One Thousand Reasons

Articles filed under Justice

Justice Too Long Delayed
New York Times
Of the many examples of the Bush administration’s abusive and incompetent detainee policies, one of the most baffling is the case of Mohammed Jawad. Mr. Jawad, an Afghan, was no older than 17 and likely even younger when he was captured in 2002 and thrown into indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

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Mad Max's Justice Department
Washington Post
IMAGINE A PLACE where soldiers are entitled to burst through doors without warrants and citizens can be locked away without trial. Imagine that the leader of this place has the power to silence dissenters and the press and has the right to keep duly elected legislators from having a voice in these matters. Imagine further that he can unilaterally rip up and disregard any treaty he dislikes and that he has been told he is on solid legal ground by a hand-picked circle of advisers.

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Confessions of a former Guantánamo prosecutor
Salon
When Army Lt. Col. Darrell Vandeveld began his work in May 2007 as a prosecutor at the Guantánamo Bay military commissions, the Iraq war veteran was one of the most enthusiastic and tenacious lawyers working on behalf of the Bush administration. He took on seven cases. In court hearings he dismissed claims of prisoner abuse as "embellishment" and "exaggeration." Once, when a detainee asked for legal representation only for the purpose of challenging the legitimacy of the military commissions, Vandeveld ridiculed the request as "idiotic."

So it came as a shock in mid-September when Vandeveld announced that he was resigning as a prosecutor because he had grave doubts about the integrity of the system he had so vigorously defended.

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Correcting an injustice
Baltimore Sun
As one of the nine U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration in 2006, I have been carefully monitoring the train wreck that followed. I am not happy to see the enormous damage that has been done to the Department of Justice, a once-venerated institution. But I am pleased that the internal investigations, including the report released last week by the department, have fully vindicated what my colleagues and I have been saying for the last two years: Improper politicization has crippled the department, and the Bush administration's culture of partisanship and loyalty above all has done a terrible disservice to this country.

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Report condemns Bush's narrow ideological doctrine
Seattle PI
The Bush White House politically subverted the U.S. Department of Justice and is now engaged in a hardcore cover-up to keep the full dimensions of the subversions hidden.

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Politics Over Prosecutors
Washington Post
With Wall Street's fate hanging in the balance, and with Sarah Palin's incoherence sparking interest in Thursday's vice presidential debate, it was easy to overlook a major story that got less attention than it deserved yesterday. The Justice Department released a nearly 400-page report with this jaw-dropping bottom line:

"Our investigation found significant evidence that political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several . . . U.S. attorneys."

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Crossing a Line at Justice
Washington Post
SOME WERE FIRED because they irritated Justice Department higher-ups. Others were dismissed after Republican politicians groused about their failure to move quickly against political enemies. One was removed to make room for Karl Rove's handpicked candidate. For some, there seems to be no explanation of why they were asked to leave; remarkably, two were actually let go because of poor performance evaluations.

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Obama's Justice
Huffington Post
On Sunday, September 21, the New York Times published an editorial ("The Candidates and the Court") predicting that, if elected president, Barack Obama will appoint "moderate" or "centrist" justices, like Stephen Breyer, rather than "all-out liberals, like William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall." The Times argued this is a good reason to elect Obama rather than John McCain, who would appoint "archconservatives" and would "complete President Bush's campaign" to make the Supreme Court "an aggressive right-wing force."

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The Candidates and the Court
New York Times
Among the many issues voters need to consider in this campaign is this vital fact: The next president is likely to appoint several Supreme Court justices. Those choices will determine the future of the law, and of some of Americans’ most cherished rights.

John McCain and Barack Obama have made it clear that they would pick very different kinds of justices.

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American credibility on trial
Salon
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba -- One of the youngest detainees at Guantánamo Bay, a 23-year-old Afghan named Mohammed Jawad, spent two days in a courtroom here last week as his defense lawyer argued that his case should never go to trial. The attorney, Maj. David Frakt, claimed that his client was repeatedly tortured and abused in U.S. custody, charges that were supported by the testimony of a senior U.S. Army criminal investigator.

Perhaps just as troubling, Frakt also asserted that partisan politics played a role: Prosecutors handling the case, he said, were pressured by a Pentagon lawyer to bring charges against Jawad quickly -- before the next American presidential election drew too close.

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"Justice Delayed is Justice Denied."
Pottersville
The Washington Post reports today that six Blackwater mercenaries connected to the Nisour Square shooting that senselessly slaughtered 17 innocent Iraqi civilians September 16th last year have received target letters from the Department of Justice indicating that a grand jury is close to indicting them.

Elsewhere, ABC also tells us the sunny news that a complaint originally filed in federal district court in the District of Columbia has been amended and expanded to include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former WH liaison Monica Goodling in connection with the politicized hiring process at the Department of Justice.

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Mr. Mukasey in Denial
New York Times
Conservatives like to talk about personal responsibility, but Attorney General Michael Mukasey does not seem to think it applies to the Bush administration. In a speech on Tuesday, he described the shameful politicization of the Justice Department as a “painful” episode in which “the system failed.”

Mr. Mukasey made no mention of the role played by his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, and other members of President Bush’s inner circle. There is by now strong reason to believe that they were involved in plans to fire United States attorneys for political reasons, fill other important positions on the basis of partisanship rather than competence and order prosecutions designed to help Republicans win elections.

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The Mukasey Doctrine
Harpers
Prior to his confirmation, Michael Mukasey fessed up, in a written response to Senator Dick Durbin, to a meeting the White House arranged with a group of movement conservatives. The team he met with had a simple agenda: They wanted his assurance that he would not appoint special prosecutors to go after administration figures involved in serious scandals at the Justice Department, including the U.S. attorneys scandal and the introduction of torture with formal Justice Department cover, and they wanted his assurance that Justice would continue to provide legal cover to “the Program.” The team who met Mukasey included figures on the periphery of the scandal who may have had personal reasons to fear an investigation. But Mukasey is clearly keeping the understanding that brought him to the cherished post of attorney general. And that’s bad news for the Justice Department and its reputation.

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The big show trial in Guantánamo
Salon
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba -- "A young man once captured a live bird in his hands and asked his wiser elder whether the bird was alive or dead. If the old man said 'alive,' the young man would have crushed his hands together to kill the bird and prove the old man wrong. If the old man said 'dead,' the young man would have opened his hands and let the bird fly free. But when asked if the bird was alive or dead, the old man replied, 'Young man, the bird's life is in your hands.'"

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Trial by Tribunal
Washington Post
THE FIRST U.S. military commission since World War II rendered a stunning verdict and sentence last week against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver. The commission's decision was remarkable not because it was the first of its era but because it appeared to be measured, thoughtful and fair -- or as fair as a hopelessly flawed system could hope to produce.

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Hamdan sentenced to duration of Bush administration
Daily Kos
On Thursday the jurors in Salim Hamdan's military tribunal at Guantanamo deliberated for only one hour before agreeing on a sentence of just 66 months. They'd already determined that the judge, Capt. Keith Allred, planned to count Hamdan's incarceration as time served. So the "stunningly light sentence" was a rebuke of the Bush administration on several levels simultaneously. The jury in effect sentenced Hamdan to a prison term for the duration of the Bush administration.

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The Justice Department’s Truthiness Problem
Harpers
“Truthiness,” a phrase coined by the comic Stephen Colbert, has emerged as one of the hallmarks of the Bush Administration.

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Waas: DOJ Probe Has Expanded to the White House
TPM
Murray Waas confirmed today something we've suspected for a long time: that the Justice Department has widened the net in the Inspector General's U.S. attorneys firing probe to include allegations that senior White House officials made false statements to Congress.

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Guilty as Ordered
New York Times
Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired — has held its first trial. It produced ... a guilty verdict.

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First Unconstitutional Military Commission Trial Ends In Conviction
ACLU
NEW YORK – After a trial filled with overwhelming constitutional and procedural flaws, a jury of military officers today found Salim Hamdan guilty of providing material support for terrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union has been at Guantánamo Bay observing the Hamdan proceedings, which lacked the fundamental legal safeguards found in traditional U.S. courts or military courts governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

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Pentagon: U.S. will still detain Hamdan even if he is acquitted.»
Think Progress
Yesterday, a military jury began deliberations in the trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, on whether Hamdan conspired with al Qaeda in terrorist attacks. The trial is the first U.S. military commission since World War II. In a Pentagon press briefing today, spokesperson Geoff Morrell said the U.S. will detain Hamdan regardless of the verdict:

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Judicial Partisanship Awards
Washington Independent
Who are the real activists on the U.S. Supreme Court? Do Republican appointees differ from Democratic appointees? How much? Are federal judges political?

