9.30.2006 Legislating Violations of the Constitution By Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky

With little public attention or even notice, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The Public Expression of Religion Act - H.R. 2679 - provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion.
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The bill applies even to cases involving illegal religious coercion of public school children or blatant discrimination against particular religions.

The passage of this bill by the House is a disturbing achievement by those who seek to undermine our nation's commitment to fundamental freedoms laid out in the Constitution. Should it come up for a vote, it is imperative that the Senate reject this nefarious proposal. The religious right is looking for a way to get away with violating the Establishment Clause and is now one step closer to this goal. The Establishment Clause is no less important than any other part of the Bill of Rights and suits to enforce it should be treated no differently than any other litigation to enforce civil liberties and civil rights

9.29.2006 Aziz Huq:

There are two ways in which you--citizen or non-citizen, resident of Topeka or Timbuktu--can become an "unlawful enemy combatant."

The first way is if you engage "in hostilities" or "purposefully and materially support" hostilities. This sounds reasonable enough until you realize that no-one has the slightest clue what it means to "purposefully and materially support" hostilities. Do you need to intend to aid the hostilities? Or is it enough to intend to give the support? Would purposely giving to a charity that then gave money to Hamas count, even if you knew nothing about the Hamas? What about writing an editorial that gave "aid and comfort" to the enemy--say, by criticizing the Administration's Iraq policy?

The second way is--if it's even possible--more dangerous: You are designated an enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal--the Potemkin proceedings jerry-rigged at Guantánamo--or you are designated by "another competent tribunal" created by the Defense Secretary.It's the latter that catches in the throat, because the MCA does not define what Rumsfeld's "competent tribunal" must look like. Rummy himself with the always-fair-and-impartial Addington? Five Syrian torturers (like the ones to whom the U.S. sent the hapless Canadian Maher Arar)? A bunch of guys who flip coins for your liberty? Sure, why not? The MCA doesn't stop the executive from using any of these, provided Rumsfeld gave them power and hence made them "competent."

"Gone missing" has more hope. Perhaps they will be found. "disappeared" suggests a more ominous scenario.

Harold says that the abandonment of Habeus Corpus in the Military Commissions Act is a poison pill which will force immediate consideration by the Supreme Court. Maybe Habeus Corpus has just gone missing. We'll find out.

9.28.2006 Senate Passes Dangerous Bush Military Commissions Bill, ACLU Says Legislation Upends the Rule of Law

"Nothing could be less American than a government that can indefinitely hold people in secret torture cells, take away their protections against horrific and cruel abuse, put them on trial based on evidence that they cannot see, sentence them to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and then slam shut the courthouse door for any habeas petition," said Christopher Anders, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "But that’s exactly what Congress just approved."

9.28.2006

9.28.2006 Coleen Rowley on the Detainee Bill

This bill was born out of fear: George Bush's fear of being called to account. He was asleep at the wheel on 9/11. He was wrong about Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, wrong about Saddam's WMD. His ill-conceived invasion of Iraq has been a failure, and last summer, Bush literally fiddled while New Orleans drowned. George Bush knows he cannot keep America safe, so he is illegally tapping our phones, indefinitely detaining those labeled as 'enemy combatants', and ignoring centuries of established legal precedent in the desperate hope that he will stumble on a magical formula for success. He's asked Congress to give him cover for his cowardice, and John Kline and the GOP-led Congress were only too willing to comply. They placed political expedience above the principles that made this country great.

Shame on them. And shame on all of us if we don't stand up and declare that we the people will not be frightened into violating those principles.

Scientists and lawmakers have since deemed the air rife with toxins.

Early tests known to the EPA at the time had already found high asbestos levels, the notes say. But those results were omitted from the press releases because of "competing priorities" such as national security and "opening Wall Street," according to a report by the EPA's inspector general.

The chief of staff for then-EPA head Christie Todd Whitman, Eileen McGinnis, told the inspector general of heated discussions, including "screaming telephone calls," about what to put in the press releases.

In the House, "there was a bit of a snafu with this particular document," said a spokesman for Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the intelligence committee chairman. "We had a massive computer failure on our classified side." The first that the committee knew of its existence was late last week, when "it was requested specifically by a member. That was when it was found and scanned into our system." WaPo

Chart shows increase in signigicant terrorist attacks in 2004. 10 times the number in 2003. Declassified Key Judgments of the NIE (Here)

Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

9.27.2006 Steve Clemons:

The last pre-election loophole through which John Bolton's confirmation might have snuck through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was at 2:15 this afternoon at a previously called "business meeting" of the Committee.

That meeting has been cancelled -- and with it even the dimmest chance of John Bolton being confirmed as US Ambassador to the United Nations.

