I’ve bumped this old post in light of the Obama administration’s shocking decision to try the 9/11 terrorists in a New York civilian court. Does anyone remember what happened the last time we tried this? Also, see David Horowitz’s editorial, “The Worst Decision by a US President in History”:
The decision to try the jihadists in a civilian court is also a decision which will divulge America’s security secrets to the enemy since civilian courts afford defendants the right of discovery. It is also a propaganda gift to Islamic murderers who will turn the courtroom into a media circus to promote their hatred against the Great Satan — a hatred shared by their apologists at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the pro-Castro Center for Constitutional Rights who have pioneered the campaign against Guantanamo and whose influence in the Obama Administration is pervasive. (BTW, The newly appointed lawyer for the president is the husband of Obama’s recently departed Maoist communications director Anita Dunn.)
Does anybody remember Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman? He was the blind Egyptian cleric who was associated with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was plotting numerous additional bomb attacks, which were thankfully prevented by his 1993 arrest and 1995 conviction. So we left him to rot in jail, and that was that.
Not quite. The Sheik was represented by radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who was always ready to defend the constitutional rights of the scum of the earth. As part of her services, Stewart carried secret communications from the isolated Sheik Abdel-Rahman to his followers between 1997 and 2002. These included instructions to initiate a campaign of terror in Egypt. Last year Stewart, along with two others, were convicted of conspiring to materially assist terrorists. Her sentencing is next month, and she is, of course, claiming hardship due to age and infirmity. And as you can imagine, she is receiving encouragement and support from the usual suspects.
Certain classes of evil people must simply vanish away into a pit, never to be heard from again. Yes, this gives a dangerous degree of power to the government. But when there is danger on every path, we must choose between trusting the American government and trusting the Lynne Stewarts of the world.
Today at Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing Al Franken had an attack of nostalgia for the old Perry Mason shows. How cool, as he puts it, that he and Sotomayor, who sat watching the same show simultaneously, across the distance of time and space, should meet today under such profound circumstances. Yes, unimaginable. Sotomayor was inspired to become a lawyer and a judge. Franken became a clown and a Senator. Only in America.
Too bad Perry Mason isn’t on the Senate Judiciary Committee to get to the truth. Alas, no last minute confessions will be heard. The Constitution is about to be murdered.
The positions of each are well known. Obama says the enhanced interrogation techniques were illegal and a violation of our ideals. Cheney defends the methods as legal and effective in saving American lives. Obama said Guantanamo was “a mess” and had to be closed. He delineated how categories of detainees would be processed, some winding up in U.S. prisons. One could ask how physically moving the detainees makes a difference in our values.
As usual Obama sets up a false argument: the rule of law versus “anything goes”.
And congratulations to John McCain and Lindsay Graham for being cited by Obama in support of his arguments.
Thought you might like to see a snippet of one of our heroes at work, this time defending another one of our heroes, Sheriff Arpaio. The discussion is about
[...] This authorizes the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, permitting designated officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions, pursuant to a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), provided that the local law enforcement officers receive appropriate training and function under the supervision of sworn U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
David Harris, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh testified against 287 g and the law enforcement practices of Sheriff Arpaio. (Written testimony pages 4,5,6,7). The Professor said under the Bush administration local law enforcement agencies were pressured into enforcing immigration laws even though they did not want that authority. He also claimed the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) database was inappropriately used to force local police to make arrests of illegals. In his oral opening remarks the professor stated local law enforcement officials would be “pushed into racial profiling” because the immigration laws are too complex and the local law enforcement agents are untrained. He said it takes years and years of study to properly understand the immigration laws. This was a major point in his argument that 287 g is a profound mistake.
He also testified specifically against Sheriff Arpaio (page 12) citing the Goldwater Institute independent study of Sheriff Arpaio’s actions. It was a negative assessment.
His conclusion:
For public safety and civil rights, the implications of immigration enforcement by state and local police departments could not be clearer, or more negative. Immigration enforcement by these non-federal law enforcement agencies will lead to a decrease in public safety and an increase in crime, because vital relationships between police and the communities they serve will break down, corroding under the fear generated by immigration enforcement.
