Tag: Bybee

Feb 23 2010

Open Thought for the Day

From a commenter at reddit, on the subject of Associate Attorney General David Margolis, with Holder’s approval, reducing the conclusion of the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility report on Yoo and Bybee’s Torture Memos  to Bush to say that they showed only “poor judgment“:

If Obama’s ‘Justice Department’ had conducted the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, all of the Nazis would have gone free – ‘Merely Poor Judgement, the Holocaust was just a policy mistake’!

There is a road, no simple highway,

Between the dawn and the dark of night,

And if you go no one may follow,

That path is for your steps alone…

Jun 25 2009

Torture Accountability Action Day! June 25, 2009!

h/t David Swanson

A large coalition of human rights groups has planned rallies and marches in major U.S. cities, including a rally in Washington, D.C.’s John Marshall Park at 11 a.m. followed by a noon march to the Justice Department where some participants will risk arrest in nonviolent protest if a special prosecutor for torture is not appointed.  Torture Accountability

For those who are not able to go to Washington, D.C., rallies are also planned for San Francisco, CA; Pasadena, CA; Thousand Oaks, CA; Boston, MA; Salt Lake City, UT; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; Las Vegas, NV; Honolulu, HI; Tampa, FL; Philadelphia, PA; and Anchorage, AK, with details available online:  Events Across the U.S.  Hopefully, some of you will be able to attend one of these very important rallies.

Of interest, in San Francisco and Pasadena, citizens will submit a formal judicial misconduct complaint against 9th Circuit Court Judge, Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney General.   I can only think of this as a positive move in this maze of affiliates of considered, acted upon, carried out TORTURE!

Keep going!

May 11 2009

Action Alert! “Stand the F..k Up!” *

* (budhydharma)

         (TM)

Shoulda’ happened yesterday already!

Cong. Tammy Baldwin has introduced a bill “Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009” (H.Res. 417), “calling on President Obama to reverse the damaging and illegal actions taken by the Bush/Cheney Administration and to collaborate with Congress to proactively prevent any further abuses of executive branch power.”   h/t David Swanson

Here are the key points of the bill:

“Over the past several years, serious questions have been raised about the conduct of high ranking Bush/Cheney Administration officials in relation to some of the most basic elements of our democracy: respect for the rule of law, the principle of checks and balances, and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights,” said Baldwin. “We must restore Americans’ faith that in a democracy, we follow the rule of law and that nobody – even the President and Vice President of the United States – is above the law,” Baldwin said.

“President Obama has already begun the work of reaffirming American values of justice and freedom. I commend him for his orders to close the detention facility at Guantanamo and prohibit illegal and immoral interrogation techniques. President Obama’s efforts to renew America must also include restoring executive branch accountability. We had an administration that spied on Americans, outed a covert intelligence agent, suspended habeas corpus, held people without charges and without access to counsel, and used torture and rendition. This measure lists steps President Obama can take to proactively prevent any further abuses of executive branch power and restore the public’s faith in our government,” Baldwin said.

The Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009 calls on President Obama to:

* Affirm our nation’s commitment to uphold the Constitution;

* Fully investigate Bush/Cheney administration officials’ alleged crimes and hold them accountable for any illegal acts;

* Hold accountable Bush/Cheney Administration officials who showed or show contempt for the legal duty to comply with Congressional subpoenas; disclosed the identity of any covert intelligence agent; pursued politically-motivated prosecutions;

* Ensure that any Bush/Cheney administration official guilty of a war crime is prosecuted under the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Act;

* Affirm that it is the sole legal right of Congress to declare war;

* Criminalize lying to Congress and the American public about the reasons for going to war;

* Restore the writ of habeas corpus as an essential principle of our democracy;

* Ensure that torture and rendition are uniformly prohibited under United States law;

* Responsibly close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp;

* Ensure that Americans can bring claims against their government;

* Immediately take affirmative steps to protect all Bush/Cheney Administration documents;

* Publicly review potential abuses of the presidential pardon process; and

* Further reform the use of presidential signing statements.

A copy of the Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009 as introduced can be found in this PDF.

Congresswoman Baldwin explains why she feels this bill is necessary:

Apr 27 2009

Geithner and Bybee: how legal corruption works

On Monday, the New York Times front-paged a long, detailed investigative article on Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary who is looting the nation’s public funds to enrich Wall Street executives. Not surprisingly, the article points out that Tim has lots of pals on Wall Street. What is a surprise is that he was offered the job of head of Citigroup in 2007 while serving as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY. You got that right: one of the chief “regulators” of the banking industry was offered a highly lucrative position as the head of one of the banks he was regulating.