For a lot of reasons - some cyclical, some technical and some having to do with the emergence of alternative fuels and conservation - the price of crude oil has fallen lately to around $60 a barrel. Yes, in the long run, we want the global price of oil to go down. But we don't want the price of gasoline to go down in America just when $3 a gallon has started to stimulate large investments in alternative energies. That is exactly what OPEC wants - let the price fall for a while, kill the alternatives, and then bring it up again.

For now, we still need to make sure, either with a gasoline tax or a tariff on imported oil, that we keep the price at the pump at $3 or more - to stimulate various alternative energy programs, more conservation and a structural shift by car buyers and makers to more fuel-efficient vehicles.

The modern institution of civil and human rights, and particularly the writ of habeas corpus, began in June of 1215 when King John was forced by a group of feudal lords to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede.

Two of the most critical parts of the Magna Carta were articles 38 and 39, which established the foundation for what is now known as “habeas corpus” laws (literally, “produce the body” from the Latin – meaning, broadly, “let this person go free or else give him a trial – you may not hold him forever with charging him with a crime”). The concept of habeas corpus in the Magna Carta led directly to the Fourth through Eighth Amendments of our Constitution, and hundreds of other federal and state due process provisions.
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King Charles I, in response, invoked his right to simply imprison anybody he wanted (other than the rich feudal lords), anytime he wanted, as he said, "per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis."

This is essentially the same argument that George W. Bush makes today for why he has the right to detain people without charges for as much as their entire lives solely on his own say-so: because he's in charge. And it's an argument now supported on the record by these Republicans who have chosen to betray America's founding principles in exchange for peace with the White House.

Thus, if a person purposefully and materially supports hostilities, he will be an unlawful combatant, even if he never engages in any hostilities himself. [NOTE: At least one of the Administration's supporters believes that the mere filing of a habeas petition is a form of "aggression against the United States." Presumably that is not the intent of the drafters, or else all those attorneys now representing military detainees would become "unlawful enemy combatants"!]
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It is worth noting one thing about the breadth of the habeas-stripping provision, both in the new draft and in last week's version, that has thus far received inadequate attention in the public debate. That provision would eliminate the right to petition for habeas for all alleged alien enemy combatants, whether or not the detainee has been determined to be an "unlawful" combatant -- indeed, even if the detainee is deemed a lawful combatant (e.g., a POW) -- and no matter where they are detained, including in the United States.

This week's congressional debate over torture policy will be an important benchmark in the war on terrorism. But because of the Bush administration's restrictive policy on sharing classified information with Congress, very few of the people engaged in the debate will know what they're talking about.

The latest Marti scandal joins a rich and well-funded heritage of commentators, journalists, talking heads, and think tank wonks who have proven themselves to be not only "in the tank" as so many journalists are, but also "on the take."
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The use of taxpayer dollars to subvert honest American journalism, while deplorable, seems hardly necessary. After all, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, The Weekly Standard, and Rush Limbaugh already broadcast anything and everything the Administration claims to be true, no matter how outlandish. The traditional bulwarks against this kind of thing have been weakened almost beyond recognition, as the work of, say, The New York Times' Judy Miller or The Washington Post's Bob Woodward quite neatly illustrates.

So why go to all this trouble to bribe journalists when so many are willing to work for free? Well, no one ever argued that competence was this administration's strong suit.

Almost half of Americans believe the plunge at the pump has more to do with politics and the November elections, than economics.

The ''pardon'' is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ''pardon'' provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.

Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national.
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Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.

President Bush is pushing Congress to put the agreement into law before adjourning for the midterm elections, but Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said Sunday he “vigorously” disagrees with the habeas corpus provision of the bill.

DON'T FOLD THIS TIME!

In the late 1980s, I was the first western journalist allowed into the world’s most dreaded prison, Moscow’s sinister Lubyanka. Muscovites dared not even utter the name of KGB’s headquarters, calling it instead after a nearby toy store, “Detsky Mir.”

I still shudder recalling Lubyanka’s underground cells, grim interrogation rooms, and execution cellars where tens of thousands were tortured and shot. I sat at the desk from which the monsters who ran Cheka (Soviet secret police) — Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria — ordered 30 million victims to their deaths.

Prisoners taken in the dead of night to Lubyanka were systematically beaten for days with rubber hoses and clubs. There were special cold rooms where prisoners could be frozen to near death. Sleep deprivation was a favourite and most effective Cheka technique. So was near-drowning in water fouled with urine and feces.

As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major “strike group” of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran’s western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

“I am absolutely convinced,” said Mr. Horton, “that the ton of bricks fell on these two guys — Bilal Hussein and Abdul Ameer Hussein — because they were working as professional journalists. They were the eyes of the world, covering things that the Pentagon doesn’t want people in America to see.”

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
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The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.

