number one on his list during one of the Salons at Fdl.
##Does the “alleged” spying on Colin Powell by John Bolton fall into this scenario? I keep remembering those Senate hearings when Senators Biden, Dodd, Kennedy, Boxer, Kerry, Lincoln Chaffee, kept demanding those NSA intercepts that the Bush administration refused to hand over when Bolton was up for the UN position.
The Generals revenge
http://dir.salon.com/story/opi…..s_revenge/
When British Foreign Minister Jack Straw complained to Powell that Bolton was obstructing negotiations with Iran on its development of nuclear weapons, Powell ordered that Bolton be cut out of the process, telling an aide: “Get a different view.” The British also objected to Bolton’s interference in talks with Libya, and again Powell removed Bolton. But much as he may have wanted to, Powell could not dismiss Bolton because of a powerful patron: Vice President Dick Cheney.
The Bolton confirmation hearings have revealed his constant efforts to undermine Powell on Iran and Iraq, Syria, and North Korea. They have also exposed a most curious incident that has triggered the administration’s stonewall reflex. The Foreign Relations Committee discovered that Bolton made a highly unusual request and gained access to 10 intercepts by the National Security Agency, which monitors worldwide communications, of conversations involving past and present government officials. Whose conversations did Bolton secretly secure and why?
Staff members on the committee believe that Bolton was likely spying on Powell, his senior advisors, and other officials reporting to the secretary of state on diplomatic initiatives that Bolton opposed. If so, it is also possible that Bolton was sharing this top-secret information with his neoconservative allies in the Pentagon and the vice president’s office, with whom he was in daily contact and well known to be working in league against Powell. If the intercepts are ever released, they may disclose whether Bolton was a key figure in a counterintelligence operation run inside the Bush administration against the secretary of state, resembling the hunted character played by Will Smith in “Enemy of the State.” Both Republican and Democratic senators have demanded that the State Department, which holds the NSA intercepts, turn them over to the committee. But Rice so far has refused. What is she hiding by her coverup?”
## Were they spying on Powell?
A little OT-For those interested, Scott Horton will be on the other Scott Horton’s show today.
Listen live 11am-1pm Texas time on 92.7 FM in Austin or stream it from KAOSRadioAustin.org.
Thanx for the heads up; will stream it. I’ll listen to him anyplace, any time.
oooh thanks for that. I’ll be away but maybe it will be archived.
ps – did anyone see Dean Edley on Moyers last friday ? – equivocate much perfesser ?!?!
it was all about the campaign but illustrative of the good dean’s mindset
link
Scott Horton interview just started.
That was an excellent one-on-one w/Scott Horton. I’ve finally got to leave for a meeting, but here’s the archival site for KAOS’ Anti-War Radio, the show that did the interview. Looks like they archive everything, so Horton’s interview should eventually come up on it:
http://kaosradioaustin.org/station/archives/6
TTFN
The Horton and the Goyette interview links are usually posted on Antiwar.com a day or two after the interview on the upper right of webpage.
Thanks, kspena. MP3 file of Scott Horton’s interview yesterday is now up here:
http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/…..horton-10/
We can’t lay everything at Yoo’s door alone though. Congress has known for years now about the ”alternative” argument on the AUMF and what have they done? As stupid an argument as it is, it is very easy to lay to rest, isn’t it? Congress passes another resolution. But they haven’t.
Still, the case law is dead against. It’s almost point for point some of what has been tried before and shot down by the Sup Ct – wiretapping specific statute, allegations of some vague empowering references by Congress overriding the statute – specific details in the statute to deal with the situations (like the FISA specifics on a 15 day free for all in the event of war) etc. Went up, was shot down. The down side is the horrible O’Connor opinion in Hamdi.
Oh well.
I apologize is this is posted twice, or if what I’m about to tack on to the end of this is posted more than once too – I keep getting little spinnging wheels and messages my browser is giving messages the site can’t understand so I don’t think this old comment went through either:
********
********
OT
A few of the amoral jerks in Congress finally get around to talking to one of our ex-detainees. And just like no one in the network media paid any attention to the satellite feed of Executive Crimes victim Arar when he spoke to Congress months back, they haven’t paid attention to this testimony by Kurnaz either.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/n…..fies_o.php
So the timeline is that Congress allows an illegal attainder facility, peopled with human trafficking victims purchased using US tax$, to be established while they all run out and buy lapel pins. Hillary Clinton and John McCain on the armed services committee receive daily chiropractic therapy from the damage done by the bizarre stresses placed on their necks as they make sure they never look at what is going on.
