Category: Civil Liberties

Since when do we have a system of Government where the President can simply “waive” away laws? That’s from Glenn Greenwald in a well-considered and comprehensive commentary, “An Ideology of Lawlessness” at digby’s blogspot. Take a read and educate yerself. I have to comment myself, however, on lawless precedents of American presidents since this ain’t…

A single paragraph in Harper’s Weekly on November 9, 1861 said this: On 23d the President instructed the Marshal for the District of Columbia not to serve writs on the Provost Marshal, but return them to the Court with the explanation that the President has, for the present, suspended the privilege of the writ of…

I have to ask how someone as obscure (until recently) as John Yoo, former law clerk to Justice Thomas, currently a law professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt law school, is in the position of writing innovative legal rationales for the U.S. Justice department advocating denial of legal rights to U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,…

In a long well considered post, Glenn Greenwald posits that the illegal wiretap scandal might be one that resists the usual tamping down by the Bush cult of personality (Breaking the Daou Cycle: Conservative opposition to Bush’s law-breaking): > Former Bush loyalists are now, in droves, expressing discomfort or worse with George Bush generally and…

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson suspects that the NSA intercepted some of his phone calls discussing his negotiations with North Korea (The Albuquerque Tribune: Local / State Government). Richardson’s name often comes up as a possible Democractic presidential or vice-presidential candidate.

Perhaps I’m humorless or old-fashioned but I’m still not over the cavalier way the President and all of his men are defending their decision to spy domestically without seeking warrants. Last week Christopher Brauchli put it thusly in a post to Spot-On called Presidential Prerogatives: > When asked by Jim Lehrer of “The NewsHour With…

The capacity for Bush defenders (I can’t call them conservatives — not even sure they’re really Republicans anymore) to argue that up is down and black is white and violating the law is not violating the law has reached a crescendo. Glenn Greenwald explains cogently just how far out of line the defenses of warrantless…

With so many lies flying around about Bush’s warrantless wiretaps — even the lies have lies — one caught my ear the other day during Bush’s press conference and repeated by 9/11 commissioner Lee Hamilton in an article in today’s Times. The anecdote (much like Reagan’s false – but – still – believed – to…