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The bizarre trial of bin Laden's bodyguard
Salon
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Given all the information about abusive interrogations that has made its way out of Guantánamo, the "surprises" over the past week in Salim Hamdan's war-crimes trial -- the first military commission convened by the U.S. government since Nuremberg -- weren't exactly earth-shattering. But that didn't stop the defense, dubbed Team Hamdan, from doing what it could here to surprise the six-member jury of military officers (plus one sub) tasked with determining Hamdan's guilt or innocence.

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Extreme justice, Bush style
Seattle PI
If you're looking for a good summer read, might I suggest something just published by the Justice Department's inspector general that has a very boring title but should be called "We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us"?

It's a 140-page thigh-slappin' laugh riot. It reads like the best of George Orwell: funny and scary at the same time. It describes how the Bush administration gave a 30-something true believer named Monica Goodling the power to hire federal prosecutors and immigration judges only if they espoused hard-line conservative and Christian views.

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Is Killing Liberals a Hate Crime?
Slate
Jim David Adkisson, who confessed to opening fire in a Knoxville church last weekend, told police that he was motivated by a hatred for gays and liberals and, in particular, that "liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country." Authorities are now investigating the shooting as a hate crime. Do liberals get special protections under the law?
Not in Tennessee.

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A U.S. Trial by Its Looks, but Only So
New York Times
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — On the surface, the proceedings unfolding inside a makeshift courthouse on a hill here resemble an American trial. A judge wearing a black robe presides. There is a public gallery and a witness stand. Prosecutors present witnesses, and defense lawyers cross-examine them. Objections are made and ruled upon.

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Partisan Interview Questions
Washington Post
"[W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?"

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Internal Justice Dept. Report Cites Illegal Hiring Practices
Washington Post
For nearly two years, a young political aide sought to cultivate a "farm system" for Republicans at the Justice Department, hiring scores of prosecutors and immigration judges who espoused conservative priorities and Christian lifestyle choices.

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Another Blow To Justice
Washington Post
Another stunning report has documented the bold and illegal influence of politics at the Justice Department over the past eight years.

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There Was Smoke — and Fire
New York Times
It was hardly news that President Bush’s Justice Department has been illegally politicized, but it was important that the Justice Department finally owned up to that sorry state of affairs. An internal investigation released on Monday found that the department’s top staff routinely took politics and ideology into account in filling nonpolitical positions — and lied about it.

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Bush OKs execution for Army death row inmate
MSNBC
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army private, the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military.

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Justice report finds aides illegally discriminated against career hires who weren't Republican
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by letting politics influence the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges at the Justice Department, says an internal report released Monday.

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The Right Place to Try Terrorism Cases
Washington Post
I have spent 27 years on the federal bench. In particular, my experience with the trial of Ahmed Ressam, the "millennium bomber," leads me to worry about Attorney General Michael Mukasey's comments last week, urging Congress to pass legislation outlining judicial procedures for reviewing Guantanamo detainees' habeas petitions. As constituted, U.S. courts are not only an adequate venue for trying terrorism suspects but are also a tremendous asset in combating terrorism. Congress risks a grave error in creating a parallel system of terrorism courts unmoored from the constitutional values that have served our country so well for so long.

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Mr. Mukasey’s Justice
New York Times
We are, sadly, accustomed to hearing President Bush’s lawyers justify this administration’s ceaseless efforts to undermine the Constitution and the rule of law: intrusions on privacy, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, torture.

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Send Rove to jail petition passes 100,000
The Swamp
A petition to send former White House deputy chief of state Karl Rove to jail over refusing a subpoena to testify before a House committee has gained over 100,000 signatures, according to the group promoting the petition.

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Gitmo: No Rights Advice for Prisoners
Time
(GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba) — An FBI agent testifying at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial said interrogators did not advise detainees here of any rights because the military prison is dedicated to intelligence gathering, not law enforcement.

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Military Trial Begins for Guantánamo Detainee
New York Times
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — In a hushed courtroom here on Monday, a military judge opened the first American war crimes trial since World War II, culminating a nearly seven-year effort by the Bush administration to try some of the hundreds of terrorism suspects held in the detention camp.

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Conservative Lawyers Urge Bush To Issue ‘Pre-Emptive Pardons’ To Officials Involved In Illegal Programs
Think Progress
The New York Times reported this weekend that “[f]elons are asking President Bush for pardons and commutations at historic levels as he nears his final months in office, a time when many other presidents have granted a flurry of clemency requests.” However the Times noted that despite commuting Scooter Libby’s prison sentence, applicants “should expect to be disappointed” because Bush “has made little use of his clemency power” compared to past presidents.

Except perhaps if you participated in any illegal activity involving the Bush administration’s controversial counterterrorism programs.

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Gitmo judge: No 'coercive' questioning evidence
MSNBC
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The judge in the first American war crimes trial since World War II barred evidence on Monday that interrogators obtained from Osama bin Laden's driver following his capture in Afghanistan.

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Bin Laden's driver is in the dock, but America's war on terror is on trial
Independent
Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's personal driver, will enter a specially built courtroom in Guantanamo Bay tomorrow for the first full trial of any of the hundreds of detainees to have been sent to America's infamous prison camp since the 9/11 attacks nearly seven years ago.

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Sabotage in Guantánamo
Salon
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba -- When Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the 39-year-old Saudi alleged to have been al-Qaida’s financial manager, appeared before the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay last month, his lawyer, Major Jon S. Jackson, intended to defend him on multiple charges. Al-Hawsawi is accused, in a group indictment with four others, of planning the 9/11 attacks. Jackson, a lumbering 6-foot-4 Army lawyer from Memphis, Tenn., had met repeatedly with al-Hawsawi and built a rapport with him.

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Judge Who Signed 'Torture Memo' Blasts DMCA Sentence
Wired
Perhaps a session of waterboarding is the correct sentence for a California man convicted of selling more than $1 million worth of counterfeited "access cards" that allowed customers unlawful access to DirectTV's digital satellite feed.

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The Justice Department, Blind to Slavery
New York Times
Washington
PRESIDENT BUSH has won support abroad and bipartisan praise at home for his efforts to combat human trafficking, the slavery of our time. But now that work is imperiled by his own Department of Justice.

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Pull Up a Chair, Mr. Rove
Washington Post
Karl Rove had never been so agreeable.

The former chief strategist to President Bush was the only witness listed on the agenda for yesterday's meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, and he proved to be uncharacteristically contained.

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Rove defies subpoena from Hill Dems on Justice Dept.
USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he influenced the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama.

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Guantanamo Crumbles
Washington Post
THE CASE OF Huzaifa Parhat provides the clearest, most compelling evidence yet that the process used by the Bush administration to justify holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay is deeply and irreversibly flawed and must be discarded.

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Court Is Skeptical of U.S. Evidence in Guantánamo Case
New York Times
In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that allegations against an ethnic Chinese man held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims, according to the decision released Monday.

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John Roberts' record defies '05 pledges
Chicago Tribune
With his third term as chief justice coming to a close amid three explosive cases last week, John Roberts has proved to be almost everything conservatives hoped and liberals feared.

Despite pledges during his 2005 confirmation hearing to hew to judicial centrism, Roberts has shown himself to be a reliable member of the Supreme Court's right flank--rarely, if ever, disagreeing with its positions on civil rights, gun control, the death penalty, affirmative action and a host of other issues.

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In Courts, Afghanistan Air Base May Become Next Guantanamo
Washington Post
Jawed Ahmad, a driver and assistant for reporters of a Canadian television network in Afghanistan, knew the roads to avoid, how to get interviews and which stories to pitch. Reporters trusted him, his bosses say.

Then, one day about seven months ago, the 22-year-old CTV News contractor vanished. Weeks later, reporters would learn from Ahmad's family that he had been arrested by U.S. troops, locked up in the U.S. military prison at Bagram air base and accused of being an enemy combatant.

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Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
Pottersville
When I read stories like this one from Truthout, I wonder less and less why Michelle Obama is only now proud of the United States. IMHO, there's still not much to be proud of, as this article by Maya Schenwar shows.

