Ammunition for your Turkey Day arguments

Ah, Thanksgiving...that classic American holiday in which families gather together to stuff themselves stupid, watch football, and tiptoe delicately around safe conversation topics. Inevitably, Grampa Joe or Aunt Sally will bring up the latest rant from their favorite pundit, often a criticism of some new and dastardly way the ACLU is destroying the fabric of America. Like any polite relative, you'll avoid engaging and politely change the subject to something non-controversial - like who was on Leno last night. Right?


Ah, who are we kidding? If we were people who avoid engaging in controversial conversation, we wouldn't be the ACLU.


So, should you decide to embarrass your poor family by going point-for-point against your misinformed but opinionated relatives, we want you to be well-armed with the ACLU member's favorite ammunition: logic and cold, hard fact. Here are a few of the most popular lies about the ACLU, and how to argue against them.


MYTH: The ACLU is fighting a war against Christmas


Much as we'd miss our annual deluge of Christmas cards and their heartwarming holiday spirit ("Merry Christmas, you atheist bastards!") the truth is we have nothing against people observing and celebrating Christmas. Personally, I love Christmas. Where we have a problem is where governments implicitly endorse one specific religious belief by putting on Christmas celebrations, and forgetting everyone else. 


But the fact is, even when we file a suit, it's always against a government entity and it's against things like nativity scenes and crucifixes - stuff that represents a specific faith, not symbols of a shared cultural season like Christmas trees or Santa. We've never insisted anyone change the name to "holiday tree," and we have nothing whatsoever to do with private stores like Macy's and Walmart choosing to say "Happy Holidays." They do that to try to be respectful of all their shoppers, which to us seems pretty in-line with "peace on earth and good will toward men."


MYTH: The ACLU is suing to remove crosses from military cemeteries.


This is patently untrue, and was made up out of whole cloth to smear the ACLU. In fact, the ACLU believes very strongly in the right of each person to express their religion, and we would fight hard against anyone who told a Christian soldier that he or she could not choose to have a cross on his or her headstone. But don't take our word for it. Check with Snopes.


MYTH: The ACLU sued to stop Marines from engaging in prayer.


Once again, Snopes comes in handy. Patently untrue, and demonstrates a frequent misunderstanding of our defense of religious liberty. The ACLU fights hard to defend the rights of every American to express his or her religion freely. What we oppose is government endorsement or enforcement of religion. This is why, for instance, we will defend the right of a child or children to choose to pray in a public school, but oppose the school's endorsement of such, including any school official leading that prayer.


A recent rumor is that the ACLU is trying to introduce Sharia law into US government, which is as untrue as it is ludicrous. We defend the rights of Muslims to observe their religion as they choose, just as we defend the rights of Christians to do the same.  What we oppose is the introduction of those religious laws into the government.


On a related note, there's a great web site, The ACLU Fights for Christians (maintained by a kind supporter) to show anyone who tells you that the ACLU is anti-Christian.


MYTH: The ACLU runs the CIA


Our apologies to guests at the Bachmann Thanksgiving table, but no matter how many times you hear this repeated, it just isn't true.


We're not saying we wouldn't like to be in charge - we have a lot of great ideas, like stopping waterboarding and other torture altogether, closing secret prisons and Guantanamo Bay, and respecting Constitutional requirements like due process and habeas corpus. We've been shouting pretty loud about all those things for a while now, as have the majority of Americans who want the same things - but they don't appear to be charge of the CIA either.

So there you go. There are, of course, no shortage of other lies, misunderstandings, and distortions about the ACLU, but we thought we'd stick with the classics. Granted, you probably won't win any points with your relatives for starting a screaming match. When in doubt, there's nothing wrong with being polite - if you have to, you can always rely on the clip below. Happy Thanksgiving!

Chris in Philly

Torture me this

Last week I started to write a post about the horror of America's policy on torture under George W. Bush. The post was inspired by an NPR story last week about Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was wrongly detained during a layover at JFK in 2002 and sent to Syria, where he was tortured. Eventually, officials realized he was innocent, and Arar was released. The Canadian government awarded him $10 million for his ordeal, and last week the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in his case.

I was struck by the NPR story because the personal story can be so moving. Hearing Arar describe his experience, which you can hear at NPR's website by clicking the link above, penetrates even the deepest cynicism.

