When I tell people in meatspace conversations that I’m opposed to drug prohibition, I frequently get a look of utter astonishment:  “You mean people ought to just be able to take crack, or meth, or whatever, whenever they feel like it?”

Well, the point is they can already do that right now.   If you look at countries like the Netherlands, where pot is for all intents and purposes legal, and private possession and use of the hard stuff is virtually decriminalized, the actual rates of drug use are probably at or below those in the United States.

So essentially, we’ve allowed our country to be taken over by gangs and organized crime syndicates fighting to control the black markets in illegal drugs.  We’ve created lawless, militarized police forces that view us as an occupied enemy, sadistic bastards who taser people in diabetic comas to death for “resisting arrest,” and murder 92-year-old women in their sleep in botched SWAT team raids.  We’ve gutted the due process provisions of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, which are now kept around mainly as examples of good penmanship.  We’ve got the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world–greater than Communist China–and a massive prison-industrial complex using slave labor.  We are literally at the mercy of beasts of prey in SS chic uniforms.   We’ve corrupted our society to the core.  And we’ve done it all for nothing.

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Liberals, feel free to weigh in as well, but I’m especially interested to know what my fellow libertarians think of criminalizing the ownership of poisonous snakes, and prohibiting adult religionists from handling them based on faith that they can come to no harm by doing so. AP (whom I should not be quoting) recently reported: (more…)

The Art of the Possible’s mission is to bring together liberal and libertarian writers who agree on certain politically and morally enlightened essentials, and to encourage political coalitions in defense of same. Few projects, therefore, could be more suitable for this site’s participation and promotion than the Strangebedfellows alliance, and the AccountabilityNow political action committee it has led to:

Strangebedfellows is a unique and diverse left–right coalition which has come together to put a stop to the eradication of civil liberties in America. Modeled on a similar group in Britain, the initial Strangebedfellows group encompasses Ron Paul supporters (BreakTheMatrix.com, Rick Williams and Trevor Lyman), leading bloggers from the left (Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, Jane Hamsher of firedoglake.com) and many more who share the view that warrantless surveillance, telecom immunity and other such outrages of the lawless surveillance state MUST END—AND END NOW. Our group of Strangebedfellows is organizing a moneybomb on behalf of AccountabilityNowPAC, and we’re reaching out to friends and colleagues from across the political spectrum who believe in the Bill of Rights and freedom in America. So join us– become a Strangebedfellow! Add your name and group to our list of backers, and enter your pledge today to donate to AccountabilityNowPAC. Let’s reverse these police state sellouts by our political leaders—FOREVER.

This week, Congress passed an atrocious bill that not only grants retroactive immunity to the telecommunications giants who for years illegally cooperated with the Bush Administration’s warrantless spying on Americans’ international telephone calls and emails, but the legislation also strips the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of its warrant requirement for eavesdropping on broad categories involving U.S. citizens, allowing warrantless spying on Americans’ electronic communications when the “target” is someone “reasonably believed to outside the U.S.” Republicans and Democrats brought this about; civil libertarians across the political spectrum are outraged.

AoTP is therefore delighted to interview Rick Williams and Trevor Lyman, and to support the current pledge-drive to hold accountable those in our Congress who voted for telecom amnesty and abridgment of our civil liberties. Pledges can be made via either the logo above or at the end of this interview, and pledgers will then all contribute on August 8, in one “money bomb.” Bloggers who wish to make known their public support by adding their names to the growing list of Strangebedfellows may do so here.

August 8 is the date on which Richard M. Nixon resigned from the office of president.

****

AoTP: Rick and Trevor, welcome, and thank you for taking the time to talk with us. You are both libertarians who worked very hard on the 2008 Ron Paul presidential campaign — a campaign which conventional wisdom had held would not get much attention at all. Because of your efforts (and Dr. Paul’s, of course), that campaign became A Phenomenon. Why do you think the Paul message became so popular?