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Scalia or wingnut blogger?
Daily Kos
Really, there's no difference anymore.

In his dissent in Boumedienne (pdf), Justice Scalia wrote:

"At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield."
When I read this, I wondered about the word 'returned', since it seems to assume that these detainees were enemy combatants when they were captured.

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Judicial activism by conservatives
Los Angeles Times
The Supreme Court's invalidation of the District of Columbia's handgun ban powerfully shows that the conservative rhetoric about judicial restraint is a lie. In striking down the law, Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion, joined by the court's four other most conservative justices, is quite activist in pursuing the conservative political agenda of protecting gun owners.

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Homeless man gets nearly 5 years for Bush threats
Boston Globe
TAMPA, Fla.—A mentally ill homeless man will serve 57 months in federal prison for threats he made against President Bush.

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Audit: DOJ Weeded Out Liberals, Dems
CBS News
Ivy Leaguers and other top law students were rejected for plum Justice Department jobs two years ago because of their liberal leanings or objections to Bush administration politics, a government report concluded Tuesday.

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Appeals Court Invalidates Detainee's 'Enemy' Status
Washington Post
A federal appeals court in Washington has invalidated the Bush administration's finding that a detainee held for more than six years in the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba is an "enemy combatant," and has ordered the government to release him, transfer him or offer him a new hearing.

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White House Dismissed Legal Advice On Detainees
Washington Post
Senior lawyers inside and outside the Bush administration repeatedly warned the White House that it was risking judicial scrutiny of its detention policies in Guantanamo Bay if it did not pursue a more pragmatic legal strategy that considered the likely reaction of the Supreme Court. But such advice, issued periodically over the past six years, was ignored or discounted, according to current and former administration officials familiar with the debates.

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US Asks to Rewrite Gitmo Evidence
Time
(WASHINGTON) — The Bush administration wants to rewrite the official evidence against Guantanamo Bay detainees, allowing it to shore up its cases before they come under scrutiny by civilian judges for the first time.

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How to Complicate Habeas Corpus
New York Times
Chicago
LAST week’s Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush settled a key constitutional issue: all prisoners detained at Guantánamo Bay are constitutionally entitled to bring habeas corpus in federal court to challenge the legality of their detention.

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Detainees will put spotlight on U.S. evidence against them
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — The Taliban tortured Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak Al Ginco. They thought he was a U.S. spy. Then, U.S. soldiers called the Syrian native an enemy and shipped him to Guantanamo Bay.

Now, Ginco will be turning a spotlight back on the Bush administration itself. Newly empowered by the Supreme Court, Ginco and several hundred other Guantanamo Bay detainees can start demanding hard evidence and quick action.

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McCain's terror errors
Los Angeles Times
No one wants to be the first candidate to invoke Sept. 11. As a campaign tactic, 9/11 chest-thumping has become both predictable and tacky. So this week, John McCain's campaign hit on a creative solution: Invoke Sept. 10.

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U.S. hasn't apologized to or compensated ex-detainees
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — To date, the U.S. government hasn't given any former detainee financial compensation or apologized for wrongfully imprisoning him, shipping him around the world and holding him without legal recourse.

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Deck stacked against detainees in legal proceedings
McClatchy Newspapers
KHOST, Afghanistan — Guantanamo detainees appearing before the military tribunals that would decide their fate had little chance of receiving evenhanded hearings, an eight-month McClatchy investigation found. At least 40 former Guantanamo detainees of the 66 interviewed had tribunal hearings, but none was able to submit testimony from witnesses outside the detention facility.

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The Court McCain Wants
Washington Post
Conservatives, seizing on the Supreme Court's ruling last week on Guantanamo detainees, want to turn the court into election fodder.

I hope they succeed.

No issue in this campaign is as simultaneously neglected and important. And the opposite reactions of John McCain and Barack Obama to the decision underscore how much is at stake for the future of the court.

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John Yoo's ongoing falsehoods in service of limitless government power
Salon
One of the most reliable methods for knowing that a position is unsustainable is that its advocates must employ outright falsehoods in order to support it. In a Wall St. Journal Op-Ed today, John Yoo defends the right of the Bush administration to imprison people at Guantanamo indefinitely with no judicial review and condemns last week's Supreme Court habeas corpus ruling as "judicial imperialism of the highest order." To do so, Yoo asserts what have become the now-standard though still-blatant falsehoods on this issue.

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Contempt Of Courts
Washington Post
The day after the Supreme Court ruled that detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus hearings, John McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Well.

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Wrongly jailed detainees found militancy at Guantanamo
McClatchy Newspapers
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.

U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however — after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers — he'd made connections to high-level militants.

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The U.S. Attorneys Scandal Enters the Criminal Prosecutions Phase
Harpers
Sources in Washington tell me that the year-long probe of the Bush Administration’s decision to fire a still-undetermined number of U.S. Attorneys for political and improper reasons is “substantially completed” and that it remains the subject of wrangling in a fairly transparent effort to slow down its release.

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A Case of Politics
New York Times
Don Siegelman, the former Alabama governor, is asking a federal appeals court to throw out his conviction on dubious corruption charges. His appeal has some surprising backers: a bipartisan group of 54 former state attorneys general has submitted a brief on his behalf. Congress is also investigating charges that Mr. Siegelman was politically targeted.

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Kristol: McCain And Graham Plan To Introduce Legislation Undermining Supreme Court Decision On Guantanamo»
Think Progress


Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts. Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wasted no time in publicly blasting the decision, saying they were “disappointed” in “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

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Detainees May Be Denied Evidence for Defense
Washington Post
When Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other alleged co-conspirators in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks seek to represent themselves in military commissions trials in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they may be barred from reviewing highly classified evidence and might not have access to the intelligence agents who interrogated them, according to the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions.

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Studies differ on threat from Guantanamo detainees
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Had a majority of the men imprisoned at Guantanamo after 2002 attacked the United States or American troops?

It depends on whom you ask.

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America's prison for terrorists often held the wrong men
McClatchy Newspapers
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

They shouted "Allahu Akbar" — God is great — as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar's head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face.

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McCain and Obama Split on Justices’ Guantánamo Ruling
New York Times
BOSTON — The presidential candidates took differing positions Thursday on the Supreme Court decision granting foreign terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay a right to challenge their detention in civilian courts. Senator John McCain expressed concern about the ruling, while Senator Barack Obama lauded it.

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Detention Camp Remains, but Not Its Legal Rationale
New York Times
The Guantánamo Bay detention center will not close today or any day soon.

But the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday stripped away the legal premise for the remote prison camp that officials opened six years ago in the belief that American law would not reach across the Caribbean to a United States naval station in Cuba.

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Supreme court ruling on right to trial puts Guantánamo future in doubt
Guardian
The future of the infamous Guantánamo detention centre was thrown into doubt yesterday after the US supreme court delivered the most serious blow yet to President George Bush's policy of holding prisoners indefinitely without trial.

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The Education of George W. Bush
Washington Post
President Bush's slow and painful schooling in constitutional law continued today as the Supreme Court ruled for the third time in four years that he had violated a basic precept of the American legal system.

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Supreme Court rules in favor of Guantánamo detainees
Salon
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that detainees held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

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Collateral Damage
New York Times
Get it out of your head that “Bush’s Law” is another high-minded, high-umbrage, A.C.L.U.-channeled eulogy to the United States Constitution, which died on the table at the hands of Bush administration surgeons. No, it’s Stephen King country, a collection of horror stories every bit as mouth-drying and finger-curling as Kathy Bates’s taking the lumber to James Caan in “Misery.”

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US world's leading jailer - rights watchdog
News (AU)
THE US has 2.3 million people behind bars, more than any other country in the world and more than ever before in its history, Human Rights Watch says.

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The strange ways of Guantanamo Bay's version of justice
Telegraph
In the contentious history of Guantanamo Bay, Thursday was momentous. It was the first time senior al-Qa'eda suspects had been seen in public since the September 11 attacks on America nearly seven years ago, and the first time any had been charged in a US court.

Short of capturing Osama bin Laden or his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, this was as close as America will come to submitting leading perpetrators of the worst terrorist atrocity on its soil to the rule of law.

But justice is strange at Camp Justice.