Kris Kobach, Professor of Law from the University of Missouri (KC) testified in support of 287 g.
Here is Rep. Chaffetz’s questioning of Professor Harris.
Former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick left prison Wednesday and began the lengthy release process, officials told an Atlanta television station.
WSB-TV said an official with the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that Vick was likely on his way to Virginia, possibly to his own home.
We in Los Angeles seem completely unable to convict famous men who kill women. Here’s the latest update regarding Spector’s second trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson. The prosecution ended its case Monday.
Music producer Phil Spector, on trial for the second time in connection with the 2003 death of an actress at his home, is “a very dangerous man,” a prosecutor told jurors Monday.
The victim in the case, Lana Clarkson, was “a murder waiting to happen,” deputy district attorney Truc Do said in closing arguments.
Spector, 69, is charged with second-degree murder in Clarkson’s death. The 40-year-old actress was found dead of a gunshot wound through the roof of her mouth in February 2003, at Spector’s Alhambra, California, home .
The prosecution concluded its closing arguments Monday. Defense closing arguments are set to begin Tuesday. Jurors could begin deliberating by the end of the week…A mistrial was declared in Spector’s first trial in September 2007. After deliberating for 15 days, jurors were unable to reach a verdict, telling Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler they were split 10-2.
Eric Holder released a number of Bush DOJ memorandums relating to legal determinations for anti-terror executive powers post-9/11 pertaining to search and seizure, suspension of treaties and other matters. While the suspension of Constitutional rights and extension of Presidential powers are chilling, I have to wonder what is the point of releasing these memorandums to the public except for political purposes. The Bush DOJ repudiated the determinations (although not until January 15, 2009) with the explanation —
The opinions addressed herein were issued in the wake of atrocities of 9/11, when policy makers, fearing that additional catastrophic terrorist attacks were imminent, strived to employ all lawful means to protect the Nation. In the months following 9/11, attorneys in the Office of Legal Counsel and in the Intelligence Community confronted novel and complex legal questions in a time of great danger and under extraordinary time pressure. Perhaps reflecting this context, several of the opinions identified below do not address specific and concrete policy proposals, but rather address in general terms the broad contours of legal issues potentially raised in the uncertain aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. [...]
Mindful of this extraordinary historical context, we nevertheless believe it appropriate and necessary to confirm that the following propositions contained in the opinions identified below do not currently reflect, and have not for some years reflected, the views of OLC. This Office has not relied upon the propositions addressed herein in providing legal advice since 2003, and on several occasions we have already acknowledged the doubtful nature of these propositions.
Holder is releasing the memos in the name of transparency. I suppose we are expected to view them in utter horror as a revelation of the dictatorship Herr Bush was building. There is speculation that releasing these documents is part of a buildup to establishing a “truth commission”.
The memos could also increase Democratic calls for wide investigations to shed light on Bush’s security practices, such as a “truth commission” proposed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. Leahy said they help illustrate Bush’s “misguided national security policies.”
Holder isn’t repealing the authority. The Bush DOJ repudiated these policies itself. Holder wants everyone to know what the Bush DOJ was thinking at the time because it is harshly authoritarian. It is hypocritical of course because we have reason to dread what powers Obama will assume before he’s through. Frankly, I don’t like many of the assumptions that were made about executive powers. You may disagree. Imagine Obama assuming the same powers.
I believe the immediate post-9/11 authority the DOJ assumed for President Bush is a matter of concern even though I did support what I knew about it at the time. That thinking may have been understandable at the moment but generally speaking it concerns me that a President, any President, could assume such power solely based on a compliant DOJ appointed by that President. We have an opportunity to discuss the circumstances under which such authority is warranted and for how long the authority is granted. These early DOJ opinions were discarded by the DOJ itself for one reason or another over time. If Holder starts granting vast unconstitutional powers to Obama we’ll go out of our minds and properly so. I think we should be consistent in our alarm when our rights are in jeopardy.
I feel so much safer now that I know B. Hussein Obama is filling key posts inside the Department of Justice with private firm lawyers who have been defending terrorists held at Gitmo, don’t you?
