TVSF - The Very Special Forum!

SIGNING STATEMENTS

A recent U.S. law outlaws torture. Yet the U.S. military is still torturing people. Why?

Recently, the U.S. Congress passed an anti-torture bill. When the Smirking Chimp signed it into law, he added a 'signing statement', which essentially said that the law did not apply to him. The signing statement is a legal fiction that is not mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution.

Here is a remarkable article about a Republican Senator who is fighting against some of Bush's egregious violations of U.S. law.



Sen. Specter prepping bill to sue Bush
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led
the fight against President Bush's signing statements said Monday he
would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue
him in federal court.

"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...
authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing
statements with the view to having the president's acts declared
unconstitutional," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa.,
said on the Senate floor.

Specter's announcement came the same day that an American Bar
Association task force concluded that by attaching conditions to
legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to
either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.

Bush has issued at least 750 signing statements during his presidency,
reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on national
security and constitutional grounds.

"That non-veto hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond
to a signing statement," said ABA president Michael Greco. The practice,
he added "is harming the separation of powers."

Bush has challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according
to numbers compiled by Specter's committee. The ABA estimated Bush
has issued signing statements on more than 800 statutes, more than all
other presidents combined.

Signing statements have been used by presidents, typically for such
purposes as instructing agencies how to execute new laws.

But many of Bush's signing statements serve notice that he believes parts
of bills he is signing are unconstitutional or might violate national security.

Still, the White House said signing statements are not intended to allow
the administration to ignore the law.

"A great many of those signing statements may have little statements
about questions about constitutionality," said White House spokesman
Tony Snow. "It never says, 'We're not going to enact the law.'"

Specter's announcement intensifies his challenge of the administration's
use of executive power on a number of policy matters. Of particular
interest to him are two signing statements challenging the provisions of
the USA Patriot Act renewal, which he wrote, and legislation banning the
use of torture on detainees.

Bush is not without congressional allies on the matter. Sen. John Cornyn
(news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, a former judge, has said that signing
statements are nothing more than expressions of presidential opinion
that carry no legal weight because federal courts are unlikely to consider
them when deciding cases that challenge the same laws.

Bush has issued at least 750 signing statements during his presidency,
reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on national
security and constitutional grounds.

The man does "whatever he wants" to "fight the terrorism".

If you're not with him, you're against him.

If you're not with him, you're against him.

If you are against USA or HIM, you're a terrorist.

Hmmmm

I guess we are lots of terrorists then.

THE DEATH KNELL FOR THE BILL OF RIGHTS?
Only if Congress passes it.



WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

Bush seeks to extend Guantánamo procedures to American citizens

By Patrick Martin
1 August 2006

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

In draft legislation prepared in response to last month’s Supreme Court decision against the use of military tribunals for US prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, the Bush administration proposes to extend the practice of indefinite detention and summary trial by military commissions to include American citizens.

According to press accounts Friday, based on leaks from those with access to the draft, the bill would essentially legalize the military tribunals in the form decreed by Bush in 2001, with only minor changes, while for the first time making US citizens as well as foreign nationals subject to such summary proceedings.

The tribunals, commissions of active-duty military personnel under orders of the president as commander-in-chief, would have the power to impose death sentences based on secret evidence and in proceedings from which the defendants could be excluded whenever military judges decided this was “necessary to protect national security.”

The Washington Post reported that the draft legislation had initially reaffirmed the 2001 Bush order that limited the jurisdiction of the military commissions to “alien enemy combatants.” This language was crossed out, the newspaper said, and replaced by language giving the commissions authority to try anyone “engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” regardless of nationality.

When American John Walker Lindh was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, where he served as a member of the Taliban-controlled armed forces, he was not taken to Guantánamo because he was a US citizen. His case was tried in federal court, which provided him greater legal protections, ultimately making it necessary for the Bush administration to accept a plea bargain and a 20-year prison term rather than seek a death sentence. If the proposed draft legislation had been in effect, Lindh could have faced a military tribunal.

Other provisions in the draft legislation would permit the use of hearsay evidence, eliminate the right to a speedy trial (essentially sanctioning indefinite detention without a trial), and permit the use of classified evidence that would be provided to defendants only in summary form. Defendants and their civilian attorneys could be excluded from the proceedings at the discretion of the judge, with the prisoner represented only by a military attorney who, as a serving officer, must obey presidential authority.