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Lawyers Fear for Marri's Sanity
Washington Post
Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is obsessed with the noise variations in an industrial fan, the buzzing of fluorescent lights overhead and the preparation of his dinners. He has stuffed his air vents with food to prevent what he believes are noxious fumes from streaming into his cell, and he worries at times that his lawyers are part of a government conspiracy against him.

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Last Call at Gitmo
Anti-War
Like alcoholics queuing up for drinks at closing time, the U.S. government is pressing charges against prisoners at Guantánamo at a frantic rate, anxious to be seen as validating the chronic lawlessness of the last seven years before November's presidential election.

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Pressure Mounts on Karl Rove
Harpers
For seven years Karl Rove was the nation’s ultimate political puppetmaster, pulling the strings of the great apparatus of state. He sallied forth from that pinnacle of power to offer his wisdom in friendly media. But his actual dealings remained obscured by a heavy curtain of secrecy.

Some of the most serious accusations surrounding Rove related to his manipulations of the justice system.

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Mr. Rove Talks, but Doesn’t Answer
New York Times
In a recent appearance on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Karl Rove was asked if he had a role in the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute Don Siegelman. The former Democratic governor of Alabama was convicted and sentenced to more than seven years, quite possibly for political reasons, and there is evidence that Mr. Rove may have been pulling the strings.

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Fact Sheet: The 16 Prisoners Charged in Guantanamo's Military Commissions
Huffington Post
As a 16th prisoner at Guantánamo, Noor Uthman Mohammad, is put forward for trial by Military Commission (the much-criticized system of trials for "terror suspects" invented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks), Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, provides a guide to the 16 men, two of whom were juveniles at the time of their capture.

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Guantanamo's day in court
Boston Globe
TOMORROW a number of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay will finally get their day in court - although, alas, not literally. Thirty-five Americans who were arrested at the US Supreme Court last January during a demonstration protesting the illegal detention center will go on trial in Washington. They are charged with "causing a harangue." Instead of entering their own names, each defendant will enter the name of a prisoner held at Guantanamo. Father Bill Pickard, a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania, will identify himself as Faruq Ali Ahmed. "He cannot do it himself," Pickard says, "so I am called by my faith, my respect for the rule of law, and my conscience to do it for him."

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House Panel Subpoenas Rove
New York Times
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed former White House adviser Karl Rove as part of its inquiry into whether the Bush administration politically meddled at the Justice Department.

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The Iron Laws of Imprisonment, Bush-style
The Nation
Back in the mid-1990s, in my book, The End of Victory Culture, I wrote the following about the adventure films of my childhood (and those of earlier decades)

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The Most Curious Thing
New York Times
The following essay shows how a photograph aided and abetted a terrible miscarriage of justice. I invite readers to offer their own interpretation of the considerable amount of material contained in the footnotes.

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” – Lewis Carroll, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

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Detention Deficit
Washington Post
A 34-YEAR-OLD man being held in a U.S. facility for foreign detainees dies of heart failure after employees wait more than 40 minutes after his collapse to provide medical help. A permanent legal resident facing deportation because of a 10-year-old conviction for buying stolen jewelry is denied treatment for a suspected recurrence of cancer. An 81-year-old Baptist minister, seeking asylum from his native Haiti, perishes in custody after a nurse concludes he was faking illness.

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Why the Gitmo Cases Are in Disarray
Time
Mohammed al-Qahtani, reputedly one of the most dangerous prisoners held at Guantanamo and one of six to who might have faced the death penalty for alleged participation in the 9/11 plot, has just had charges against him dropped by the top legal authority at the base.

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McCain's Judicial Hypocrisy
American Prospect
Both conservatives and progressives have the words and phrases they like to invoke, the commonly offered arguments, the villains and heroes who populate their rhetoric. But you could sift through every word of contemporary American political debate -- read every stump speech, pore over every press release, endure every moment of every cable chatfest -- and you would be unlikely to encounter a more complete, unadulterated, shameless piece of outright bullshit than "judicial activism."

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Bush Administration 9/11 Show Trials Tainted By Torture
One Utah
The Bush administration’s plan for rigged 9/11 terrorist show trials to coincide with the 2008 presidential election has run into legal difficulties.

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Canada Court Says U.S. Likely Paid Bounty on Suspect
New York Times
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian Federal Court said on Monday that Pakistan appears to have received a $500,000 bounty from the United States for the capture of Abdullah Khadr, a Canadian wanted on charges of working with al Qaeda against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

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Memo Shows Frustration With Special Counsel
Washington Post
Last September, career investigators at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel opened a probe into whether partisan politics were a factor in the Justice Department's prosecution of former Democratic Alabama governor Don Siegelman on corruption charges in 2006.

Siegelman, who narrowly lost his reelection bid in 2002 and intended to run again in 2006, has insistently alleged that Karl Rove, then a White House adviser, targeted him for prosecution to ensure he did not oust a Republican governor.

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Judge Drops General From Trial of Detainee
New York Times
In a new blow to the Bush administration’s troubled military commission system, a military judge has disqualified a Pentagon general who has been centrally involved in overseeing Guantánamo war crimes tribunals from any role in the first case headed for trial.

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It’s About the White House
New York Times
Like many Americans, we have been intrigued and often exasperated by the long-running Democratic primary and the ever smaller-bore spats between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. So we are thankful to Senator John McCain for reminding us Tuesday what this year’s presidential race really is about.

On a day when Mr. Obama won a decisive victory in North Carolina and Mrs. Clinton eked out a win in Indiana, Mr. McCain spoke about his judicial philosophy. He is determined to move a far too conservative and far too activist Supreme Court and federal judiciary even further and more actively to the right.

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Justice System For Detainees Is Moving At a Crawl
Washington Post
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- At the end of a tattered, sun-baked runway dotted with large green tents here is a building aptly called the Expeditionary Legal Complex Courtroom, surrounded by coils of concertina wire, where the most notorious alleged terrorists in U.S. custody are supposed to face charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Nearly seven years later, however, not one of the approximately 775 terrorism suspects who have been held on this island has faced a jury trial inside the new complex, and U.S. officials think it is highly unlikely that any of them will before the Bush administration ends.

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America's Gulag Just Keeps Growing
AlterNet
We're No. 1! We're No. 1! The New York Times' Adam Liptak wrote a disturbing front-page story on Wednesday about how the United States dwarfs the rest of the world when it comes to locking up its citizens.

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Scalia On Bush v. Gore: Get Over It!
CBS News
People who believe the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision giving the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush was politically motivated should just get over it, says Justice Antonin Scalia.

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Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’
New York Times
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

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The Supreme Court Fine-Tunes Pain
New York Times
The Supreme Court’s regrettable ruling upholding Kentucky’s use of lethal injection is a reminder of why government should get out of the business of executing prisoners.

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Red Cross Criticizes U.S. Prison Procedures
Washington Post
The Red Cross on Monday criticized the way U.S. authorities handle prisoners at the highly secret Bagram military base in Afghanistan, urging reforms that would allow detainees to introduce testimony in their defense.

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How to Judge a Would-Be Justice
New York Times
It is hard to imagine a more solemn responsibility than confirming the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. And we have worried, especially in recent years, that nominees are far too carefully packaged and coached on how to duck all of the hard questions.

A new study supports our fears: Supreme Court nominees present themselves one way at confirmation hearings but act differently on the court.

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Former Ala. Governor Turns Tables on Justice Department
Washington Post
The successful criminal prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (D) has become tangled in political charges and countercharges that reflect contrasting views about the independence of the Justice Department.

In the two weeks since his release from prison pending an appeal, Siegelman has sharply increased the volume of his assertions that he was railroaded. He says that Karl Rove, who was a White House adviser, targeted him for prosecution to ensure he did not win reelection to the governor's office and displace a Republican there.

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New Roadblocks Delay Tribunals at Guantánamo
New York Times
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — When military officials announced war crimes charges against six detainees for the Sept. 11 attacks two months ago, the move was part of an effort to accelerate the Bush administration’s sluggish military commission system, which has yet to hold a single trial.

But the Sept. 11 case immediately hit a snag. Military defense lawyers were in short supply, and even now, two months later, not one of the six detainees has met his military lawyer.