That post I started was never finished. And now since Friday, the floodgates have opened on the Bush administration's torture scandal. In the administration's waning days, the Bush crime syndicate would probably prefer to control the message of Bush's legacy. Instead, it has had to deal with the stain it has left on America's reputation and the very real damage it did in America's pursuit of national security through its use of torture.

Last Thursday, the Senate Armed Forces Committee, led by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ), released a report indicating that high level administration officials, going at least as high as then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were directly responsible for torture committed by American military members. Lynndie England and Charles Graner weren't a couple of low level bad apples. They were told from on high to do what they did.

The committee report was the result of two years of investigation. It confirmed what we already knew due to the previous release of DOD and DOJ memos.

Stunningly, rather than tamping down the story, Vice President Dick Cheney has faced it head on, telling ABC News that he thinks the use of torture, including waterboarding, was appropriate. Of course, Cheney doesn't admit that the techniques used were torture. He sticks to the administration line that the United States doesn't torture, but in the same interview, within minutes, he states that he feels that all of the interrogation tactics used by the U.S., including waterboarding, were appropriate.

It is well known that torture techniques, including waterboarding, were used on al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and in the ABC interview, Cheney claims that about half of what we knew about al-Qaeda a few years ago came from KSM.

But Cheney's claim doesn't jibe with a new article at VanityFair.com. David Rose of VF has written a story, "Tortured Reasoning", in which counterterrorism officials from various agencies indicate that the Bush administration's use of torture not only did not produce reliable intelligence but it was also counterproductive in our country's attempt to protect itself.

In researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts—with Abu Zubaydah’s case one of the most glaring examples.

Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some misleading “information” that boosted the administration’s argument for invading Iraq.

And here's where Cheney's assertion about KSM is blown to shreds:

But according to a former senior C.I.A. official, who read all the interrogation reports on K.S.M., “90 percent of it was total f--king bulls--t.” A former Pentagon analyst adds: “K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.”

So not only is torture morally reprehensible, it's not practical.

Incredibly, there are people out there still willing to defend this wretched practice. Philly radio talk show host Michael Smerconish told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday on Hardball that if the US does it, it's OK.

Meanwhile, Senator Levin stated on The Rachel Maddow Show that his committee's report warrants the creation of a commission to determine if Bush administration officials should be charged with crimes. (Gotta embed this one.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The New York Times' editorial board, meanwhile, believes the commission step should be skipped:

A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse.

We're all looking forward to putting this sad chapter of American history behind us, but even with a mere month remaining in the Bush administration, this story continues to have plot twists.

Andy in Harrisburg

Fight defamation! Award the medal of freedom!

Or Bill Kristol is such a jerk

You gotta read this. No really. You…just…gotta…read…this.

William Kristol writes in the Weekly Standard that President George Bush should not only consider himself an old-fashioned last-minute preemptive pardoning spree of any and all folks who participated in the "War on Terror," but (get this) he should also award them the Medal of Freedom.

Bush should consider pardoning--and should at least be vociferously praising--everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.

Let's forget for the moment about why those who have engaged in torture or illegal spying should be protected from public criticism. Let's focus instead on what the Medal of Freedom is supposed to be about. According to the Presidential Medal of Freedom:

Recipients of the medal are those who have made outstanding contributions to the security or national interest of the United States or to world peace, or those who have made a significant public or private accomplishment.

Sniff. Beautiful. Gets this red-blooded freedom-loving girl a little misty around the eyes.

Except that, as Andrew Sullivan writes in his Atlantic Monthly blog The Daily Dish:

There is no "witch-hunt" for CIA staffers ordered by their superiors to commit war crimes.

However, there remain questions. Very big, very constitutional questions. Whether President-elect Barack Obama will call for a governmental investigation into war crimes is still being debated - even though, as Sullivan points out, there may be very well be a vital need to hold those at the top accountable.

But to even suggest that the president - so obviously trying to dodge that door slamming shut right now on his butt - should use the highest civilian award to honor those folks who have spent the past eight years committed to shredding the very document on which this nation has been built is a suggestion of obscenely cynical proportions.

Lauri in York

Editor's note: To this day, I'm still in awe of the fact that the NY Times thought it was a good idea to give this nutcase a weekly column. He's the classic example of failing upward. "Wrong about everything? You, too, can be a high paid columnist and analyst, just like Bill Kristol!" --Andy in Harrisburg

Will the new president defend the Constitution?