Oh, sure, the DOJ says these freaks will recuse themselves in instances involving Gitmo, but that’s not the problem. The problem is the fact that lawyers who felt defending child killing genocidal maniacs was time well spent. This is a a character issue. The depravity that led these lawyers to defend terrorists will inform every other action they take.
More than a dozen new Justice Department lawyers have come from private firms representing Guantanamo Bay detainees, creating potential conflicts of interest as the agency begins its review of roughly 245 men imprisoned at the military detention center…
And the department will have to tread carefully as more lawyers join the leadership ranks. Several of Obama’s nominees for top department posts have ties to Guantanamo through their firms’ work, including:
• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr’s David Ogden, who is nominated for deputy attorney general. His firm represents three detainees in habeas proceedings in federal court.
Three former Wilmer lawyers are already planted in the DAG office: chief of staff Stuart Delery, chief counsel Eric Columbus, and counsel Chad Golder. Wilmer lawyers played the lead role in detainees’ landmark victory in Boumediene v. Bush, which recognized their constitutional right to challenge their confinement under habeas corpus.
• Covington & Burling’s Lanny Breuer, the nominee to head the Criminal Division. He’s also conflicted out of matters related to the firm’s 16 Yemeni clients. Covington lawyers burned 3,022 hours on Guantánamo litigation in 2007, according to The American Lawyer’s annual pro bono survey, the latest figures publicly available. It was the firm’s largest pro bono project that year. Covington co-authored one of three petitioners’ briefs filed in Boumediene v. Bush, and was responsible for several detainee victories in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
• Morrison & Foerster’s Tony West, the nominee to head the Civil Division. His firm represents one detainee in a habeas case in U.S. district court.
Quickly gone is the sweet taste of Bush finally—but no doubt reluctantly—doing something for Ramos and Compean. Today we’re reminded he sided with Mexico in favor of Jose Medellin, an illegal immigrant gang rapist and murderer. Fortunately the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Texas courts over the International Court of Justice and President Bush. Fitting that this latest IJC ruling, a scolding and a threat, comes at the onset of President Obama’s administration. A sign of things to come?
Medellin participated in the hour-long gang rape of two teenage girls. The girls were killed, one strangled with her own shoelaces, so the assailants would not be identified. Medellin later boasted he had virgin blood on his clothes. He was convicted and given the death sentence by a Texas court. Legal wranglings followed. Mexico got into it claiming Medellin and dozens of other Mexican nationals were not advised they had the right to speak to the Mexican Consulate. The case went before the International Court of Justice which of course ruled in favor of Mexico.
Bush jumped into the legal fray on the side of Mexico. There cetainly are implications concerning treatment of Americans in foreign courts. That doesn’t mean our own laws can automatically be preempted by international law.
Medellin filed several appeals. All were rejected. Bush withdrew from the Optional Protocol after the IJC’s first ruling in favor of Mexico. He then issued a President’s Memorandum asserting the power of the President to review convictions and sentences of foreign nationals under the Vienna Convention. The Supreme Court (Medellin v Texas ) blew away both the IJC’s jurisdiction and Bush’s assertion of Presidential power in such matters. However, the Supreme Court’s ruling was based heavily on the fact the treaty was not binding on domestic law unless Congress has enacted statutes implementing it or the treaty itself conveys an intention that it is “self-executing”. To me that means the door is still open for Congress to hand over our legal system to the IJC.
Since the Mapp v Ohio Supreme Court ruling in 1961 drug dealers, rapists, murderers and criminals of every variety have gone free because a judge deemed evidence was obtained by an unconstitutional search and seizure. The evidence would be inadmissible for even a slight technical violation by the police. The idea was to make the penalty for police misconduct so severe procedures would be fastidiously followed. All too often, a small technicality resulted in the worst scum getting released and put back out on the street. It was better to let 100 guilty go free than one innocent man suffer as William Douglas said. How many innocent suffered from one guilty going free wasn’t taken into consideration.
