GOP Leaders in House Hate Gays and Lesbians More Than They Support U.S. Troops
Several Republican leaders in the House announced their intention today to vote against the latest Defense Authorization Bill, because it includes a provision to include gays and lesbians as a protected group under existing hate crimes law:
And the Pravda Award for Best Newspaper Reporting Via Government Diktat Goes To…
Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post!
Glenn Greenwald presents this richly deserved recognition of Ms. Kornblut’s advanced stenographic abilities:
Patriot Act Provisions Up for Renewal
Between health care reform and missile defense, this news kind of got buried, but it’s important. Here is the story from Threat Level, the national security blog at Wired:
Possible Terror Attack Disrupted, and Guess What?
ABC News reports on an FBI raid that disrupted a possible terror attack. I would like to draw your attention to one sentence, which I have bolded:
Authorities raided properties in New York City today in an effort that was intended to disrupt the plans of a terror suspect whose travels had been tracked by the FBI, according to an official briefed on the raids.
“He was being watched and concern grew as he met with a group of individuals in Queens over the weekend,” said Congressman Pete King (R-NY). “The FBI went to court late last night for an emergency warrant to conduct the raids this morning.” A resident in the neighborhood said there was police activity around 2 a.m. Monday.
Officials said the execution of search warrants came after days of surveillance, and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly characterized it as part of an “ongoing investigation.”
I don’t believe I need to say more.
The Torture Investigation Mystery Show
So there’s been a lot of speculation in blogtopia about Attorney General Eric Holder’s reportedly renewed intentions of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the authorization and use of torture in the previous administration. The speculation — which revolves around the question of who Holder intends to prosecute, more than whether he intends to prosecute — has been fueled by these three articles:
- Daniel Klaidman’s piece, published Saturday in Newsweek, which reported that AG Holder had returned to the possibility of prosecutions.
- Carrie Johnson’s Washington Post article titled “Probe of Alleged Torture Weighed,” published on Sunday, which speculated that any investigation would be limited to CIA interrogators who had gone beyond the “guidelines” prescribed by the Bush lawyers.
- Scott Horton’s “Torture Prosecution Turnaround?” published in The Daily Beast, also yesterday. which suggested that the scope of prosecutions, if they happened, would be wider.
I certainly agree with Tim, Glenn, and Spencer that if investigations and/or prosecutions are going to be limited to low-hanging fruit, it would be better not to do anything at all. But I don’t think it’s at all clear that’s what Holder has in mind.
Keep in mind, first, that — as Glenn himself pointed out – the predictions as to what Holder will do in both articles — Johnson’s and Horton’s — are being made by anonymous sources. I’m not going to take any claims seriously that come from sources without names or identities attached to them. It’s not even that I think these people are unreliable, whoever they are. I’m sure they are high-ranking officials who know Holder well. But no matter who they are, if they are anonymous, they might as well be no one, because there’s no accountability. No other journalist can call them up and confirm what they said. So they can say whatever they want, but it has no gravitas until they are identified.
And that leads me to the other reason I don’t take these claims about Holder’s intentions seriously: They’re not meant seriously. They’re meant to test the waters. Isn’t that what corporate journalism is about these days? Anonymous sources test-driving major decisions by calling reporters at major papers and sending out trial balloons?
It can actually be entertaining sometimes to see how reporters for top national papers parse the reasons for not naming the sources. There’s a whole structure and style to presenting sources anonymously. First, there is the obligatory first mention, “…according to three sources. …” This is usually included in the opening paragraph, but sometimes it’s the second or third. Then, several paragraphs further down in the article, you get the “reason” why these sources are not being identified. And I put “reason” in quotes because, obviously, there’s only one reason. But Carrie Johnson can’t very well tell us that her sources would only agree to speak to her on background “because they don’t want to be held responsible for the information they’re leaking.” So instead, she writes that the sources “spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing process.”
Thank you to Digby for inspiring the above rant by saying exactly what I had been thinking (in the first Update to her post about the Brain Trust at This Week With George Stephanopoulos).
Count the Strawmen
I count five, stated in various ways (listed under video).
1. The Democrats still want to blame the Bush administration for the economy.
2. The Democrats want to dismantle the CIA.
3. Nancy Pelosi is looking for political cover.
4. It’s not unusual for president and vice-president to be involved.
5. The CIA is in the secrecy business and Congress wants to know everything.
(And one dodge: “I don’t have enough information.”)
Via Think Progress.
The IG Warrantless Surveillance Report
Here is a roundup of commentary about the report (h/t Glenn), which came out on Friday.