So the clouds have opened and all will be well since the Democrats won, right? Ha! Yeah, right. We've been warning our friends that civil liberties will still need defended at the local, state, and, yes, federal level after the election. Remember Bill Clinton with the Defense of Marriage Act, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the massive ballooning of the prison industrial complex, and the original proposal of the PATRIOT Act?

National is all over what needs to be done by President-elect Obama. Click here for the ACLU's transition plan for the new president. Here's Day One.

Day One: Stop Torture, Close Guantanamo, End Extraordinary Renditions
The next president will have a historic opportunity -- on day one -- to take very important steps to restore the rule of law in the interrogation and detention of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, and in secret prisons around the globe. Every action taken pursuant to an executive order of President Bush can be reversed by executive order of the next president.

Therefore, on the first day in office, the next president should issue an executive order directing all agencies to modify their policies and practices immediately to:

• Cease and prohibit the use of torture and abuse, without exception, and direct the Attorney General immediately after his or her confirmation to appoint an outside special counsel to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute any violations of federal criminal laws prohibiting torture and abuse;
• Close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and either charge and try detainees under criminal law in federal criminal courts or before military courts-martial or transfer them to countries where they will not be tortured or detained without charge;
• Cease and prohibit the practice of extraordinary rendition, which is the transfer of persons, outside of the judicial process, to other countries, including countries that torture or abuse prisoners.

Andy in Harrisburg

July 4: A day for repentance

Wow, columnist Chris Satullo raised the roof today in The Philadelphia Inquirer. This is a must-read. Here's a snippet.

This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement.

For we have sinned.

We have failed to pay attention. We've settled for lame excuses. We've spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago.

The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner.

The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing.

The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them.

Such abuses once were committed by the arrogant crowns of Europe, spawning rebellion.

Today, our nation does such things in the name of our safety. Petrified, unwilling to take the risks that love of liberty demands, we close our eyes.

Andy in Harrisburg

I got so much trouble on my mind. Refuse to lose.

Lots of stuff out there in the ether.

• To borrow a phrase, America's chickens have come home to roost. Several federal agencies sponsored a summit last week with immigrant groups to recruit aid in intelligence gathering. And guess what they heard.
  

  "We are going to ask you to open up your communities to us," said Ronald Sanders, an assistant national intelligence director, and the son of an Egyptian immigrant mother.
  
  The officials got an earful in return — about immigration and hiring rules and foreign policies that make life harder in immigrants' old countries. The intelligence agencies' own practices also came under criticism: extraordinary rendition, holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, harsh interrogation practices that some say amount to torture.
  
  "Basically they've scared people," said Amina Khan, of the Association of Pakistani Professionals and an attorney formerly with the U.S. Energy Department.

• ID this! Yesterday 40 people came out on a workday morning to attend a public hearing in Erie on the federal Real ID Act. The testimony from the one defender of the real nightmare of Real ID, who was from the Coalition for a Secure Driver's License, sounded something like this:
  

  "9/11, drug dealers, September 11, illegal aliens, terrorists, terrorists flying planes into buildings, be afraid."

  
  That's not an exact quote, but it was something like that. I was trying to ignore what he was saying.

• ID this, part deux! Here we go again. Last week PA House Republicans introduced legislation to require photo identification at the voting booth. Their press conference sounded something like this:
  

  "The illegal alien vote, stop fraud, dead people, Chicago, illegal aliens, close the borders, 9/11."

  
  That's right, one rep even managed a 9/11 reference, saying, "Can you imagine if the 19 9/11 hijackers had been allowed to vote?"
  
  These people are mad. There is no evidence that this type of voter fraud is happening, so why put up more roadblocks to voting? Maybe they're afraid of the voters. Frankly, they should be.
  
  The Erie Times News, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Patriot News of Harrisburg all opined against this ridiculous idea.
  

Andy in Harrisburg

File this- sadly- under: No, Duh

As ACLU legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said regarding last week's revelations:

With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House. This is what we suspected all along.

Truthout links to the articles that report the hardly surprising revelations that top level Bush Administration figures, from VP Dick Cheney on down, were directly involved in policy discussions about torturn.