RW: Ron Paul said it best on the campaign trail: “Freedom is Popular!” The Ron Paul campaign was all about freedom, and his supporters (particularly the younger ones) found his words about limited constitutional government, sound money, an end to the overseas empire, and an end to the police state at home to be the right message for the times we live in. Our government in Washington DC has brought nothing but decline, and failure, and war, and debt. It’s time for a change– real change– and Ron Paul’s supporters know that.

AoTP: How did the Strangebedfellows/AccountabilityNow alliance come about – who first reached out to whom?

RW: The Strangebedfellows alliance of left and right actually came about through Joshua Koster, one of our members at BreakTheMatrix. Josh is a young political activist in Washington DC, and he works in the world of media and advertising, Josh represents a number of Democratic political candidates, and he has many contacts with the left. He realized that BreakTheMatrix and many of the leading bloggers on the left shared the same views and values on the subject of civil liberties and constitutional rights, and he brought us together with Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher.

AoTP: Also, hasn’t Strangbedfellows been working in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union? If so, how did that come about and has it been a comfortable arrangement?

RW: We at BreakTheMatrix were pleased when the ACLU became involved in the Strangebedfellows effort. The ACLU has been a positive and consistent voice for civil liberties in America for a long time. We think it is entirely proper and appropriate that Bob Barr, Libertarian Party candidate for president, is an ACLU member.

AoTP: Considering how polarized American politics tend to be, it’s quite unusual to find such an alliance between the right and left ends of the spectrum. What are the core values shared by everyone in this coalition?

RW: In our view, the terms “right and left” and even “Democrat and Republican” have become largely meaningless in modern political discourse. The true divide in this country is between our establishment political class on the one hand, and the people they purport to serve on the other. Very simply, our political leaders of both parties have lost their way; they serve only themselves; and they stand for nothing that matters to the American people as a whole. Look at what happened after the Democrats received a mandate in 2006 to end the war in Iraq. Nothing happened. The leadership groups of both parties have continued forward with the war in complete disregard to the wishes of the American people. That’s why the Democratic congress has an 11% approval rating– they failed to fulfill their promises. Our Strangebedfellows alliance reflects a transpartisan consensus that the Iraq war must end; that the “War on Terror” is a sham; and that the police state measures of the FISA reauthorization “compromise” are an unacceptable encroachment on the civil liberties of the American people. These are core values that BreakTheMatrix and leading thinkers and writers from the left hold in common.

AoTP: And the flip side: what are some significant issues about which members of the coalition disagree, but are willing to set aside for now in pursuit of common goals?

RW: Many on the left still hold to the view that big government can somehow serve as a positive force for the American people. We at BreakTheMatrix look at the endless string of big government failures, and see no basis to expect anything better in the future. Very simply, we perceive that a socialist welfare state model is doomed to always and eternally fail– that the model itself is irretrievably flawed. The “big government” left and the “limited government” right are far removed from any consensus about how a society can (and should) best operate for the benefit of its people. Can these differences be put aside forever? No, of course not. But can we work together DESPITE such differences? Absolutely.

AoTP: Libertarians, some right- and many left-wingers have about eight years’ worth of complaints against the current administration’s actions, but not until the telecom amnesty bill — which also permits warrantless eavesdropping on Americans’ international electronic communications — have we seen a cross-spectrum coalition to fight it. Is there something uniquely repugnant about the telecom amnesty bill, or was it more of a “straw that broke the camel’s back” event?

RW: I think it’s a matter of timing more than anything else. Most of the stronger members at BreakTheMatrix were deeply involved in the Ron Paul presidential campaign, and genuinely perceive that this is a unique moment in American history. The moment has not “gone away” merely because John McCain will ultimately be the Republican standard-bearer in November. If anything, the freedom movement sparked by Ron Paul is gaining strength every day. One lesson we did learn from the Paul campaign is that coalition building is essential in politics. It’s not enough to rally a small group of true believers, and the great principles of freedom are not something that we as Ron Paul supporters hold alone in this country. The bipartisan political kiss of our Democratic/Republican leadership group in Washington DC is creating a growing disaster for ALL Americans, and freedom is the solution which cuts widely across our political spectrum.

