By Libby

I suppose the law of averages would dictate that a tiny handful of the Gitmo detainees really are high value inmates, worthy of prosecution, but judging from the outcomes of the previous miltary hearings that pose as judicial review, I'd say not many of them really are players that deserved the draconian punishment they now suffer. Not that this will deter the administration from trying to make them so. Take for example, Osama's driver.

The Navy lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver argues in a Guantánamo military commissions motion that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 campaign.

Notably, it describes a Sept. 29, 2006, meeting at the Pentagon in which Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, a veteran White House appointee, asked lawyers to consider Sept. 11, 2001, prosecutions in light of the campaign.

''We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election,'' England is quoted as saying.

You'll remember it was this particular political interference that led to the resignation of Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who served as former chief Pentagon prosecutor. But even leaving aside the untoward political machinations for a moment, it defies logic to cast the driver as a mastermind in any AQ plots. In any criminal enterprise, isn't the driver usually the one who's too out of the loop to be trusted with any part of the operation except driving the car? One doubts he was privy to any high level meetings. More likely he would be left waiting in the car.

I mean think about it. Isn't that like holding Hilter's limo driver responsible for the Holocaust? Maybe Hamdan was even a loyal and willing soldier in the AQ organization but the only thing high value about him is likely to be his political value to the GOP in timing his prosecution to influence the election cycle.

By Libby

The attorney purge scandal largely dropped out of the media narrative once "Fredo" Gonzales finally resigned, and nobody has been indicted for the gross politicalization of our Justice system yet, but at least one small step towards justice was finally taken in Alabama.

MONTGOMERY -- A federal appellate court today ordered former Gov. Don Siegelman released from prison while he appeals his 2006 conviction, saying there are "substantial questions" about his case.

That's putting it mildly. The court effectively said the prosecution didn't make its case. As Steve Benen put it in an excellent overview post, "Of course he shouldn’t have been imprisoned; the charges against him have always been a bad joke." The entire justice system has become a criminally bad joke if you ask me.

It's not like Siegelman is the only victim. One can't fail to remember the unfortunate case of Georgia Thompson in Wisconsin. She was wrongly convicted by the same group of politically beholden thugs simply to provide oppo for a failed attempt by the GOP to defeat Gov. Jim Doyle. She also spent many months wrongfully incarcerated and suffered the ruination of her personal life.

I hope I live to see the day when the true criminality of this administration is finally fully exposed and every single perp is convicted and imprisoned for the grievous damage they have done to the rule of law of this land.

By Libby

Here's your 30 second point and click activism of the week. This just in off the transom.

Dear Libby ,

John McCain is breaking the law.

When McCain's presidential campaign was in trouble, he opted-in to public financing through the primary, limiting him to a $54 million spending cap.

But laws aren't for "mavericks"...

McCain's latest spending report, filed by his own campaign, shows he has spent in excess of $58 million so far -- a public admission by his own hand that he has broken the law.

We filed a formal complaint to Federal Election Commission yesterday, and we want you to sign-on for a second delivery of signatures later this week.

Please read and co-sign the letter to the FEC right now.

This one is so simple to sign onto that it won't take ten seconds unless you're a really slow typist. McCain is gaming the system using taxpayer dollars. He needs to be held accountable for ignoring the rule of law. Sign the letter and pass the link on. Let's generate some steam for this issue. Maybe our lamebrained professional media will cover it more fully if we make enough noise.

By Cernig

Remember Rush Limbaugh calling for Republicans to change sides for a day and vote for Clinton in Texas and Ohio just to keep the Dem primary bloodfest going a while longer?

He has a wee problem:

While this all makes for great talk radio and sounds like fun, there is one catch: What Limbaugh encouraged Republican voters to do in Ohio was a fifth-degree felony in that state, punishable with a $2,500 fine and six to 12 months in jail. That is because in order to change party affiliation in Ohio, voters have to fill out a form swearing allegiance to that party’s principles “under penalty of election falsification.”

I assume that encouraging others to commit a felony is itself illegal - aiding and abetting, isn't it?

Hat tip to Mike at CFLF)

Update Rush's defense? Even if you voted McCain, you'd be voting for Democratic principles.

CALLER: Hey, I just wanted to put your mind as ease as it pertains to the potential indictment that might come down against you and other Republican crossover voters who voted in the Democrat primary in Ohio and now potentially Texas. If the basis of the charges would be that the crossover voter has to attest that they'll vote with Democrat values in the fall, then if they vote for John McCain, aren't they still within the confines of the law?