From Dan Froomkin's piece in The Washington Post:

Discussions were so detailed, ABC's sources said, that some interrogation sessions were virtually choreographed by a White House advisory group. In addition to Cheney, the group included then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and then-attorney general John Ashcroft.

At least one member of the club had some qualms. ABC reports that Ashcroft "was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Lauri in York

U.S. Senate does something right. Don't get used to it.

It wasn't all doom-and-gloom this week in Washington. Yesterday the U.S. Senate passed a bill to require the CIA to use the Army Field Manual as its guide on interrogations, effectively banning waterboarding. Senator Casey voted for the bill, Senators Specter and McCain- a victim of torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese- voted against it, and Senators Clinton and Obama did not vote.

The bill passed, 51-45, but faces a veto threat from the Emperor, errr, the President.

Wait, wait, for the last year, I could have sworn it takes 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. (/snark)

Andy in Harrisburg

Polite Euphemisms and Other Matters...

I'm recovering from the flu today, so I'm going to keep it short.

Glenn Greenwald has a post on Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and testimony from Attorney General Michael Mukasey. He makes some interesting observations about just how Orwellian things have gotten under this Administration.

Greenwald writes:

The Senators and Mukasey spoke all day long about torture with such dispassion that one would have thought it was nothing more than the latest bureaucratic HUD program. They don't even use the euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques" any more. That phrase has been so normalized that they now all know and use an abbreviation for it -- "EIT." So Senators ask questions about when "EITs" can be used and the Attorney General outlines the elusive formula he applies to determine its legality and all controversy, all passion, all intensity is completely drained out of the discussion in the U.S. Senate of our torture policies. "Torture" is now an EIT Unit.

Lauri in York

Let's hear it for our homeboy

Tom Ridge, the first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, makes it clear - waterboarding is torture. On Friday, the former soldier told members of the American Bar Association at a homeland security conference that there is no doubt in his mind.

In an interview with the Associated Press, he said

One of America's greatest strengths is the soft power of our value system and how we treat prisoners of war, and we don't torture. And I believe, unlike others in the administration, that waterboarding was, is — and will always be — torture. That's a simple statement.

Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars offers some interesting insight into Ridge's use of the phrase "soft power."

In 2005, Ridge quit the homeland security job created in the wake of Sept. 11. His remarks drew a clear line between his position and those of the current administration. On Thursday, the current Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, refused to say what he thinks of the interrogation technique.

Lauri in York

Sameh Khouzam is free

Sameh Khouzam, an Egyptian persecuted and tortured in his homeland for his religious beliefs, was freed yesterday after seven months in York County Prison. The York Dispatch has coverage, including photos of his homecoming.

Andy in Harrisburg

Sameh Khouzam free tomorrow?

We just found out that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government's request for a stay of the release of Sameh Khouzam. Unless the government tries any other legal maneuvering, Sameh will walk out of York County Prison tomorrow a free man with protection from the Convention Against Torture.

There was quite a bit of media coverage, both national and in PA, on the decision last week. The best story I saw was in the New York Times, which included insight from academics on how this case will affect future cases.

Philip G. Schrag, a professor of law at Georgetown University and an expert on asylum issues, said the ruling was significant.

"The importance of this case," he said, "lies in its rejection of the Bush administration's claim that secret diplomatic assurances by a foreign government that it will not torture a person preclude judicial review."

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Mr. Khouzam, echoed that view. And Marc D. Falkoff, assistant professor of law at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and counsel for 16 Yemenis held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said the ruling could have sweeping implications for those detained at Guantánamo.

"It's tremendously important," Mr. Falkoff said. "It's not a binding precedent outside the jurisdiction of the Third Circuit but the ruling has persuasive authority in any federal court and, without a doubt, it will be brought to the attention of any federal judge who has a case pending where a detainee or prisoner is challenging the government's right to transfer him to a country where he might be tortured."

Andy in Harrisburg

"Freedom from torture is a fundamental right"

Update
Update II

This is one of those days that reminds me why I work for the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a rebuke of an overreaching executive branch, Judge Thomas Vanaskie of the federal Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled that Sameh Khouzam has "a fundamental right" to be free of torture and that Sameh must be released immediately from York County Prison. In short, Sameh escaped religious persecution and torture in his home country of Egypt and, after years in U.S. jails, won protection under the Convention Against Torture, only to be detained in May and threatened with deportation. The Bush Administration claimed it had "diplomatic assurances" from the Egyptian government that Sameh would not be tortured.