Then you have people determined to be absolute ”mistakes” at GITMO (except, of course, that kidnapping and disappearing a ”mistake” out of country for shipment to a concentrated population detention facility is a major breach of the G. Conventions and subject to the War Crimes Act. So suddenly no one wants to release the ”mistakes.”
Some, like Kurnaz, despite years of being held for no reason, at last do get to court. Of course, they first have the challenge of anyone getting access to the super-duper-secret files. DOJ can be so proud – Comey isn’t the only one who can invoke secrecy to help out his buddies. And when attornies do get access to all the exculpatory material in the files they then get threatened that they can’t use it, bc it’s ”secret”
Finally they get to a judge who is appalled and orders release, but DOJ appeals and continues Kurnaz’ torture detention in the concentrated population camps.
ALL OF THIS IS GOING ON PUBLICALLY. In freaking DC. So what does Carl Levin do? He scratches his butt, rushes to huddle with Warner and McCain and Graham and starts the path to suspending habeas so that George Bush’s war crimes victims won’t have access to courts. He says he just meant for the victims who hadn’t already filed cases to lose their rights – God bless his furry little soul – and thank God the Sup Ct in an ’everywhichway’ opinion pretty much agrees that pending cases are not disenfranchised. Leaving open the question of after-filed cases and, more importantly, the question of what ”better” drafted legislation could do to complete the disenfranchising process.
So then we get round two. The US moaning and complaining that other countries ”won’t take” people we’ve been torturing for years (with no one mentioning the fact that we are trying to force foreign governments to agree to hold as prisoners anyone released to them no matter how innocent they were before the kidnap/torture started) while getting to work on new legislation. Legislation that Harry Reid won’t block for love or money. Legislation that he insures will get through, while still being able to blink and pretend he voted ”against” it. Where are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? Making a few lightweight statements on the floor. Only Leahy and Dodd really tried to fight the fight.
And while Dems like Sherrod Brown RUSH to support the MCA and fawningly cling to McCain as their touchstone for that support, we now have Congress, despite a whole RAFT of PUBLISHED stories like Kurnaz’ going on right under their noses in DC courts, and despite the publicized Arar case being decided during the actual build up to the MCA vote – a charlatan Congress crawling before George Bush and doing what even the OLC opinions did not and could not – – a Congress making it an irrebuttable presumption that ANYONE termed an ”unlawful enemy combatant” at a kangaroo court be irrevocably put into that status – while taking all habeas rights away.
And now, NOW, they hold a little under the radar session to tsk tsk over Kurnaz’ story.
Which, btw, includes descriptions of his ”water treatment” as well. Three waterboardings evah? Yeah, right.
Well said as always Mary. Yoo is despicable and should be disbarred (and lose his tenured position on the basis of academic dishonesty), but he had a huge supporting cast within the administration and Congress. Senator Levin is high on my list of Dems that I would love to see lose their seat.
(((Mary))) so good to have your voice here. hafta go (crap!) but will enjoy reading you later
be good to one another and have a FDL Day!
”Congress by statute [in the AUMF] had confirmed and supplemented the President’s recognized authority under Article II of the Constitution…”
How can the Constitution be supplemented without being amended? The argument is absurd on its face and a thumb in your eye.
Oh Yeah look who Amy Goodman has on today
Hans Blix talking about Iraq and Iran
http://www.democracynow.org/
Just an aside, but one thing Congress has done, by statute, clearly and unequivocally, is to stand the old FISA concepts of warrantless spying only for intel gathering on agents of foreign powers on their head and instead set up a free for all of gathering info for criminal proceedings without having criminal probable cause and gathering intel about domestic persons and citizens for the primary purpose of harrassing or investigating them on criminal matters with only a wildly tangential, barely to be recited, link to any kind of intel gathering whatsoever.
It’s about time someone seperated the two verbs in Patriot and focused more on the second one and less on spreading the first one around on the heads of a buch of schmucks in the legislative and executive branches.
