Film the police

The American People are rising up. The 0.1% will fight back with all the power at their disposal. Document the misdeeds of their minions.

[No, I'm not saying the police are our enemy. But many police departments are being used like corporate armies to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly, restricting the free press, and acting violently against those they are supposed to protect. We must document that and hold their badges accountable, and especially hold accountable the politicians at whose behest they act.]

--the BB

We the People are the government of this nation

Why is this man walking free? - updated with h/t

Report: Bush Lawyer Said President Could Order Civilians to Be 'Massacred'

How is that for a headline? Michael Isikoff reported the following at Newsweek:

The chief author of the Bush administration's "torture memo" told Justice Department investigators that the president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be "massacred," according to a report released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.

So I ask you: giving a president unlimited dictatorial powers violates both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, no?

Then why, in the name of all that is holy (and the rule of law), has John Yoo not been disbarred for violating his oath to uphold the Constitution? Why is he allowed to teach at the University of California? The question of why is he not behind bars for war crimes is related to his justifications for torture, not this.

(All that is ignoring what a smug bastard he is.)

What is wrong with this nation?

When will the rule of law be restored to the United States?

I am just seeing the Bush Crime Regime being given one pass after another.

And I have a few words for the President:

Yo, Barry! Your oath to support, uphold, and defend the Constitution involves enforcing the laws. Laws have been broken. When the hell are you going to start enforcing? Why do you hamper your DOJ? Get with it. Or do you want to go down in history as yet one more sorry-ass lawbreaker? Just saying.

Update:
I forgot the h/t to ImpeachKingBushII

--the BB

Where there is no accountability there is no rule of law

Obstruction of justice:

Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—

Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.

--U. S. Code. Title 18. Part I. Chapter 73. § 1505

Emanuel viewed many of the legal problems that Craig and Holder were immersed in as distractions. “When Guantánamo walked in the door, Rahm walked out,” the informed source said. Holder and Emanuel had been collegial since their Clinton Administration days. Holder’s wife, Sharon Malone, an obstetrician, had delivered one of Emanuel’s children. But Emanuel adamantly opposed a number of Holder’s decisions, including one that widened the scope of a special counsel who had begun investigating the C.I.A.’s interrogation program. Bush had appointed the special counsel, John Durham, to assess whether the C.I.A. had obstructed justice when it destroyed videotapes documenting waterboarding sessions. Holder authorized Durham to determine whether the agency’s abuse of detainees had itself violated laws. Emanuel worried that such investigations would alienate the intelligence community. But Holder, who had studied law at Columbia with Telford Taylor, the chief American prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials, was profoundly upset after seeing classified documents explicitly describing C.I.A. prisoner abuse. The United Nations Convention Against Torture requires the U.S. to investigate credible torture allegations. Holder felt that, as the top law-enforcement officer in the U.S., he had to do something.

Emanuel couldn’t complain directly to Holder without violating strictures against political interference in prosecutorial decisions. But he conveyed his unhappiness to Holder indirectly, two sources said. Emanuel demanded, “Didn’t he get the memo that we’re not re-litigating the past?”

That’s what human rights are to Rahm Emanuel–mere distractions, speed bumps on his road to nine wins or–in the case of health care reform–epic failure.

--emptywheel, quoting Jane Mayer

Rahm Emanuel is just bad news for progressive governance, change one might believe in, and America in general. He is definitely bad news for the Democratic Party. He is, perhaps, Obama's biggest mistake but I fear this nation must pay for that mistake.

Yeah, I loathe the guy.

So don't say I only carp about Republicans.


--the BB

Mitch McConell is a douchenozzle

And that's the nicest thing I have to say about him.

AG Holder issues a much-deserved smackdown.

Here is the opening:

I am writing in reply to your letter of January 26,2010, inquiring about the decision to charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab with federal crimes in connection with the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 near Detroit on December 25, 2009, rather than detaining him under the law of war. An identical response is being sent to the other Senators who joined in your letter.

The decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab in federal court, and the methods used to interrogate him, are fully consistent with the long-established and publicly known policies and practices of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the United States Government as a whole, as implemented for many years by Administrations of both parties. Those policies and practices, which were not criticized when employed by previous Administrations, have been and remain extremely effective in protecting national security. They are among the many powerful weapons this country can and should use to win the war against al-Qaeda.

I am confident that, as a result of the hard work of the FBI and our career federal prosecutors, we will be able to successfully prosecute Mr. Abdulmutallab under the federal criminal law. I am equally confident that the decision to address Mr. Abdulmutallab’s actions through our criminal justice system has not, and will not, compromise our ability to obtain information needed to detect and prevent future attacks.

Read it all here.

It seems that Mr. Abdulmutallab is offering information useful to the intelligence community and our national safety without the use of torture. Imagine.

The whiny ass titty babies on the right are all douchenozzles.

An additional note:

Republicans may have a hard time keeping up their talking point about how reading Miranda rights to the Christmas Day bomber represented a dangerous new direction under President Barack Obama.

It turns out that that back in December 2001, Richard Reid — the “shoe bomber” — was read or reminded of his Miranda rights four times in two days, beginning five minutes after being taken into custody.

Furthermore, the Bush administration specifically rejected the idea of a military tribunal — another step that Republicans have argued should have been taken in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day and was read his rights after 50 minutes of FBI questioning.

--Mike Allen at Politico (h/t to Kos)

Another talking point undercut by those pesky facts.

--the BB

Watch us weasel

bmaz reports at emptywheel:

Mike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman put up a post about an hour ago letting the first blood for the Obama Administration’s intentional tanking of the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) Report. In light of Obama’s focused determination to sweep the acts of the Bush Administration, no matter how malevolent, under the rug and “move forward” the report is not unexpected. However, digesting the first leak in what would appear to be a staged rollout is painful:

…an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

Sigh.

This is not about mercy, reconciliation, or - heaven forfend - truth. It is about impunity. And where impunity prevails the law is irrelevant.

One of my fiercest criticisms of the Obama administration is its refusal to enforce the law where war crimes BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT are concerned.

Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Cheney, Rice, Bush and several others should not be walking free.


--the BB

Speaking of rule of law

I am hugely disappointed in the Obama Department of Justice and Office of Legal Counsel on many fronts. This shit was not OK when Republicans did it and its NOT OK when Democrats do it.

But in a surprise buried at the end of the 289-page report, the inspector general also reveals that the Obama administration issued a secret rule almost two weeks ago saying it was legal for the FBI to have skirted federal privacy protections.

[snip]
The Obama administration retroactively legalized the entire fiasco via a secret ruling from the Office of Legal Counsel.

[Emphasis mine]

Go read more at Emptywheel's Obama Gorging Himself on Poison Fruit.

I intend to hold ALL presidents accountable.

--the BB

Possible murders at Gitmo - don't gloss them over

The Rude Pundit puts it out there:

Torture and Murder at Gitmo: A Risky Political Opportunity If Obama Is Willing to Take It:
The Rude Pundit has said it before, and he'll keep saying it: the Obama administration's failure to investigate and prosecute the crimes of the Bush administration will lead to its downfall. You wanna establish moral authority to "change the tone" in Washington? Then adhere to some goddamned moral code. The laws of the land are a good place to start. As so many members of yer progressive punditry are saying, Barack Obama has to make Bush and the Republicans own the crises we are now in. And one way to do that is to reveal the extent that the United States under Bush tortured innocent people. It's ugly, and it's awful, but, hell, most violent crimes are.

So far the Obama administration has backpedaled on anything resembling holding the Bush crime group accountable. Which suggests Obama may preach rule of law but doesn't really believe in it. Political reality, you say? I offer this political reality: if you eschew the integrity of the law you have no lasting political future.