I'm old enough--growing up in North Carolina also helps--to remember when respected pundits and politicians referred to the "extremists on both sides," one side being the Klan, the other being the NAACP or Martin Luther King. This is exactly how the torture debate is now being constructed, at least by the Administration. The Post and the Times are not yet on message, but how many operating politicians will be able to resist the lure of "moderation" and "reasonableness" rather than risk being identified with the ACLU (selected out for a dismissive reference by Sen. McCain in the transcript quoted in Marty's invaluable contribution)? To stick with the analogy, waterboarding is being treated as the equivalent of lynching, but other forms of formerly criminal abuse are being normalized as part of "the program."

h/t to a 16 year old girl and to Norm.

This is an extensive chronology, covering the following topics:

• Reducing Access to Family Planning
• Building the Platform to Outlaw Abortion
• Redefining the Legal Status of the Fetus
• Packing the Courts to Overturn ROE
• Replacing Science with Ideology
• Censoring Free Speech

But instead of balance, we should talk about fairness. Fairness means that you are trying to find out what different sides say and then come to some sort of conclusion about it, giving all the different their voice, but still willing to make some strong statements about what the overall mix adds up to. Too often, the press is not willing to do that, so they get into he-said, she-said. Instead of balanced journalism, I would like the press to use a standard of fair journalism. That way, the press can be both open to hearing all parties and yet willing to state what the facts say. Too often, they don't tell us what the facts seem to say.
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That is what a good reporter does; that comes with the territory. I don't think anybody in journalism today would stand up and say straightforwardly that one should just go out and get one side and the other. I think it happens a lot, but I think that today we're sophisticated enough to realize that that's not good reporting, and you've got to go out and get to the bottom of things. It should be every journalist's job to do that; it's not too much to ask.

[UPDATE: The way in which the bill excludes the CIA techniques from "cruel treatment" is rather subtle, and important: I discuss it here]. It only takes 30 seconds or so to see that the Senators have capitulated entirely, that the U.S. will hereafter violate the Geneva Conventions by engaging in Cold Cell, Long Time Standing, etc., and that there will be very little pretense about it. In addition to the elimination of habeas rights in section 6, the bill would delegate to the President the authority to interpret "the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions" "for the United States," except that the bill itself would define certain "grave breaches" of Common Article 3 to be war crimes. Some Senators apparently are taking comfort in the fact that the Administration's interpretation would have to be made, and defended, publicly. That's a small consolation, I suppose; but I'm confident the creative folks in my former shop at OLC -- you know, those who concluded that waterboarding is not torture -- will come up with something. After all, the Administration is already on record as saying that the CIA "program" can continue under this bill, so the die apparently is cast. And the courts would be precluded from reviewing it.

Bill Maher:

Everybody's got something. But if there's one drug above all we should be cracking down on, it's oil. Oil is the addiction poisoning our lungs, and our political system, and our foreign policy. Willie Nelson, high though he might have been, was on a bus that didn't pollute anything, because it runs on bio-diesel. But bio-diesel threatens the profits of Big Oil, which means the only way we're ever going to legalize pot in this country is to convince Bush and Cheney it's a petroleum product. And it may be, all my bongs have a carburetor.

9.22.2006 Secret CIA Prisons in Your Backyard Onnesha Roychoudhuri

The largest covert CIA operation since the Cold War is run not only by shadowy government contractors in the darkest corners of Afghanistan, but also by unassuming Americans in places like Dedham, Mass.
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If Congress does authorize the president's version of the bill, they're not only retroactively authorizing torture, they're creating a legal framework for the future. That would create a system where disappearing and torturing people would become a part of the law.

More important is the bill's definition of ˜serious physical pain or suffering." One would think that, on any reasonable understanding of ordinary language, the "alternative" CIA techniques do, indeed, result in serious physical suffering, at the very least. Indeed, such serious suffering -- and the prospect of ending such suffering by telling one's interrogators what they wish to hear -- is the whole point of using such techniques in the first place. But remarkably -- and not accidently -- the bill's definition would not cover all such actual "serious physical suffering."

The definition would require, for one thing, a "bodily injury" -- something that would not necessarily result from use of the CIA techniques -- even though one can of course be subject to great physical suffering without any "physical injury."

What's worse, such physical injury would also have to "involve" at least one of the following:

• (1) a substantial risk of death;
• (2) extreme physical pain;
• (3) a burn or physical disfigurement of a serious nature, not to include cuts, abrasions, or bruises; or
• (4) significant loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty.

As you can see, this definition simply does not cover many categories of actual serious physcial suffering, including, naturally, the physical suffering that ordinarily results from the CIA techniques that have been reported.