You know, for some reason, this cracked me up. These days, Congress neither knows, nor gives a damn, about the separation of intel etc. from due process criminal investigations. All fruit is good fruit. Jeebus, Congress itself is engaging in unfair parallel proceedings against the concept of due process; just take a look at what it did to Roger Clemens. Congress now routinely, when it sees a glossy standard criminal case (but not uniquely in the purview of Congress), says “lets get em in for hearings and put em under oath”. This is fundamental stuff historically; yet nobody says a thing. It is freaking outrageous.
I also note the return of one of my favorite phrases, “surveillance activities acknowledged by the President”, in one of the Benczkowski quotes Marcy cited. The three card monte shell game rears it’s ugly head yet again. The AUMF/Art. II bunk too. How special.
Yeah, they’ve clearly solved all of the country’s major problems, so they can spend time on things like NFL scandals. [/snark]
I think about half of Congress needs to be kicked out on its collective rear.
(Did you hear that Boehner wants Waxman to apologize to Issa? Never mind that Waxman is doing the job he’s being paid to do, and which Boehner never bothered with ….)
Don’t even think of acquiecing to that bs, Henry. I’ll be calling yr. office later to say hi (Waxman’s my Rep, great office personnel here locally BTW).
Fun Factoid about Darrell Issa- despite (or because of?) all the wack things he did in his wild & frivolous youth, Darrell Issa is now worth between $135–677 million.
I think he should go home and spend it. He earned it through hard work, I’m sure.
Yep, that caught my attention, too. So how precisely Mr. Benczkowski are the surveillance activities not acknowledged by the President justified these days with the 2001 or 2006 opinion? Or perhaps is it yet another opinion altogether hidden under a fine coating of pixie dust???
I’m lazy and a slow typist; for “NSA surveillance activities acknowledged by the President”, how ’bout “NSA-SAAP”?
“Unless Congress … sought to … warrantless searches… — which it has not — then the statute must be construed to avoid [such] a reading.”
Obviously Yoo never heard of the Bill of Rights that also limited warrantless searches.
Unless Congress … sought to restrict… warrantless searches… — which it has not — then the statute must be construed to avoid [such] a reading.
Sorry about the bad edit.
How long will it take to undo this stuff? Can a new administration just sign Executive Orders or do new laws have to be enacted?
Another question – how will we ever know how much of this stuff went on?
It will take a combination of both enforcement by Congress of current legislation coupled with new legislation. If we leave it to the next President to issue a new set of Executive Orders to replace the old ones, there will be nothing to prevent a future President from issuing yet another set of Executive Orders that lands us right back in the fix we are in today — or worse.
At about 1:00 pm next January 20, President Obama should issue an Executive Order that says, in effect, “All Bush-Cheney era EOs are suspended immediately pending review, after which they will be either reaffirmed, superseded or abolished, as determined appropriate.”
Agreed. All I’m saying is that is insufficient to protect us from future abusive Presidents.
Much more will need to be done on the part of Congress to prevent a recurrence of our current national nightmare. This is the thing that makes me crazy in our obsessive fixation on the Presidency, we are in dire need of Congress behaving as a co-equal branch that is more directly responsive to the interests of their constituents (as opposed to the interests of their campaign donors). At the moment, I am much less interested in a strong and honest President, than I am in a stronger more responsive Congress.
“Another question – how will we ever know how much of this stuff went on?”
And another question: How long will it take the new president to figure out what IS going on– in its full length and depth?
The new president will have to establish a new Department to Undo Hideous Fuckery.
Bob in HI
Scott Horton lends his credibility to the Main Core article.
Hey! Off blog/net, I have coined a new phrase I am rather proud of. I want to test drive it here.
“Bush and Cheney’s legal opinion in a Cracker Jacks Box boy, John Yoo.”
Whadda ya think?
As long as the prize automatically jumps out of the box and chokes someone, while simultaneously crushing the nearest childs testicles… It’s a keeper, bmaz.
And yes, I resent these cretins for making my brain think this way.
No adminstration in history has been as secretive, and as error-prone, and those aspects are related.
They hid their decisions from scrutiny, to avoid criticism and debate.
This has 2 consequences:
1. They did not get to improve the decisions with the knowledge of others.
2. Lie, evade and weasel as they might, the Bush administration has no one to blame for its failures.
EW: You say
when it should read
Just saying.
