US and torture from law professor Benjamin Davis

'Clarifying' the Geneva Conventions: A Ploy to Limit US Culpability

JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says official US calls for "clarifying" the Geneva Conventions are part of a ploy to limit their application and enable prisoners to be treated outside the law without inviting culpability for war crimes and torture...

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State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger III has called for "clarification" of Geneva Conventions in the margins of the 30th international conference of the International Committee of the Red Cross/Red Crescent in Geneva (see this report

Bellinger said, on JURIST).

[The Conventions] do not apply to every situation. They in fact apply to conflicts between states. So therefore the Geneva Conventions do not give you the answers about who can be held in a conflict with a non-state actor. They do not tell you how long you can hold someone in a conflict with a non-state actor. They do not tell you what countries to return people to. In a normal conflict where one is fighting one or maybe two countries, at the end of the conflict you return the combatants to those countries. In fighting al-Qaida we've found that we have detained individuals from more than two dozen countries around the world. The Geneva Conventions do not provide answers to those questions so they don't provide sufficient guidance to countries as to what law to apply.

I want to emphasize the consistent and relentless effort of those speaking for the United States Government to keep trying to convince all of us domestically and internationally that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to this armed conflict. It started soon after 9/11 and was enshrined very early on in the February 7, 2002 Presidential Military Order. Bellinger is one more of a long line of persons working overtime to argue for holes and seek our acquiescence in this view.

The reason for these arguments is not one of principle but it is rather one of decisions made to be able to treat persons outside of law. The law is used to protect the persons who conspired to act outside of law who do not want to face any consequences for the decisions taken. As long as these persons are able to keep us guessing and arguing about the applicability of Geneva Conventions they can keep us from looking at their intended acts that are grave breaches and war crimes. We should not be duped by this ploy.

Bellinger went on to say,

The United States is firmly committed to the law that applies. We're also committed to working with other countries around the world to develop new legal norms in cases where existing law does not give one the answers. But what we do think is problematic is to simply suggest that the Geneva Conventions provide all of the answers in fighting international terrorism, and that countries simply need to follow the Geneva Conventions and that is the end of the matter.

In his comments, Bellinger did not talk about the core aspects of Geneva treatment of persons held but more about issues like when you have to return people. It is clear to me that the lever of the issue of when to return people is trying to be used to encourage a review of several aspects of the Geneva Conventions. The reason for this effort is that if one can convince the world to create a new protocol to deal with things one argues were not covered in the prior Conventions or Protocols, then one is able to vindicate the United States Government’s position since early on in the "War on Terror" that the Geneva Conventions and Protocols did not apply to the conflict. Through this maneuver, any prosecution for those leadership persons of the United States for grave breaches and war crimes for existing Geneva law violations before international criminal tribunals would then be undermined on the basis of the principle of legality.

Bellinger reaffirms the United States opposition to torture, yet even that reaffirmation is weak. He speaks of having strong personal beliefs and we are supposed to understand that as meaning that he will advise Mukasey to find that waterboarding is torture. But, the fact is that all those policies were worked out when Bellinger was at the White House and on into his time at State. I have no faith that his strong beliefs depart in any significant manner from those of the Haynes’, Bradbury’s, Yoo’s, Goldsmith’s, Gonzales', Addington’s or others on these topics who have created and extended the legal argumentation to enable U.S. torture in this armed conflict. Nothing in his tenure at State suggests his views are different from those of these other apologists for torture.

If there is one lesson from the torture debates it is that there is an almost unending availability of clever lawyers willing to build up sandcastle analyses to enable the sovereign to argue that what he/she is doing is perfectly legal. As long as those lawyers can include an Attorney General willing to see this as misfeasance the clever lawyer gets off scot-free as does the sovereign who sought the legal advice to allow the illegality.

If one is willing to take the scales from one’s eyes and just call things as they are, then the Bellingers are stopped in their tracks for their enabling of grave breaches and war crimes. That would be a clarification of American high-level civilian and military culpability that has been long delayed by efforts at spinning the War on Terror. It is a day of reckoning that is long awaited.