Instead of a unanimous jury verdict, a two-thirds majority would suffice for conviction, and unanimity for the death penalty, which would have to be confirmed as well by the president. As in the current system, outlawed by the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision, prisoners could be detained, even if acquitted, until “the cessation of hostilities.” Given the Bush administration’s expansive definition of the “war on terror,” this means indefinitely.

According to language in the draft legislation quoted by the New York Times, the measure rejects a system based on courts martial as “not practicable in trying enemy combatants,” in part because such proceedings would exclude “hearsay evidence determined to be probative and reliable.”

Evidence obtained through torture would not be admissible, but this prohibition is largely gutted by a provision that military judges may accept testimony obtained through “coercive interrogation,” a label which the Bush administration uses to describe methods, such as water-boarding, that the rest of the world regards as torture.

The bill was drafted without consulting with lawyers from the Judge Advocate-General (JAG) corps, because these career military prosecutors and judges have insisted on using the court martial system as a basis for trying prisoners, and on upholding the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to all prisoners captured by the US military. The JAGs, as well as the military defense lawyers who fought and won the Hamdan case, have warned that by carving out an exception to the Geneva Conventions, the US government would endanger American soldiers captured in current and future wars.

In addition to overturning Bush’s 2001 order for military commissions, the Hamdan decision upheld the applicability of Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions to all prisoners captured by the US government, whether they are recognized as POWs or treated as “illegal combatants.” Common Article Three bans “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” of detainees, a description that would apply to nearly every prisoner held at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and secret CIA-run prisons elsewhere.

The legislation drafted by the White House would effectively override that element of the high court decision, by declaring that the Geneva Conventions “are not a source of judicially enforceable individual rights.” This means that individual prisoners would lose the right to file lawsuits against the violation of their rights, limiting such standing to governments. There are few governments that would risk a conflict with the Bush administration by filing a US court challenge on behalf of prisoners labeled as “terrorists.”

Congressional approval of the bill in the specific form drafted by acting assistant attorney general Steven G. Bradbury is uncertain, but one key senator, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called it “a good start.” Graham, himself a member of JAG corps in the reserves, said he supported the use of hearsay evidence and the exclusion of prisoners from their trials, so long as these actions were subject to appeal.

The draft legislation also seeks to forestall another anticipated consequence of the Hamdan decision: that US officials could face legal liability for war crimes charges because they authorized the violation of the Geneva Accords. Under the 1996 War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Conventions are crimes against the United States and the perpetrators can be subject to the death penalty if prisoners die as a result of their actions.

The 1996 law was drafted by a right-wing Republican and passed by the Republican-controlled Congress to pander to the POW-MIA (prisoner of war-missing in action) lobby in the US. It initially targeted Vietnamese government officials deemed responsible for the torture and death of American prisoners during the Vietnam War. By an irony of history, this law could now subject high Bush administration officials—Bush himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and others—to criminal sanctions for the deaths of prisoners held by the US government in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

As the Washington Post summed up the matter in a front-page analysis published July 28, “An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in US courts.” The newspaper reported that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has spoken privately to congressional leaders about the need for “protections” against such an eventuality.

The bill seeks to solve the problem by declaring that a law passed last year on humane treatment of US detainees—drafted by Senator John McCain and added to a military appropriations bill over White House opposition—would “fully satisfy” the requirements of Common Article Three.

The bill would also provide that the 1996 War Crimes Act applies only to violations of the Geneva Conventions as interpreted by the US government, not the international community, effectively gutting the conventions as an instrument of international law.

Given that the decision to prosecute rests with the US Department of Justice, headed by Bush crony Gonzales, there is no possibility that any Bush administration official will soon face charges for violation of the War Crimes Act. But the concern over their legal vulnerability is nonetheless real. The war criminals in the White House and Pentagon are well aware of the mass opposition to the war in Iraq, both internationally and increasingly in the United States, and they are looking nervously over their shoulders.

WOW, A FEDERAL JUDGE WITH BACKBONE!

Judge Orders Immediate Halt To Bush Admin's "Unconstitutional" Wiretapping...
Associated Press | SARAH KARUSH | Posted August 17, 2006 12:07 PM

"A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy."

Here is the URL:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/08/1 ... 27468.html

Regarding that she is a woman I'm not surprised....