Here is a way to measure how seriously President Bush was willing to compromise on the military tribunals bill: Less than an hour after an agreement was announced yesterday with three leading Republican senators, the White House was already laying a path to wiggle out of its one real concession.

When McLean High School students write this year about Othello or immigration policy, their teachers won't be the only ones examining the papers. So will a California company that specializes in catching cheaters.
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Members of the new Committee for Students' Rights said they do not cheat or condone cheating. But they object to Turnitin's automatically adding their essays to the massive database, calling it an infringement of intellectual property rights.

The ongoing bureaucratic drama surrounding procurement for this project is a kind of fairy tale for the system of legalized corruption in this country, in which taxpayer money is basically stolen and shot into space by an open conspiracy of legislators, defense contractors and Pentagon officials, colloquially known as the "Iron Triangle." The F-22 project is particularly offensive since its cost -- $65 billion -- mirrors very closely the $50 billion in "emergency" cuts to social programs Congress made last year, ostensibly to help pay for Katrina reconstruction.
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But there are three basic problems with the F-22.
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What a joke American journalism is. Our entire Army is on its knees before a few thousand gun-toting religious fanatics in the Arabian desert, and here's our government, taking food out of the mouths of foster kids and single moms to go binge-shopping with our tax money in the Sharper Image catalog of the industrial world. And what's on TV? Fucking Suri Cruise? Are you kidding me?

Every other wealthy nation manages to provide almost all its citizens with guaranteed health insurance, while spending less on health care than we do. And there’s no mystery why: we’re paying the price for pointless, destructive reliance on private insurers. Medicare, which is a universal health insurance program for older Americans, spends less than 2 cents of every dollar on administrative costs, leaving 98 cents to pay for medical care. By contrast, private insurance companies spend only around 80 cents of each dollar in premiums on medical care; much of the remaining 20 cents is spent denying insurance to those who need it.

One of the cornerstones of the Republican Party's strategy for winning elections these days is voter suppression, intentionally putting up barriers between eligible voters and the ballot box. The House of Representatives took a shameful step in this direction yesterday, voting largely along party lines for onerous new voter ID requirements. Laws of this kind are unconstitutional, as an array of courts have already held, and profoundly undemocratic. The Senate should not go along with this cynical, un-American electoral strategy.

If you were to pick the single greatest hypocrisy of the Bush Presidency, wouldn't it have to be this: that the man who ostentatiously claims Jesus as his favorite philosopher (he of "do unto others as ye would have them do unto you" fame) would say, in all seriousness, "Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'?"

Federal judges decided Tuesday to require faster and fuller disclosure of their expense-paid trips, a response to criticism that the travel could undermine the public's faith in an impartial judiciary.

The nation's 2,200 federal judges also will have to use computer software that is intended to make it easier for them to identify and step aside from cases in which they have a financial conflict.

The changes were made by the Judicial Conference of the United States, a 27-judge body led by Chief Justice John Roberts that met at the Supreme Court.Under the new trips policy, sponsors must reveal in advance who is paying for a judge's travel to private seminars. The information is to be posted on the judicial branch's Web site.
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Judges may not accept travel from sponsors who refuse to disclose the information.

Then, within 30 days of the end of the program, judges must file a report about the trip. Local court Web sites will have the information

9.21.2006 Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) released a new report by the Campaign for America's Future that provides an overview of the corporate profiteering and mismanagement in Iraq

9.20.2006 CIA 'refused to operate' secret jails by By Guy Dinmore

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Wednesday to identify some detainees who say they were abused by U.S. military personnel at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff rejected arguments by the Defense Department that it needed to black out the names and other identifying information of detainees to protect their privacy and he ordered the redactions removed within a week.
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In the ruling, the judge noted the "considerable public interest" in learning the treatment of detainees, "whether they have been abused, and whether such abuse has been properly investigated," outweighed the privacy interest argued by the government.

9.21.2006 I am your elder By Garrison Keillor

It's time the powers-that-be took my advice: No more papal Muslim-bashing, no apologies for American cars and a lot more action in Washington.
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You want to know what I think? Members of Congress should leave town. Move north to where they can feel the crisp chill breeze of reality. Maybe a place in the middle of the country, along the Mississippi River. Let D.C. keep the Pentagon, the White House, the statuary, the vast marble and granite sheds of the federal bureaucracy, and move our nation's deliberative bodies to a place with a clearer view. There is plenty of land available along the Mississippi, rolling hills, woods, meadows. No need to spend money on a dome and pillars -- just pitch two big circus tents, one for the House, one for the Senate, bring in FEMA trailers for housing, and let's see if we can't get more work out of these people.

IIn the push to enact legislation dealing with the interrogation and prosecution of terror suspects, both the White House and dissident Republicans in the Senate intend to strip away the hallowed safeguard of habeas corpus for some noncitizens held in U.S. custody outside the United States.