What the NYT article does not point out is that this is how the stealthy corruption of our public officials works. Geithner was not just offered a job, he was implicitly offered assurance that Wall Street would take care of him financially as long as he took care of Wall Street. If Geithner had been busting heads and cracking down on Citigroup’s policies, he never would have received such an offer, and the implication of the offer was that if he started to crack down he would never again receive a similar offer. Geithner’s willingness to play ball with Wall Street led to his installation as Treasury Secretary, and now we see the fruits of “deep capture” of that high office: a lavish give-away program that has Wall Street salaries soaring again while the nation remains mired in recession and record setting deficits are funneling taxpayer cash into “private sector” institutions.

Just a few days earlier, the Washington Post ran an article on Judge Bybee, the issuer of an infamous White House opinion “legalizing” torture. It seems Judge Bybee was promised an appointment to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, but first Gonzales wanted him to do a little bit of dirty work in the Office of Legal Counsel. Of course there was never an explicit deal, but the torture was approved, and the judgeship granted. Bybee knew that if he had antagonized the Bush administration by resisting their demands to make torture legal he could kiss his seat on the bench goodbye. So he did the dirty deeds.

The perfection of legalized corruption is the main reason why no change of elected officials will clean up the United States government. The practice of controlling politicians and political appointees with tacit quid pro quos is legally impregnable. Only far-reaching reforms requiring rigid separation of public and private sector careers can overcome this stealthy form of corruption, and it is the corrupted politicians who would have to pass these laws. A new form of government must arise to end the insidious and destructive practices of stealthy, legal corruption. Building this new governmental structure should be the political goal of the citizens of the world. My book-in-progress on the Netstate is one step towards that goal. The first chapter can be read here:

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Apr 25 2009

Mystery explained: the Bybee Memo

How is this for motivation?

Bybee’s friends said he never sought the job at the Office of Legal Counsel. The reason he went back to Washington, Guynn said, was to interview with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for a slot that would be opening on the 9th Circuit when a judge retired. The opening was not yet there, however, so Gonzales asked, “Would you be willing to take a position at the OLC first?” Guynn said.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

After Bybee approved the torture memo, he was made a Federal Judge by Bush. Is there now any longer a mystery about how an ambitious lawyer would authorize a memo legalizing torture of captives? This is how legal corruption works: all you have to do is make the quid pro quo tacit, and the devil’s work gets done.

Apr 25 2009

Appeals court claims detainees are not people.

Cross-posted from www.progressive-independence.org.

A court of appeals claims that prisoners held at Gitmo are not people, and therefore have no rights – much less the right to sue their torturers, according to the following article from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Full article reproduced below.

Apr 05 2009

Guantanamo! (Update)

Update:  Some of you have seen the documentary, some have not.  At any rate, if you would like to share your thoughts about it, why not do it here?  Some comments are already remarking on it at the bottom.  It would be interesting to see how others think and feel about this documentary, as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tomorrow,  Sunday, April 5, 2009, National Geographic Society, will air a documentary entitled “Inside Guantanamo,” 8 PM CST or Wednesday, April 8, 7 PM CST – Check your local listings.  *Also, there are other optional times for viewing.

The video below is a panel, with Chris Wallace hosting, from FOX News.  Note the National Geographic logos. in the background.  In his opening remarks, Wallace refers to the detainees as some of the most notorious!  I have only watched bits of it, as right in the beginning, this Col. Donald Woolfolk (now retired), in charge of interrogations at Guantanamo, categorically denies there was any torture during his tenure there.  I had to shut it down, I became so angry.  Then, I watched a little here and a little there.  I have always admired National Geographic in so many respects, but when I heard this comment from the Col., I became concerned, “will National Geographic do a whitewash of Guantanamo? Have they sold out, too?”  Those thoughts prompted me to try and find out who are the directors, trustees, etc.  I found this, which is quite interesting, I think.  Tracy Wolstencroft is an appointment to the Board of Trustees.  He has been a partner at Goldman Sachs since 1994.   Also, I watched a little of the preview on NGS — I am concerned that it may turn out to be a kind of a neutralization of reality.

Well, we can’t be sure what the purpose of such a panel is, and, maybe, National Geographic will be an honest documentary — we’ll have to wait and see.

Video follows!