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The Associated Press fails to reveal Mukasey's favorite color
Salon
In the short time he's been Attorney General, Michael Mukasey has become one of the most divisive political figures in the country. He's been in the middle of numerous controversies, steadfastly defending even the most radical Bush policies -- from torture to warrantless spying -- and demonstrating himself to be as blindly loyal to the White House as his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, and every bit as willing to subvert the powers of the DOJ for political ends.

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The Political Specter at Justice
New York Times
Attorney General Michael Mukasey was supposed to end the cynical politicization of the Justice Department. But the sudden disbanding of the United States attorney’s public corruption office in Los Angeles looks like business as usual.

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Siegelman: Rove's Fingerprints Smeared All Over Case
Daily Kos
We know part of the story in the scandal of Republican politicization of the U.S. Attorneys. We know about U.S. Attorneys who got sacked for not doing the partisan dirty work for the Bush White House and the GOP. The other side of the story is still murky: what about the U.S. Attorneys who did willingly turn their offices in to partisan outposts and used the Department of Justice to settle political scores?

A part of that story may start to emerge with the release from federal prison of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman:

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Court Orders Release of Ex-Governor From Prison
New York Times
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The former governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman, was ordered Thursday to be released from prison on bond by a federal appeals court, pending his broader appeal in a bribery conviction last June.

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Mukasey's rough justice
Boston Globe
WHEN the history of the Bush administration is written, one of the most disturbing chapters will be the 2006 purge of US attorneys - all Bush appointees - who failed to toe the White House line by aggressively prosecuting Democratic officeholders or winking at possible misdeeds by Republicans.

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Going to Jail for Being a Democrat: How Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman Got Roved
AlterNet
Don Siegelman, a popular Democratic governor of Alabama, a Republican state, was framed in a crooked trial, convicted on June 29, 2006, and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush administration.

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Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials
Anti-War
This has been another terrible week for Guantánamo's Military Commissions, established by Dick Cheney and his close advisors in November 2001 to try, convict and execute those responsible for 9/11 through a novel process so far removed from the US court system and the military's own judicial procedures that the tainted fruit of torture would be allowed, and secret evidence could be withheld from the accused.

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After Guantanamo
Findlaw
By groups of five, six, 12 and sometimes even 18, the prisoners at Guantanamo are slowly being sent home. Quietly, without any of the fanfare that accompanied their arrival, they're put on planes and returned to their countries of origin.

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Capital cases in kangaroo courts
Boston Globe
EARLIER this month, the Bush administration decided to seek the death penalty against six suspects in the Sept. 11 plot - and to do so in the kangaroo courts that it calls military tribunals. The tribunals' limits on defendants' access to evidence and other shortcomings make them a mockery of US justice under any circumstances. To use them for death-penalty cases against defendants such as the alleged mastermind of Sept. 11 is to invite international condemnation.

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Courts and the Law: The World Is Watching
CQ Politics
War is hell, and President Bush’s “war on terror” has been no exception.

His administration has worked around the U.S. courts and brushed off global criticism since Bush’s decision in 2001 to hold suspected “enemy combatants” at the naval base at Guant?!namo Bay, Cuba — supposedly outside the reach of the courts or the Constitution. And it has rebuffed Congress by refusing to say that waterboarding is torture, although the practice is barred under both U.S. law and international treaties.

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Rigged Trials at Gitmo
The Nation
Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes--and seeking the death penalty for all of them.

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Detainees at Guantánamo Fight Further Appeal Delay
New York Times
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for a group of Guantánamo detainees who are appealing their classification as enemy combatants have told the Supreme Court that it would be “unconscionable” to grant the Bush administration’s request for further delay in producing the records necessary for the appeals to move forward.

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Justice at Guantanamo
Washington Post
THE BUSH administration has asked the Supreme Court to take a case it says needs to be decided quickly because it presents a serious threat to national security. The justices should grant the administration its wish, and promptly rule against it.

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White House appeals to top court on detainee data
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday in an effort to limit the information it must provide when Guantanamo Bay prisoners challenge their continued captivity.

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Bush Administration Tries to "Cleanse" Evidence Obtained Through Torture
AlterNet
Timing is everything. Yesterday the Pentagon announced that it will seek the death penalty against six men accused of masterminding the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Arriving at the heels of CIA Director Michael Hayden's admission last week that three detainees at Gitmo -- including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is among the defendants -- were waterboarded, the announcement sparked immediate questions about the viability of the evidence against the defendants, who are said to have undergone other forms of "harsh interrogation." As one reporter asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino: "Is the White House at all concerned that some of the evidence of the confessions by many of these men may not be admissible because they were obtained through waterboarding, which the administration admitted to last week?"

Perino skirted the question, but I would guess 'no.' That's because the Pentagon has deployed a novel strategy to legitimize the process and make it respectable again: take defendants imprisoned in an endless legal limbo and whose confessions have been tortured out of them and interrogate them again, this time asking nicely and without violence, to obtain the same evidence. A few months later, voila: You have a clean trial.

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The Guantánamo Six
CounterPunch
Finally, then, nearly six and a half years after the 9/11 attacks, the US administration has charged six Guantánamo detainees with, amongst other charges, terrorism, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, and conspiracy -- adding, for good measure, that it will seek the death penalty in the case of any convictions.

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A Child on Trial at Guantanamo
Huffington Post
February 11, 2008, Guantanamo Bay Naval Base -- Nothing quite prepares you for the reality of justice, Guantanamo style. It's not the endless security checks, the first sight of a Guantanamo detainee or that a military prosecutor begins his legal argument by describing how he salutes the flag during his morning run. No, it's the growing realization that not only is this small courtroom on the far corner of the island of Cuba going to deal with some fundamental issues about the rights to a fair trial and the law of war, but that this defendant, one of the first of any of the several hundred Guantanamo detainees to face any charges, is a very special case. He is facing charges for alleged offenses committed at the age of 15, as a child soldier.

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This is what the US calls justice
Socialist Worker
Guantanamo Bay: Torture, show trials and execution

The US’s decision to seek the death penalty for six Guantanamo Bay detainees in connection with 9/11 is a crime against the very idea of justice.

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Military Prosecutors Plan To Use Flawed Commissions System To Seek Death Penalty For Guantánamo Detainees
ACLU
NEW YORK - The United States military has announced its intention to prosecute and seek the death penalty for six detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, despite a flawed military commissions system there that has yet to try a single case.

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Begging Bush’s Pardon
New York Times
Washington

THE first rule for handling requests for presidential pardons was set down in a report to Congress in 1887, during Grover Cleveland’s first term in office. It said they were to be sent to the attorney general’s “pardon clerk” for “his prompt and appropriate attention.”

Just as important, according to the report, was that the petitioners were to be given a fair shake.

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Restoring Civil Rights
New York Times
In recent decades, and to much public acclaim, Congress passed a series of landmark laws designed to ensure equal rights for all Americans. Lately, and without much notice, the Supreme Court has been gutting them.

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Pioneering Blackwater Protesters Given Secret Trial and Criminal Conviction
AlterNet
Last week in Currituck County, N.C., Superior Court Judge Russell Duke presided over the final step in securing the first criminal conviction stemming from the deadly actions of Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration's favorite mercenary company. Lest you think you missed some earth-shifting, breaking news, hold on a moment. The "criminals" in question were not the armed thugs who gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 20 others in Baghdad's Nisour Square last September. They were seven nonviolent activists who had the audacity to stage a demonstration at the gates of Blackwater's 7,000-acre private military base in North Carolina to protest the actions of mercenaries acting with impunity -- and apparent immunity -- in their names and those of every American.

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Why Jose Padilla's 17-Year Prison Sentence Should Shock and Disgust all Americans
Huffington Post
The news that US citizen Jose Padilla has received a prison sentence of 17 years and four months should provoke outrage in the United States, although it is unlikely that there will be much more than a whimper of dissent.

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Department of Orwellian Excesses
Harpers
A few weeks ago, I testified before the Judiciary Committee in connection with their examination of crimes committed among contractors in Iraq. This was a matter within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. The crimes described, and well documented, notably the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, were horrendous. She had been gang-raped, brutally assaulted, and then imprisoned for fear that she would tell her story to the outside world.

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Cruel and Far Too Usual Punishment
New York Times
The Supreme Court hears arguments on Monday in a case about whether Kentucky’s use of a “cocktail” of injected poisons to carry out the death penalty is unconstitutional. We believe that the death penalty, no matter how it is administered, is unconstitutional and wrong. If a state does execute anyone, it must do so in a way that is humane and does not impose needless suffering. Kentucky’s method does not meet that standard.