AoTP: How did the money bomb idea come to be, evolve and be implemented for the Ron Paul campaign?

TL: I found the idea in a video on YouTube. James Sugra came up with the concept of having one day where 100,000 people would donate $100 each for a total of $10 million. At that point I took the video and placed it into the RonPaulForums.com forum to see if people were interested in participating. They were!

I bought the domain ThisNovember5th.com and proceeded to use my knowledge and experience about how people behave on the internet to create a website that would help grow pledges. By giving people feedback and statistics about the number of pledges and the best ways to spread the word, I was able to keep people motivated and on target towards our $10 million goal.

People became excited about giving money to the Ron Paul campaign when they realized it was a way to get him noticed in the main stream media. From this and with the help of the live money ticker on Ron Paul’s website the concept of the money bomb evolved. Supporters began asking for other supporters to donate at the same time in order to get Ron Paul’s money level above “X” amount within a given time frame and this created the money bomb.

AoTP: Many of the people you hope to reach with your August 8 AccountabilityNow money bomb campaign are ideologically opposite in many respects from the folks who contributed to the Ron Paul money bombs. Will that demographic difference impact the “bombing” strategy, and if so, how?

TL: Politically the demographic is different, but in terms of the issue and the fact that we are targeting those that use the internet for their information there is no difference. I don’t think the way this will work is going to be changed and so I don’t foresee a change in strategy.

AoTP: Why did you choose August 8 as the money-bomb date?

RW: We all realized that the week of July 7 would be a very significant time of debate on the FISA bill. For many in the Senate, this will be their opportunity to stand up for freedom and civil liberties. We perceive that the American people will be focusing on the FISA debate this week, so this was chosen as the “launch date” for the money bomb effort. It takes about a month for the money bomb to develop its full power and potential across the internet– hence August 8.

We’ve also selected August 8 because that is the date Richard Nixon resigned from office as a result of his Watergate conduct, which itself involved surveillance on his political adversaries. The Nixon resignation is a good example of what the American people can do when moved to action. Even a president, let alone a group of telecoms, is not above the law.
AoTP: What do you plan to do with the money you raise?

RW: BreakTheMatrix is a “for profit” company, so we will not be involved in making campaign contributions to or on behalf of political candidates. Our role in connection with the AccountabilityNowPAC is as a vendor and service provider retained to organize and fulfill the money bomb. Others from the right and left will ultimately decide how the money is spent. But we believe the mission is clear: candidates and politicians (whether Democrat or Republican) who support civil liberties will be supported by the PAC, while those who oppose freedom in America will not be supported.

AoTP: Telecom amnesty and warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications are unpopular with Americans; in theory, therefore, to please voters most elected officials should oppose a bill providing for such measures. Why then has a PAC become necessary vis-a-vis these and related civil liberties issues?

RW: Look at the record of our politicians. The big corporations give them money, and the politicians vote in favor of the money providers. The wishes of the American people are of little importance. And, of course, our politicians and the mainstream media keep up a steady drumbeat of fear-mongering propaganda about the supposed threat of “terrorism” at home and abroad. Not surprisingly, a sizable number of people in America believe such stories, and these people all too often are ready to trade liberty for the illusion of government sponsored “security.” An informed populace is essential if freedom is to survive, and regrettably, the stream of news transmitted to the American people through the mainstream media is designed to mislead rather than inform.

______

The Art of the Possible staffers Mona and Jennifer Abel conducted this interview. (more…)

Alright, fair warning. This is going to be long. And it’s probably not organized optimally. That’s the nature of blogging, I’m afraid. I think there’s a payoff to getting to the end, namely seeing what’s really rotten about the Heller decision (hint: it’s not that it overturns a handgun ban).

