Enforcement of the Convention Against Torture

Perhaps the winds of change are blowing through the District of Columbia, for a change. Professor Manfred Nowak has spoken publicly about his belief that George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld should be brought before a court because of the conditions of imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay. A video of an interview with CNN's Rick Sanchez is posted for context below.



For those readers unfamiliar with the various levels of complicity, such as John Ashcroft's infamous quote, Condoleeza Rice's admission, or Dick Cheney's admission from Taxi to the Dark Side, a few highlights are presented below by liberal pundit Rachel Maddow, for a quick brief.

To summarize the argument even further into condensed legal flavor, Article 4 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment compels member states to prosecute allegations of torture, casting a wide net to catch everyone between the interrogator to those who knew about it and did nothing, in theory. The Text is quoted below.

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture. 2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

This, to state the obvious, is the largest test of the new administration. How will Obama handle these allegations? I hope this is a question that is being asked again in the White House and in various agencies of the Federal Government, to the logical conclusion that these allegations must be investigated as a matter of legitimacy. How the Rule of Law is enforced will set the tone, as it a lack of credible enforcement of the law as it is written set the tone of the Bush Administration. Simply issuing a subpoena to  former officials will not work, just ask Karl Rove. There can be no pleading and begging for a notionally independent branch of government for morsels of information and the respect due such an august body. Flaunting of Congressional subpeonas must stop, and the words of the anointed, yet not confirmed, Attorney General, Eric Holder, are encouraging, if unsettling to certain people, such as Alberto Gonzalez. Unfortunately for the shamed former AG seems to rest precariously on the words of John Yoo, former counselor in the Bush Administration's Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel. 

America Keeps Inching Back Toward Justice

There have been some gains for freedom and for the American people lately that have been overshadowed by the free fall in the stock market. The important thing is that these small steps show that our system still works, even if it draws its inspiration from molasses.

The Justice Department has completed its investigation into the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys and decided that since the Bush administration refused to cooperate with its investigation, Justice would appoint a special investigator. Whether this new investigator will have the power to get the information required to get to the bottom of this remains to be seen, and whether any power given will be effective is a whole other question.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered the release of the Uighers into the United States. What is significant about this ruling is that last part about being released into the U.S. These are Chinese Muslims that were captured in Pakistan during the early days of the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. government has not considered them "enemy combatants" for some time now but will not release them into the United States and will not send them back to China. So the Government has been looking for, and failing to find, any country that will take them in. As with any promising ruling, there are still many appeals to go through.

Baby Steps Toward Justice

Today U.S. District Judge John Bates ruled that Congress can subpoena members of the Bush administration. Unfortunately this is not the end of the legal philosophy of executive privilege since Bates also ruled that these aids can still invoke executive privilege in response to certain questions.

It is interesting to me that this article by Reuters chose to say that it is the Democrats that claim politics interfered with hiring and firing decisions at the Justice Department when an internal investigation by the Justice Department itself came to the same conclusion this week.

The bias in Reuters reporting is interesting because of the way it parallels the line taken by the Republican party in response to the decision by the House Judiciary committee to hold Karl Rove in contempt of Congress.

These are all small steps but they are steps on the path that lead to justice and accountability. We may yet falter on the way but it is proof that our system is not broken and still works. Let this be a lesson to all those who vainly spoke of moving to Canada.

That being said, its all well and good to gloat about Bush and the neo-cons who are using him as a vehicle getting their cummupance, but this story has a portion to it that should upset everyone. The problem is that it is buried past the critical first paragraph of most articles. According to the Justice Department's internal report, Monica Goodling the person under Attorny General Alberto Gonzales in charge of hiring, passed over a highly qualified and experienced counter-terrorism attorny because his wife was active in the Democratic Party. Instead she hired a Bush croney who had no experience working with counter-terrorism in any way. So she put political concerns above national security. Its useless to extend this behavior to other Republicans like some are tempted to do. History has shown us that career politicans are corrupt regardless of what party they belong to. The important thing is to be sure that this individual who put all of our lives at risk for her petty concerns takes responsibility for what she has done and faces justice.