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Stinting on Mercy
Washington Post
PRESIDENT BUSH showed a modicum of courage and compassion last month when he commuted the sentence of Maryland resident Michael Dwayne Short. Mr. Short had no prior record when he was arrested in 1989 and charged as a relatively minor player in a D.C. crack cocaine ring. Because of the absurdity of the crack laws, Mr. Short was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison. President Bush's commutation allows Mr. Short to regain his freedom in February, shaving 14 months off his sentence.

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State Without Pity
New York Times
It is a shameful distinction, but Texas is the undisputed capital of capital punishment. At a time when the rest of the country is having serious doubts about the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions this year took place in Texas. That gaping disparity provides further evidence that Texas’s governor, Legislature, courts and voters should reassess their addiction to executions.

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Executions Decline Elsewhere, but Texas Holds Steady
New York Times
This year’s death-penalty bombshells — a federal moratorium, a state abolition and the smallest number of executions in more than a decade — have masked what may be the most significant and lasting development. For the first time in the modern history of the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions took place in Texas.

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Just Another Day for the Department of Justice
Harpers
Wednesday, December 19, 2007. The House Judiciary Committee convenes a hearing to look into the Justice Department’s handling of allegations of crime involving contractors in Iraq. It started with the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, and we quickly learned that this was just one of a substantial number of cases involving rape and sexual assault. The Justice Department is invited to send a witness to explain its policies and inaction. At the last minute, the Justice Department’s congressional liaison sends a poorly informed letter claiming that the cases the committee will investigate are “under investigation” though, as we learn, the Department of Justice’s “investigation” got launched just about the time the Department learned that Congress was going to take a look. The Justice Department said it would be improper for the Justice Department to respond. Mind you, the Committee’s request was not for the Department to talk about any particular case, but about how it dealt in concept with contractor crimes.

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A Pause From Death
New York Times
The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday for a global moratorium on the death penalty. The resolution was nonbinding; its symbolic weight made barely a ripple in the news ocean of the United States, where governments’ right to kill a killer is enshrined in law and custom.

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Mukasey Limits Agency's Contacts With White House
Washington Post
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey issued new restrictions yesterday on contacts between Justice Department and White House officials regarding ongoing criminal or civil investigations, implementing his first major policy revision since taking office on Nov. 9.

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Mukasey Signals He’ll Be a Strong Bush Advocate
New York Times
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has signaled in his first weeks on the job that he intends to be a forceful advocate for some of President Bush’s most controversial antiterrorism policies, even if that means angering Congressional leaders who hoped that he would instead focus on repairing the strained relationship between the Justice Department and Capitol Hill.

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Foxes Only
Slate
The Justice Department is telling Congress to keep out of the investigation of the destruction of the CIA tapes that recorded hundred of hours of torture of two al-Qaida captives. DoJ wants the federal judge who ordered the department to preserve all evidence relevant to the detentions at Guantanamo Bay to keep out, too. To Congress, the argument is: Trust us—we've launched our own investigation, and you'll only get in the way. In court, the government urges: Keep moving, nothing to look at here, because no one has proved that these two al-Qaida guys were held at Guantanamo. Neither argument is convincing. And neither bodes well for Attorney General Michael Mukasey's promise of a new day at his department.

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Whittling Away, but Leaving a Gap
New York Times
There was an avalanche of sentencing news last week. The Supreme Court gave trial judges more power to show mercy, the United States Sentencing Commission gave almost 20,000 prisoners doing time on crack cocaine charges a good shot at early release, and even President Bush commuted a crack sentence.

The net effect: tinkering.

The United States justice system remains, by international standards at least, exceptionally punitive. And nothing that happened last week will change that.

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Americans Held in Iraq Draw Justices’ Attention
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — Expanding its inquiry into the role of the courts at a time of armed conflict, the Supreme Court accepted two cases on Friday that test whether federal judges have the authority to prevent military officials in Iraq from turning United States citizens over to the Iraqis for criminal prosecution or punishment.

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Skeptical Supreme Court ponders major Guantanamo case
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical Wednesday about the Bush administration's treatment of foreign-born prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, raising questions about the future of White House war-on-terrorism tactics.

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Supreme Court Inc.
In These Times
While in law school in Washington, D.C., in the late ’60s, I heard Justice William O. Douglas explain at a public forum that his support for the Warren Court’s “criminal law revolution” was undergirded by his fear that the nation’s police stations were staffed in no small part by “crypto-fascists.”

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A Key Moment for Justice
New York Times
The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that offers a chance to redress an enormous wrong done by President Bush and Congress when they denied justice to a group of prisoners. It is the latest phase of a battle over whether detainees held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to bring a habeas corpus challenge to their confinement. The narrow legal issues have changed since the court considered the question last year, but the principle remains the same: The detainees have a right to have a court determine whether the government has a valid basis for imprisoning them.

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Railroading A Journalist In Iraq
Washington Post
At long last, prize-winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein may get his day in court. The trouble is, justice won't be blind in this case -- his lawyer will be.

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Government Secrecy May Lead to New Trial In Va. Terrorism Case
Washington Post
A federal judge criticized the government's secrecy yesterday in the case of a prominent Muslim spiritual leader from Fairfax County who was convicted on terrorism charges, and she threatened to grant a new trial if the government doesn't share information about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program.

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Release Justice’s Secrets
New York Times
MICHAEL MUKASEY has been confirmed as attorney general. But the profound moral, legal and constitutional issues raised at his Senate Judiciary Committee hearings are unresolved. Mr. Mukasey should open the door to their resolution by releasing the Justice Department’s long-secret legal opinions that have warped our fight against terrorism.

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The Rise of the Federalist Society and the Erosion of Justice
Huffington Post
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the nation's most important employment law -- prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. In 1991 Congress extended Title VII's protections to state employees.

But two weeks ago a federal appeals court issued a technical ruling in Alaska v. EEOC holding that the Title VII's landmark civil rights protections do not apply to state workers. The case strikes a blow to tens of thousands of state workers. Yet it is only one ruling in a string of decisions that have closed the courthouse doors on civil rights cases.

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Small Lies, Big Lies, and Economists
Huffington Post
The timing could not be more inappropriate. The United States is finally moving to join all the civilized nations of the world by ceasing to execute people. It still has quite a way to go. So far, most states that still impose the death penalty have recently suspended executions until the Supreme Court rules on whether the ways people are currently 'put down' constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment; that is, whether lethal injection violates the constitution.

Enter a bunch of economists with a model that, they say, shows that the death penalty deters crimes and hence saves lives.

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Hang your head in shame, George Bush
Guardian
"There is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty's deterrent value and that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty's implementation is irreversible and irreparable," declared the UN resolution passed in committee on Thursday, calling for a global moratorium on capital punishment.

There are many old and highly appropriate proverbs about the company you keep. The vote found the US spinning at the axle of the Axis of Executions, standing firmly alongside China, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan and Syria for the right to behead, stone, gas, fry, inject, hang or shoot grown human beings.

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Prison system a costly and harmful failure: report
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans in prison has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major justice-system overhaul.

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The Trial of Alberto Gonzales
Harpers
No, we’re not there yet. In fact, Fredo hasn’t even been indicted. And with political appointees yanking the chains ferociously as they have since the beginning of the Bush Administration, it has to be reckoned as a long shot that he will be indicted—notwithstanding a long line of now well-defined perjuries before Congress.

But a report in Friday’s Kitsap (Washington) Sun gets us a bit closer to the core of the case which is emerging against the former attorney general. And President Bush sits right in the middle of it. No doubt he’s dusting off another one of those pardon forms right now.

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In Contempt
New York Times
White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, showed their utter disregard for Congress, the Constitution and the American people when they defied Congressional subpoenas in the United States attorneys scandal. The House Judiciary Committee rightly voted to hold them in contempt, and now the matter goes to the full House.

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Bush's Other War: on the Courts
Washington Post
Long after the Iraq war is over -- in other words, a long time from now -- another of President Bush's legacies will still be very much with us: the profound rightward turn of the federal judiciary in general and the Supreme Court in particular.

So last night's 25th anniversary gala for the Federalist Society, complete with a keynote from Bush himself, was an orgy of self-celebration. Membership in (or at least affiliation with) the reactionary legal group is practically a requirement for Bush appointees to the bench or top legal jobs.