"Bush did horrible things," the observers in the future will say, "but Obama did nothing about it. The U.S. presidency is corrupt, though and through, devoid of moral principle."

As you read Horton's piece, you eventually get through the violence and the cover-up (as suicides, called "a good P.R. move" by an assistant secretary of state) to the stomach-churning section where, it seems, the Justice Department of the Obama administration is refusing to investigate the case in more than a cursory way. Why? More than likely because of fear of wrecking bipartisanship and ruining that oh-so-precious comity in Congress, under the notion of always "looking forward, not backward." Which sounds so Cheneyesque that it's even more nauseating than the Republican crowing over Scott Brown's victory lap.

Indeed.

I have seen pursuit of consensus paralyze churches. We are watching pursuit of comity destroy the Obama presidency.

--the BB

ALL presidents must be held accountable

I voted for Obama. Enthusiastically. I support him. I criticize him. I want him to succeed. And I intend to hold him accountable. I'm already pretty pissed about several issues.

The Obama administration has, alas, a less than stellar record so far on some significant legal issues.

bmaz writes today on the issue of rendition.

Just to keep y'all informed. And to keep the President on his toes.

We must also remember: (1) He was not and is not the Messiah... or the anti-Christ; (2) he is not a liberal or progressive, he is a left-leaning centrist; (3) he's human; (4) he's trying to clean the Augean Stables of Bush's crime spree and clusterfuck; and (5) it is the job of the People to make him do the right thing.

--the BB

The story line we have been led to believe ... is false in every one of its dimensions

Senator Whitehouse delivered a powerful speech in the Senate on June 9. You may read the full text from The Congressional Record here.

An excerpt:

From open source and released information, here are some of the falsehoods that have been already debunked. I will warn you the record is bad, and the presumption of truth that executive officials and agencies should ordinarily enjoy is now hard to justify. We have been misled about nearly every aspect of this program.

Imagine my surprise. Not.

Dan Froomkin discusses all this here.


--the BB

Imagine: enlightening the citizenry!

WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) - A federal judge rejected on Monday a U.S. government request to keep secret the unclassified evidence that it says justifies the continued imprisonment of more than 100 Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the government cannot keep the documents known as factual returns from public disclosure and must seek court approval to keep specific information secret.

"Public interest in Guantanamo Bay generally and these proceedings specifically has been unwavering," Hogan wrote. "Publicly disclosing the factual returns would enlighten the citizenry and improve perceptions of the proceedings' fairness."

--the BB

... we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Convention....

OMG, General Petraeus acknowledges what we and the whole world know but the Beltway keeps trying to deny or ignore.

Q: So is sending this signal that we're not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does that have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?

PETRAEUS: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again they've beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion. When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Convention, we rightly have been criticized, and so as we move forward, I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena, and to practice those.

h/t to BarbinMD

Can we start the flipping war crimes trials now? Please?

--the BB

I'm shocked, shocked!

If Jane Harman was asking--more than six months after CIA started torturing--whether or not the torture had been "authorized and approved by the President," it's a pretty big clue that the Administration had not given Congress a Presidential Finding. Or, to put it another way, it's a pretty big piece of evidence that the Administration and CIA had failed to comply with the law!
--Emptywheel

Indeed.

--the BB

The photos are out there already

This was not the work of "a few bad apples." This was White House policy!

This blood is on the hands of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and their accomplices AND ON OURS UNLESS WE HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE!

Photo via The Sydney Morning Herald
h/t to Juan Cole

--the BB
[Note: I make no apology for posting photos of the atrocities committed by our government in our name. The truth must be exposed.]

No one does timelines like Emptywheel

Marcy is the empress of timelines in legal and political discussions. She can ferret out the smallest revealing details and put them in order and connect dots.

I light incense and bring flowers.