Benjamin Davis is a professor at the University of Toledo College of Law

see also: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/11/mukaseys-letter-not-good-enough.php

Mukasey's Letter: Not Good Enough

JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says that Judge Michael Mukasey's written response to Senate Judiciary Committee follow-up inquiries concerning his views on the legality of waterboarding and torture demonstrate views of America's obligations under international law so limited and problematic that he should not be confirmed...

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Judge Mukasey has responded to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s written inquiry with regard to waterboarding and torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. His four-page letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supplemented by 172 pages of related responses prompts several thoughts.

First, Judge Mukasey notes that "some Members of Congress, including those on the intelligence committees", have been briefed on the specifics of "a program run by the Central Intelligence Agency". In the context of the confirmation process, it is essential that we now ask who were those members of Congress, whether they were briefed on waterboarding and other techniques as part of that briefing, and what were the members' views on those techniques. It is far too convenient to hold Judge Mukasey’s feet to the fire on waterboarding without also holding accountable the members of Congress who have been briefed on this subject. This information is important in the context of Judge Mukasey’s confirmation because his phrase can be easily read as a veiled warning to those Congresspersons that they will be “outed” for what they allowed to go forward. That veiled warning has the effect of chilling further inquiry by other members of Congress for fear of alienating colleagues. We need to cut through this gamesmanship and get the truth out. Americans can handle the truth.

Second, Judge Mukasey, in addressing the legality of "coercive interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, provides an instance of the kind of legal analysis he would make as Attorney General as a way of assisting the committee in understanding his work method if he were to be confirmed. He essentially limits his analysis to federal statutes that are enabling legislation of the Convention Against Torture and Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment (“Convention Against Torture”) and the Constitutional standard of “shocks the conscience” that is said to apply pursuant to a United States reservation to that treaty. He makes passing reference to the Geneva Conventions and to the Convention Against Torture itself.

That is not enough. Let me be specific:

• Judge Mukasey's analysis does not take into account the prohibition against torture and cruel inhuman or degrading treatment in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). His analysis does not take into account the non-derogability of those prohibitions even in times of public emergency as expressed in Article 4 of the ICCPR.
  
  
• His analysis does not take into account the question of whether the US reservation to the Convention Against Torture is inconsistent with the object and purpose of the treaty and, as a matter of international law, of no effect. His analysis also does not express clearly whether he subscribes to the position that said reservation is only substantive (as was stated by Abram Sofaer, the negotiator of that treaty for the United States, in his January 2005 testimony to the committee) or whether he subscribes to the view that it is both substantive and geographic in limitation (i.e. only within the United States) as was stated by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. This point is important since detainees are essentially held abroad.
  
  
• His analysis does not take into account the fact that foreigners held by the United States are subject to the protection of the state of their nationality. Said state, as Australia did for David Hicks, will insist that their citizens be treated in accordance with the requirements of international law applicable. He does not seem aware that internal statutes of the United States are of no moment to such foreign states. What is important to those states is whether the United States is in compliance with the language of the relevant international law obligation (such as the Convention Against Torture) – not United States domestic law. He does not see that the internal law (which he might have used in his court) cannot be used in this non-court context on the international plane to extract the United States from its international obligations.
  
  
• His analysis refers to Geneva Common Article 3 War Crimes but does not address the question of liability for Non-Common Article 3 War Crimes. In Hamdan the Supreme Court only said that Common Article 3 applied without reaching the broader question of whether other articles of the Geneva Conventions apply in the current armed conflicts. A careful analysis would therefore have looked at the non-Common Article 3 articles in the Geneva Convention III on Prisoners of War as well as the non-Common Article 3 articles in the Geneva Convention IV on Civilians including protected persons and security detainees. His analysis does none of that and therefore is unacceptably cursory. He presents a cramped vision of Geneva Conventions applicability that seems even narrower than that which Jack Goldsmith took but closer to that of David Addington, which I find extremely problematic. His vision limits the analysis to the detriment of evaluating waterboarding as a per se war crime under these other provisions of the Geneva Conventions.
  