Larry, keep us posted about the rest, I bet she will confront some obstacles in the near future.

US removes Swede from terror list!

Published: 17th August 2006 10:35 CET

The American government has said it is removing Swedish citizen Ahmed Yusuf from its list of people suspected of links to terrorism. The decision means that a travel ban will be lifted and the freeze on his bank accounts ended. The Swedish foreign ministry has criticized the fact that it has taken so long to remove the Yusuf from the list.

The Swede, who has Somalian roots, worked for al-Barakaat, an informal banking network centred on the east African country. After the attacks of September 11th 2001, American authorities said the bank was linked to terrorism. The UN and the EU later incorporated Yusuf and two other Swedes into their list of terror suspects. This meant that the men's assets were frozen, even though no evidence had been produced. After a long legal process, two of the Swedes were taken off the list, but the US refused to remove Yusuf's name until now. "This is of course extremely pleasing for him," his lawyer, Thomas Olsson, said.

"This has gone on for a long time now. We had almost stopped believing that these sanctions could be changed," he told news agency TT. The decision means in practice that the United States will back the United Nations in removing the Swede from its sanctions list. The Swedish foreign ministry applied on Wednesday evening to the UN Sanctions Committee for Yusuf to be removed from its list of people with links to terror. When this happens, Sweden will ask the EU to do the same. The foreign ministry hopes for the process to be complete within a week.

The Swedish government has been criticized for not doing enough to help the Swedes on the terror list, but Thomas Olsson was on Thursday complimentary about the foreign ministry. "This result has been achieved since we, together with the foreign ministry, started this process in the United States to bring about a removal from the list. It is now time to be glad that Yusuf is finally free of these sanctions, and we share that gladness with the government today. We have achieved this result through partnership," he said. Hans Dahlgren, cabinet secretary at the foreign ministry, said that Yusuf should have been removed from the sanction list earlier.

"Given that we believed that there were no grounds to have him on the list, it should have gone a lot faster. The conclusion we have drawn is that the UN sanctions system needs to be reformed so that those who don't belong on it can be taken off it more quickly." Dahlgren could not explain why the US had changed its mind at this point. Asked whether Sweden could have done more, he said that Sweden had worked very hard on the case. "But we're not the ones who have made the decision, rather it's the UN Sanctions Committee. We have had regular contact with the Americans, who have to approve his removal from the list."

http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=4 ... e=20060817

WE ARE SO SCREWED!

I first saw this article on another board. I feel that it is so important that everyone should see it.



Fatal Vision: The Deeper Evil Behind the Detainee Bill
By Chris Floyd, TO UK Correspondent
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 02 October 2006

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country - if the people lose their confidence in themselves - and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.
- Walt Whitman
1.

It was a dark hour indeed on Thursday when the United States Senate voted to end the constitutional republic and transform the country into a "Leader-State," giving the president and his agents the power to capture, torture and imprison forever anyone - American citizens included - whom they arbitrarily decide is an "enemy combatant." This also includes those who merely give "terrorism" some kind of "support," defined so vaguely that many experts say it could encompass legal advice, innocent gifts to charities or even political opposition to US government policy within its draconian strictures.

All of this is bad enough - a sickening and cowardly surrender of liberty not seen in a major Western democracy since the Enabling Act passed by the German Reichstag in March 1933. But it is by no means the full extent of our degradation. In reality, the darkness is deeper, and more foul, than most people imagine. For in addition to the dictatorial powers of seizure and torment given by Congress on Thursday to George W. Bush - powers he had already seized and exercised for five years anyway, even without this fig leaf of sham legality - there is a far more sinister imperial right that Bush has claimed - and used - openly, without any demur or debate from Congress at all: ordering the "extrajudicial killing" of anyone on earth that he and his deputies decide - arbitrarily, without charges, court hearing, formal evidence, or appeal - is an "enemy combatant."

That's right; from the earliest days of the Terror War - September 17, 2001, to be exact - Bush has claimed the peremptory power of life and death over the entire world. If he says you're an enemy of America, you are. If he wants to imprison you and torture you, he can. And if he decides you should die, he'll kill you. This is not hyperbole, liberal paranoia, or "conspiracy theory": it's simply a fact, reported by the mainstream media, attested by senior administration figures, recorded in official government documents - and boasted about by the president himself, in front of Congress and a national television audience.