Habeas corpus (literally “produce the body”) is a legal proceeding that allows one to challenge his or her detention in a court of law. It is the most significant safeguard against arbitrary imprisonment. Someone deprived of this right — which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and has been recognized by various societies all the way back to the Middle Ages — can be locked up, whether innocent or guilty of any offense, and never heard from again.

I can’t believe that most Americans think this is all right.

“This is recognized as a broad common-law and constitutional right,” said Bill Goodman, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which has been fighting to secure basic legal protections for prisoners in American custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

At a minimum, said Mr. Goodman, “A person has a right to know what crime he’s being charged with. And a court can demand that the government produce evidence indicating that there is a reason to hold that person.”

9.19.2006 "Will Ferrell as Dubya on Global Warming"

9.19.2006 VII. It is not a "war." By Robert Dreyfuss

Although the Pentagon has garnered 90 percent of the money for the so-called war on terrorism, and although the Pentagon's special operations command is supposedly in charge of the "war," it is not a war. Terrorism cannot be fought with tanks, planes and missiles. The Defense Department cannot invade the London suburbs or mosques in Hamburg or the teeming cities of Pakistan. Cells of angry Muslims will coalesce spontaneously to seek revenge for real or alleged wrongs for decades to come. That is a problem for the CIA, the FBI, and, especially, foreign police and intelligence services, not Donald Rumsfeld's legions. "I hate the term 'global war on terrorism,'" John O. Brennan, who headed the National Counterterrorism Center until last year, told me. "The Department of Defense and others insist very strongly on calling it a war, because that allows the Pentagon to prosecute the military dimension of the conflict. It fits their strategy."

Alan Grayson, a Harvard-educated lawyer, told of Halliburton's singular capacity to maintain under seal documents brought under the False Claims Act , effectively out of public view for not the sixty days mandated by law, but for as long as three and a half years and counting. In other words, Halliburton and friends have kept their scandals under an undoubtedly very expensive table somewhere. With more than fifty claims pending, not one has been litigated by the US Government. Not one.

Bush has no problem asking people to violate the law. He thinks it's his prerogative as Commander-in-Chief. He's just having a harder time convincing his own officials that they won't suffer any blowback from it.

Bush, Cheney & Co. are desperately trying to hold together a house of cards that is ready to collapse because their strategy and tactics for fighting terrorism were slapped together with no real regard for the rule of law. What we’ve seen over the past few years has been a nightmare version of the United States. Torture? Secret prisons? Capital trials in which key evidence is kept from the accused? That’s the stuff of Kafka, not Madison and Jefferson.

The reason President Bush has been trying so frantically to get Congressional passage of his plan to interrogate and try terror suspects is that he needs its contorted interpretations of the law to keep important cases from falling apart, and to cover the collective keisters of higher-ups who may have authorized or condoned war crimes.

The fact is that for all his talk of being a “war president,” Mr. Bush has been conspicuously unwilling to ask Americans to make sacrifices on behalf of the cause ­ even when, in the days after 9/11, the nation longed to be called to a higher purpose. His admirers looked at him and thought they saw Winston Churchill. But instead of offering us blood, toil, tears and sweat, he told us to go shopping and promised tax cuts.

Only now, five years after 9/11, has Mr. Bush finally found some things he wants us to sacrifice. And those things turn out to be our principles and our self-respect.

9.17.2006 Marty Lederman:

In his impassioned press conference yesterday, the President acknowledged that the Hamdan decision, by clarifying that Common Article 3 applies to the conflict with Al Qaeda, had rendered the CIA's "program" of "alternative" interrogation techniques unlawful, and that unless the Administration's bill is enacted, "the program" cannot lawfully continue:

This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court's ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. [T]he bottom line is . . . that this program won't go forward if there's vague standards applied like those in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. . . . You can't ask a young professional on the front line of protecting this country to violate law. Now, I know they say they're not going to prosecute them. Think about that, you know. "Go ahead and violate it, we won't prosecute you." These people aren't going to do that.

... Smith reports that an "unpublicized memo to the CIA from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel" names "the precise interrogation methods the department believed to be sanctioned by [the McCain Amendment]." (Shouldn't that memo be made available to Congress, so that the legislature can see exactly what it's being asked to authorize?)
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In the hands of the Administration, then, the McCain Amendment would be "a 'flexible' standard,'" which would, according to officials, "allow interrogators to weigh how urgently they felt they needed to extract information against the harshness of their techniques, instead of following rigid guidelines."