  
• He appears to be applying domestic U.S. standards for treaty interpretation and not international standards such as the Vienna Convention Law of Treaties which has been seen as authoritative by the United States in the past. With regard to the Convention Against Torture, it is of great concern that in his analysis he makes no mention of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties with regard to interpretation of our obligations. Rather than only referencing a couple of internal cases to describe the court’s “shocks the conscience” standard, I hoped that Judge Mukasey would have taken into greater account the evaluation to be done is in the context of compliance with treaty obligations of the United States – not just compliance with a Constitutional standard. In a setting where he will be under enormous pressure to use internal law interpretations of the treaty that are the President’s and by definition self-serving, his inability to even bring forward the idea of the more traditional international standard is deeply troubling. Thus, the evaluation of the “shocks the conscience” standard would need to take into account concerns such as compliance with the object and purpose of the treaty, the traditional methods in international law of interpretation of treaties, and issues of whether the “shocks the conscience” reservation is an improper derogation from peremptory norms. None of that appears in the four-page letter, nor is it intimated that he would consider such matters. This type of analysis is well-known by those steeped in international law but possibly less familiar to persons who work essentially in U.S. foreign relations law We are all aware of the separation of powers, but neither the President, the Congress, nor the Supreme Court are above the United States. The treaty obligations (as well as customary international law obligations) fall squarely on the United States and his analysis in domestic law of “shocks the conscience” should be tempered by this international background. This type of analysis is all the more important in a context where the techniques are being applied to foreigners who are subject to the protection of the state of their nationality. On the state to state level, the internal law modifications of the United States to treaty and customary international law obligations are of no moment.
  
  
• In addition to not making any reference to the ICCPR in his analysis, he makes no reference to customary international humanitarian law, human rights law, law of diplomatic protection, or international criminal law. These additional areas of international law and the jurisprudence of international tribunals from the Nuremberg trials or the Tokyo trials onward are not referenced or analyzed in any meaningful manner. In the context of an armed conflict of global proportions, that lack of familiarity and absence in his legal analysis are of concern.
  
  
• There is no evidence that Judge Mukasey looked at the relevant state practice of other states under treaty or customary international law with regard to evaluating waterboarding or at the American jurisprudence on the subject in domestic or in international tribunals we helped to create over the past 100 years. That is not good enough these days.

Third, Judge Mukasey's analysis purports to present great concern for the impact of his comments on the personal jeopardy of those in the field or those charged with reviewing conduct of those in the field. His loyalty – upwards or downwards – is misplaced. It pains me greatly that his solicitude for those persons seems far greater than what I would hope is the central concern – defending and protecting the United States. In his role as Attorney General, an important part of the task ahead will be to cleanse the state itself of its criminality: whether at the level of those who wrote the shameless memos (that are more than mistakes), those who ordered the memos, or those down below to the lowest level implementer of the policy. It would seem that a truly independent person would show now a willingness to follow the facts where they lead both up and down and not personal loyalty concerns. If someone was induced in error as part of the common plan by someone above in the hierarchy, Judge Mukasey may determine to be solicitous towards such a person in his investigation and discretion as to prosecute. But, as the Attorney General nominee, these type of personal, almost managerial, concerns are beneath the office of the Attorney General.

Fourth, because of what is not said in Judge Mukasey's analysis above, I am worried about his commitment to transparency in his approach to the Attorney General position. Maybe one way he could show that openness would be if he committed to release or examine releasing the International Committee of the Red Cross report on the detention and interrogation techniques in the CIA Black Sites referenced in a recent New Yorker article. That report no doubt has the truth on what we have been doing. Rather than playing internal law semantic games, the discussion of the ICRC would point out whether in our practice we have complied with the international obligations that fall upon the United States as a whole and for which we would expect the Attorney General to have great concern. Those who have read the report in Congress seem to suggest that we have failed miserably. Let the American people know what our leaders and the detainees know. Have we been leveled with by our leaders? We can handle the truth.

Fifth, it pains me greatly that Judge Mukasey has not simply said that “waterboarding is torture and illegal.” It pains me greatly that the international component of his analysis is not as extensive as I think it should be of the Attorney General who would serve at this crucial time.