And although the Republic snuffing act just passed by Congress does not directly address Bush's royal prerogative of murder, it nonetheless strengthens it and enshrines it in law. For the measure sets forth clearly that the designation of an "enemy combatant" is left solely to the executive branch; neither Congress nor the courts have any say in the matter. When this new law is coupled with the existing "Executive Orders" authorizing "lethal force" against arbitrarily designated "enemy combatants," it becomes, quite literally, a license to kill - with the seal of Congressional approval.

How arbitrary is this process by which all our lives and liberties are now governed? Dave Niewert at Orcinus has unearthed a remarkable admission of its totally capricious nature. In an December 2002 story in the Washington Post, then-Solicitor General Ted Olson described the anarchy at the heart of the process with admirable frankness:

"[There is no] requirement that the executive branch spell out its criteria for determining who qualifies as an enemy combatant," Olson argues.

"'There won't be 10 rules that trigger this or 10 rules that end this,' Olson said in the interview. 'There will be judgments and instincts and evaluations and implementations that have to be made by the executive that are probably going to be different from day to day, depending on the circumstances.'"

In other words, what is safe to do or say today might imperil your freedom or your life tomorrow. You can never know if you are on the right side of the law, because the "law" is merely the whim of the Leader and his minions: their "instincts" determine your guilt or innocence, and these flutterings in the gut can change from day to day. This radical uncertainty is the very essence of despotism - and it is now, formally and officially, the guiding principle of the United States government.

And underlying this edifice of tyranny is the prerogative of presidential murder. Perhaps the enormity of this monstrous perversion of law and morality has kept it from being fully comprehended. It sounds unbelievable to most people: a president ordering hits like a Mafia don? But that is our reality, and has been for five years. To overcome what seems to be a widespread cognitive dissonance over this concept, we need only examine the record - a record, by the way, taken entirely from publicly available sources in the mass media. There's nothing secret or contentious about it, nothing that any ordinary citizen could not know - if they choose to know it.

2.

Six days after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush signed a "presidential finding" authorizing the CIA to kill those individuals whom he had marked for death as terrorists. This in itself was not an entirely radical innovation; Bill Clinton's White House legal team had drawn up memos asserting the president's right to issue "an order to kill an individual enemy of the United States in self-defense," despite the legal prohibitions against assassination, the Washington Post reported in October 2001. The Clinton team based this ruling on the "inherent powers" of the "Commander in Chief" - that mythical, ever-elastic construct that Bush has evoked over and over to defend his own unconstitutional usurpations.

The practice of "targeted killing" was apparently never used by Clinton, however; despite the pro-assassination memos, Clinton followed the traditional presidential practice of bombing the hell out of a bunch of civilians whenever he wanted to lash out at some recalcitrant leader or international outlaw - as in his bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998, or the two massive strikes he launched against Iraq in 1993 and 1998, or indeed the death and ruin that was deliberately inflicted on civilian infrastructure in Serbia during that nation's collective punishment for the crimes of Slobodan Milosevic. Here, Clinton was following the example set by George H.W. Bush, who killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Panamanian civilians in his illegal arrest of Manuel Noriega in 1988, and Ronald Reagan, who killed Moamar Gadafy's adopted 2-year-old daughter and 100 other civilians in a punitive strike on Libya in 1986.

Junior Bush, of course, was about to outdo all those blunderbuss strokes with his massive air attacks on Afghanistan, which killed thousands of civilians, and the later orgy of death and destruction in Iraq. But he also wanted the power to kill individuals at will. At first, the assassination program was restricted to direct orders from the president aimed at specific targets, as suggested by the Clinton memos. But soon the arbitrary power of life and death was delegated to agents in the field, after Bush signed orders allowing CIA assassins to kill targets without seeking presidential approval for each attack, the Washington Post reported in December 2002. Nor was it necessary any longer for the president to approve each new name added to the target list; the "security organs" could designate "enemy combatants" and kill them as they saw fit. However, Bush was always keen to get the details about the agency's wetwork, administration officials assured the Post.

The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen, along with several foreign nationals, by a CIA drone missile in Yemen on November 3, 2002. A similar strike occurred on December 4, 2005, when a CIA missile destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a suspected al-Qaeda figure. But the only bodies found at the site were those of two children, the houseowner's son and nephew, Reuters reports. The grieving father denied any connection to terrorism. An earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but killed his wife and children, Pakistani officials reported.