Massachusetts Sues Feds on DOMA
Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, on the basis that it violates the rights of individual states to legislate on such private matters:
Massachusetts, the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, has become the first to challenge the constitutionality of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, saying Congress intruded into a matter that should be left to individual states.
“Our familes, our communities, and even our economy have seen the many important benefits that have come from recognizing equal marriage rights and, frankly, no downside,” Attorney General Martha Coakley said this afternoon at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. “However, we have also seen how many of our married residents and their families are being hurt by a discriminatory, unprecedented, and, we believe, unconstitutional law.”
The suit filed in US District Court in Boston claims that the Congress, in enacting the DOMA, “overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people.”
[...]
The lawsuit argues that the DOMA, which was enacted in 1996, precludes same-sex spouses in Massachusetts from a wide range of protections, including federal income tax credits, employment and retirement benefits, health insurance coverage, and Social Security payments.The defendants named in the lawsuit include the US Department of Health and Human Services, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and the United States itself. Charles Miller, a US Justice Department spokesman, said, “We haven’t seen it. Once we are served with it, we’ll review it and make a determination as to how to respond.”
The lawsuit questions the constitutionality of Section 3 of the law, which defines the word “marriage” for the purpose of federal law as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” It does not challenge the constitutionality of Section 2, which provides that states are not required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
The suit alleges that the law violates the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which reserves to the states all powers except those granted to the federal government. It also alleges that the law violates Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which limits the power of Congress to attach conditions to the receipt of federal funds.
Another organization — Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) — is preparing its own legal challenge to DOMA, which, Bil Browning tells us, will allege that DOMA violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection.
Pam’s House Blend links to the pdf of the complaint, and plus has further information about the lawsuit, as well as a roundup of reaction from GLBT advocacy organizations (and from Barney Frank).
Oscar Arias to Mediate Talks Between Zelaya and Micheletti
Oscar Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for helping to end years of war and political violence between the Central American nations, has agreed to facilitate a U.S.-backed effort to resolve the conflict between the ousted but democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, and the interim government headed by Roberto Micheletti:
Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Tuesday accepted a U.S.-backed effort by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to mediate an end to the political crisis in Honduras and said talks with his rivals would begin on Thursday.
“Our first meeting is set for Thursday, in Costa Rica,” Zelaya, told Honduran radio from Washington.
In Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, who was appointed president by Honduran lawmakers after the June 28 coup, also said he would attend Thursday’s talks under Arias’ mediation.
Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner with experience in solving Central American conflicts, faces mediating between sharply opposed positions.
Zelaya said his reinstatement as president was nonnegotiable.
“What this is is not a negotiation, this is the planning of the exit of the coup leaders,” he said.
But Micheletti maintained his position that Zelaya could not return as president. “We’re not going to negotiate, we’re going to talk,” he said. “We’re going into these talks because we’re interested in having peace and tranquility in Honduras.”
Zelaya, whose ouster was sparked by his efforts to change presidential term limits and by his political shift to the left, spoke after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
She urged him to negotiate rather than try to force his way back into the country.
Here is an interesting article byMiami Herald reporter Frances Robles. Robles interviewed Honduras’s top military attorney about the events of June 28, and got some eye-popping admissions:
The military officers who rushed deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country Sunday committed a crime but will be exonerated for saving the country from mob violence, the army’s top lawyer said.
In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador’s elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya — and they circumvented laws when they did it.
It was the first time any participant in Sunday’s overthrow admitted committing an offense and the first time a Honduran authority revealed who made the decision that has been denounced worldwide.
”We know there was a crime there,” said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. “In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.”
Inestroza also told Robles that the military would not take orders from a leftist government. And, despite his own acknowledgment that the forcible removal of Zelaya from office was not lawful, Inestroza, amazingly, said, “… [I]t’s very difficult for someone who has dedicated his whole life to a country and an institution to see, from one day to another, a person who is not normal come and want to change the way of life in the country without following the steps the law indicates.”
More on Obama’s Post-Acquittal Indefinite Detention Plans
Today, Glenn Greenwald weighs in on the Obama administration’s newly revealed plans to continue holding Guantanamo detainees indefinitely even in the cases of detainees who may be acquitted:
Obama Official Claims Post-Acquittal Right to Detain
I suppose I have to get used to maintaining a nothing-surprises-me attitude toward the Obama administration when it comes to anything related to civil liberties or human rights — just as I had to during the previous administration.
Closing the Circle
Thanks to Rush Limbaugh, we now know that Gov. Mark Sanford committed adultery because he was in despair over Pres. Obama’s handling of the economic crisis. But what we did not know until today was the answer to this question: What caused the economic crisis?