Let me preface things by noting for the record a) that I approve the substantive outcome of Heller, b) that you’ll know I’m planning to run for office in 5-10 years when I join a gun club, and c) the Democrats’ push for gun control, as Jim points out, has been the most idiotic tactical maneuver since the Judean People’s Front Suicide Squad last deployed, yet Democrats and liberals appear still not to have figured it out. Handgun bans are infringements on liberty that accomplish nothing besides fostering a (kinda justified) siege mentality among gun owners that will perpetuate their mistrust of the left indefinitely. Maybe once liberals get tired of whining about Heller, they’ll recognize what an enormous blessing it was for the political fortunes of the Democratic party.

That said, both Scalia’s majority opinion and Stevens’ dissent are really atrocious miscarriages of jurisprudence, and for parallel reasons, failing both as historical and conceptual analysis. (more…)

Okay Frank Gaffney, you want your chance to soil your sheets, Leonidas-style, over the silent and perhaps at this point irreversible Islamofascist conquest of America? You don’t need to resort to fantasizing about Muslim sovereign fund managers putting a hex on their bond issues, or, I don’t know, doing a universal find and replace of “New York” for “London” in whatever Melanie Phillips wrote this week. You don’t need to make up anything at all. Because it turns out that the most cunningly disguised Islamofascist sleeper cell ever has just planted the bloody banner of the false prophet Mahound and his demonic minions in a courtroom a mere stone’s throw from the Capitol: (more…)

You know, call me a naive youth, but I’d been holding out a little hope that Barack Obama’s weaselly hedging on the new (awful) FISA bill was just a tactic to allow him to mitigate the risk of voting against a bill the White House, the RNC, and the McCain campaign is suggesting could be the difference between whether hard-working Americans live or die. I.e., Obama could have been trying to make himself sound like the voice of centrist, moderate, non-ideological wisdom, emphasizing his support for the bill in general and expressing his opposition to telecom immunity sotto voce, so that when it came up for a vote, he could claim that the immunity-free legislation he supported was a sensible compromise, and that the Republicans were extremists who insisted on getting 100% of what they wanted or else they’d walk. That might not have been a very effective tactic, given that Steny Hoyer has already quite voluntarily allowed the Republicans to frame their 99% non-compromise as a centrist, moderate, non-ideological compromise, but hey, it would have been consistent with Obama’s usual manner of positioning himself when he takes the liberal side in a lost cause. (Cf. his vote against confirming John Roberts on the Supreme Court.)

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I completely agree with my awesome UO co-blogger, Thoreau: It’s time for Barack Obama to put his authority to use where it counts, stopping this corrupt telecom immunity bill making its way through the Congress this week. Otherwise, we’ll have a right to find his nods in the direction of civil liberties to be empty gestures; indeed, we’d be fools to regard them any other way.

As I wrote yesterday over at Unqualified Offerings:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is working eagerly with a Democratic-controlled Congress to grant George Bush all the power Bush wants to intercept Americans’ telephone calls and emails without warrants, and to retroactively grant immunity from civil or criminal sanction to the telecoms that have been assisting with Bush’s illegal eavesdropping for years — telecoms that heavily contribute to congresspeople of both parties, and which are in the middle of lawsuits they’d dearly love to see rendered moot by Hoyer’s efforts.

[...]

To fully understand how sickening and outrageous this all is (and tell me, why did I vote a straight Dem ticket in ‘06 again?), read Greenwald. (Brief ad click-through.) I can’t do better than he does, as he has been working on this issue feverishly and my re-explaining it could only be a paraphrase of his posts. Then, contribute to this fund to put heat on Hoyer and the other Democrats who are acting like good little authoritarian GOP-bots.