However, there is simply no way of knowing at this point how many people have been killed by American agents operating outside all judicial process. Most of the assassinations are carried out in secret: quietly, professionally. As a Pentagon document uncovered by the New Yorker in December 2002 revealed, the death squads must be "small and agile," and "able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to ... enter countries surreptitiously."

What's more, there are strong indications that the Bush administration has outsourced some of the contracts to outside operators. In the original Post story about the assassinations - in those first heady weeks after 9/11, when administration officials were much more open about "going to the dark side," as Cheney boasted on national television - Bush insiders told the paper that "it is also possible that the instrument of targeted killings will be foreign agents, the CIA's term for nonemployees who act on its behalf.

Here we find a deadly echo of the "rendition" program that has sent so many captives to torture pits in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere - including many whose innocence has been officially established, such as the Canadian businessman Maher Arar, German national Khalid El-Masri, UK native Mozzam Begg and many others. They had been subjected to imprisonment and torture despite their innocence, because of intelligence "mistakes." How many have fallen victim to Bush's hit squads on similar shaky grounds?

So here we are. Congress has just entrenched the principle of Bush's "unitary executive" dictatorship into law; and it is this principle that undergirds the assassination program. As I wrote in December, it's hard to believe that any genuine democracy would accept a claim by its leader that he could have anyone killed simply by labeling them an "enemy." It's hard to believe that any adult with even the slightest knowledge of history or human nature could countenance such unlimited, arbitrary power, knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet this is exactly what the great and good in America have done.

But this should come as no surprise. They have known about it all along, and have not only countenanced Bush's death squad, but even celebrated it. I'll end with one more passage from that December article, which sadly is even more apt for our degraded reality today. It was a depiction of the one of the most revolting scenes in recent American history: Bush's state of the Union address in January 2003, delivered live to the nation during the final warmongering frenzy before the rape of Iraq:

Trumpeting his successes in the Terror War, Bush claimed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists" had been arrested worldwide - "and many others have met a different fate." His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let's put it this way. They are no longer a problem."

In other words, the suspects - and even Bush acknowledged they were only suspects - had been murdered. Lynched. Killed by agents operating unsupervised in that shadow world where intelligence, terrorism, politics, finance and organized crime meld together in one amorphous, impenetrable mass. Killed on the word of a dubious informer, perhaps: a tortured captive willing to say anything to end his torment, a business rival, a personal foe, a bureaucrat looking to impress his superiors, a paid snitch in need of cash, a zealous crank pursuing ethnic, tribal or religious hatreds - or any other purveyor of the garbage data that is coin of the realm in the shadow world.

Bush proudly held up this hideous system as an example of what he called "the meaning of American justice." And the assembled legislators ... applauded. Oh, how they applauded! They roared with glee at the leering little man's bloodthirsty, B-movie machismo. They shared his sneering contempt for law - our only shield, however imperfect, against the blind, brute, ignorant, ape-like force of raw power. Not a single voice among them was raised in protest against this tyrannical machtpolitik: not that night, not the next day, not ever.

And now, in September 2006, we know they will never raise that protest. Oh, a few Democrats stood up at the last minute on Thursday to posture nobly about the dangers of the detainee bill - but only when they knew the it was certain to pass, when they had already given up their one weapon against it, the filibuster, in exchange for permission from their Republican masters to offer amendments that they also knew would fail. Had they been offering such speeches since October 2001, when the lineaments of Bush's presidential tyranny were already clear - or at any other point during the systematic dismantling of America's liberties over the past five years - these fine words might have had some effect.

Now the killing will go on. The tyranny that has entered upon the country will grow stronger, more brazen; the darkness will deepen. Whitman, thou should'st be living at this hour; America has need of thee.


Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the "Empire Burlesque" political blog. He can be reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com.
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How come i'm not surprised?

Yeah, tell me about that! It goes so far beyond my undestandig that all this can happen and nothing can be done. In west! We have the idea of freedom and democrazy and that all this kind of activity is typical for 3rd world countries - and it's here in front of us. It really stinks!

They played yesterday in TV Moore's film Fahrenheit. It was the first time I saw it. I think it was the good one even if I felt a bit emotionally manipulated in the end when they talk about losses and injuries of solders. This doesn't move my heart - you work in army, you assume the dangers. I feel it's only fair for those who first kill civils or even other soldiers.