Politicising the Mail Room

We have previously commented on this blog about the propencity of the Bush administration to not only engage in cronyism in hiring but to prefer political supporters over more qualified candidates to the detriment of the function of U.S. governance. The depths to which people were vetted based on their loyalty to the individual that currently holds the office of the President had not been previously revealed. This article describes that it was policy to prefer ideologs at every level of hiring, even down to lowly interns. The ideology-based hiring went so far as to violate the law.

I am not the least bit suprised. Many people would call me cynical for that. Which leaves me wondering at what point, after consistently being vindicated in my cynicism towards government corruption does it cease to be cynicism? When do the people who werent expecting it to get worse get told they are seeing the world through rose colored glasses?

The punchline of the article is that this political monkeying around with the hiring process has not only hurt these specific individuals, but it has hurt the program through which these professioinally inferior, political zombies were hired, and this has hurt the agency of the Justice Department by filling its ranks with substandard ideologs.

Tazers, I Just Wont Let it Rest

Amnesty International, citing its own study on the harmfull effects of tazers.
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=17564
The Canadians are so upset about Tazers they are paying attention to the announced study from the Department of Justice on tazers
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5il1RBXiJauS80Jpyivr-KhVR7uxA
Diane Ream had a show about it yesterday
http://wamu.org/programs/dr/07/12/05.php#18231

Loss of International Good WIll

During the initial phases of the feigned outrage in congress over the use of torture on those in U.S. custody, then Attorny General nominee Alberto Gonzales said in responce to criticism that even if we torture people Americans can never be as bad as the terrorists. It has also been remarked with dismay that the whole way in which the Bush administration has been treating detainees is one of the main reasons we are loosing all of our good will internationally.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002170340_gonzales04.html

For example, Russia has been throwing obstructions infront of international election monitors that they had origionally invited to oversee their current round of national elections. They dont take kindly to any criticism that they might not be behaving like a democracy should and impugn the recent American human rights record and voting irregularities stating that we are not ones to talk down to them about democracy.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iyBfqwTaolA0ETVWNlYycSzVpn8wD8SV0H3O0

Pakistan is less subtle when it points out the speck in our eye to divert criticism from the plank in their own. General/President Pravez Musharrif declared a state of emergency and imprisioned political opponents, and today installed a "caretaker government." Musharrif justifies all this under his countries anti-terrorism laws and points to the U.S. when he justifies locking up dissodents. He says he is doing this to protect his country from radical islamists, but the people he is throwing in jail are the legitimately elected moderates he ousted from power in a military coup. His recent behavior and comments are reminicent of the attitudes of the types of people we have been forced to team up with in Bush's global, generational, war on terror. We have to deal with tribal warlords who see the way we behave and missapprehend it as anti-islam. They say they are also against the Islamists and say they are on our side. Once they have our support they proceed to be corrupt, violent, crime lords.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2GeoguY159A&refer=home

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071107/Malalai_Joya_071107/20071107/

Rage for Breakfast

In a case of trying to have one's cake and eat it, too, the Bush Administration, through the Departments of Justice and State (re: more political interference in the federal bureaucracy) is pushing Congress to not adopt the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act, which appears to be the brainchild of savedarfur.org . As loathesome as the conduct of the Bush Administration may be at times, this is by far the worst case of hypocricy and ineptitude that has been demonstrated thus far. I mean, it may not seem like the most pressing issue in the world to some, and I'm not going to touch upon the obvious question that this viewpoint raises. However, in this situation, even a little practical U.S. support in the form of even an AWACS or two tasked to administer a no-fly zone to support the UN Peacekeepers, could go a long way toward bringing about a sustainable resolution to the issue. Given the strong response that the crisis drew from the administration in the past, notably in the speeches of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, one would think that they might consider more than just their political backing. Which brings me to, perhaps, the most important question raised by this entire affair, just who is the administration protecting? Whose stock price stands to take a tumble after retirement funds and pension boards all over the country divest themselves of corporations doing business in the Sudan?

Rage is clinically proven to be a better stimulant than a morning cup of coffee.

