Mood:  celebratory

Copied from - WASHINGTON (CNN)

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/26/senate.pro.forma/index.html?iref=topnews

The U.S. Senate was called to order for 11 seconds on Wednesday as the last political scuffle of the year between the White House and the Democratic-led Congress played out.

Democratic senators will hold short "pro forma" sessions over the holiday break to prevent recess appointments.

Nearly all the senators left the Capitol for the Christmas holiday last week, but Democrats are keeping the Senate in session to block President Bush from making any recess appointments -- a constitutional mechanism that allows the president, during congressional recesses, to fill top government posts for up to one year without Senate confirmation.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, opened and then immediately gaveled the Senate session to a close.

He spent 57 seconds in the chamber.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, announced December 19 that he would keep the Senate open with a series of "pro forma" sessions through mid-January.

Talks had just broken down with the White House on a deal that would have allowed the president to make dozens of those appointments if he agreed not to appoint one controversial official,

Steven Bradbury,

as the permanent head of the influential Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.

Bush declined to accept the Democrats' offer, and Reid refused to approve Bradbury because of concerns about his involvement in crafting legal opinions for the administration on interrogation techniques of terrorism suspects.

Similar sessions were conducted over the Thanksgiving recess.

Webb also did the duty Friday, but he won't be the only senator tasked with presiding over the shortened sessions. Other Democrats -- including Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Chuck Schumer of New York -- will share the duty.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 5:17 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 26 December 2007 5:18 PM PST

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Mood:  irritated

FBI Sought Authority

To Detain Thousands

Associated Press
Sunday, December 23, 2007; A16

Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention shortly after the Korean War began and arrest as many as 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document.

Hoover sent his plan to detain suspect Americans in military and federal prisons to the White House on July 7, 1950, but there is no evidence to suggest that President Harry S. Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of the proposal.

Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage," the New York Times reported yesterday in a story posted on its Web site.

The plan called for the FBI to apprehend all potentially dangerous individuals whose names were on a list that Hoover had been compiling for years.

"The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States," Hoover wrote in the now-declassified document. "In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus."

Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, is a bedrock legal principle.

All apprehended individuals eventually would have had the right to a hearing under Hoover's plan, but hearing boards composed of one judge and two citizens "will not be bound by the rules of evidence," he wrote.

The details of Hoover's plan was among a collection of Cold War-era documents related to intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The State Department declassified the documents Friday.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:38 PM PST

Updated: Sunday, 23 December 2007 12:42 PM PST

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Mood:  loud

Blackwater Protest:

Protestors Drive

Blood-spattered Car

onto Blackwater Property

Author

• Sue Frankel-Streit
• http://richmond.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13722/index.php

Date Created

• 21 Oct 2007

• More details...

Date Edited

• 21 Oct 2007 09:17:14 PM

Rating

• Current rating: 0

License

This work is in the public domain

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:25 AM PST

Updated: Sunday, 23 December 2007 1:30 AM PST

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Mood:  amorous

Judge Rules

White House

Visitor Log is

Public Information

12/18/07 -- Posted by Catherine Morgan http://www.care2.com/politics/judge-rules-wh-visitor-log-public.html Federal Judge Smacks Down on White House Log Secrecy Why in the world do White House visitor logs need to be a national secret? Well, when all else fails the Bush administration usually plays the "Threat to National Security" card. No surprise here, that is exactly what they did. However, on Monday, a federal judge rejected the Bush administration argument for secrecy, and ruled that the visitor logs are subject to the Freedom of Information Act and are public information. This is from The Carpetbagger Report... For several years now, White House visitor logs have been a major point of contention with the Bush gang. About a year ago, for example, when Dick Cheney insisted that his visitor logs remain classified, the WaPo sued the administration for access. A federal judge eventually ruled that the logs were public information, prompting Cheney to direct the Justice Department to block the decision on national security grounds. But that’s just the start of the Bush gang’s log problem. In June, Cheney instructed the Secret Service to destroy copies of visitor logs. A few months prior, the White House told the Secret Service that while it maintains the visitor logs, the logs don’t actually belong to the Secret Service, which means FOIA doesn’t apply. Other bloggers are talking about this latest triumph over secrecy... The FOI Advocate Blue Girl, Red State Jason Daley has a post on what the secret service log looked like on one particular day. So, what do you think about this? Should the White House visitor log be public? Do you think it's a threat to national security? Would you vote for a presidential candidate that intended to maintain such a high level of secrecy? Z3 Readers click here to go to the original post and to read the comments that have been posted there.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:10 PM PST

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Mood:  surprised

Report:

Govt Info at Your Fingertips?