Strange Bedfellows Unite to Fight FISA Deal (6/18/2008)

Contact: (202) 675-2312, media@dcaclu.org

Washington, DC — A sham spying deal could be rammed through both the Senate and House this week. It’s moving that fast. If we don’t stop this, telecom companies that broke the law by supplying mountains of personal information to the government without a warrant will be let off the hook.

A broad alliance of strange bedfellows is now forming to support a campaign to fight the gutting of FISA (The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) with the intent to work together on all civil liberties, constitutional rights and rule of law issues.

The ACLU is joining with activists from the Ron Paul campaign, represented by Break the Matrix, Rick Williams and Trevor Lymon, and civil liberties writer Glenn Greenwald of Salon, and leading liberal bloggers including, Jane Hamsher of firedoglake, Matt Stoller of Open Left, John Amato of Crooks and Liars, Howie Klein of Down with Tyranny, Digby, Josh Nelson of The Seminal and activist Josh Koster to tell Congress that we will not let them ignore the Constitution or give immunity to telecoms which deliberately broke our laws for years.

This group of Strange Bedfellows is mobilizing a broad-based left-right coalition of office holders and candidates, public interest groups and individuals who are devoted to preserving basic constitutional liberties to join in the fight. The goal is to work together to impede the corrupt FISA/telecom amnesty deal.

Glenn Greenwald said, “The Beltway establishment has made clear that they support the Bush administration’s assault on our basic constitutional protections and the rule of law. Constitutional rights and the rule of law are not liberal or conservative principles. They’re American principles, and this broad-based alliance is devoted to defending them from the bipartisan political class that wants to trample upon them.”

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Below I wrote about the wackiness at AP vis-a-vis copyrights, and it seems that entity is getting even more bizarre in the face of unhappy reaction. That wire service is proposing a fvcking schedule charging bloggers per word excerpted: (more…)

This, my friends, is corporatism and the military-industrial complex at work; companies so in bed with the federal govt that they do the state’s (dubious) bidding, at the expense of their customers’ trust and for fine pay (links omitted): (more…)

To keep current with my posts about the overzealous, hoaxer-believing Texas officials who removed more than 400 children from a polygamous religious group the state does not like — based on scant evidence of any wrongdoing at the Mormon sect’s compound, Yearning for Zion Ranch — a unanimous Texas state appellate panel today: (more…)

No doubt my post expressing wariness of the treatment of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound in Texas — where over 400 children were removed from their families — gave insight into my view that ill-informed, uncritical hatred of any new religion dismissed as a “cult” is dangerous. And can result in illiberal state action.

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Greenwald has been on fire analyzing the document dump the DoD was forced to make to The New YorkTimes — and Josh Marshall has had a bit to say as well — about all the retired military “analysts” spewing forth on the news networks for lo these past many years, who were directed and scripted by the Pentagon as to what the “correct” positions were. (All of which is probably illegal.) But tax-payer subsidized psy-ops is nothing new; the DEA has been doing it for years, as for example by publishing a “debate manual” (originally titled How to Hold Your Own in a Drug Legalization Debate) to use during exchanges with those advocating drug-policy reform. (But the DEA counsels avoiding any debate at all, if possible.)

We’ve been paying for the government to fund lies and propaganda defending its own tyrannical powers since well before Bush and 9/11.
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Marie has been posting some highly disturbing videos of law enforcement officers committing what are or should be crimes against citizens. But at least as bad as those incidents is the fact that when a non-wealthy criminal defendant is assigned an underpaid and over-worked public defender — who has available nothing remotely comparable to the forensic and investigative resources that the state does — odds of wrongful convictions rise dramatically. See these faces:

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[Important Addendum at End]

You might think that the United States Armed Forces — charged with protecting the Constitution and the rights therein for all Americans — might not itself discriminate on the basis of religion or irreligion. Yet the New York Times reports that when Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, an officer attended to berate him, shrieking (according to Hall and one other attendee): (more…)

Jesse Walker at Reason’s Hit & Run examines why “The FLDS raid in Texas looks more ludicrous every day.” Not to mention that, as WaPo reports, the original caller claiming to be a 16-year-old rape victim at YFZ apparently is a 33-year-old hoaxer, with a history of such false calls.