Because no one in Congress was told that the CIA was going to start torturing in 2002, until it was too late. Pelosi and Goss were told, after CIA had waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times, that CIA might waterboard in the future. Bob Graham was not told of waterboarding at all, according to him. Jello Jay was not at the briefing at which CIA told Pat Roberts "in considerable detail" about waterboarding. The CIA doesn't even say Jane Harman was told about waterboarding specifically in February 2003 (though I assume she was).

The first time CIA can say for certain that any Democratic members of Congress at all were briefed on waterboarding was in July 2004, after CIA had waterboarded for what ended up being the last time, and after their own Inspector General determined they were breaking the law.

And then, in 2005, when CIA was trying to sustain their ability to torture against Congressional wishes, CIA had briefings for Ted Stevens and Thad Cochran with no Democrats in attendance. They had a briefing for John McCain with no Democrats in attendance. They had two briefings for Bill Frist with no Democrats in attendance. They had a briefing for Duncan Hunter with no Democrats in attendance. They had a briefing for Crazy Pete Hoekstra with no Democrats in attendance.

Lindsey Graham says that, "if you were trying to commit a crime ... you would not go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it." And that, as it turns out, is exactly what the public record shows: that the Bush Administration did not tell Democrats about what they were doing. For six months to two years after they started this program, and again when they were under pressure to end it, the Bush Administration did not go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it.

--Emptywheel

The Goopers may now stop whining about what the Dems knew about torture. I have no problem with holding ALL sides accountable to the extent they are culpable, but you cannot - with the least shred of integrity - pretend that there was any equivalency in guilt on the torture front. This one belongs to the Bush White House. Period.

--the BB

Anyone paying attention should know the basics of the timeline

Marcy has some observations on veracity.

DURBIN: So, when members of Congress were briefed of [sic] this, was it before the fact? Were they being asked to authorize these techniques and give their approval?

ZELIKOW: Sir, I think Senator Feinstein mentioned, SSCI is apparently really trying to break down the chronology. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been publicizing chronologies of briefings, which then need to be matched up against when we were actually doing things.

And so, the honest answer is, I don't know whether folks were briefed before the fact.

Yes, Zelikow, you do know whether folks were briefed before the fact. There's the SSCI narrative (to which DiFi's work--alluded to by Zelikow--is follow-up), which states clearly that Congress got briefed after Abu Zubaydah had already been tortured.

[Emphasis mine]

Maybe he's just too busy/important to bother with little things like timelines of the history of which he was a part. After all, facts are so inconvenient.

And this is allegedly one of the "good guys" in the torture storyline.

Marcy also writes this:

The Republicans are working so hard to argue that Democrats were properly briefed because--per Lindsey Graham--if it becomes clear they weren't, then it is evidence of criminal intent.

You think?

I also commend to y'all's attention the op-ed contribution of Vicki Divoll in today's NYT.

Some of her comments:

The C.I.A. is prohibited by law from conducting covert action activities without express presidential approval — and this is not a requirement that the agency takes lightly. The National Security Act also requires that when the president approves a covert action program the two Congressional intelligence committees shall be “notified.” The committees do not have disapproval power, nor can they force changes at that time. But the law does require the executive branch to provide timely, written notice to the full committees — which together consist of fewer than 40 members — of the plans.

It is unlawful for the executive branch to limit notification, as it did here, to the Gang of Four. There is no such entity recognized in the National Security Act. Federal law does provide, however, for notification of fewer lawmakers than the full intelligence committees, but only when “extraordinary circumstances affecting vital interests of the United States” are at stake. Under those very limited situations, the notification may be to the “Gang of Eight,” which includes the majority and minority leadership of the House and Senate, in addition to the intelligence committee leaders.

It should be noted that there is a legal argument that the interrogation program was merely foreign intelligence “collection,” and not “covert action” at all, because it was used to elicit information that already existed in the minds of the detainees. In that case, there is no exception in the law for Gangs of Four or Eight, and every member of the two committees should have been notified.

