Category Archives: justice department

The Encyclodpedia of

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Check out a thorough collection of articles about 9/11 via NYMAG‘s Encyclopedia of 9/11.

What Dinh didn’t anticipate was a profound shift in liberalism and, therefore, in the politics of the country. Even with a Democrat now in the White House, the liberalism that protects the right of the individual against the majority—the politics of civil rights and abortion and gay marriage—has diminished, in favor of one that aims to improve the lot of the median man. Obama’s liberalism is for the majority, not against it. This spirit, and the unlikely endurance of the Patriot Act, owes something to the central psychological events of the decade: the vitality and threat of new economic competitors, the social violence initiated by the authors of obscure financial instruments, but first and most of all September 11—each of which evoked a particular feeling, that we were all together, under attack. .::Patriot Act

mumia is still not free

… but he got his death sentence overturned.

mumiapanthers1970.jpg

whats really good though, they decided he needs a new sentencing hearing but not a new trial? Its dope that he wont be on death row anymore, but this seems in a lot of ways like a bogus concession to make it seem like the justus system is doing the right thing when the actual trial was what was completely jacked up, not–objections to the death penalty in general aside–the sentencing.

anyways this post probably belongs on the politricks page, but here are some of Mumia’s thoughts on hip-hop music…

Check out the documentary A Case for Reasonable Doubt in its entirety here.

53-40

That was the vote to confirm Michael Mukasey late Thursday night as our 81st Attorney General.

So let’s see. Now Chuck Schumer will forward legislation explicitly banning waterboarding, since his good buddy Mukasey assured him that such legislation would be enforced. It’ll pass the Senate with something like 90 votes, then it’ll get through the House with similar support. The President will cheerfully sign it, with the new AG by his side, talking about the importance of the rule of law. This will be swiftly followed by the grand tradition of Bush-era bipartisanship, pictured below:

bipartisanship

A day after the bill-signing, Charlie Savage will find, buried deep within the Federal Register, a newly written signing statement which pledges to uphold the waterboarding ban, so long as doing so doesn’t infringe upon the President’s dual role as Commander-in-Chief and head of the unitary executive branch. The story will run on page A9 of the Boston Globe, and might get a two-paragraph blurb in the Washington section of the New York Times. None of the networks will mention it.

Then, sometime in mid-February, Democrats in Congress will claim to be “troubled” and “deeply shocked” that despite AG Mukasey’s previous assurances, evidence continues to roll in that US agents are using waterboarding. There will be an angry letter from Chairman Leahy demanding that Mukasey testify on these matters before the Judiciary Committee. The White House will say no, it being inappropriate for a member of the Executive Branch to be summoned like an errand boy before Congress. The Senate will drop it in the name of compromise.

And far from Capitol Hill, at some undisclosed location, a prisoner in American custody will have water poured down his throat until he begins to drown. This will be done again and again until he tells his captors what they want to hear. To protect our freedoms.

Another one about the AG battle

Admittedly, I’m really entertained by the idea of Pat Robertson endorsing Rudy Giuliani, but that’ll have to wait until later. For now my main concern is the coming Senate vote on Michael Mukasey. As I’ve mentioned previously, Mukasey was approved by the Judiciary Committee and sent on to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. He’s certainly got enough votes to pass, so the only chance of preventing his confirmation would be a filibuster, which would only require 40 votes. And even that might be a challenge.

I realize I’ve been harping on this one, and I think it’s fair that I explain why. Now, y’all may remember this chap, who has a pretty damn good claim on the title of Worst Attorney General Ever:

gonzales

During Gonzales’s tenure as AG, it appears that the Justice Department was transformed into a wing of the Republican political machine, and ultimately collapsed in a sorry wreck of scandal and resignations. Thus, the initial reaction of the Senate to Judge Mukasey was “he can’t possibly be worse than the last guy, let’s get him in there.” This opinion was only furthered by the perception that Mukasey had stood up to the Bush Administration in the Padilla case.
Of course, as is ever the case in these things, a quick look under the surface revealed multiple causes for alarm. Now, as clear as it was (and still is) that Mukasey would not go in for the sort of partisan shenanigans that were the hallmark of the Gonzales DoJ, his record on executive authority is less than reassuring. For example, in that Padilla ruling, despite its assertion that Jose Padilla had the right to legal counsel, Mukasey made it clear that he was comfortable with the President exercising a power to declare American citizens “enemy combatants,” and arrest them without charge.