True enough–but I think that’s all the ones he has been trying to declassify since seeing the opinions last fall.
It would be helpful if we were able to see the fourth memorandum, given that the other three are out there.
Do you have a link? There’s nothing I could find on Whitehouse’s site.
The other three are not out there. As with this opinion, Whitehouse was only able to declassify one sentence capturing the main idea of the opinion. This sentence appears in the DOJ letter.
Though I should make one clarification. The exact language I cite here I got via email.
At the time JudgeADTaylor wrote of Bush, ‘in this country there is no such thing as a hereditary king’, to me the language appeared a trifle overbearingly parental, though an admonition well deserved, even for its patent lack of deference toward the executive. Yoo’s politics seem to foster that anachronistic way of viewing our form of government, after all, it was precisely the kind of government our constitution was written to shun; and ADTaylor’s criticism seems to become more enduring as time passes. Similarly, Yoo’s informal interview text from Esquire in which he complains several times about the US courts, seems revealing of his dislike of oversight. A frequently conservative, but in election years more pragmatic, news entity in CA published an article this week which attempted to look at Bush’s record on suppressing science in court confrontations through this same monarchical lens, showing the administration’s guardianship of resources as a concept transparently venal. Some of the article’s judge cites scolding Bush administration attorneys are apt. There is a strong streak of heedless profiteering in the Republican ethos, a trait Bush has emphasized. Yet there are other kinds of Republicans; the name of one appears obscurely in a recounting of how one national park expanded to cover thirty miles of seashore in one western state, in this article with a few nice photos of a peaceful place.
How could this possibly be hackery?
FISA’s sole purpose was to rein in an errant executive that had committed surveillance crimes, in a context that included not only Nixon’s documented wrongs, but discoveries of J. Edgar Hoover’s massive files of dirt on decades of his and the reigning administrations’ political opponents. But John Yoo says there’s no indication Congress intended FISA to restrict the President’s authority because the statute doesn’t say, “we intend to restrict the President’s authority”. It just does it.
The authorization to use military force against al Qaeda does not mention FISA in giving the President authority to retaliate against those who had attacked us on 9/11. But Yoo and his DOJ continue to infer that it did, and generally, that no statute can restrict the implied authority of the President’s Article II powers.
Oh, and Benckowski claims that taking a legal mulligan in 2006 excuses the President picking up his ball and dropping it in the cup in 2001. Somehow that doesn’t quite seem to comply with the rules of golf, or the law.
Hey! Christy Hardin Smith is up over on the new ACLU Blog, taking a stand for liberty.
I’m having trouble getting the embedded link to work, so here it is:
http://blog.aclu.org/2008/05/2…..le-of-law/
Bob in HI
A gutted FISA and immunity for telecoms, and hence Bush and Cheney, is what’s on the table now.
Think Progress is reporting at least four more people were waterboarded than has thus far been revealed.
1. The German man in the video, Murat Kurnaz.
2. Kurnaz said “others” told him indicating more than one person told him (therefore at least two).
3. The Justice Departments IG Report from yesterday lists one more in 2004.
Also, Team Torture calls drowning torture “water treatment” in order to conceal how often it occurs.
22 – I think I like it, but I had to explain to my niece a couple of years ago what a cracker jacks prize was, so I feel old now thinking about that exchange.
And now someone who has been flypspecking the DOJ IG report mentions our role as torturers for the Chinese.
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4894921
Apparently we “softened up” the Uighurs we had mistakenly purchased, and then for snickers and giggles we let Chinese intel have their way with them at GITMO too.
The Chinese Uighurs whose case made it to court, btw, are the 5 who were released. Not some random five, but five who had a case that went up before Judge Roberts (who resigned from FISC over the revelations of the secret warrantless programs) where Roberts had to detail the Kafka-esque situation of the 5 who were, as he held, completely innocent of ever having been enemy combatants of any kind, legal or otherwise, but who were outsiders when the community was littered with flyers from the US, indicating that they could round up outsiders and sell them for big money to the US.
And yet, his holding was that he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t order their return to China because they were refugees from China, hanging out in Afghanistan hoping to get visa into Turkey where they hoped to get jobs. He couldn’t order that they be allowed into the US, bc immigration was solely discretionary in the Executive. He couldn’t order some other country take them. And so, he issued his opinion that would have broke your frickin heart about what this country has become, if you gave a damn.