Election Reform

I just want to point out an issue that is only tangentally related to this article. Election reform is a real issue. The Republican party in Ohio was found guilty of interfearing with the last presidential election. And Ohio being the key state you would think that would have brought the results into question. As usual noone payed it any mind. The Republicans are mindfull that there is at least nominal public outcry for reform of the electoral process after indecision 2000. Its even been suggested the UN observe our elections like would be done in some african dictatorship, which is a tremendous embarassment for the country that is supposed to lead the free world.

The Republican solution is of the type of double speak we have come to expect from the Red Side in the last 7 years. They move to replace old outmoaded vote counting processes with newer severely insecure voting machines. (the manufacturer of which is a heavy donor to the Republican party) They call this effort to make the voting process less transparent and more prone to interfearence "reform." Thats one type of double speak.

At the same time they also persue voter fraud through the "real ID" program and state laws requiring one present an ID when showing up to vote. This cuts down on the numbers of elderly, poor, and minoritys who vote. They just happen to mostly vote Democratic.
http://www.mlive.com/elections/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1193669477242340.xml&coll=5
Also, actual voter fraud that can be countered by requiring an ID, like a single person voting more than once, or people voting multiple times as different people, tends to favor Democrats. This was an issue during the Justice Department firings of 8 US Attorneys. The US Attorneys were instructed to persue Democrats involved in this type of voter fraud, 8 refused the improper interferance and were terminated. But noone cares about the intracacies of justice, its not sexy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/nyregion/29real.html

Swept Under the Rug Monday: The Wyrm Eats Its Tail

Over the course of the Bush administration, there have been many famous cases of personnel management, such as the case of Valerie Plame. However, there has also been pretty severe staffing problems. Readers may remember, this Oct. 14th story in the New York Times about issues at the "Level I" level, but the problem goes much deeper than that. In the course of politicizing every political appointment in the federal bureaucracy, the Bush administration has pushed or otherwise drove highly qualified people from career positions in the various departments. From the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to the State Department's Foreign Service Corps, from the Transportation Department's Transportation Security Officers (and the Homeland Security Department's Procurement staff), to Patent and Trademark Office's examination workforce, there is a common story of staffing problems. There is a recurrent question in recent times about whether the U.S. can survive the Bush administration, but I think the real question is whether the Bush administration can sustain itself in the one year, two months, and twenty two days that it can legally retain its authority.

In addition to driving down the unemployment rate in the greater Washington metropolitan area, this phenomenon has combined with another alarming trend in the Bush administration, that of over-classification (and more) and retroactive classification, a trend that supposedly found its origin in 9/11. Because of the volume of classified material and the resultant increase in demand for clearances, there is a backlog for security clearances that could force wait times to be most easily measured in months or years. If positions requiring security clearances are being filled by less than the best, it might explain why the Bush administration's approaches to sensitive intelligence work range from the illegal to the dysfunctional.

And the punch line is that the DHS can't properly comply with the Vacancies Reform Act.

Mukasey, continued

Here is an article from the Raw Story that purports to shed more light into the 1995 trials of the Blind Sheikh and his co-defendants. The article is written by an individual who wrote a book on the same subject.

Michael B. Mukasey

Michael B. Mukasey, Mr. Bush's choice to replace Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General, is the latest name to hit the ears of pundits and the pens of editors all over the United States. The most common talking points about him refer to his service as the Chief Justice of the District Court of the Southern District of New York, a prestigious position, to be sure. He's seen to be smart enough to head up the Justice Department, and yet independent enough to sooth even the most partisan Democratic Senator. He's handed down tough sentences, most notably a life sentence to the so-called "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman in October of 1995 for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Already, his nomination has served to lay the groundwork for a partisan battle in the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, between Senators Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter, over issues surrounding the Bush Administration's lack of cooperation with the Congress.

However, how are we supposed to judge whether he is worthy of such a vaunted position as the chief law enforcement office of the United States? Thankfully, the retired judge pubhlished two op-ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal from which we can draw conclusions.