We'll soon have an official statement. For more information on the case, visit our website.

So much for my plan to post on the oral arguments in the voter ID and lethal injection cases.

Update, 6:10pm EST: Our press release is available here, and the judge's decision is available here (PDF).

Update, 6:20pm, EST: Judge Vanaskie has granted the government's request for a five day stay of Sameh's release so that DHS can appeal the release decision to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. The government is also appealing the entire ruling. Sameh won't be released today. Let's hope he sees freedom next week.

Andy in Harrisburg

A year to go....

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm basking in a warm glow of hopefulness today. The Pennsylvania primaries remain a long way off - eons in campaign time - but no matter who you support, last night's Iowa caucus served as a reminder that George Bush won't be president forever. (Unless of course you're like some paranoid individuals, who believe that we are one "state of emergency" away from the suspension of elections. But really, what's to be paranoid about?)

So as Harvey Keitel said in Pulp Fiction, "Let's not go sucking ..." OK, you remember the line. And it ain't over yet.

Dan Froomkin reports in the Washington Post on President Bush's top priority for 2008. (Before you read any further, close your eyes and try to guess what that is.) Yup, you got it: "Permanent expansion of government spy powers, including retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that assisted in warrantless surveillance."

For a lame duck president, Bush certainly has lofty goals. As Froomkin says

In short, it's a historic battle over the future of the country as a surveillance state.

There are those who question the risk inherent in the Executive Branch's mission of expansion of powers and its ability to operate outside constitutionally established checks and balances. Those individuals should take a look at what the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes, an issue only recently revealed, meant to the 9/11 commission and the war on terrorism.

In a powerfully worded New York Times op-ed piece, the 9/11 commission's chairman and vice chairman on Wednesday blasted the White House and the CIA for hindering their investigation.

As Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton wrote

Our role was to investigate the history and evolution of Al Qaeda and the 9/11 plot. Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information on these broad topics that had been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives, portions of whose interrogations were apparently recorded and then destroyed.

The C.I.A. gave us many reports summarizing information gained in the interrogations. But the reports raised almost as many questions as they answered. Agency officials assured us that, if we posed specific questions, they would do all they could to answer them.

The op-ed further said that White House counsel rejected their attempts to directly interview detainees and never mentioned that videotapes existed.

As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.'s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.

Lauri in York

While most of MSM snoozes, Boston Globe hits a home run

Tonight the first votes of the 2008 presidential election will be cast as Iowans caucus, minus disenfranchised members of the military, second-shift workers, and parents who can't find a babysitter. While most of the mainstream media focuses on the horse race angle of the election- I watched Hardball last night and the only issue I can recall being discussed was Mike Huckabee's bizarre claim that the way to respond to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is to build a fence on the Mexican border- two weeks ago The Boston Globe published the results of a survey on executive power that the paper sent to all of the presidential candidates. (Hat tip Arianna Huffington. Glenn Greenwald also wrote extensively about the survey.) The results showed that while the ACLU has taken on the phrase "One more year, No more damage," there could still be great damage to our system of checks-and-balances if the wrong candidate is elected.

Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, and Christopher Dodd and Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul all responded to the questions. Rudy Giuliani wrote a general response but did not answer the questions.

Because the ACLU is non-partisan, you won't see much commentary here. But the answers speak for themselves.

Issue: Warrantless Surveillance

Obama: The Supreme Court has never held that the president has such powers. As president, I will follow existing law, and when it comes to U.S. citizens and residents, I will only authorize surveillance for national security purposes consistent with FISA and other federal statutes.

Clinton: No. The President is not above the law.

Edwards: I strongly oppose George Bush's illegal spying on American citizens. Surveillance that takes place within the United States should be performed with judicial oversight, as the law provides.

Richardson: No.

Dodd: Absolutely not – I have been a very vocal and early opponent of this Administration's warrantless wiretapping program and efforts to provide retroactive immunity for the companies who participated. The choice between national security and civil liberties is a false choice. Indeed, our adherence to the rule of law enhances our international standing and leverage, and accordingly enhances our national security. I've made it clear that I will return from Iowa and filibuster any bill that makes it onto the Senate floor including retroactive immunity language.