In other words, the Administration's mantra that its bill would bring "clarity" is exactly backwards. Under the current law -- Common Article 3's categorical prohibition on "cruel treatment and torture" -- the CIA techniques are plainly unlawful: That's why the "program" has been stopped. (Lederman's emphasis)

9.17.2006 The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies Frank Rich

9.17.2006 Journalists In Danger Overseas...From U.S. Governemnt Robert Tanner

According to the AP, the U.S. military has detained 14,000 people worldwide, with 13,000 in Iraq, most held without specific charge.

Bush is threatening to close up the CIA unit involved with terrorist interrogations if he doesn’t get the authority to thumb his nose at the Geneva Conventions. In short, he is blackmailing America.

He is telling us that he will not allow the CIA to interrogate prisoners -- within the bounds of the Geneva Convention -- who might yield information, unless they can be tortured. Bush is thus blackmailing all the residents of America by telling us that he will shut the CIA out of all detainee information gathering unless he can use barbaric methods.

And on Wednesday in the House, the Republican leadership of a subcommittee of the Government Reform Committee took lengthy and detailed testimony from the Inspector General of the Interior Department on the festering corruption and incompetence at that agency. The administration's plain contempt for the ordinary functions of government and its use of the executive branch to enrich cronies and reward allied industries have become too grotesque even for its usual defenders on Capitol Hill. Even with an election approaching -- perhaps because it is approaching and some Republicans fear for their seats as well as their consciences -- there will be more such rebellions.

The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.

9.15.2006 Judge Hears Arguments on Federal Spying Program

Summing up, Judge Lynch said: “We’re debating a rather abstract but rather vital issue. Does the president have the power to do something despite the fact that Congress said ‘thou shalt not have this power’?”

He added, “I have no idea at this point how I’m going to come out on this.”
Center for Constitutional Rights v. Bush

Mr. Bush has made it clear that he plans to continue operating the C.I.A. camps. And he wants Congress to collaborate by exempting the United States from a provision in the Geneva Conventions that prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” Mr. Bush says this wording is too vague, but that’s a dodge. What he really wants is Congressional authority to go on doing things to prisoners in C.I.A. jails that are clear violations of international rules.

He also wants Congress to rewrite the War Crimes Act, which makes it a crime to violate the Geneva Conventions. The administration’s goal here is to avoid having C.I.A. interrogators, private contractors or the men who gave them their orders called to account for the immoral way the administration has run its terrorist detention centers.
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Senators Warner, McCain and Lindsey Graham have formed a principled spine of resistance against their party’s attempt to steamroller the White House legislation through Congress. But their own bill ­ the only competing proposal to emerge so far ­ shares some big problems with the president’s. One is its scope. Both bills draw the definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” so broadly that it could cover almost anyone that a particular administration decides is a threat, remove him from the judicial system and subject him to a military trial.
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The White House wants to strip the federal courts of any power to review the detentions of the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. This provision has no real bearing on the handful of genuine terrorists who were recently shipped there from abroad. Their cases are likely to be brought before military commissions, whose judgments could be appealed to higher courts, including the Supreme Court. But it has a profound impact on the hundreds of others at Guantánamo Bay. Many of them, perhaps the majority, committed minor offenses, if any. The administration has no intention of trying them, and wants to prevent them from appealing for help in court.

At issue are definitions of what is permissible in trials and interrogations that both sides view as central to the character of the nation, the way the United States is perceived abroad and the rules of the game for what Mr. Bush has said will be a multigenerational battle against Islamic terrorists.

Snow said the issue had never "come up" before. Does this mean we never tried to raise the questions before because we had never felt an urge to torture previously? Or what?

The AI report notes that despite Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s subsequent protestations to the contrary, he stated publicly and repeatedly during the conflict that he was firing his missiles at civilian areas to make Israeli civilians pay for their army’s actions, and with his uncontrolled Katyushas, an indiscriminate weapon, he killed 43 of them.He had advised Israeli Arabs to leave those areas.He had provoked the war with a cross border attack in which some Israeli soldiers were killed and others seized.

AI did not address the issue of an estimated 1,000 Lebanese civilians killed when Israel attacked Hezbollah fighting and command positions that had been established within populated villages, or the use of civilian vehicles, buildings and clothing by Hezbollah fighters, who also sometimes fought in Israeli uniforms.That is still the subject of investigation, and AI announced those issues, unlike the Hezbollah violations, are too complex for immediate comment. Readers will recall that perceived Israeli transgressions were what attracted the most attention and condemnation during the Lebanon conflict, and that those occurences were largely presented as Israel’s fault. It will be interesting to see if AI attempts to sort out how many of those 1,000 were actually Hezbollah guerrillas, and how many cases of "Israeli" attacks on civilian buildings and vehicles -- such as ambulances -- were staged Hezbollah propaganda events, and in some cases, if the dead were actually dead, or play-acting, or being recounted and shuffled around.