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Reason’s Jacob Sullum is dueling it out with Cully Stimson over drug policy in the LAT: Part I, Part II. Stimson decrees that drug laws “protect the public good,” public good, of course, being an abstraction that has neither rights nor duties. Those inhere in individuals. (And even if you do not believe in rights, legislating prohibitions on consensual behavior for “the public good” has historically been a great source for emiserating individuals under the aegis of lofty sounding, moralistic rhetoric.)

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By now most have heard about the raid on the The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) compound — Yearning for Zion — in Edlorado, Texas. Over 400 children were removed, each of whom has been assigned a volunteer attorney (h/t to Margherita by email) to serve as guardian ad litem; all the children face the prospect of ending up in a secular foster system utterly foreign to the sheltered lifestyle from whence they were abruptly yanked. And separated from mothers who are agonized and desperately want their sons and daughters back.

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Zero tolerance reaches new heights of absurdity when kids who cannot possibly understand a sexual move (unless they are victims of sexual abuse) are being disciplined in school as “sex offenders,” and the school is calling in the cops — as with six-year-old Randy Castro who patted a fellow student on the behind. The officers in their report described the lad’s behavior as “Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive”. And to my sheer astonishment, while reading his column addressing this matter I find that I agree with Mark Steyn in at least one area: (more…)

In an article this week for TNR entitled Legal Bondage, Jeffrey Rosin gives moral legislation in the US a clean bill of health, despite Justice Scalia’s alarmist dissent five years ago in Lawrence v. Texas warning that the majority’s decision to decriminalize sodomy would send the country down the “slippery slope” of unchecked moral degeneration: (more…)

The federal Road Home program was supposed to help those who lost their homes in the Katrina mess rebuild both dwellings and lives. But the private contractor who managed this relief effort — ICF International — is going after those who were “overpaid,” seeking return of an average of $35K from each “overpaid” recipient. ICF is bidding for collection agencies to chase after approximately $175 million from these families. (Oh, and “[o]ne-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week.”)

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This degrading experience must be read to be believed. And what of the fellows with a Prince Albert? Would pliers do the trick? Does the thought make ya squirm, guys? (I mean, if the piercing itself does not, would you want to nervously — and with an audience — perform TSA-approved, quick surgery to remove it?)

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As my author bio notes, I attended the Notre Dame law school. I learned Constitutional Law from Professor Douglas Kmiec, who had served directly under Ed Meese in the Reagan DoJ. Prof. Kmiec was and is a devout Catholic who believes abortion should be illegal, and that marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples. He has always been a Republican. (I tilted that way myself, then, and at the time shared his views on criminalizing abortion.)

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Mulling over Kevin Carson’s superb post below, I’ve been contemplating why it was that I tilted conservative/GOP in the 80s, and even supported the Robert Bork nomination to SCOTUS. For me, it came down to federalism, and a complete aversion to the manner in which the High Court and liberals had been abusing the Commerce Clause to intrude the federal government into matters that were at least Six Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon’s Commerce. FDR’s court-packing threat (which enabled the jurisprudence of the Commerce-Clause-means-any-area-in-which Congress-legislates) was not, to my mind, something cute to be winked at — if George W. Bush suggested such a measure his critics would rightly decry it as outrageous.