I had respect for that one who refused from going back.

I have also seen Fahrenheit 911. It was an interesting mixture of facts, half-truths and misinformation. I don't know if Michael Moore was trying to make a political statement, or if he was simply trying to make money by pandering to the largely anti-Bush audiences in Western European.

In my opinion, accuracy is the first responsibility of a documentary film-maker. There is already plenty of dirt on Bush; Moore did not need to stretch the truth.

PROPOSED NEW TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS

In civilized lands, citizens have the right to leave their home countries for
vacations, education, and business trips. If the The Chimp gets his way, that
will no longer be true for U.S. citizens. We will need prior clearance from the
Bush Gestapo. Here is the link:
http://www.jabberwonk.com/flinker.cfm?cliid=1gr0z3

Well, it's a step in the right direction if he wants to act like Gestapo. It's all about to gain control over the citizens, just like in Germany 1933-1945.

I wonder if he can find a way to forbid all opposition and become the almighty dictator before next election?

Hail Bush!

(at the same time it's scary, we have seen it many times before in world history)

ATTORNEYS FOR GUANTANAMO DETAINEES COULD BE DETAINED AS
ENEMY COMBATANTS UNDER NEW LEGISLATION
President Given Undue Power to Silence Critics


Synopsis

On September 26, 2006, attorneys for the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) determined that what appears to be the final version of the Military
Commissions Act of 2006 could allow the government to detain the
attorneys themselves as 'enemy combatants.' CCR Legal Director Bill
Goodman said: "This ominously broad definition of enemy combatants
would mean that almost anyone who actively opposes the President or
the government could be locked up indefinitely. This bill makes a
mockery of the rule of law."


The current version of the Military Commissions redefines an "unlawful
enemy combatant" (UEC) so broadly that it could include anyone who
organizes a march against the war in Iraq. The bill defines a UEC as "a
person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and
materially supported hostilities against the United States" or anyone who
"has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a
Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal
established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of
Defense of the United States." The definition makes no reference to
citizenship and therefore could be read to include any number of
individuals, including:

CCR attorneys and other habeas counsel, Federal Public Defenders and
military defense counsel for detainees at Guantánamo Bay
Any person who has given $5 to a charity working with orphans in
Afghanistan that turns out to be associated in some fashion with someone
who may be a member of the Taliban
The bill also currently includes provisions so sweeping that they strip U.S.
courts of jurisdiction over habeas petitions by any non-citizen detained by
the government anywhere. Because there is no geographic limitation in
the bill's language, it would allow the President to detain any non-citizen
without their ever having the chance to challenge their detention in court:
"No court... shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a
writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the
United States who has been determined by the United States to have
been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such
determination." Examples of people who could be detained indefinitely
with no access to a court include:

A foreign tourist wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt at the Statue of Liberty
A protester at an immigration rally who has lived in the U.S. since she
was six months old and is a lawful, permanent resident
CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren said: "This new version of the
legislation grants the President frightening power to silence his critics.
Habeas corpus is, like voting, one of the fundamental rights of
democracy. The President's efforts to exercise the privilege of kings must
be turned back, before the so-called 'war on terror' turns on our own
citizens."

THE CHIMP'S WAR ON THE PRESS
from villagevoice.com


Nat Hentoff
Bush Revives Espionage Act
Bush's war on the disloyal press climaxes in a trial on classified information.
by Nat Hentoff
November 10th, 2006 3:55 PM

Persons who come into unauthorized possession of classified information must abide by the law. That applies to academics, journalists, professors, whatever. —Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who will preside over the case of United States of America v. Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917.

This is the first prosecution ever of private citizens for receiving and distributing classified information. —Floyd Abrams, "The State of Free Speech," New York Law Journal, October 18.


These charges potentially eviscerate the primary function of journalism—to gather and publicize information of public concern—particularly where the most vulnerable information to the public . . . is what the government wants to conceal. —Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, with which this Voice columnist is affiliated.


Not many Americans know about this trial, slated for next January, that could result in future government suppression of news stories—based on classified information—suchas The Washington Post's reports by Dana Priest of CIA secret prisons in Europe and the James Risen–Eric Lichtblau New York Times revelations on the National Security Agency's secret, warrantless spying on Americans.