For these reasons, as a citizen I remain extremely troubled by Judge Mukasey’s nomination and suggest that the Senate not confirm him. If he asks why, someone might respond as Churchill responded to an employee he had fired: “Not up to the job.”

Benjamin Davis is a professor at the University of Toledo College of Law

November 02, 2007

Attorney General Nominee Michael Mukasey "Has Distaste for People who Voice Skepticism about the Government's Motives in the War on Terror," Says Attorney from Center for Constitutional Rights

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Shayana Kadidal discusses Mukasey's role in the trial of Jose Padilla, his view on presidential power and the significance of the news that that the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales secretly issued legal opinions that reportedly authorize methods including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. [includes rush transcript]

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The Bush administration is continuing to reject calls by Congressional Democrats to release a series of secret legal opinions effectively sanctioning the use of torture.

The New York Times revealed last week that the Justice Department, under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, secretly issued the memos that reportedly authorize methods including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. The first opinion came shortly after Gonzales arrived in February 2005. Just months earlier, the Justice Department had publicly declared torture “abhorrent.”

The showdown on Capitol Hill over the release of the documents comes as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for confirmation hearings for US Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey. The hearings could begin as early as October 17th. President Bush officially nominated Mukasey, a retired federal judge, on September 17th.

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said he will seek Mukasey's opinion on the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, the Bush administration's secret domestic wiretapping program and a list of what he called other topics of "concern."

• Shayana Kadidal, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. He works on the Center's case on the illegal NSA domestic spying program, as well as the Center's PATRIOT Act case. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.

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AMY GOODMAN: The Bush administration is continuing to reject calls by Congressional Democrats to release a series of secret legal opinions effectively sanctioning the use of torture.

The New York Times revealed last week the Justice Department, under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, secretly issued the memos that reportedly authorize methods including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. The first opinion came shortly after Gonzales arrived in February 2005. Just months earlier, the Justice Department had publicly declared torture “abhorrent.”

The showdown on Capitol Hill over the release of the documents comes as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for confirmation hearings for US Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey. The hearings could begin as early as October 17th. President Bush officially nominated Mukasey, a retired federal judge, on September 17th.

Committee Chair Patrick Leahy says he will seek Mukasey's opinion on the firing of nine US attorneys, the Bush administration's secret domestic wiretapping program and a list of what he called other topics of "concern."

Shayana Kadidal is a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights here in New York. He works on CCR's case on the illegal NSA domestic spying program, as well as the Center’s PATRIOT Act case. He's a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. Shayana joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Good morning, Amy. Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance of the torture memos that we have now seen, not because the government has released them to Congress, but because the New York Times revealed them, and how this relates to the confirmation hearing for Judge Mukasey?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. Well, you know, the reality is the Times has talked to government officials who have seen the memos. They haven't actually seen the memos. And so, the release of the actual memos -- there are two of them, one saying that the torture prohibitions in the Constitution and various treaties don't apply to the CIA, and another one sort of defining torture -- no one has seen them. And so, whether or not they're released to Congress, that’s going to be a huge issue for the new attorney general to deal with. And, you know, I assume that the Democrats are going ask Mukasey whether or not he's willing to release these.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about who Judge Mukasey is, why you're blogging about him. And, well, then we'll talking about the kind of questions that could be asked in the confirmation hearing.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. Well, you know, it's a little bit of self-interest. You know, one of the key things, I think, that we should be concerned about with Mukasey is that he hates the legal left. He has come after the Center for Constitutional Rights in, you know, his op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about a month before he was nominated.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Oh, sure. Well, you know, Michael Ratner, the President of the Center, shortly after lawyers started going down to Guantanamo, did an interview with Mother Jones magazine in which he said, you know, look, lawyers are going to go down there, talk to detainees, and they’re going to confirm stories of torture that we've heard already, you know, Abu Ghraib-style things happening at Guantanamo. And he said, you know, look, you can't run a torture and interrogation camp with lawyers going down there. And in Mukasey's reading, that’s become “You can't run an interrogation camp with lawyers going down there.” He said in the Journal, “The director of an organization purporting to protect constitutional rights has announced that his goal is to unleash a flood of lawyers on Guantanamo so as to paralyze the interrogation of detainees.” And he's come after the American Library act for protesting the PATRIOT Act. He’s clearly --