A rebellious Senate committee defied President Bush on Thursday and approved terror-detainee legislation he has vowed to block, deepening Republican conflict over terrorism and national security in the middle of election season.

Republican Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record) of Virginia, normally a Bush supporter, pushed the measure through his Armed Services Committee by a 15-9 vote, with Warner and three other GOP lawmakers joining Democrats. The vote set the stage for a showdown on the Senate floor as early as next week.
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In the committee vote, Warner was supported by GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine. Warner, McCain and Graham had been the most active senators opposing Bush's plan. The vote by the moderate Collins underscored that there might be broad enough GOP support to successfully take on Bush on the floor of the Republican-run Senate.

9.15.2006 "Was Armitage a partisan gunslinger?" The answer is in the question

9.15.2006 Friedman says he'd legalize pot in Texas

Kinky Friedman says he favors legalizing marijuana to keep nonviolent users out of prison. If Texas elects him governor, he says, he'll try to get locked-up pot users released to make room for more violent criminals.

"I think that's long overdue," Friedman told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "I think everybody knows what (U.S. Sen.) John McCain said is right: We've pretty well lost the war on drugs doing it the way we're doing it. Drugs are more available and cheaper than ever before

9.15.2006 " Princeton Scientists Create Vote-Stealing Program for Diebold AccuVote-TS"

9.14.2006 BOB HERBERT:

The president put us on this path away from the better angels of our nature, and he has shown no inclination to turn back. Lately he has touted legislation to try terror suspects in a way that would make a mockery of the American ideals of justice and fairness. To get a sense of just how far out the administration’s approach has been, consider the comments of Brig. Gen. James Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines. Speaking at a Congressional hearing last week, he said no civilized country denies defendants the right to see the evidence against them. The United States, he said, “should not be the first.”

Today, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee performed an amazing acrobatic feat: legislating in the dark. And like any other good circus trick, today's feat would have been entertaining to watch, too, if the issues being debated weren't so important.

Unfortunately, in a lock-step Republican vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would grant President Bush permission to continue his warrantless domestic wiretap program, and in addition, immunize officials who have violated federal law by authorizing such illegal activities.
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So instead of Congress amending FISA to clean up after the President -- something that we're doing completely in the dark -- President Bush should "tweak" his own domestic spying program to comply with existing federal law.

After all the miscalculations and billions wasted, projects screwed up, lives and limbs lost, foreign enemies made, American stature squandered, Taliban strength regained, North Korean bombs and Iran-Iraq alliances built (visiting the American-hating, Holocaust-denying Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq called Iran “a good friend and brother’’) Dick Cheney wouldn’t do anything differently?

Part of leadership has to be retooling, saying: “You know what? This hasn’t worked. This is making things worse. What else can we do?’’

P.S. Portions of the Intelligence Committee's report remain classified even though some of the restricted information would not jeopardize intelligence sources or methods, but only the Bush Administration's credibility. Some of the material that remains classified, and therefore covered up, includes deeply disturbing information, the continued classification of which has the effect of shielding the White House. I will continue to work for declassification of all information that can be safely made available so that Americans can know the full story.

During the 1990s, conservative Republicans and the Clinton White House somehow managed to balance the budget while winning two wars, reforming welfare, and conducting an awesome impeachment trial focused on oral sex and a stained Gap dress.

The fact that both parties hated each another was healthy for our republic’s bottom line. A Democratic president who hates a Republican appropriations chairman is less likely to sign off on funding for the Midland Maggot Festival being held in the chairman’s home district. Soon, budget negotiations become nasty, brutish, and short and devolve into the legislative equivalent of Detroit, where only the strong survive.

But in Bush’s Washington, the capital is a much clubbier place where everyone in the White House knows someone on the Hill who worked with the Old Man, summered in Maine, or pledged DKE at Yale. The result? Chummy relationships, no vetoes, and record-breaking debts.

There was a time, not so long ago, when no one ever spoke of an American "homeland." During World War II there was a home front, and of course there has always been a heartland between the two heartless coasts, but no one thought of our big-shouldered cities, traffic-choked suburbs, purple mountains' majesties and amber waves of grain as anything called a homeland.

The United States was always a place for people who had left their homelands behind, a polyglot, rainbow-colored nation whose defining characteristics were vitality, mobility, dynamism and the restless urge to push toward the next frontier. But now we inhabit an official homeland, with an official Department of Homeland Security to protect it

"Homeland" is one of the burdens left to us by the trauma of Sept. 11, 2001. Words are all we have to give shape to reality, and because we had no words for what happened five years ago -- by definition, language falls short of the unimaginable -- a new lexicon had to be developed. I am convinced that much of this new language, by accident or design, has the effect of clouding our view of our enemies and ourselves. We need to begin choosing our words more carefully, and we need to discard the ones that do not serve us well.