Biden: No. The President is not above the law, he is bound by valid acts of Congress. Our laws state clearly that no one can wiretap Americans without a warrant. By willfully authorizing warrantless wiretaps of Americans, the President violated the law, and he should be held accountable.

McCain: There are some areas where the statutes don't apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is. ... I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law.

Romney: Intelligence and surveillance have proven to be some of the most effective national security tools we have to protect our nation. Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive and the President should not hesitate to use every legal tool at his disposal to keep America safe.

Paul: Absolutely not.

Issue: Detaining U.S. citizens without charge as unlawful enemy combatants

Obama: No. I reject the Bush Administration's claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.

Clinton: No.

Edwards: George Bush has abused our constitutional traditions in his detention policies and has created a national embarrassment at Guantanamo Bay. Judicial review ought to be restored to the process of detentions. As president, I will not detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants without charges, and I will close Guantanamo Bay on my first day in office.

Richardson: No.

Dodd: No.

Biden: No. The Supreme Court resolved this issue in a case called "Hamdi" in 2004. An American citizen held as an enemy combatant has a constitutional right to due process to determine whether his detention is legal and is adequately based on fact.

McCain: The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that, under the Congressional authorization of the use of force, the U.S. can hold even American citizens under the law of war if they are enemy combatants. But the Court also said that U.S. citizens must have due process to challenge their detention. And I think that is very important when it comes to American citizens.

Romney: All US citizens are entitled to due process, including at least some type of habeas corpus relief regardless whether they are designated unlawful enemy combatants or not.

Paul: No.

Issue: Torture- Can the President use an interrogation technique prohibited by Congress?

Obama: No. The President is not above the law, and the Commander-in-Chief power does not entitle him to use techniques that Congress has specifically banned as torture. We must send a message to the world that America is a nation of laws, and a nation that stands against torture. As President I will abide by statutory prohibitions, and have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors.

Clinton: No.

Edwards: It is hard to believe that the president and his supporters are engaged in a debate about how much torture we should have. The United States should never torture, for several reasons: because it is not the American way, because it undermines our moral authority in the world, because it places our troops at risk, and because it does not work. I strongly oppose George Bush's possible veto of the Congressional bill prohibiting torture.

Richardson: No.

Dodd: No, and I was absolutely shocked that Attorney General Mukasey, in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee, said that in certain circumstances could thwart the law. This, and his declaration that he could not say whether or not waterboarding was in fact torture, led me to believe that he would not be the kind of nominee I could support.

Biden: No. The President must comply with all valid acts of Congress. That’s why I’ve introduced the National Security with Justice Act, unequivocally banning waterboarding and other forms of torture.

McCain: No. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress that power. Unless the president chooses to willfully violate the law and suffer the consequences, he must obey the law.

Romney: A President should decline to reveal the method and duration of interrogation techniques to be used against high value terrorists who are likely to have counter-interrogation training. This discretion should extend to declining to provide an opinion as to whether Congress may validly limit his power as to the use of a particular technique, especially given Congress’s current plans to try to do exactly that.

Paul: No.

Issue: Habeas Corpus- Agree or disagree with Alberto Gonzales that nothing in the Constitution gives a right to habeas corpus?

Obama: Disagree strongly.

Clinton: I disagree with Attorney General Gonzales. I have long believed that the right to habeas corpus offers fundamental protection against unchecked government power. It is a constitutionally guaranteed right. The Supreme Court should reaffirm this principle in the Boumediene case now pending and correct the mistake Congress made when it attempted to rescind habeas corpus through the Military Commissions Act.

Edwards: I disagree.

Richardson: This is clearly wrong. The Framers, in their declaration that habeas may be suspended only in cases of rebellion or invasion, made clear that the Constitution presumes the existence of the common law right to habeas corpus. Any other interpretation is sophistry.

Dodd: I Disagree. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution confers the fundamental right of habeas irrespective of Congressional actions to statutorily expand or limit the federal role relative to the states.

Biden: I disagree categorically with Mr. Gonzales. The Constitution guarantees the right of habeas corpus unless in the case of rebellion or invasion it is suspended. My National Security with Justice Act reinforces this Constitutional right by extending by statute meaningful habeas review for all Guantanamo detainees.