Not Quite !

December 11, 2007 1:13 PM

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/12/report-govt-inf.html

Justin Rood Reports:

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:19 AM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:22 AM PST

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Mood:  irritated

At an event to commemorate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR) today, the Nobel laureate said the detention of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a "huge blot on a democracy".

"Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government," Archbishop Tutu said.

Archbishop Tutu is chairman of the Elders, a group of prominent international statesmen that includes former US president Jimmy Carter, anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and his Mozambican-born wife, Graca Machel.

The group is spearheading a campaign to get one billion people to sign a pledge reaffirming the principles of the UNDR, passed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

Archbishop Tutu, who helped lead the struggle to overthrow white minority rule in South Africa, said he was surprised so many Americans had accepted the argument that the Guantanamo detentions were necessary because of national security.

"It is exactly what the apartheid government used to say here," the Anglican cleric said.

His remarks come amid a growing outcry over alleged abuses at Guantanamo, which was used as a mass detention centre for suspected violent Islamic radicals in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

Critics have said the US is circumventing international law by holding detainees without charge, often for years, and violated their human rights with forced confessions and torture tactics.

President George W. Bush said the detentions are lawful, humane and necessary as part of its fight against extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a legal challenge by Guantanamo inmates who are contesting their detention.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:28 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 11 December 2007 11:31 PM PST

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Mood:  happy

CRACK COCAINE

& THE SUPREME COURT

NEW [JUSTICE] LAW

 http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/10/scotus.crack.cocaine/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal judges have the discretion to give "reasonably" shorter prison terms for crack-cocaine crimes to reduce the disparity with crimes involving cocaine powder.

Lawyers argue that crack-cocaine offenders were unfairly targeted.

The 7-2 ruling represents a victory for lawyers who argued that crack-cocaine offenders were unfairly targeted under U.S. sentencing guidelines.

Current federal penalties for selling 5 grams of crack cocaine can warrant the same prison sentence as dealing 500 grams of the powdered variety.

The Supreme Court case centered around Derrick Kimbrough of Norfolk, Virginia, who according to court records, pleaded guilty to distributing more than 50 grams of crack cocaine. Federal sentencing guidelines called for 19 to 22.5 years behind bars. But Judge Raymond Jackson instead gave the defendant a 15-year sentence, calling the case "another example of how crack-cocaine guidelines are driving the offense level to a point higher than is necessary to do justice."

A federal appeals court overturned the case and sent it to a higher court, saying Jackson's discretion was "unreasonable when it is based on a disagreement with the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses."

Said Kimbrough's attorney, Michael Nachmanoff in October, "A sentence of 19 years for a man with no felony convictions who served his country honorably, who had never spent a night in jail ... that was ridiculous."

Kimbrough is a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and is African-American.

African-Americans were nearly 82 percent of defendants sentenced in federal court for dealing crack, but only 27 percent of those sentenced for dealing powder cocaine, according to 2006 federal statistics. Each year, federal courts handle about 11,000 cocaine sentences, which are roughly evenly divided between crack and cocaine cases.

The issue long has been a source of contention between government prosecutors and civil rights advocates, who argue crack dealers are often targeted for longer prison terms because that drug is prevalent in urban and minority communities, while the powdered version is more commonly associated with higher-income users.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a practical approach, saying it is important to preserve judicial discretion, while ensuring most sentences remain within federal guidelines established two decades ago to ensure a measure of uniformity.

Ginsburg said a federal judge was right to give a crack offender a lesser prison term than the guidelines called for, since federal law "mandates only maximum and minimum sentences," she wrote. "It says nothing about appropriate sentences within those statutory guidelines."