Allow me to pause a moment to explain that one. Under Anglo-American law dating back to the Magna Carta (and arguably earlier), the government can not arrest you without charging you with a crime, then granting you access to a court of law in which you can defend yourself. For a judge to concede that an executive has an inherent authority to abrogate those rights by determining that you are an “enemy combatant” (a determination which is not subject to review by anyone but the executive) is to undermine one of the founding principles of our government. So, yeah, maybe a problem in the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.

The shit really hit the fan, though, when the Judiciary Committee began to question Mukasey on the use by American intelligence agents of “waterboarding,” which the press refers to as a “controversial procedure,” and the rest of the world refers to as torture. (For an excellent take on the press’s absurd attempts to present a “debate” about the merits of torture, check out this article.) Despite constant questioning, Mukasey refused to state that he thought the practice was illegal. This caused most of the Democrats on the Committee to declare their opposition to his nomination, and suddenly things were looking up.
However, apparently Mukasey met privately with Chuck Schumer and assured him that, should the Congress pass a law explicitly banning waterboarding, he would enforce said law. Now, there are many proper reactions to such an assurance, ranging in eloquence from Senator Kennedy’s to “Whoop-de-friggin-do, we already have about a half-dozen laws against waterboarding, why don’t you enforce those?” But Schumer’s was to vote for him.

So now, short a filibuster, we’ll have an Attorney General who, while neither a partisan flack nor a religious fanatic obsessed with the breasts of Justice, will not stand in the way of a President who claims the power to imprison citizens at will, ignore Congressional statute, and torture people. Indeed, he may even actively abet such claims. This is a problem. To explain why this is a problem, I’ll turn to Senator Lindsey Graham, who (despite his support for Mukasey’s nomination) gave one of the more eloquent statements I’ve heard on these matters during the Judiciary Committee’s vote Tuesday:

The world is not short of people and countries who will waterboard you. There’s not a shortage of people who will cut your heads off in the name of religion. There is a shortage of people who believe in justice, not vengeance.

Kennedy’s thoughts on Mukasey

kennedy

I’m going to have a lot to say about our soon-to-be Attorney General later tonight, but before I head out to work, I thought I’d turn over the floor to Senator Kennedy, who had this to say:

…we are told that Judge Mukasey agreed to enforce a ban against waterboarding if Congress specifically passes one. We are supposed to find comfort in the representations by a nominee to be the highest law enforcement officer in the country that he will in fact enforce the laws that we pass in the future? Can our standards really have sunk so low? Enforcing the law is the job of the Attorney General. It’s a prerequisite – not a virtue that enhances a nominee’s qualifications.

The full text of his statement is here.

Inconceivable!

The White House seems to have a default position whenever it’s asked about Iran, which is to claim that it’s “pursuing the diplomatic track,” or something to that effect. Every time I hear it, I start waiting for some reporter to stand up and tell Dana Perino, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” On Tuesday, the claim that we’re using diplomacy was buttressed by the point that Bush is meeting with the leaders of France and Germany next week. Can’t help but notice, though, how that’s not meeting with Iran.

See, it’s a funny thing about diplomacy. It requires intricate, obscure techniques, like talking to the other country. Not labeling their military a supporter of terrorists and freezing their assets. Not warning third parties that inaction will lead to Armageddon. If they were serious about this, they’d be proposing high-level talks at a nice resort on the French Riviera next month. That way, best case, they solve the differences between the two nations; worst case, they spent a week in Nice. Not much downside there. Beyond that, it’s not like it would lose Bush any political support. He’s already more than established his “tough-on-terror” credentials. To go ubergeek for a moment and use the post’s second obscure quote: “There is an old Vulcan proverb: only Nixon could go to China.” Same deal here. Of course, it’s so logical and so potentially worthwhile that it’s totally guaranteed that Bush won’t do it.

Instead, they’ll stick to what they’ve been doing: letting Cheney ramp up the rhetoric while Secretary Rice tells the Iranians that she’d be glad to talk to them about their nuclear program, just as soon as they agree to give up their nuclear program. Take a moment to digest the logic behind that one.

Oddly enough, it’s not an attitude limited to foreign policy. Check out the first set of answers regarding the Mukasey nomination here (video from TPM):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpCbwBgecw[/youtube]

See, Senate Democrats who are worried that Michael Mukasey might be a radical authoritarian who’s OK with letting the President waive Congressional law, ignore judicial orders, and allow American agents to torture prisoners? Just give him the keys to the Justice Department! Then you’ll have all the answers you want when you ask him to testify again. Or, possibly, when the Deputy AG arrives on the steps of the Capitol to inform you that your services are no longer necessary and the Executive Branch will take it from here.