In the first piece, published on May 10, 2004, Mr. Mukasey seeks to redress critics of the USA PATRIOT Act for their "hysteria" in opposing the Act. Hysteria which he went on to describe as "recreational." He goes on to criticize the American Library Association forcriticizing the records disclosure portions of the PATRIOT Act and declining to denounce the Cuban Government for holding 10 librarians in prison, support the "sneak and peek" type warrant that has been the object of much criticism from privacy advocates, and equating Saddam Hussein with terrorism out of the side of his mouth. However, the most interesting and disturbing portion of the piece is the final conclusion in which Mr. Mukasey outlines his vision of the constitution. He argues that since the Bill of Rights is not included in the "boring part" of the Constitution, those freedoms and rights are subordinate to the government established by the body of the Constitution. He goes on to write: "It may well be that those who drafted the original Constitution understood that if you give equal prominence to the provisions creating the government and the provisions guaranteeing rights against the government--God-given rights, no less, according to the Declaration of Independence--then citizens will feel that much less inclined to sacrifice in behalf of their government, and that much more inclined simply to go where their rights and their interests seem to take them." I quote this entire statement as it stands on its own merits. It seems an interesting side note that he specifically refers to these rights as "God-given." His final conclusion is that the population should give the Government the benefit of the doubt because the same Government is notionally responsible for ensuring that you continue to enjoy the Bill of Rights.

In the second piece, published yesterday, Mr. Mukasey advocates for the creation of a special inferior court expressly for the prosecution of terrorism suspects, as these suspects require special handling and financial considerations that, in his opinion, strain the resources of the judicial system. He then goes on to justify his signature on the material witness warrant for the arrest of Jose Padilla. The arrest under this type of warrant, "used frequently" after 9/11," was necessary as authorities in the U.S. don't have the statute that allows for 'investigative detention on reasonable suspicion." The term almost sounds innocuous. In further critiques of the law of the land, Mr Mukasey critiques the requirements of a conspiracy conviction, that the prosecutor is required to release a list of unindicted co-conspirators to the defendant. Because of this provision, in 1995 Osama bin Laden, while in the Sudan, found out that the United States Government thought he might have something to do with the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing. Perhaps his most interesting point, though is a plea for the reader to "consider the distortions that arise from applying to national security cases generally the rules that apply to ordinary criminal cases." I would hope, perhaps against hope, that Mr. Mukasey, should he be confirmed as Attorney General, would keep that from happening. The most ominous and threatening statement of the whole piece is last: "Perhaps the world's greatest deliberative body (the Senate) and the people's house (the House of Representatives) could, while we still have the leisure, turn their considerable talents to deliberating how to fix a strained and mismatched legal system, before another cataclysm calls forth from the people demands for hastier and harsher results." Again, this statement stands on its own merits.

Okay, so his words might not portray him as the best candidate to repair an ailing Justice Department, but perhaps they are only words. The philosophical rantings, if you will, of an otherwise commendable public servant who is beyond reproach.

To reflect on some of Mr. Mukasey's actions, Melanie Lefkowitz of the Newsday, employed the mighty weapon that is the Freedom of Information Act and found some interesting results. To begin with putting this issue in its proper contrast, in 2004, the Inspector General for the Justice Department released a report stating that no federal judge had any credible threats against their lives. All told, the Federal Marshalls Service between 1999 and 2005 spent $22.2 million dollars on a full-time security detail for Judge Mukasey. Some of the highlights are rent that was paid to the judge for space for the security detail in each of his residences, budget categories such as "ATM fees," hundreds of blacked-out invoices, and $407.82 to fix a water pipe that burst in the judge's second home in the Hamptons.

Well, barring any other method, one can surely judge a man's character by the company he keeps.

Bloomberg.com has two articles singing Mr. Mukasey's praises, here and here. For anyone who's keeping score, the editorial board of the New York Times thinks that Senator Leahy should delay the nomination hearings for the former judge. On the other side of the question, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Antonio Express News, and, of course, the Wall Street Journal believe that Mr. Mukasey is the man for the job in terms that are various forms of glowing.

Mr. Bush, according to some has found the perfect choice for Attorney General. Perhaps they realize they have found the attorney who is smart enough to properly manipulate policy and personnel decisions and cold enough to have allowed U.S. Government officials to take custody of Joseph Padilla in 2002 and consider the Bill of Rights a granted privilege.