Obama Preparing Executive Order to Allow Preventive Detention
The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.
[...]
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House was already trying to build support.
Remember that meeting last month between civil liberties and human rights activists and Pres. Obama right before his big national security speech? The one where he was trying to get their support for his Guantanamo plans?
I’m hearing spinning noises coming from the White House:
“Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order,” the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should be prosecuted or released.
I’m not the only one wondering what’s the game here:
What? What civil liberties organization actually encouraged the administration to set up a system of “prolonged detention” — the less euphemistic term would be indefinite detention — in the first place; let alone urged the administration to do it without congressional approval?
Aha!
Update: Zach Roth at TPM reports that the Center for Constitutional Rights certainly doesn’t approve of the idea.
Update 2: CCR representatives say that in a recent White House meeting, they conveyed to administration officials that “any prolonged detention scheme was unacceptable, no matter how it was dressed.”
Regarding comparisons between the White House plan for preventive detention described by Linzer and Finn in the WaPo piece, and the one laid out by Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, see smintheus at unbossed.com and Mytwords at Corrente.
Does the State Have an Interest in Convicting the Innocent?
That is the question Matthew Yglesias asks about Thursday’s majority ruling by the Supreme Court in the case (pdf here, via Glenn) of a convicted rapist who sought to prove his innocence through DNA testing that was not available at the time of his trial:
Matthew Alexander: Torture Has Cost Us American Lives
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this video is worth at least a hundred thousand:
Via The Huffington Post.
Preventive Detention Is a Non-Starter
Pres. Obama’s preventive detention idea, so far, is not going over too well, reports Glenn Greenwald:
The backlash against President Obama’s extraordinary proposal for indefinite “preventive detention” — already widespread in the immediate aftermath of his speech — continues to grow. On Friday, Sen. Russ Feingold sent a letter (.pdf) to Obama which, while praising some aspects of his speech, vowed to hold hearings on his detention proposal, and in the letter, Feingold rather emphatically highlighted the radical and dangerous aspects of Obama’s approach[.]
[...]
On Twitter on Friday, Rachel Maddow pointed to the civil liberties questionnaire from Charlie Savage which Obama answered during the Democratic primary and asked rhetorically: “This is the same guy now proposing ‘prolonged detention’ without trial?”
[...]
It’s a bit difficult to claim that what Obama is proposing is nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary, given that his own White House Counsel just last February told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that it would be “hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law.” As acknowledged by two of the leading proponents of preventive detention — Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith and Obama’s Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal — the real purpose of preventive detention (contrary to what some are arguing) is not to classify and treat all detainees as “prisoners of war” (since some of them, by Obama’s own description, will get trials in real courts and others in military commissions), but rather, to give “the government an overwhelming incentive to use trials only when it is certain to win convictions and long sentences, and to place the rest in whatever detention system it creates” (h/t EJ). I defy anyone to re-read that description of what this “preventive detention” system does and then claim that what is being described is a “justice system” in any meaningful sense of that term.
Digby has more.
Proposition 8: Reading the Tea Leaves
Sara Robinson at Orcinus speculates on what might happen if California’s Supreme Court overturns Proposition 8 tomorrow:
Nobody has a clue which way they’re likely to rule. Activists on both sides have been scrying the tea leaves and chicken bones on this ever since the court heard the case back in March, but have divined nothing. But there’s one forecast I can offer right now: if Prop 8 is overturned by the courts, the backlash from the right is likely to be far more ferocious and intense than anybody on the left reckons right now.
In recent weeks, I’ve been in discussions with some of the state’s gay leadership about how the hardcore right across the country is likely to react if Prop 8 is overturned. From their viewpoint, even a loss in the courts will only be a momentary setback. In that case, they’ll simply put the issue back on the ballot, over and over, for as long as it takes to regain their right to marry. They know (and the most recent polls support them in this) that time, demographics, and the generally tolerant culture of California are all on their side. They may or may not be able to outspend the Mormons and the Catholics; but they know for sure that they can outwait them.
For that reason, they’re not particularly worried about the right-wing reaction to a decision in their favor. In their view, victory is (sooner or later) preordained. In the long run, the anti-gay-marriage forces are fighting a losing battle. If they’re not irrelevant now, they will be soon. And so they’re not much worried about that.
But they should be.
Yes, the right wing is losing on gay rights issues. That is, very precisely, why they’re more dangerous now than they have been in the past. Their impending irrelevance is not a reason to worry less; it’s a reason to worry more. And getting Prop 8 overturned in the courts would ignite the situation, because it will hit absolutely every angry-making right-wing button there is[.]
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