Ginsburg noted the trial judge "honed in on the particular circumstances of Kimbrough's case and accorded weight to" reports by the U.S. Sentencing Commission that show "the crack/powder disparity yields unjustifiably harsh sentences for crack offenders."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented in the Kimbrough case. Thomas said it will now be up to courts "to assume the legislative role of devising a new sentencing scheme," something Congress never intended.

The government had no immediate reaction to the high court's ruling.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission -- an independent federal agency that advises all three branches of government on sentences -- recently cut the gap in recommended prison time for crack-cocaine offenses. The guidelines took effect November 1 after Congress decided not to overturn the changes.

The commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to make those guidelines retroactive for prisoners convicted in the past of crack dealing.

Almost 20,000 inmates could be eligible for shorter sentences under the proposed changes.

Congress recently has introduced at least four bills that would reduce the current disparity in cocaine sentences. One widely circulated proposal led by Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, would revise the cocaine ratio downward to 20-to-1. That ratio is also supported by the Sentencing Commission.

Harsher sentences for crack offenses came after a social epidemic of crack cocaine began destroying many urban areas in the 1980s.

"The crack-cocaine guidelines were put in place because crack was fueling crime waves across the country, in particular with respect to street violence," said Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney in Miami who comments on legal matters for CNN. "And it is clear that crack cocaine and white powder cocaine had a very different impact in terms of not only the lives of the users but the impact on the community."

The case is Kimbrough v. U.S. (06-6330).

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:10 PM PST

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Mood:  spacey

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=zebra334

*****************************

http://www.joe-anybody.com/id106.html

Posted by Joe Anybody at 5:04 AM PST

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Mood:  chatty

Guantanamo: The Prequel

A Judge Discusses His Experiences
With Guantanamo Bay Litigation By BRANDT GOLDSTEIN
December 4, 2007 1:08 p.m.

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119672508133812403.html?mod=googlenews_wsj 

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether detainees at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can go to U.S. courts to challenge their confinement. More than 300 foreigners branded enemy combatants by the Bush administration are being held there. Three detainees are currently facing charges, according to the

Associated Press.Judge Sterling Johnson Jr.¹ of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., may know more about Guantanamo Bay's history than anyone else on the federal bench. Now 73 years old, he served there as a young Marine in 1953, carrying a shotgun on night-guard duty in the hills. As a judge decades later, he heard the first case challenging the detention of foreigners at Guantanamo. Judge Johnson readily recalls the government's position: Guantanamo is beyond the reach of American law; foreigners held there have no constitutional rights. "Been there," said Judge Johnson. "Done that."

But as familiar as the U.S.'s argument has become in recent years, the case Judge Johnson heard has no direct tie to the Guantanamo litigation that returns again to the Supreme Court this week. In fact, Judge Johnson's case dates back to 1992. The detainees at the time weren't alleged terrorists, but Haitians who had fled a military coup in Port-au-Prince. On orders from the George H.W. Bush administration, Coast Guard cutters intercepted their boats and took everyone aboard to Guantanamo. Judge Johnson, an appointee of the first President Bush, ordered the Justice Department to release the Haitians in 1993. The judge recently spoke at Albany Law School about the first Guantanamo camp, offering some historical context for the controversy over detentions there today.