RUSH: Well, you're giving away some secrets, should we have to go to court here. But a very, very, very insightful deduction on your part.

CALLER: Sorry about that, Rush.

RUSH: How in the world -- that's okay. (laughing)

CALLER: It appears to me that you can vote for Obama, Clinton, or McCain and you're pretty much voting within --

RUSH: Democrat Party principles.

CALLER: -- Democrat, correct.

RUSH: Exactly right. (laughing) Arthur, you're a very insightful man.

His other defense is that Obama and Clinton have also called for Republicans to re-register as Dems, although he conveniently forgets that the difference is they're asking for those moderate conservatives sick of the GOP's movement to the wingnut extreme Right to consider switching sides on a permamnent basis, not just for a day.

But after this one - - go on John, throw the bum under the bus. Call for his indictment.

By Libby

I can sum it up in the six words represented by the acronym SCOTUS. The impact of these appointments span generations, not just terms of office. Does anyone really want to take a chance on tilting the court any further to the right than this?

When the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago limited the First Amendment protections available to public employees, faculty groups thought that they had dodged a bullet. While the decision didn’t go the way professors hoped, it specifically indicated that additional issues might limit its application in cases involving public college professors.[...]

The Supreme Court case that has set off this concern has nothing to do with higher education. Rather, in Garcetti v. Ceballos, the court ruled 5 to 4 that normal First Amendment protections did not protect Richard Ceballos, a Los Angeles deputy district attorney who was demoted and transferred after criticizing a local sheriff’s conduct to his supervisors. In his decision, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote: “We hold that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”

Employer discipline? For whistleblowing? I can't imagine a greater need for First Amendment protection than in exposing wrongdoing. Especially in our justice system. But now this ill-advised precedent is being applied more broadly.

In the current case, Juan Hong, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California at Irvine, maintains that he was unfairly denied a merit raise because comments he made in faculty meetings offended superiors. Some of those comments concerned personnel decisions. More generally, Hong said that his department was relying too much on part-time instructors to teach lower-division courses, and that students were entitled to full-time professors.

The district court dismissed the suit, saying that these discussions were part of the “official duties” of professors, and thus under the Garcetti decision were not entitled to First Amendment protection. The court did not determine whether the lost merit raise was related to the comments, and the faculty groups’ brief focuses on the legal principles, not the specific cases.

I don't get the logic of that decision either. How is criticizing the administration part of the 'official duties?' Is it in the job description? The plaintiff's brief argues that "[t]he speech of university professors merits a special degree of protection...". I'd argue that every citizen deserves an unfettered degree of protection for dissent. But as the article notes, this isn't entirely unexpected.

While the brief expresses shock that the Garcetti decision would apply in higher education, the dissent in the 2006 ruling suggested just that possibility. Justice David Souter wrote that the majority decision “is spacious enough to include even the teaching of a public university professor, and I have to hope that today’s majority does not mean to imperil the First Amendment protection of academic freedom in public colleges and universities, whose teachers necessarily speak and write ‘pursuant to official duties.’ ”

I don't think it's all that much of a stretch to imagine a day when this decision is ultimately used to squelch all criticism of the government by any citizen. If we allow a Republican nominee to fill the next vacancy, and there will almost surely be one in the next term, I'd say it's more than just a little possible.

By Cernig

Mickey Edwards, 16-year Republican Congressman from Oklahoma, founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation and Princeton scholar, has found his contrary voice to the Bush?Cheney GOP late in life - but, oh boy, is it a clear one.

The decision to go to war...to send young Americans off to battle, knowing that some will die -- is the single most difficult choice any public official can be called upon to make. That is precisely why the nation's Founders, aware of the deadly wars of Europe, deliberately withheld from the executive branch the power to engage in war unless such action was expressly approved by the people themselves, through their representatives in Congress.

Cheney told Raddatz that American war policy should not be affected by the views of the people. But that is precisely whose views should matter: It is the people who should decide whether the nation shall go to war. That is not a radical, or liberal, or unpatriotic idea. It is the very heart of America's constitutional system.

In Europe, before America's founding, there were rulers and their subjects. The Founders decided that in the United States there would be not subjects but citizens. Rulers tell their subjects what to do, but citizens tell their government what to do.