AMY GOODMAN: American Library Association?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right, right. And, you know, he's clearly a guy, I think, who has distaste for people who, you know, voice skepticism about the government's motives in the war on terror, which is a troubling thing for a federal judge to sort of feel.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about his role in the Jose Padilla case?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. Well, Jose Padilla was a US citizen -- is a US citizen who was arrested at O'Hare Airport, and the Justice Department’s initial sort of account of who he was was that he was coming here to the US to plant a dirty bomb somewhere. It’s a real serious allegation. This all happened right after 9/11. And he ended up in Mukasey's courtroom, first detained as a material witness, which meant they weren't charging him with anything -- they just wanted to keep him so he could testify in someone else's proceeding -- and then as an enemy combatant, which is kind of this completely newfangled category of military detainee.

And, you know, some people on the left were excited when Mukasey was nominated, because, you know, first, he wasn't a Bush administration insider like Alberto Gonzales, but moreover, they felt that he had given Padilla a pretty balanced sort of deal, that, you know, he had said, “You have the right to see a lawyer,” for instance. But the reality is that, you know, this case that he decided, which was pretty shortly after 9/11, maybe within the first year, said that the President has a right to hold people as military detainees, that somebody like Padilla, who ordinarily would have to be charged with a crime, because he was a US citizen, because he was arrested in the US, at minimum, that the executive can just hold him by designating him an enemy combatant. And Mukasey set a very low standard for what the President has to show.

You know, so people on the left look at that case, and they think, well, Mukasey said that, you know, an enemy combatant can get into US court, but the reality is that it would have been a very short stay in court. And then, he did say that you are allowed to see a lawyer as an enemy combatant, but he said that the military can listen in on your conversations with the lawyer. And, in fact, Jose Padilla didn't see a lawyer for three years when he was held as an enemy combatant.

AMY GOODMAN: What are the questions you think that the senators should ask?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure, well, I think, you know, they should really probe into his views on key war on terror issues. You know, is it acceptable for the President to hold detainees without any form of review from federal judges? Is torture ever acceptable, and what are the boundaries on it? You know, and is he going to be willing to do real investigations of misconduct of this administration, perhaps by appointing a special prosecutor?

Now, Newsweek reported that during Mukasey's White House interview for the job that he gave answers to all three of those questions that are things that the administration would be pleased to hear, that he thinks we should be allowed to hold people outside of the court process, that torture is acceptable for certain, you know, sort of high-value detainees, and that he voiced skepticism about whether it was wise to appoint a special prosecutor.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance Friday, the US military's chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war crimes trial is resigning, Air Force Colonel Davis?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. Well, it shows what a mess this entire system has been. You know, the military is making up rules as it goes along for trying these so-called terror suspects. In fact, some of the charges are things that were created after the violations had supposedly occurred. You know, we're seeing ex post facto charges, really, against a lot of these guys, and this is just another symptom of making up the rules as you go along.

AMY GOODMAN: They say that he was clashing with the Pentagon. They wanted him to bring war crimes prosecutions in a sensational way.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. And he felt, you know, his supervisors were interfering with his role as a prosecutor. You know, prosecutors do work for the executive -- in this case, he’s a military prosecutor -- but they're also supposed to exercise independent judgment. The founders thought about putting the Justice Department in the judicial branch instead of the executive, in order to ensure a little distance from the President. And this is another example of things that go wrong when there's interference from above.

AMY GOODMAN: How important is Judge Mukasey as Attorney General? What will he be determining over these next few years?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Well, among other things, he'll -- the Office of Legal Counsel, which gives the President legal advice, which wrote all these torture memos, that's part of the Justice Department, so he would have final oversight over the people who are, you know, at OLC and that sort of thing. Beyond that, he'll be deciding on who to prosecute on interpretations of federal law generally that bind the executive branch. So it's a hugely important position. And I think in some ways he's a brilliant choice by Bush. You know, he doesn't appear to be an insider, but he's someone who agrees with all their positions on executive power.

