Rolls Royce And The Incomparable Imperialists

During my college years, I spent several summers working at a classic automobile restoration shop in Santa Monica. One of the most spectacular pieces of automotive machinery that I have ever seen in my life was in the shop over two of the summers, and I had the privilege of working on it. A 1913 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. One of the finest cars ever made, synonymous with quality and character, and solid to a fault.

Today, I am moved to hold another Royce in that reverence. Judge Royce Lamberth of the United States DC District Court. From Guantanamo to Cobel to a host of other important cases, Judge Lamberth has had the guts and determined conviction to to make tough, fair and necessary rulings that question authority and stand up to big government and behind the common citizen. He is a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, and we need a lot more like him.

Here is today’s example of how it is done by Lamberth. From the Washington Post:

Lawyers representing many of the 265 detainees at Guantanamo Bay say they are heading for a unexpected logjam that could delay federal court hearings: a shortage of interpreters.

After the Supreme Court ruled that terrorism suspects held at the military prison in Cuba have a right to seek their release in federal court, lawyers are gearing up for what they expect to be an avalanche of legal briefs and new evidence filed by the Justice Department. Lawyers say they are trying to rush to meet with their clients in advance of cases that judges may want to hear quickly.

"The shortage of interpreters will pose a problem, because it’s already difficult enough to get to Guantanamo and to see one’s client," said Martha Rayner, a lawyer who represents two detainees and is also a clinical associate professor of law at Fordham University Law School in New York. "But without an interpreter, the meeting can’t take place."

The issue concerns lawyers so much that they clashed with the Justice Department recently when the security clearances for several Arabic interpreters were rescinded for unexplained reasons. Worried the pool would grow even smaller, the lawyers said they enlisted the help of U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who prodded Justice officials into fixing the clearance problems.

When a lay journalist reports that Judge Lamberth "prodded Justice officials", you can be pretty sure that he excoriated them. Good. That’s why he is the Rolls Royce in this tale. Follow the link and read the entire story, it really is a superb demonstration of the heroic and special work of a few fighting for trurh and justice on behalf of the detainees, and the malevolent bad faith occasioned by the Bush/Cheney InJustice Department. The oppressive hatred and disdain by the Administration toward the rule of law and simple humanity is staggering. Theirs is the way of classic imperial fascism; taking, plundering and oppressing everything in sight.

By the way, isn’t it amazing, in what they call the defining clash of civilizations in all of history, that seven years after 9/11 the Bush Administration still doesn’t have any freaking interpreters? And they are actively jerking around the security clearances of the ones that do exist. Of course they are. That is just what they do.

And, for the next item of evidence. Guess what, The Great Big Book of Everything comprehensive database the US Government is compiling has been being expanded in new and fun ways. Again, from the WaPo:

The federal government has been using its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations.

Officials say the Border Crossing Information system, disclosed last month by the Department of Homeland Security in a Federal Register notice, is part of a broader effort to guard against terrorist threats. It also reflects the growing number of government systems containing personal information on Americans that can be shared for a broad range of law enforcement and intelligence purposes, some of which are exempt from some Privacy Act protections.
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The data could be used beyond determining whether a person may enter the United States. For instance, information may be shared with foreign agencies when relevant to their hiring or contracting decisions.
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Under the system, officials record name, birth date, gender, date and time of crossing, and a photo, where available, for U.S. travelers returning to the country by land, sea or air. The same information is gathered about foreign travelers, but it is held for 75 years.
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The border information system will link to a new database, the Non-Federal Entity Data System, which is being set up to hold personal information about all drivers in a state’s database. States that do not agree to allow customs to have such large amounts of information may allow the agency to query their databases in real time for information on a traveler.
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The notice states that the government may share border records with federal, state, local, tribal or foreign government agencies in cases where customs believes the information would assist enforcement of civil or criminal laws or regulations, or if the information is relevant to a hiring decision.

They may be shared with a court or attorney in civil litigation, which could include divorce cases; with federal contractors or consultants "to accomplish an agency function related to this system of records"; with federal and foreign intelligence or counterterrorism agencies if there is a threat to national or international security or to assist in anti-terrorism efforts; or with the news media and the public "when there exists a legitimate public interest in the disclosure of the information."

I don’t know if you all remember or not, but it seems like just yesterday that we were discussing what the American police state is shaping up to look like in the "FISA Redux: The Slippery Slope Becomes A Mine Shaft" thread. And now this. Beautiful. Hey, do that have that domestic spy satellite system up and going yet? Cause they only have five more months to do maximum damage you know.

In parting, I would like to apologize to the Chrysler Imperial. The title to this post was a take off on classic cars. A reverential association for the Rolls Silver Ghost, and an unfair one for the Chrysler Imperial, which was often advertised as "The Incomparable Imperial". The Imperial was a very fine series of automobiles, and does not deserve to be associated with the Bush Administration.

UPDATE: In comments, Mary makes an excellent point as to my neglect in not also mentioning Judge Royce Lamberth’s heroic white hat duty in his term as head of the FISA Court. It has, from the outset, been my contention that Lamberth, and his successor at FISC, Colleen Kollar Kotelly, were very likely the real impetus behind the sudden DOJ/OLC much ballyhooed Ashcroft Hospital Heros fable. These clucks were not principled heroes determined to do the right thing in that situation, they were far more likely motivated by self serving panic, and fear of losing their right to practice their livelihood, resulting from the FISC taking them to the woodshed over the illegal warrantless wiretapping program ordered by the White House that they were facilitating. Mary, who was also an initial investor in this theory, sums it up quite nicely:

I’m glad to see the post give some greatly due recognition to Judge Lamberth. In addition to what you’ve mentioned, he also made a strong effort via his position with FISCt to try to make DOJ reconsider Teh Program (having the Chief FISCt judge tell DOJ up front that he’s barring the program from tainting his court bc he believes it is unconstitutional makes that ‘good faith’ argument Obama and the Democratic Congress were selling a laugher) and his position, combined with Kollar-Kotelly’s later, probably did more to prevent rampant abuse than anything else.

While he was on it, the FISCt also tried to rule in favor of keeping some kind of limits on the Executive doing the things you are writing about in your FISA posts too (In re Sealed Case). Unfortunately, there the failings of the FISCt system, with the FISA appellate court being able to “overrule” with no advocate being able to really argue the case against the phalanx of DOJ lawyers, and with a resulting, almost incomprehensible ruling whose dicta has been used support the kind of things we are seeing now and whose ruling could not be appealed (bc the party in interest defendant was never before the court to start with) – – it’s a mess that needs work.

But instead Congress has diligently gone to work to make more of a mess. And when Congress was offering up the DOJ playbook on how horribly difficult and time consuming it was to try to get a FISCt warrant, Lamberth went out on a limb and, even though Congress did not call him to testify, he made sure it went into the public venue, via some speeches, that he granted FISCt warrants from his car, by phone, as circumstances required, and had been roused in the wee hours of the morning to grant one as well.

He even went further and said that as Chief Justice, briefed on “teh program” he had seen both George Bush’s way and FISA’s way, and FISA was better. And the Democrats in Congress still studiously avoided having him appear to testify, even in closed session. Lamberth has been the kind of Judge you are forced to respect, even when you don’t always agree. He’s a judge who believes in the Constitution and believes that lawyers have to be bound by their code of ethics AND by the law, and he’s not too afraid of the neocon machine to put consequences on the table for lawyers who treat his courtroom like a shell game kiosk at a low rent county fair.

Indeed.