McCain: On that one, the Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in the Boumedienne case and it is expected to rule early next year on that question. So I will be interested in seeing how the Court rules.

Romney: The availability and limitation of habeas corpus is governed by current federal statutory law and the Suspension Clause of the US Constitution, Article I, § 9, cl. 2.

Paul: I strongly disagree with him because I think it was absurd. If we can’t deny habeas corpus it infers that you have habeas corpus. So I would strongly disagree with his whole interpretation of habeas corpus. ... [As for whether that extends to non US citizens in US custody overseas]. I think that might depend upon the circumstances of declared war, and what the circumstances might be. ... [In the case of Guantanamo detainees,] I would think then that we should, under those circumstances, follow the principles of habeas corpus.

The survey contained a total of 12 questions with other topics covered including international human rights treaties, the power of Congress to cap troop deployments, and how the candidates feel about other candidates who did not answer the questions. (Ron Paul had the best answer to that last one- "what are they trying to hide? Why are they embarrassed to answer the questions?") Fascinating stuff.

Andy in Harrisburg

A whopper from the White House

This is too rich to let it pass by.

Q: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?

WH Press Secretary Dana Perino: In our opinion, no.

More from Think Progress.

Andy in Harrisburg

Don't buy what the ACLU's selling? Then how about a Marine?

On September 11 of last year, I wrote a post here about where American freedom stood at that moment. The post included the story of Omar Khadr, a teenage detainee at Guantanamo Bay:

An hour or two later they came back, checked the tautness of his chains and pushed him over on his stomach. Transfixed in his bonds, Omar toppled like a figurine. Again they left. Many hours had passed since Omar had been taken from his cell. He urinated on himself and on the floor. The MPs returned, mocked him for a while and then poured pine-oil solvent all over his body. Without altering his chains, they began dragging him by his feet through the mixture of urine and pine oil. Because his body had been so tightened, the new motion racked it. The MPs swung him around and around, the piss and solvent washing up into his face. The idea was to use him as a human mop. When the MPs felt they'd successfully pretended to soak up the liquid with his body, they uncuffed him and carried him back to his cell. He was not allowed a change of clothes for two days.

Yesterday NPR featured a story on Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine attorney who defended Khadr, who is retiring next year. (Found via Daily Kos, "One fewer good man".)

By all accounts, Vokey is a Marine's Marine.

"Colby Vokey?" muses retired Col. Jane Siegel "Integrity almost seems like a word too small to describe him."

Says Lt. Col. Matthew Cord, "He's just one of the best."

But Vokey is retiring because he is, in his words, "fed up." And his revelations about Guantanamo are startling, albeit nothing new to a lot of us.

The U.S. has imprisoned hundreds of "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay in a military legal system that Vokey denounces as "horrific." Vokey saw the system first-hand when he agreed two years ago to defend a teenager there who had been charged with murdering a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Vokey said he knew the case would be difficult, but he discovered that the legal system at Guantanamo is a "sham."

Vokey said the military staff constantly harassed him and interfered with his defense work by making it difficult even to meet with his client or show his client the government's evidence against him. The teenager confessed to killing the soldier, but he told Vokey he confessed after being shackled for hours in excruciating positions and bombarded by screeching music and flashing lights.

FBI agents have reported seeing detainees treated in similar ways and investigators at human rights groups have reported evidence suggesting that detainees are routinely abused.

Vokey calls the system "disgraceful."

"Anytime you want to subvert the rule of law to the power of a government, you've got a very bad thing brewing," Vokey told NPR. "As an officer in the Marine Corps I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And now we are perpetrating something that if any other country in the world was doing, we would likely step in and stop it."

After speaking out, Vokey was fired as the chief of defense counsels for the western United States.

But when former Marine Corps lawyers heard about Vokey's firing, they were incensed. Siegel said Vokey's firing sent a chilling message that some officials don't want military lawyers to defend the Constitution too vigorously.

"I believe that Colby Vokey was pulled out of his position because he's doing too good a job," Siegel said. "I think that the people in Washington, D.C., don't like that."

After Siegel and other well-known lawyers wrote a blistering letter of protest about Vokey's firing and lobbied top commanders at Marine headquarters, officials backed down and reinstated him. But critics say the Corps is just doing damage control because officials know that Vokey is planning to leave on his own.