AMY GOODMAN: Shayana Kadidal, I want to thank you very much for joining us, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. He is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

Mukasey as next Attorney General?

or

How do you write an editorial on the man
when his motivations are so deeply stacked under outrage
for his stand on Jose Padillo?

<<:>> <<:>> <<:>>

First a comment that appeared in the Daily Kos:

Judge Mukasey (1+ / 0-)

Recommended by:

luckylizard

He's a close friend of Rudy Giuliani.

I suspec6t he's "down" with the Israel-first, dual national neocon types like Wolfowitz, Dov Zakheim, Richard Perle et al.; he is in any case an Orthodox Jew. No, I don't see being Jewish, or Orthodox, as a disqualification, but we don't need more high-level federal officials who believe American foreign policy should be dictated by the Israeli extreme right. His views on those matters ought to be questioned.

He certainly has a reputation as a "hanging judge" in criminal matters.

I -- a civil attorney -- tried one matter before him. He has a first-rate intellect, undeniably, but is also arrogant as all hell, and utterly convinced of his own rectitude, if not his infallibility.

He is also one of the most humorless men I have ever met in my life.

But there is much more to be concerned about this man becoming the next legal beagle, BuZh apologist for the White House, "stuff" that is incredibly hard to find out as it is buried on the internet under compilations of urls on the Jose Padillo case, a case that it appeared he would do the right thing, and then capitulated after being seen PRIVATELY by US officials, without Padillo's legal person being present. There went civil rights (and never forget that Jose Padillo is an American citizen ..)

So here comes the latest for the Daily Kos in its entirety ...

Now if this allegation below (no reason to think it isn't) is TRUE, it could well be an additional reasoon that Mukasey is the pick .. being PRO Labor racketerring (he covered it up) which is USEFUL if the North American Union comes into being!!! He is accused of helping CONGRESS cover up dirty money ... (which could explain why Congress would let him in AND further the NWO agenda at the same time ...

QUESTION FOR EXAMINATION
Did the Mukasey Panel by and through their Summary Order 03-3117 filed
January 14, 2004 (attached) continue a systematic pattern to hide documented Judicial Fraud and Extra Judicial Acts of Misconduct committed by District Judge Janet C. Hall – doing so by intentionally avoiding the procedural process of a 28 U.S.C. 455 affidavit and motion (the premise of the appeal) in order to circumvent the standard of review fora 28 U.S.C. 455 motion, that being: "Impartiality might reasonably be questioned"?"

And this is from a blog, facts about his son .... interesting CONNECTION. BINGO!!

Marc Mukasey - Partner at Bracewell & Giuliani where he "focuses on the defense of white collar criminal and regulatory cases." The firm also states: "Recently, Mr. Mukasey has been successful in persuading Department of Justice prosecutors to close an antitrust investigation against a major corporation without the filing of charges, and to drop securities fraud and mail fraud investigations of his business clients. He also successfully argued a downward departure motion that secured a favorable outcome for his client in the face of vigorous opposition by the Department of Justice." Marc's father, Michael Mukasey, former chief judge of the Southern District of New York, is also a member of Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee.

And this is a great OpEd showing how Mukasey's brand of justice shown in the Padilla case will totally decimate the US Bill of Rights ..

Now I believe that there is FAR more to be seen about Mukasey. I will not stand corrected if I am wrong; for I know I am correct in this. The other four nominees were bandied about hoping we would be lead off the 'scent' .. and we were. This is massive political trojan horse project in the making on the part of the Administration. At best, it is simply a stall tactic . . . just as the announcement that Gonegonzales was delayed to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing that Alberto made a poor showing before Congress. The decision was made but took a month to be announced. Karl Rove's dirty paws seemed to be involved in the TACTIC. We can expect, eventually, that this will be as wildly unpopular as putting in Harriet Myers turned out to be.

So this Mukasey appointment may be just another of the stall, delay, obfuscate tactics of which we all have such intimate familiarity. But today is the day we earnestly begin our dedicated research.

It's a good day for taking out those pens and beginning to write away about our disgust. These letters and emails, they are not tactics; they are calls to continue a freedom loving lifestyle ... with certain inalienable rights ...