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I found this story over at Blonde Justice. If it were not so very unjust, it really would be funny. Well, actually it’s unjust and funny (Cheech and Chong style): (more…)

Today I came across three articles, from three sources, dealing with three different
types of privacy issues. The first two deal with Internet privacy. The last with
wiretapping (in which a New York governor finds himself caught red-handed doing things he shouldn’t have).
The first piece is from Southern Beale. Apparently, Rep. Tim Couch (R-Hyden) out of Kentucky is pushing a bill that, if passed, would make it illegal for people to post anonymously. Here’s an excerpt from the original newstory cited by SB: (more…)

Here’s another chapter in the ongoing tug-of-war between Bush and Congress over the use of interrogation methods widely considered to be torture. While Congress works to eliminate such tactics from the toolbox of intelligence agents, Bush continues to use fear tactics to shame Congress into relenting: (more…)

For a helpful visual aid on how the US compares to other countries on incarceration rates, check out Pete Guither’s Drug War Rant : (more…)

Already the world leader in numbers incarcerated, the US can now boast (or cringe
in horror) that more than 1 in 100 Americans are living in prison, according to a Pew report cited today by the AP: (more…)

As the military presses forward with its plans to try six detainees, the defense assigned to the case faces significant obstacles to providing adequate representation while adhering to the policy framework of the military tribunals. According to an article from the Associated Press, only one military lawyer has been appointed so far to handle the defense for all six cases, with scant support from a small handful of civilian lawyers and paralegals. The following excerpt lists a series of concerns voiced by the defense counsel: (more…)

Glenn Greenwald, of salon.com , criticizes CNN for inviting Bush’s Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Michael McConnell, to be interviewed by John King, despite King’s self-proclaimed ignorance of the surveillance debate. Rather than using the interview as an opportunity to pose tough questions to a controversial figure, the session, according to Greenwald, deteriorated into a platform for government propaganda reminiscent of Pravda: (more…)

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, criticized the military commissions for clinging to archaic policies regarding the torture of detainees. He argued that permitting the use of evidence obtained by waterboarding would be “not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.” While waterboarding has recently been declared illegal by Congress, Davis pointed out that at a “Senate hearing in December, the legal adviser for the military commissions, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, refused to rule out using evidence [previously] obtained by waterboarding.”
Today, an article for the AP by Ben Fox announced that Davis will serve as a defense witness for Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, who has been charged with “conspiracy and supporting terrorism.” Davis described being called as a witness as “an opportunity to tell the truth.” Here is an excerpt from the article: (more…)

I came across two op-eds in the New York Times, both by Morris Davis, who was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay from 2005-2007. The first piece was published June 26, 2007, and in it he described the detention center as being a “clean, safe and humane place for enemy combatants.” Obviously, he was doing damage control for the bad press the government had been receiving for its treatment of detainees. He derided the media for misrepresenting the center as a place where detainees lack basic rights and legal recourse, and are subject to inhumane treatment in the course of their detention. This is what he had to say in 2007, while still working there: (more…)

In his op-ed column for the New York Times today, Nicholas D. Kristof gives his take on the torture debate. What seems like common sense is lost on the Bush administration, and, sadly, we will be dealing with the consequences of its errors for a long time to come, particularly in terms of foreign relations. The fact is, our government holds prisoners in secretive conditions, without legal recourse, and uses torture to extract desperate admissions which can then be used against them. And all this at the same time as condemning other countries for their human rights abuses and holding up our own political system up as the model that other countries should mimic. How we reconcile the disparities between our values and our practices is not a private process. In fact, it’s embarrassingly public, and does not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. Kristof gives as an example Al Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Hajj, who has gone on hunger strike after being subjected to six years of inhumane treatment in Guantanamo, despite admissions from military officials that he is not considered a real threat to the our national security. Here’s some of what Kristof has to say on the matter: (more…)

The surveillance bill passed yesterday in Senate is being debated in the House today. Bush is putting the pressure on to pass the bill immediately, amidst complaints over not having had adequate time to weigh the consequences for civil rights. (more…)

This editorial highlights the likely consequences of seeking the death penalty for 6 detainees in a military tribunal. While the lack of due process and use of torture to obtain evidence is disturbing enough in a country that prides itself on rule of law, the author notes that the government’s decision to proceed in this manner will also further damage our country’s foreign relations: (more…)