At last the Supreme Court has reintroduced common sense to admissibility of evidence. In a 5-4 ruling the Court says evidence is valid despite some police errors. The case was about an arrest made based on a mistake over a warrant. Sheriffs in Coffee County, Alabama arrested Bennie Dean Herring on a warrant that had been recalled five months earlier. Computers had not been updated. Drugs and an unloaded gun were found on Herring at the time of his arrest.
Although Herring’s Constitutional rights were violated, Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy and Scalia concluded the evidence was still admissible. Justice Ginsburg said it was important for police to keep their records up to date. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeal had decided suppressing evidence under these circumstances was unlikely to improve police record keeping.
The Supreme Court said Wednesday that evidence obtained after illegal searches or arrests based on simple police mistakes may be used to prosecute criminal defendants.
The justices split 5-4 along ideological lines to apply new limits to the court’s so-called exclusionary rule, which generally requires evidence to be suppressed if it results from a violation of a suspect’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches or seizure.
Coffee County, Ala., sheriff’s deputies found amphetamines in Herring’s pockets and an unloaded gun in his truck when they conducted a search following his arrest. It turned out that the warrant from neighboring Dale County had been recalled five months earlier, but the county sheriff’s computers had not been updated.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the evidence may be used “when police mistakes are the result of negligence such as that described here, rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements.”
I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this. There will be a lot of arguing about what is reckless disregard. The dissenting four should find consolation in the fact that the Court is following the example of other countries on this matter. The United States was the only country to take the position that police misconduct, slight or major, must automatically result in the suppression of physical evidence.
As Justice Cardoza said, the criminal should not go free because the constable blunders.
These are the guys who first showed up on the radar after they dropped off their weapons-training jihad video at the Circuit City for transfer to DVD. All five are foreign born Islamists, and now face life in prison.
5 Men Found Guilty of Plotting to Kill Fort Dix Soldiers
Five Muslim immigrants were convicted Monday of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in a case that tested the FBI’s post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist conspiracies in their earliest stages.
The men could get life in prison when they are sentenced in April…Convicted were: Shnewer, a Jordanian-born cab driver; Turkish-born convenience store clerk Serdar Tatar; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business. A sixth man arrested and charged only with gun offenses pleaded guilty earlier.
“These criminals had the capacity and had done preparations to do serious and grievous harm to members of our military,” Ralph Marra, the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said after the verdict…Prosecutors said the men bought several assault rifles supplied by the FBI and that they trekked to Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains to practice their shooting. The government also presented dozens of jihadist speeches and videos that the men supposedly used as inspiration.
According to prosecutors, the group chose the Army post because one of the defendants was familiar with it. His father’s pizza shop delivered to the New Jersey base, which is 25 miles from Philadelphia and used primarily to train reservists for duty in Iraq.
The group’s objective was to kill “as many American soldiers as possible,” prosecutors said.
Let’s not forget the hero of this story, Brian Morgenstern, a 26-year-old clerk at a Circuit City, who knew it was important to call this in. Despite his initial concern that it “might be racist.”
President George W. Bush has granted pardons to 14 individuals and commuted the prison sentences of two others convicted of misdeeds ranging from drug offenses to tax evasion, from wildlife violations to bank embezzlement, The Associated Press learned Monday.
The new round of White House pardons are Bush’s first since March and come less than two months before he will end his presidency. The crimes committed by those on the list also include offenses involving hazardous waste, food stamps, and the theft of government property…
On the latest pardon list were:
_Andrew Foster Harley of Falls Church, Va. Harley was convicted of wrongful use and distribution of marijuana and cocaine…
_Geneva Yvonne Hogg of Jacksonville, Fla., convicted of bank embezzlement. (Maybe the pardon came with a bailout, too!)…
_Robert Earl Mohon Jr. of Grant, Ala., who was convicted of conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
_Ronald Alan Mohrhoff of Los Angeles, who was convicted for unlawful use of a telephone in a narcotics felony…
Bush also commuted the prison sentences of John Edward Forte of North Brunswick, N.J., and James Russell Harris of Detroit, Mich. Both were convicted of cocaine offenses.
This shouldn’t be the last round of pardons. There’s still time for Bush to do the right thing, which would at least make his last term a tiny bit less the disaster that it is.