Mind you, Vokey is the attorney who vigorously defended eight Marines accused of killing unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq. He is not one of the usual suspects. He's a Marine, and he considers what he has seen to be "disgraceful."

How many voices will it take until enough Americans know that our freedoms and principles are in serious danger?

Update- Thursday, 2:30pm EDT: I intended to include a link to the NPR story but forgot. Here it is.

Andy in Harrisburg

Insider: Another attack would doom freedom

At an event in State College in the fall of 2005, an evangelical pastor told me that we need the ACLU because, according to the pastor, if there is another terrorist attack, America will become a police state. (He was simultaneously chastising us for our stands on religious liberty.)

Now conservative Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law and late of the Justice Department, has laid out in a new book and an interview in The New York Times Magazine just how far the Bush administration is willing to go in decimating freedom.

According to a column by Robyn Blumner in the St. Petersburg Times,

In vivid detail, Goldsmith describes how the administration used the specter of terrorism as a means to expand the power of the presidency.

This was especially true, according to Goldsmith, of Dick Cheney's top aide, David Addington, who once told Goldsmith that if the OLC ruled against an administration policy, "the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands."

Addington seemed to relish the coming of another big one and what powers loyal Bushies could arrogate in the aftermath. Goldsmith recalls him saying: "We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious (FISA) court."

In other words, after one more terrorist attack, the administration could get Congress to wipe away any kind of warrant requirement for domestic spying.
...

Team Bush and its "one bomb away" agenda would use the next attack to finish the job of consolidating the nation's power in one man.

Andy in Harrisburg

Trust us. We're the government.

SCRANTON- At a hearing today at the federal courthouse here, lawyers for Sameh Khouzam, an Egyptian national facing torture if he is deported to his home country, argued that Middle District Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie should stop the deportation and release Khouzam from York County Prison, where he has been detained since late May.

Amrit Singh of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project said that "the government's position is extreme" and that the government "is asking you to ignore that the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals found" that Khouzam has scars that are consistent with torture, that there is evidence of past violations of so-called "diplomatic assurances" by the Egyptian government, and that a State Department report notes that Egypt has been a regular torturer.

Khouzam escaped Egypt in 1998 after being tortured for his religious beliefs. In mid-flight, the United States revoked his visa after the Egyptians claimed that he was wanted on homicide charges. He was detained on arrival.

Six years later, in 2004, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals granted him a "deferral of removal" under the Convention Against Torture, a treaty to which the United States is a party. In 2006, he was released from prison and lived and worked in Lancaster County until his detention by ICE officials in May. The federal government claimed that it had diplomatic assurances from Egypt that Khouzam would not be tortured upon his return.

"The issue before this court is the United States' obligations under the Convention Against Torture," Singh said. "There is no foreign policy exception in the Convention Against Torture."

Government attorney Douglas Ginsburg argued that Egypt is an ally and that a court is not in a position to intervene in foreign relations.

"Why would they work with us again if their dealings would be opened up to scrutiny," Ginsburg asked.

Judge Vanaskie asked Singh about the murder charge against Khouzam, for which he was reportedly convicted in absentia, and Singh noted that the charges are highly dubious.

Vanaskie also stated to Ginsburg, "One of the concerns I have is that using diplomatic assurances after the deferral of removal makes the process seem like a charade."

In response, Ginsburg said that a ruling against the government "harms diplomatic relations between countries."

Despite relying on the Egyptian diplomatic assurances, Khouzam and his attorneys have not seen any documentation of these assurances, and in court, Singh questioned the lack of a monitoring mechanism by the U.S. government to ensure that the Egyptian government follows through on its commitment.

More information, including briefs and links to related information, can be found at www.aclupa.org/egyptiantorture.

Andy in Harrisburg in Scranton

No sleep 'til Scranton

Tomorrow at the federal courthouse in Scranton our crack attorneys will present oral arguments to stop the deportation of Sameh Khouzam, an Egyptian national who has been tortured in his home country, and will argue for his immediate release from York County Prison before Middle District Judge Thomas Vanaskie. I'll be blogging from Scranton, which will no doubt bring back some fond memories of the Hazleton trial.

To learn more about this important case and to read the most recent briefs, visit the case page on our website. Also, Sameh's supporters have a webpage with a variety of links at www.savesameh.org.

Andy in Harrisburg