If Dick Cheney believes, as he obviously does, that the war in Iraq is vital to American interests, it is his job, and that of President Bush, to make the case with sufficient proof to win the necessary public support.

That is the difference between a strong president (one who leads) and a strong presidency (one in which ultimate power resides in the hands of a single person). Bush is officially America's "head of state," but he is not the head of government; he is the head of one branch of our government, and it's not the branch that decides on war and peace.

When the vice president dismisses public opposition to war with a simple "So?" he violates the single most important element in the American system of government: Here, the people rule.

It's been obvious to many of us for a very long time that the GOP had been taken over by people who would prefer that the people not rule. I'm glad to see more and more conservatives figuring that out for themselves in the last year of the Bush presidency. It might just help prevent a McSame presidency continuing Bush and Cheney's work.

Certainly McCain should be seen as going into the elections with all of his policies, along with his candidacy, already the lamest kind of ducks.

By Libby

It's not exactly suprising news, but it's now confirmed that the White House will not be turning over any of those thousands of damning emails. Why? Oh, just a twist on the classic excuse, the dog ate my homework.

WASHINGTON - Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.

I read this and immediately remembered the day I discovered the true meaning of the word punkd. It was over an alleged April Fool joke, except that it was pulled in March and wasn't disclosed until April 4th, but perhaps some of you remember the photoshopped graphic of Rove holding a Coptix folder in Chatanooga.

As I said in comments to that post at the time, I saw an item in a local newspaper about it and the photo was real. Rove was in Chatanooga and so apparently was Bush. What were they doing there? It's hardly a customary whistle stop on a PR tour but it is coincidentally the home of the company that housed the offsite servers that stored the disputed emails. I noted at the time that Congress should have subpoenaed the hard drives before they were destroyed. Too bad they didn't take my advice.

By Libby

With a deceitful administration and and a dysfunctional media, it's sometimes difficult to know who or what to believe about Guantanamo but I just ran across this article from my old hometown paper that laid to rest any doubt about the conditions there. It's subscription only, so I won't even bother to give you the link to the article itself, but here's the material quotes.

There is torture at Guantanamo Bay, said Eisenberg. He claims to have seen the results - a crippled hand, men walking with permanent limps, others with physical disfigurements and mental scars. There is little access to doctors for detainees, said Eisenberg.

One of his clients has a skin disease. Eisenberg suspects it is pellagra, a disease often associated with a lack of niacin or protein in a person's diet. The man's skin flakes off into small piles on the desk as Eisenberg talks with him.

There is no human contact for detainees beyond orders from soldiers, said Eisenberg. Detainees are kept in isolated cells almost 24 hours a day. Captives' cells are staggered so men are not within speaking distance of someone who would understand their language.

There is no rest at Guantanamo, said Eisenberg. The buzzing bulbs that light detainee cells and prison halls are never turned off.

This is hell's waiting room, as Eisenberg sees it, and he wants it shut down for good.

I've known Buz Eisenberg for over 20 years. He's a relentless civil libertarian, a great lawyer who has donated countless hours of free time to civil rights cases and a thoroughly honest man. If he says the inmates at Gitmo are being tortured, then they are being tortured. I surely hope our next president will make shutting down that hellhole a priority.

By Cernig

Senator Ted Kennedy wrote to SecDef Bob Gates on the 14th asking him for details of all interrogation tapes in their possession - and details of any and all tapes destroyed. His letter says, in part:

recently learned that the Department of Defense has been conducting a review of the videotaping of interrogations at military facilities from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, and the Department reportedly has identified some 50 tapes. I’m disappointed, however, to learn that the Defense Intelligence Agency claims to have routinely destroyed tapes of interrogations conducted in the past seven years.

A recent study, "Captured on Tape: Interrogation and Videotaping of Detainees in Guantánamo," by Professor Mark Denbeaux and his colleagues, used publicly available documents to show that more than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantánamo since 2002 and that every one of these interrogations was videotaped by the government. Meticulous logs were kept of information related to interrogations at Guantánamo, so it should be possible to identify how many videotapes still exist and how many have been destroyed.

I hope you agree that no further tapes should be destroyed, and I request that you take appropriate steps to guarantee the preservation of all interrogation tapes in the Department’s effective control, as well as any transcripts or documents related to the interrogations that may exist. These tapes and documents will likely be relevant both to the adjudication of the status of detainees and to congressional oversight of the treatment of detainees.