Of course my strong feelings about torture, its proponents and its defenders as well as its perpetrators, have not gone away, even if I have not commented much amid the recent flood of discussion.

Btw, Barry, if you don't release those photos I, for one, am gonna be mighty pissed. Your transparency promises are fading rapidly into Bushspeak. I believe that while releasing them may (and almost certainly will) in the short run provide fodder for those who hate us, continuing to cover-up and to protect perps will do us far more damage in the long run.

You should release the photos and say, loud and clear: Yes, we did this and it was wrong on every level--legal, moral, and practical. We renounce and denounce any such activities. We shall not allow them in the future and we will prosecute those responsible for such behavior according to the laws of the land (which the President, as a law professor, knows include the treaties of which we are signatory).

That would release an absolute shit storm but it could also restore a great deal of our credibility and national pride. We must deal with the truth.

And what the fuck is Dick Cheney doing walking around instead of his lying, treasonous ass being behind bars? May I suggest he enjoy some leisure travel on the Iberian peninsula?
--the BB

Watertiger said it so well

A few words for Dick Cheney:

Newsflash, you fucking ghoul: your beliefs don't supersede the law.

[Spelling corrected]


A novel thought in his parallel universe, I know.
--the BB

Cowards and bullies and monsters

Torture is the weapon of cowards and bullies and monsters. Cheney is all three. Prosecute him.
--Andrew Sullivan

Read why Andy says this here.

--the BB

A curious omission

Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case -- which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later -- was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.

I guess they never heard of Google or Lexis. Or maybe, just maybe, they don't consider St. Ronnie's era as worthy of emulation as they pretend they do.

You may read about how Reagan's DOJ prosecuted a sheriff for waterboarding in Jason Leopold's article here.

I like MinistryOfTruth's comment in discussing the Leopold article here:

If there is no equality under the law there can be no justice. If a dumbass Sheriff from Texas can go to jail for 10 years for authorizing waterboarding of prisoners, so can a dumbass President from Texas.

I remember reading about the 1983 waterboarding case. The court case is available in PDF format here.

h/t to MinistryOfTruth

--the BB

Rule of law only when the people making and wielding the laws feel like following them?

Mcjoan has an excellent article up today titled "Finding Justice." I commend it to you.

Here's what we know, based on the public record as represented above. A) Torture is illegal. B) The architects of the torture regime were informed that the "harsh interrogation techniques" they intended to use were torture, and that those methods were unreliable. C) Against that counsel from a military agency, torture was deployed--excessively, and it was used in part to extract information from detainees about ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, ties that the best intelligence the administration had access to had already deemed nonexistent, in order to justify the planned invasion--the chosen war--in Iraq.

...

Premeditated scandal, engineered so that it would become political and to maximize the difficulty of the reckoning, so that the opposition could be couched as vengeful, as out for "retribution" rather than justice. They played establishment Washington like a fiddle, and so we are here. Actually debating torture as policy and whether activities, which have been deemed war crimes when done by any other nation in any other time, are acceptable when done by us in response to an attack on our soil. FDR must be banging the lid of his coffin in outrage.

Now that the music has stopped, some poor schlubs have to decide what happens now, if they pull away the chairs or just declare the game over. There are a number of options, none of which are mutually exclusive, for proceeding with investigations and possibly even prosecution. Each has advantages and drawbacks from political and legal perspectives. Each, importantly, represents a choice by our country's leaders. The first of those choices is whether or not to recognize that our government is bound by U.S. and international law to investigate potential war crimes.

Assuming that the government chooses to abide by our obligations, follow me below the fold for a consideration of the possibilities.

...

[If we do nothing] It will have made torture a policy choice that future presidents will feel justified in turning to. Finally, it will mean that we're a country governed by the rule of law only when the people making and wielding the laws feel like following them.

She has followed this issue with intelligence and tenacity and I have relied on her in my posts over the past years.
--the BB