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Beyond Mukasey's Confirmation, White House Liability Issues Loom Large
OpEd News
Though it failed to send his nomination the way of Robert Bork, attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey's evasiveness on the definition of torture has done something historic. It has made it unmistakably clear to mainstream observers that the president may be criminally liable for violating anti-torture laws. Criminal liability of this White House will have wider repercussions than Mr. Mukasey's confirmation. It will reverberate through his tenure as attorney general and beyond the end of the Bush administration.

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Plan to Cut Inmates' Sentences Raises Ire
Washington Post
The Bush administration squared off against members of the federal judiciary yesterday over a proposal by an independent panel to reduce the sentences of thousands of federal inmates imprisoned on crack cocaine offenses.

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Bush To Be Pursued Legally After Leaving White House
OpEd News
President Bush and any of his aides that advocated or participated in torture will be the targets of legal action even after they leave office, President Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights(CCR), New York, said.

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Justice Department Reopens Warrantless Wiretapping Inquiry That Was Halted By Bush
Think Progress
In early 2006, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) launched an investigation to examine whether information “obtained from the NSA program, as well as whether Justice lawyers complied with the ‘legal requirements’ that govern it.”

Just a few months later, the inquiry was shut down because Alberto Gonzales refused to grant security clearances to investigators.

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Decks Are Stacked in War Crimes Cases, Lawyers Say
New York Times
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 8 — The administration’s problem-plagued military commission system started up here again Thursday, but it began with contentious new claims that the war crimes cases are unfairly stacked against detainees.

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How Can We Kill Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
Wired
What's the best way to kill someone?

I don't mean on the battlefield, or in a mob hit. Not in self-defense. I mean as the state. What's the best way for the state to execute a prisoner who has been condemned to death?

The courts are currently wrestling with that question.

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Mukasey Confirmation Looking Likely, but Filibuster Remains a Possibility
CQ Politics
Michael Mukasey appears headed for confirmation as attorney general before Thanksgiving, but Senate Democratic leaders are leaving open the possibility that there might be an attempt to filibuster the nomination.

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The Gonzales Legacy
Washington Post
So it's come to this: A promise to enforce the law (in most cases) is enough to get an attorney general nominee confirmed by a Democratic-controlled Senate.

Dan Eggen and Paul Kane write in The Washington Post: "The Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly approved the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general yesterday, moving him a step closer to virtually assured confirmation on the Senate floor as the new head of the troubled Justice Department.

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Partisanship has no place at Justice
Seattle PI
Alberto Gonzales lost his job over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys who didn't prosecute enough Democrats. But the really scary thing about the scandal isn't the ones who were let go but the ones who weren't.

What did the attorneys still employed do -- and what may they still be doing -- to hold onto their jobs?

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Judiciary Panel OK's Waterboarding, Er, Mukasey
The Nation
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning approved President Bush's nomination of former Federal Judge Michael Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General.

Mukasey, a radical advocate for expanded executive power, had refused to condemn the torture tactics -- such as waterboarding -- that Gonzales sought unsuccessfully to legitimize.

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Schumer, Feinstein Timed Mukasey Announcement To Avoid Liberal Anger
Huffington Post
With the support of Schumer, Feinstein and the committee's nine Republicans, Mukasey has garnered enough support to clear the panel and move to the Senate floor.

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The Questions Senators Should Ask Themselves About Attorney General Nominee Michael Mukasey
Findlaw
Today, a Senate Judiciary Committee vote is scheduled on retired federal Judge Michael Mukasey, President George W. Bush's nominee for Attorney General. Over two recent days at Mukasey's confirmation hearing, Senators peppered the nominee with hundreds of questions. In the ensuing week, Committee members inundated Mukasey with several hundred additional written follow-up questions. Last Tuesday, the nominee submitted 172 pages of responses to those queries.

As members contemplate their votes, I will describe, in this column, key questions Senators should ask themselves about Judge Mukasey.

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Mukasey Is (Much) Worse Than Gonzales
The Nation
George Bush's nominee to replace disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, retired Federal Judge Michael B. Mukasey, must be rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee for the same reason that Gonzales should have been rejected in 2005.

Like Gonzales, Mukasey refuses to accept that the president of the United States must abide by the laws of the land, beginning with the Constitution.

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Judge OKs subpoenas for Rice, other officials
USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior intelligence will be subpoenaed to discuss their discussions with pro-Israel lobbyists, a federal judge ruled Friday in an espionage case.

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Senate Dems closing ranks against Mukasey
Politico
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that the Senate would not hold a floor vote on the nomination of former judge Michael Mukasey to be attorney general if the nomination is rejected by the Judiciary Committee.

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The sad decline of Michael Mukasey
Salon
When President Bush nominated Michael Mukasey as attorney general his distinguished career was offered as guarantee of his integrity and independence. A former federal district judge, senior partner at a major law firm and former assistant U.S. attorney, well known and widely respected by the New York bar, he appeared to have the experience and balance needed to restore trust to the battered Justice Department. The previous attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, had been an eager plaything of the White House, a factotum from Texas who faithfully followed orders to politicize and purge for partisan purposes. While Mukasey espouses conservative views upholding an expansive interpretation of the executive, and argues that warrantless domestic surveillance is therefore justified, Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee were still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Then Mukasey was questioned about whether waterboarding -- a technique of forced drowning first used in the Spanish Inquisition and by orders of the Bush administration applied to accused terrorist detainees -- is torture.

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What Lies Beneath
Slate
As our collective interest has shifted from the incompetence of the former attorney general to the independence of the next one, it's easy to forget that Alberto Gonzales may be in heaps of legal trouble.

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Mukasey's take on torture
Los Angeles Times
Michael B. Mukasey, who once seemed headed to confirmation as attorney general by acclamation, may now be facing a narrower and more contentious vote. That's the price the retired federal judge from New York will have to pay unless he reconsiders some evasive testimony about torture.

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Southwick wins Senate nomination battle
Guardian
A Mississippi judge who defended a white employee calling a black colleague a "nigger" was today confirmed by the Senate to a New Orleans-based federal appeals court.

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Tilting the Scales of Justice
New York Times
Every time we take a look at the United States attorney scandal, more evidence emerges that Alberto Gonzales politicized the Justice Department to the point where it sometimes seems like a branch of the Republican National Committee.

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Siegelman's Lawyer: D.C. Justice Officials Played "Integral" Role in Prosecution
TPM
A former lawyer for Don Siegelman (D-AL) told the House Judiciary Committee today that his client's case took a "180 degree" turn in 2004, after Justice Department officials in Washington told local prosecutors to take another look at the case -- from top to bottom.

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U.S. Prosecution of Muslim Group Ends in Mistrial
New York Times
DALLAS, Oct. 22 — A federal judge declared a mistrial on Monday in what was widely seen as the government’s flagship terrorism-financing case after prosecutors failed to persuade a jury to convict five leaders of a Muslim charity on any of the charges, or even to reach a verdict on many of the 197 counts.

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From Toady to True Believer
Slate
The Senate should not confirm Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general. I am surprised to find myself writing this. I was initially pleased by his nomination. By all accounts, Judge Mukasey is honest, thoughtful, tough-minded, and independent—qualities his disgraceful predecessor notoriously lacked. If confirmed, Mukasey would probably reinvigorate the Justice Department's depleted and demoralized upper management and make a start on the long job of restoring the department's reputation for integrity and professionalism.

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At Gitmo, No Room for Justice
Harpers
In the past several weeks I’ve had a number of meetings with military and civilian lawyers involved in the Guantánamo military commissions, including prosecutors, defense counsel, military judges and staffers with the convening authority. They are a disciplined group, with a strong sense of dedication to the performance of their mission. And there is pretty much across the board a smoldering anger towards the Bush Administration—a sense that the military commissions, which could have been used to showcase American values, have instead become a sort of laughing stock for the world, an embarrassment for the uniformed services.

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Gonzales could be prosecuted, McKay says
Spokesman Review
The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of an investigation, possibly as early as next month, the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday.

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Empty Seats on the Bench
Washington Post
NEXT WEEK, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is scheduled to hear al-Marri v. Wright, an important case involving the rights of those captured in the war on terrorism to challenge their detentions. Under normal circumstances, the full court, which reviews federal cases from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the Carolinas, would have a complement of 15 judges. These are not normal times.