The defendants, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, are former and dismissed staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading pro-Israel lobbying organization.

They are accused by the Justice Department of having received classified information from a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence Anthony Franklin, who has since pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison. Rosen and Weissman are charged with giving the information to an Israeli diplomat—and to a journalist.

"There's little difference between what the defendants are charged with and what reporters and advocates do day-to-day," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy. Aftergood says a conviction would put this nation far along the path to having its own Open Secrets law, the British measure that bars public interest as a defense for revealing classified information. "That would mean a fundamental transformation of the American government," he continues. "Retreating from freedom of the press would mean surrender of the principles of self-rule as the best form of government."

Floyd Abrams, the John Bunyan of First Amendment lawyers, emphasizes: "Anyone who covers the CIA, the Department of Defense, or the Department of Homeland Security is routinely provided classified information by people in and out of government. Only this permits any serious discussion of the government's most important acts."

And when there is an administration like President Bush's—which devoutly believes in its sovereign right to keep secret everything it can—the press is indeed the Fourth Estate. Only the press is holding the government accountable, since Congress so frequently ducks its responsibility under the separation of powers.

For example, in an unusually candid statement by Senate Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter during a hearing on the revival of the Espionage Act, Specter said to FBI director Robert Mueller:

"Newspapers have traditionally done a very important job in our society in exposing governmental wrongdoing, senators' wrongdoing, corruption in government. There is a lot more oversight provided by the press than there is by the Judiciary Committee. It may even be that the FBI gets information leads . . . from the press."

If the Supreme Court, certain to be the ultimate ruler on this Espionage Act case, decides in favor of the government and upholds the Espionage Act, a precedent will be set for future presidents and administrations to go beyond even the unparalleled secrecy of the Bush administration.

As for the rebirth of the Espionage Act, Floyd Abrams reminds us that its "sections are sweepingly, almost breathtaking, overbroad. [They] provide for fines or imprisonment up to 10 years for whoever possesses information relating to the national defense, which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation."

Moreover, the Espionage Act targets anyone with such information who "willfully communicates the same to any person not entitled to receive it."

Since I started writing in the Voice in 2002 about the highly classified CIA "renditions" of terrorism suspects to other countries to be tortured, can Alberto Gonzales make an Espionage Act case against me? Detailed accounts of the kidnappings and torture by other reporters, too, have deeply injured the moral status of the U.S., even among its allies, further violating the Espionage Act.

Well, I'll be honored to join The Washington Post's Dana Priest and other reporters of classified information in the dock for what could be one hell of a decisive First Amendment battle.

In the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, the press successfully defied Richard Nixon and his fierce attorney general, John Mitchell, by running Daniel Ellsberg's very highly classified revelations of the government's pyramid of lies about the Vietnam War.

The Supreme Court vote backing press freedom in that case was 6 to 3, but five of the justices (pro and con) agreed nonetheless that "it seems reliable that a newspaper, as well as others unconnected with the Government, are vulnerable to prosecution" in other circumstances "if they communicate national security information." Among them, Justice Harry Blackmun warned that if publication of the Pentagon Papers resulted in "the death of soldiers . . . and prolongation of the war . . . the Nation's people will know where the responsibility for these sad consequences rest."

I expect that those five members of the Court in 1971—warning the press that the First Amendment is not a permanent shield in time of war—may well be remembered now by Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.

As for Anthony Kennedy—who could be the pivotal vote against defendants Rose and Weissman, the press, and the public—we should know his vote in a year or more. There is also the possibility that before oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Bush may have another seat to fill. These are indeed historic, fateful times.

Thanks for keeping us informed.

Fascists are not comfortable with the truth. That's my explanation for the latest trial balloon in Florida.


Posted on Thu, Feb. 15, 2007

COURTS
Prosecutors seek OK to create phony files
Prosecutors are urging a change in state law to allow them to falsify court records in some cases.
By DAN CHRISTENSEN AND PATRICK DANNER
dchristensen@MiamiHerald.com

Florida's prosecutors are floating a proposal to the Legislature to give them the power to secretly falsify public court records -- with a judge's approval -- for undercover law enforcement purposes.

Spurred by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, the draft bill would limit the authority to manufacture and plant fake documents in court files to 180 days. But it also provides for an unlimited number of 30-day extensions.