I ask that you inform me of the number of tapes in the possession of the Department of Defense and your plans for preserving them. I also ask that you preserve any transcripts of interrogations and any records relevant to tapes that may have been destroyed. Please inform me of the existence of such transcripts and records and of the specific steps you will take to preserve them. I also ask that you provide a report on all interrogation tapes the Department is aware of that have been destroyed or are no longer accessible.

I’m sure you recognize the special importance of the questions raised by the interrogation videotapes and the need for Congress to obtain complete information, so that it can perform its constitutional oversight and legislative responsibilities.

It's nice to see someone on the Hill is keeping an eye on this issue, especially when there's been a great deal of official evasion on the issue and a massive disconnect between public statements by DoD officials and military officers on how many tapes were made. The Surgeon General has stated in an official report that "all interrogations are videotaped" while the Pentagon press secretary has told journalists that "this is not a widespread practice” and that it was up to individual commanders whether to tape interrogations. Recently, the DoD "found" fifty interrogation tapes it seemingly didn't know it had but Seton Hall Law experts estimate that at least 24,000 tapes were made in total.

But one of the authors of the Seton Hall report tells me that another official source points positively to far more widespread taping than evasive stetements recently have suggested. Asked for comment, Michael Ricciardelli writes that "As I understand it, all fifty tapes the Pentagon has admitted to having found come from the brig in Charleston. The data indicates that an inventory of other military installations would prove fruitful."

there is another high level Governmental report which confirms the use of video recording of interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because our report focuses rather exclusively upon video recordings in Guantanamo, and we found this other report very late in the process, the information appears only as a footnote therein used to support the use of video recording of interrogations as an overall Govermental Policy.

On July 21, 2004 the Inspector General of The Army issued a wide ranging report on Detainee Operations titled "Detainee Operations Inspection."

Regarding interrogation in Afghanistan and Iraq the Inspector General of the Army stated the following in Chapter 4, "Interrogation Operations," Finding 6, (P.35-36 of Report; Adobe pagination of the document as found on the Pentagon web site, P.48-49.)

"The DAIG Team [Department of the Army Inspector General] observed 2 detainee facilities using digital recording devices, 1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq. Because interrogations are confrontational, a monitored video recording of the process can be an effective check against breaches of the laws of land warfare and Army policy. It further protects the interrogator against allegations of mistreatment by detainees and provides a permanent record of the encounter that can be reviewed to improve the accuracy of intelligence collection. All facilities conducting interrogations would benefit from routine use of video recording equipment."

I would submit that the above Finding of the Department of the Army Inspector General substantiates two important points: 1) It expressly states that in Iraq and Afghanistan, as of July 21, 2004, video recording of interrogations occurred in at least "2 detainee facilities," "1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq;" and 2) After July 21, 2004, interrogations which were not videotaped, were not videotaped contrary to the express and offical recommendation of the Inspector General of the Army and the Secretary of the Army who expressly approved such findings.

Importantly, as the Inspector General found, video recording of Interrogations "provides a permanent record of the encounter that can be reviewed to improve the accuracy of intelligence collection." [Emphasis mine - C]

Perhaps Senator Kennedy could call Gates, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morell and senior officers before an investigative hearing and ask them why exactly their statements show that the Inspector General of the Army and the Secretary of the Army's advice was ignored, if indeed it was, and more importantly....who had the authority to order that their advice be ignored?

By Cernig

You really should read the NY Times' editorial today. Both Tristero and BooMan have the same take on it - that it's about time the NYT and others in the mainstream woke up, smelled the coffee, and got as angry about Bush's impact on the underlying fabric of American civil liberty as leftie bloggers have been for years.

Here's a taste:

For more than two years now, Congress, the news media, current and former national security officials, think tanks and academic institutions have been engaged in a profound debate over how to modernize the law governing electronic spying to keep pace with technology. We keep hoping President Bush will join in.

Instead, the president offers propaganda intended to scare Americans, expand his powers, and erode civil liberties — and to ensure that no one is held to account for the illegal wiretapping he ordered after 9/11.

...The president will continue to claim the country is in grave danger over this issue, but it is not. The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.

The mainstream media gave Bush a pass on all his soft-totalitarian tricks for most of his presidency - the best part of eight long years - before finally deciding to speak up. Let's hope that they've already figured out that John McCain is just more of the McSame and won't give him the benefit of any doubt at all on his scaremongering tactics in the run-up to November.