The court is operating with only 10 judges. Two of the vacancies are considered "judicial emergencies," meaning the seats have been unoccupied for more than 18 months.

The Bush administration is almost entirely to blame.

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Ex-Prosecutor Alleges Pentagon Plays Politics
Washington Post
Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.

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Claim of Pressure for Closed Guantánamo Trials
New York Times
The former chief military prosecutor for the planned war-crimes trials of Guantánamo detainees said yesterday that he had been pressured by military officials to rely increasingly on classified evidence, which would require that long trial sessions be held behind closed doors rather than in open proceedings.

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Mr. Mukasey's Answers
Washington Post
THE CONFIRMATION hearings for attorney general nominee Michael B. Mukasey began yesterday with the sober pronouncement by Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) that, if confirmed, Mr. Mukasey would inherit a Justice Department facing its gravest challenge since the "Saturday Night Massacre" of Watergate infamy. Then it quickly turned into a ceremonial waltz, with members of both parties swooning as Mr. Mukasey delivered informed, concise and responsive answers. The senators' reaction was understandable, given the conspicuous difference between Mr. Mukasey's testimony and the chronic evasions of Alberto R. Gonzales. But senators shouldn't be surprised if, as attorney general, Mr. Mukasey adopts many of the same positions as his predecessor -- albeit with more reasoned and legally sound justifications.

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Mukasey: Gonzo torture memo 'worse than a sin'
The Swamp
Attorney General nominee Michael B. Mukasey provided some reassurance today to critics of the Bush administration's anti-terror policies, but by and large avoided taking hard-and-fast stances about some of its most controversial practices.

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Bush Nominee Signals Change at Justice Dept.
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 — President Bush’s nominee for Attorney General pledged today to run the Justice Department in an independent, nonpartisan way, and said the president did not have the authority to allow harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects.

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Cruel and unusual
IHT
So America has a national moratorium of sorts. An unofficial stay of execution. All quiet in the death chambers.

In the days since the Supreme Court decided to take on another death penalty case, 11 states - including Texas, the capital of capital punishment - have suspended executions.

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Supreme Disgrace
New York Times
The Supreme Court exerts leadership over the nation’s justice system, not just through its rulings, but also by its choice of cases — the ones it agrees to hear and the ones it declines. On Tuesday, it led in exactly the wrong direction.

Somehow, the court could not muster the four votes needed to grant review in the case of an innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in a secret overseas prison as part of the Bush administration’s morally, physically and legally abusive anti-terrorism program. The victim, Khaled el-Masri, was denied justice by lower federal courts, which dismissed his civil suit in a reflexive bow to a flimsy government claim that allowing the case to go forward would put national security secrets at risk.

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The United States Attorneys Scandal Comes to Mississippi
New York Times
Paul Minor is the son of Bill Minor, a legendary Mississippi journalist and chronicler of the civil rights movement. He is also a wealthy trial lawyer and a mainstay of Mississippi’s embattled Democratic Party. Mr. Minor has contributed $500,000 to Democrats over the years, including more than $100,000 to John Edwards, a fellow trial lawyer. He fought hard to stop the Mississippi Supreme Court from being taken over by pro-business Republicans.

Mr. Minor’s political activity may have cost him dearly.

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Partisanship Accusation Expanded in Alabama
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The son of Alabama’s current Republican governor boasted that a Republican judge would “hang Don Siegelman,” a former Democratic governor of Alabama, for partisan reasons, according to a deposition by a Republican lawyer from Alabama.

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Nobody Knows the Lynchings He’s Seen
New York Times
WHAT’S the difference between a low-tech lynching and a high-tech lynching? A high-tech lynching brings a tenured job on the Supreme Court and a $1.5 million book deal. A low-tech lynching, not so much.

Pity Clarence Thomas. Done in by what he calls “left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony” — as he describes anyone who challenged his elevation to the court — he still claims to have suffered as much as African-Americans once victimized by “bigots in white robes.” Since kicking off his book tour on “60 Minutes” last Sunday, he has been whining all the way to the bank, often abetted by a press claque as fawning as his No. 1 fan, Rush Limbaugh.

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I Did Do It
New York Times
Washington

O.K., folks, you want the truth?

The whole truth and nothing but?

After all this time, you’re still dying to see the mystery solved?

Fine. I did it. Everything A. said — let’s just use the initial because it’s still hard for me to speak the name of my victim and tormentor — was true.

I did what I had to do and I didn’t care if it ruined A.’s life. I didn’t even care if people thought it was obscene.

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Selective Justice in Alabama?
Time
On may 8, 2002, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbyist and landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking "good ole boy," was in an expansive mood. In the downtown offices of the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, Ala., Young settled into his chair, personal lawyer at his side, and proceeded to tell a group of seasoned prosecutors and investigators that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to some of the biggest names in Alabama Republican politics. According to Young, among the recipients of his largesse were the state's former attorney general Jeff Sessions, now a U.S. Senator, and William Pryor Jr., Sessions' successor as attorney general and now a federal judge. Young, whose detailed statements are described in documents obtained by TIME, became a key witness in a major case in Alabama that brought down a high-profile politician and landed him in federal prison with an 88-month sentence. As it happened, however, that official was the top Democrat named by Young in a series of interviews, and none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted.

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One Angry Man
Washington Post
To read Clarence Thomas's book is to be struck anew by the blast-furnace of his anger -- at Democrats; at liberal interest groups; at the media; at, of course, Anita Hill.

There are wounds that never heal, but, for most, time tends to at least salve the injury. Not for Thomas, even 16 years later. The 289 pages of "My Grandfather's Son" pulsate with Thomas's rage.

"Whoop-dee damn-doo," Thomas relates telling his wife when she interrupted his bath to report that he had been confirmed. "Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court, seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me."

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The Smear This Time
New York Times
ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence Thomas’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

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The Dissenter
New York Times
The last Supreme Court term, which ended in June, was the stormiest in recent memory, with more 5-to-4 decisions split along ideological lines than at any time in the court’s history. In a series of controversial cases about abortion, racial integration in schools, faith-based programs and the death penalty, the court’s four more conservative justices prevailed, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy providing the crucial fifth vote. The four more liberal justices were often moved to dissent in unusually personal and vehement terms. “It is my firm conviction,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the case striking down race-based enrollment policies in public schools, “that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.” According to the gossip among Supreme Court law clerks, the level of tension among the justices is higher than at any point since Bush v. Gore in 2000.

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Considering Mr. Mukasey
New York Times
Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee to be attorney general, is being promoted as a “consensus choice,” which is meant to signal the Senate that it should be grateful and confirm him without delay. Mr. Mukasey is clearly better than some of the “loyal Bushies” whose names had been floated, but that should not decide the matter. The Senate needs to question him closely about troubling aspects of his record, and make sure he is willing to take the tough steps necessary to repair a very damaged Justice Department.

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Restoring American Justice
New York Times
In 2006, acting in reckless haste before an election, 65 senators and 250 members of the House defied the Constitution, endangered the safety of American soldiers and hurt the nation’s global reputation by passing the Military Commissions Act. The law created a separate, substandard and clearly unconstitutional system of trial and punishment for foreigners. This week Congress has a chance to begin fixing that grievous mistake.

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The Next Attorney General
New York Times
The Justice Department is a disaster zone. It should be the embodiment of America’s commitment to the rule of law, but it has been contaminated by partisan politics. The nation’s top lawyers may have broken the law, and even may have sent innocent people to jail, to advance the interests of the Republican Party. To replace Alberto Gonzales, President Bush must appoint an attorney general who is above politics, and the Senate should only confirm a nonpolitical lawyer of unquestioned integrity. The names that have surfaced so far as potential nominees do not meet this standard.

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FIVE TO FOUR
The New Yorker
As George W. Bush staggers toward the conclusion of his second term, he can point to at least one major and enduring project that has gone according to plan: the transformation of the Supreme Court. In the next week or so, the justices will begin their summer recess. The first full term in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., have served together will thus be completed, and the changes on the Court, and their implications for the nation, have been profound.

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Democrats See Politics in a Governor’s Jailing
New York Times
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — House leaders are beginning an investigation this week of the prosecution of Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama who was imprisoned in June on federal corruption charges. The case could become the centerpiece of a Democratic effort to show that the Justice Department engaged in political prosecutions.

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