''Judges would be very involved in the monitoring. It all has to go through a judge,'' said Arthur I. ''Buddy'' Jacobs, general counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, which supports the bill.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida opposes the idea.

''The fundamental problem is that it so goes against our notion of the way our justice system ought to work,'' said ACLU legislative director Randall Marshall. ``How would we ever be able to trust anything in the judicial record knowing that something could be intentionally falsified with a judicial seal of approval?''

Tallahassee Public Defender Nancy Daniels said the proposal undermines constitutional protections for those charged with crimes.

''Even if this is temporary, what if someone testifies during that time and we never get to know they had a criminal conviction? We can't properly cross-examine to develop their motives for giving testimony,'' Daniels said.

The bill has been prefiled with the Florida Senate for the legislative session that begins March 6.

A second, longer version of the bill has been prefiled with the House. It would convey authority to falsify any public record to prosecutors, judges, mayors, sheriffs, coroners and other public officers unless they were acting corruptly.

The Miami Herald reported late last year how judges and prosecutors in Miami-Dade had official court records altered and kept secret dockets to disguise what was happening in some court cases.

Two cases were uncovered in which court dockets were altered to cover up the felony convictions of informants, but more are known to exist. Chief Assistant State Attorney Jose Arrojo said authorities have altered the public records of informants for two decades.

It is a crime for anyone in Florida, including judges and prosecutors, to alter or falsify court records or proceedings. Violators can be sent to prison for a year.

STATE INQUIRY

The prosecutors' push to change Florida criminal statute 839.13 comes amid a statewide inquiry by Supreme Court Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis into the improper hiding of court records. The probe began last summer after The Miami Herald reported that hundreds of civil and criminal cases, mostly in Broward County, were kept hidden on secret dockets.

More recently, Lewis asked the Florida Bar to examine the propriety of falsifying court records and to recommend rule changes by March 1. The high court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on secret and false dockets March 5.

Rundle sent a letter to the chief justice in December defending the practice of altering public court records as occasionally necessary to protect informants and investigations. She also announced that Miami-Dade judges and prosecutors would no longer ''affirmatively'' falsify dockets.

In response, the Florida Public Defenders Association has asked that the practice be banned.

Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office, said the bill is a priority for the prosecutors' association, but declined to comment further.

The Senate sponsor is Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, vice chairman of the criminal justice committee. The House sponsor is Rep. Julio Robaina, R-South Miami.

''Ultimately, this protects the public against the evil of corruption,'' Aronberg said. ``It's just another tool. How else can you get at a corrupt judge unless you create false pleadings?''

TWO SCENARIOS

In an e-mail to Aronberg's office, Ted Mannelli, executive director to the state attorney, wrote that prosecutors have used the technique in ``two scenarios.''

''In a very, very, very limited number of cases, perhaps less than five over the last two and one half decades in our circuit, bogus court records have been generated in corruption investigations targeting judges,'' Mannelli wrote.

The other scenario Mannelli described involves any case in which defendants plead guilty and sentencing is deferred to let informants work undercover.

Mannelli did not say how many times that has happened.

He wrote in the e-mail and confirmed in a phone interview that prosecutors believe Florida's prohibition on altering court records doesn't apply to them because they have acted ``without corrupt intent.''

The law, however, makes no such distinction. The Florida Supreme Court also has ruled that a lack of corrupt intent does not excuse the faking of court records.

1997 CASE

Broward County Judge Laran Johnson backdated records in an apparent attempt to keep her caseload low. In 1997, the court removed her from office because ``her knowing and repeated acts of falsifying public records strike at the very heart of judicial integrity.''

Today, prosecutors want the law changed to make sure ''these procedures are clearly legal and allow for their continuation,'' Mannelli said in the email.

So much for the justice system.........

SECRET LAWS

Guess what? Americans do not have the right to read some of the laws that apply to them! Instead they are supposed to do what they are told, no matter how stupid it is. So far, the secret laws are being applied on a small scale at travel hubs--like airports--and they involve things like warrantless searches (unconstitutional under the 4th Amendment) and the showing of identification.

Some people may regard these two examples as small potatoes in the overall scheme of things. However the concept of a secret law is straight out of the Dark Ages! If you want to read about John Gilmore's legal battle over secret laws and the right to hassle-free travel within his own country, here is the link:
http://papersplease.org/gilmore/