Get Your Torture Team Trading Cards

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I said in my last post that I was going to do a post dedicated to pitching the Center for Constitutional Right’s new Torture Team trading cards [link fixed]. And here’s that post–showing off what the cards look like.

As I said in the comments to the last thread, CCR has played a critical role in protecting the Constitution over the last eight years–they were the first organization to file a habeas petition for one of the Gitmo detainees. So while you can get a small batch of these cards for free, if you can afford it, please consider paying for the complete set. (CCR originally wasn’t going to charge for these at all, but when they unveiled them at the torture panel I did with Jerry Nadler at Netroots Nation, we all thought they should charge money.)

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23 replies
  1. WilliamOckham says:

    I think I like Addington’s card the best. I’m not sure why. By the way, the signature on the back of Bush’s card looks like the real thing. My brother has an original GWB sig (on a Southwest Airlines cocktail napkin).

  2. Neil says:

    I hope they come in a five pack with bubble gum so you can collect ‘em all.

    I’d also like to see the blue Livestrong wristband become a big seller for people across the nation who support robust health care reform.

    Here’s your moment of zen …Pats Redskins Fri 8 EST.

  3. Rayne says:

    Oh, I think there’s a crying need for a 52-card playing deck of torture players, don’t you?

    There’s the Executive Office/Fourth Branch suite, the DOJ suite, the CIA suite and the DoD/DIA suite.

    Heck, we probably have enough extras to make a Chutes-and-Ladders-with-Oubliettes board game, combined with Pokemon-like cards, don’t you think? Especially if we add in cards for the detainees.

  4. MadDog says:

    OT via Josh Gerstein at Politico:

    Judge: lawyers must see secrets in spy suit

    A federal judge is insisting that the Obama Administration grant security clearances to private lawyers in a civil suit, despite the Justice Department’s arguments that the only the Executive Branch can decide who has the need to know classified information.

    In an opinion issued today (19 page PDF), U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth rebuffed the administration for taking an overly expansive view of executive power in the area of state secrets and classified information. The decision came in a lawsuit brought by a Drug Enforcement Agency official, Richard Horn, who claims he was illegally spied on by the CIA station chief and a top diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Burma in 1993. Horn alleges his American embassy colleagues put a coffee-table in his home which contained some kind of surveillance device…

    …”The state secrets privilege is a judicial doctrine, and when the Court evaluates the privilege, its evaluation is not merely and academic exercise,” Lamberth wrote. “When the privilege is denied, the Court has the ability to order the information disclosed in litigation. Were the rule otherwise, the Executive Branch could immediately ensure that the ’state secrets privilege’ was successfully invoked simply by classifying information, and the Executive’s actions would be beyond the purview of the judicial branch. This would of course usurp the judicial branch’s obligation ‘to say what the law is.’”

    • MadDog says:

      And Lamberth wasn’t pulling any punches either. From his order (19 page PDF):

      …Finally, the Court evaluated the credibility of the government’s representations given all the circumstances of the case. The Court noted that it did not give a high degree of deference to the government because the government has already committed fraud on this Court and the Court of Appeals regarding what information is covered by the state secrets privilege in this case…

      (My Bold)

      • Mary says:

        And looky – he managed to do it in an non-torture, non-FISA case. Hehehe. Set your precedent in a good facts case if you can.

        Oh, wait -here’s an idea. Maybe Gov can hire Fran Townsend as a special counsel to go argue this one in front of him?

        I’ve always been struck by how Demobamas managed to just ignore the things he said when he was off the FISCt bench, like:

        Lamberth declined to say whether he believes the National Security Agency’s wiretap program was illegal.

        But he said he has “never seen a better way” to conduct domestic spying than under the national security court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The court secretly approves warrants for wiretaps and searches in counterterrorism and espionage investigations.

        “I’ve seen a proposal for a worse way,” Lamberth said. “That’s what the president did with the NSA program.”

        And what the Dems did with the FISA amendments they are responsible for passing.

        Sidelight – when I googled to find that link, I found this one first,
        about the FISCt moving out of Justice. It’s pretty interesting in some of what Lamberth does to, again, beat down that DOJ legend of the inability to get FISCt warrants for exigent matters.

        The judges described a grueling job that wears down psyches and often takes place outside any courtroom.

        Lamberth recalled many middle-of-the-night visits to his Virginia home by carloads of agents and government lawyers seeking emergency orders to conduct searches or monitor phone calls and e-mail accounts. On the morning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Lamberth approved warrants over his cellphone, he said.

        I like the pic in that story too – it says, “don’t piss off the court” in a way words alone could never do.

        http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01730.html

      • Mary says:

        Thanks for linking his opinion.
        He barely gets started before he notes that Panetta’s public and classified declarations were “inconsistent.”

        He also clues us in on the fact that here, too, Gov has argued that IF the courts bat down there litany of arguments preventing any access, to the point where the court did order CIPA like submissions, the court “could not allow the parties to discuss this information with their lawyers.”

        • MadDog says:

          And I’ve got to ask where the heck is that new states secret privilege policy that AG Holder said would be made public in “a couple of days” many moons ago?

          And secondly, how can AG Holder let these DOJ attorneys make such fools of themselves in front of Lamberth?

          Who exactly is running things over at DOJ that this kind of nonsense is still being tolerated?

      • MadDog says:

        Yup, I remember it well. And I remember you saying:

        …This is a huge development. Lamberth is no ordinary judge making these findings, as noted above, he is the former head of the FISC Court and his opinion is going to carry a lot of weight in courts all over the country. He is flat out suggesting a CIPA process, which has only officially been utilized in criminal cases to date, be applied in Horn, a civil case…

        One can only hope that Federal judges all over the country are paying attention, and I expect from your statement, that indeed, they are!

  5. boghos68 says:

    Love the cards! Thank you. I bought 5 sets and added a donation. You’re right, lawyering ain’t cheap.

  6. acquarius74 says:

    Here is the link to order the cards. I bought 5 sets and also added a donation. Just happen to have 5 grandkids of HS/college age. Hope these cards spark their interest in just what these bastids have done to our country’s reputation and to human rights around the world.

  7. orionATL says:

    it’s occurred to me in the last few months,

    that the obama admin/holder doj’s approach to the torture, gitmo, state secrets, foia, legalities

    may be to let the courts, or, perhaps, force the courts, to make decisions on these matters so that the administration would not have to take sole political responsibility for supporting and forwarding legal claims revealing

    – gov’t docs relating to torture,

    – investigation of bush admin officials

    – status of guantanamo detainees.

    in short, trust the judiciary to do its job – we do have three branches of government.

    • bmaz says:

      That is belied by their actions in promulgating EOs; their actions is fighting Congressional action toward legislation on state secrets and their threat to seek immediate legislation to prevent disclosure of such things as the pictures if the courts rule against them. It is further belied by their newly promulgated rules for indefinate detention and reliance on the Army Field Manual with the deplorable broad allowances under Appendix M. Furthermore, the extent to which they are deceptive, disingenuous and outright fraudulent with courts in order to protect these policies just would not maintain if they “secretly wanted” the courts to do their bidding. Not to mention that if your theory were true, it would pretty much mean they were despicable Constitutional cowards unfit for service to their country and in direct violation of their oath to office.

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