YEARS BACK he issued that opinion. Years. And only as it was going up on appeal, this holding that the Uighurs were not enemy combatants, that the US got their act together and found someplace to send them – so that the appeal would moot.
Torturing on behalf of another sovereign? That’s really I suppose what the extraordinary renditions are about, still it is odd that these arrangements are made by those who find the UN a threat to national sovereignty. While this stance apparently finds that there is a realm of concerted action beyond the the jurisdictional sovereignty of nations, this is a zone of cooperative depravity rather than one of cooperative civilization. Its something of an unratified treaty of tyrannical interests. This rationalization stems from an apology for the idea of rights being state dependent rather than a natural evolutionary human development. Its Scalia’s argument denying the existence of rights not specifically articulated in positive law. I suppose the attitude with respect to nomadic people is not so different than the attitude toward the American Indians in the context of enclosing and surveying their range. But the movement against slavery for instance was a moral argument arising of the hearts of the people.
Seems like the attack on a dislocated people is right out of the play book of Hitler and Stalin and the Sudanese warlords for that matter. The incentive against nomads is always economic. The argument is that because these people are not protected by positive legal right in a jurisdictional context they are fair game for any atrocity imaginable. Who is not convinced now that the characterization of Bush as a compassionate conservative was a cynical fraudulent arrogant ploy to seize power playing the hoodwink against the better angels of the people. How utterly depraved.
This is clearly a historical perspective but thats the thing about a rule of law that recognizes rights. It is utterly dependent upon an historical kind of consciousness as a bulwark against atrocities juxtaposed to policies founded on the tyranny of insatiable greed that permits barbarity.
The global community of human depravity is not really much of a shining light upon a hill.
You know things only moot out if SCOTUS says they do. In FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life on political advertising, the case was moot but they resurrected anyway because they wanted to rule on the issue.
Vincent Bugliosi makes the case for prosecution of Bush (and minions I would guess?) for murder.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..02427.html
Random thought–
I wonder what Poppy Bush thinks of what Junior has done to his once-beloved CIA?
Cheney may be an expert at government backchannels, but Poppy and his BFF Baker are no slouches at that, either.
So methinks that perhaps Poppy is worried that the mess his son is making will tarnish his own legacy, too. And I wonder what he’s doing about it.
Just askin’
Bob in HI
Well, they moot, too, when the relief requested (release from GITMO) has been granted, Sup Ct or no. A new case asking for different relief is not off the table though.
From the OIG report, p. 30: The collection of intelligence at GTMO is pursued primarily through detainee interrogations, but also through [4-8 words redacted]
Most of the redactions so far seem to relate to locations of CIA site. A couple relate to specific decision-making tactics of the FBI. I’m not getting this one.
53 – videos? audios? from surveillance observations when they are not being interrogated.
Or some have alleged that people pretended to be their lawyers (not sure if that would be “interrogation” or not per se) and the lawyers have claimed there has been eavesdropping on the lawyers communications with the detainees and possibly surveillance in general of the lawyers in their communications with all clients. As a matter of fact, I think there are motions filed and pending on this – the lawyers requests about info being obtained from their communications with their GITMO clients or other clients.
I dunno and have no gut on that, just throwing that out as a fwiw.
I’ll buy into the surveillance of lawyers with their clients (probably without too, but i doubt that leads to much evidence). Interrogators posing as lawyers? Heh, there’s a new way to dump on lawyers.
From the OIG report, p. 39.
I look forward to Attorney General John Edwards directing investigations into illegal torture, rendition, wiretapping, politicization of government agencies, prosecution of political opponents, programming of voting machines, voter suppression, lying about war and everything else, waste of taxpayer money, and destroying evidence. I don’t think the country can go forward without prosecution of this criminal administration, and the torture and wiretapping should be the easiest to pursue.
If this happened I might believe in this country and our justice system. Until then still looking at land in Costa Rica.
Living in a country where most Americans have their pedals to the metal getting to the mall while their country is responsible for the deaths of over one million Iraqi people and 4 million Iraqi refugees has just become too much for some of us. I don’t want to have to push this hard for my leaders to do the right thing.