Due Process

A native of Brooklyn's tough Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Judge Johnson worked as a police officer while in law school and later served as New York City's special narcotics prosecutor before ascending to the bench in late 1991. He had been a judge just six months when human-rights lawyers and law students representing the Haitians appeared in his courtroom, demanding that the Justice Department grant them access to Guantanamo. A government lawyer told the judge that Kenneth Starr, then U.S. solicitor general, was coming in to argue the politically charged case. "You go right ahead and bring the solicitor general in here," Judge Johnson shot back. "I'm from Bed-Stuy, and I am not going to be intimidated."During the lawsuit's early stages, the government hurriedly returned thousands of the Guantanamo refugees to Haiti, narrowing the case into a battle over a few hundred men, women and children. American immigration officials had identified them as potential political refugees to be flown to the U.S. -- but they had tested positive for HIV. With AIDS fears gripping America, the Bush administration kept the Haitians on Guantanamo in plywood barracks, surrounded by razor wire and guard towers. The refugees were barred from speaking with their lawyers and given no timetable for their release."I remember the government telling me, 'You have to dismiss this case,'" Judge Johnson told his audience. "[The government] said, 'You cannot hear the plaintiffs' claims. We can do whatever we want to these Haitians. We can hold them as long as we want. We can be arbitrary or capricious or cruel.'" Foreshadowing the current legal battle, the Justice Department argued that it should have a free hand on Guantanamo because the naval base there wasn't on U.S. territory, even though it was under American jurisdiction and control.The judge saw things differently, ruling after trial that the refugees' indefinite detention violated the U.S. Constitution. "The Due Process Clause is phrased in universal terms, protecting any 'person,'" Judge Johnson wrote, contrasting it with rights, such as protection against unreasonable searches, that are granted only to "the people" -- roughly meaning those in the U.S. "If the Due Process Clause does not apply to the detainees at Guantanamo, Defendants would have discretion deliberately to starve or beat them [or] to deprive them of medical attention," the judge wrote in his decision.Judge Johnson said he never second-guessed himself during the case.

 "We have three coequal branches of government," he said. "The executive branch was trying to take powers away from the judiciary. So I did what I had to do."But there is one thing he would have done differently: "I wish I'd gone down [to Guantanamo]," he told the law-school audience. "I should have had a first-hand look at the conditions. The government was calling it a 'humanitarian camp.' If that's what it was, why did they need armed guards? Why all the fences and the barbed wire?"

No Legal Precedent

While Judge Johnson was the first to rule that the Constitution applies at Guantanamo, the case doesn't survive as legal precedent. To prevent an appeal that might have reversed the decision, lawyers for the refugees agreed to a settlement deal with the Justice Department. The Haitians went free, but the judge's decision was "vacated" -- technically erased from the books and stripped of any authority. Ironically, it was the Justice Department under President Clinton that brokered the deal.

Eight years later, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the George W. Bush White House began searching for a place to hold suspected terrorists rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan. To Judge Johnson's surprise, administration officials fastened on Guantanamo -- and asked the Justice Department if prisoners could be held there without judicial review.

The answer in a December 2001 memo² by Patrick Philbin and John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel: Yes, in all likelihood. As part of their analysis, Messrs. Philbin and Yoo noted that the Haitian case had been vacated and was thus irrelevant.

The first lawsuit on behalf of the current Guantanamo detainees was filed in early 2002, with help from lawyers involved in the Haitian litigation. Whatever the similarities of the two cases, Judge Johnson observed that the detainees are different this time around. They aren't the democracy activists that many of the Haitians were, though enough evidence has emerged to suggest that many of today's detainees aren't what then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the "worst of the worst." Many of the legal questions have been different as well, including the significance of designating detainees as "unlawful enemy combatants" and the legality of the new military tribunal system.

But one bitterly contested issue from the Haitian case remains at the forefront: the Constitution's application to Guantanamo Bay. Does due process forbid the government from detaining foreigners there indefinitely without recourse to the courts? Some observers think the Supreme Court signaled "yes" in a footnote⁷ in the 2004 Rasul v. Bush decision. And it is possible, though not certain, that the justices will finally address the issue head-on when they hear the Boumediene v. Bush case on Dec. 5.

Judge Johnson, who has now taken senior status and hears cases on a limited basis, remained careful not to comment on the Guantanamo suit currently pending before the court. "I only know about that case from what I read in the papers," he told the Albany audience. He paused. "But from what I can tell, the government's making some of the same arguments they made to me."

Brandt Goldstein, a visiting professor at New York Law School, is author of "Storming the Court" (Scribner 2005), a narrative account of the 1992 Guantanamo case.

See a review⁸ of the book by Wall Street Journal Supreme Court reporter Jess Bravin, as published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:47 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 4 December 2007 1:43 PM PST

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