The word homeland is a vivid but relatively inconsequential example -- less a distortion than an infelicitous choice that makes us sound as if we had quaint harvest rituals and a colorful national costume. It strikes an odd note, with its vague connotations of ethnic solidarity and ancient nationalism, and it gives off more than a whiff of us-vs.-them. This nation does have enemies from whom we need vigilant protection, but something more like "domestic security" would have done just fine, with less baggage.

9.10.2006 Dana Priest and Ann Scott Tyson document governmental infighting: "Bin Laden Trail 'Stone Cold'"

9.10.2006 Does ABC/Disney Movie Include Bush Allowing Osama Bin Laden to Escape from Tora Bora? Christy Hardin Smith:

... I happen to know that the legal department for television and movies, in the same way that they do for publishing, normally goes over all of the facts and representations with a nitpicky fine-toothed comb that demands accountability for every tiny detail. Where were they on this film? This is exactly the nightmare scenario that give lawyers ulcers and sleepless nights: fact free defamatory moments that tie you up in litigation for the rest of your freaking life. Unless, of course, there was either complete incompetence (hello shareholders demanding accountability) or an agenda that disregarded potential litigation (um…yeah…accountability would go double here).

So maybe it will all come to nothing. But the newfound feistiness of the Democratic minority, coupled with the revolt of the GOP moderates, offers at least a faint hope that future Phase II reports (whenever they appear) will amount to something more than just fresh coats of whitewash on the biggest political scandal (and foreign policy fiasco) since the Vietnam War.

Of course, now that the policy agenda has moved on to an even bigger prospective fiasco -- war with Iran -- that also may not mean much. Still, it's at least some minor comfort (if only for history's sake) to know the Cheney administration's next plan to wage aggressive war might be investigated a bit more aggressively -- that is, if the American system of checks and balances still exists by then.

9.10.2006 Frank Rich: "We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead."

8.28.2006 "FEDERAL JUDGE REJECTS BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S EFFORT TO CONFISCATE LAWYER'S PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATIONS WITH GITMO DETAINEES"

9.9.2006 "DOJ Losing Ground In Wiretap Fight" Jason McLure, Legal Times

This is a good article about the current state of play of the various cases.

9.9.2006 Glenn Greenwald:

A federal judge in Oregon yesterday became the third consecutive judge (after Judge Walker in the Northern District of California and Judge Taylor in the Eastern District of Michigan) to reject the Bush administration's claim that national security concerns (i.e., the "state secrets" doctrine) bar courts from ruling on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

What possible justification, then, exists for ABC to broadcast this mini-series now, as opposed to, say, three months from now? Jane Hamsher and others have suggested that delaying the 9/11 broadcast until after the election would be a fair compromise -- it would allow ABC to broadcast this propaganda if it really wants to while avoiding undue influence on a major national election by injecting into it a bunch of fictionalized propaganda manufactured on behalf of its entertainment division and one of the two political parties contesting the election. Major networks are trustees of the public airways, and the last thing they ought to be doing is trying to sway imminent elections by taking sides -- via a work of admitted fiction -- in the most critically important political disputes our country has.

9.9.2006 U.S. count of Baghdad deaths excludes car bombs, mortar attacks

9.9.2006 Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root charged millions to the government for recreational services never provided to U.S. troops in Iraq, including giant tubs of chicken wings and tacos, a widescreen TV, and cheese sticks meant for a military Super Bowl party, according to a federal whistle-blower suit unsealed Friday.

9.8.2006 Pentagon Lawyers Challenge Detainee Plan

“It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has played a key role in the drafting of legislation as a member of the Armed Services Committee and a military judge. “ ‘Trust us, You’re guilty, We’re going to execute you, but we can’t tell you why’? That’s not going to pass muster, that’s not necessary.”
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On one side, Mr. Warner, Mr. Graham, and Senator John McCain of Arizona have argued that the system must provide enough guarantees of fairness that the nation would feel comfortable having its own troops tried under it. This is important, they argue, to repair a national reputation that has been damaged internationally by revelations of abuse at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and to set a precedent for how other countries would try American troops.

Administration lawyers also want to use incriminating statements that might have been coerced with interrogation techniques that Bush described as tough and safe, but others liken to torture.
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Only one defendant, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been prosecuted in the United States as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks, and that took four-and-a-half years even though he pleaded guilty. Experts said that even if Congress were to endorse Bush's proposal, legal challenges would delay prosecutions of the 14 alleged terrorists for years.
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"What bothers me is, I'm looking at the new bill the president has submitted, and it doesn't seem to be any better than the one the Supreme Court held to be illegal," Sonnett said. (Neal Sonnett, chairman of the American Bar Association's task force on enemy combatants)

More broadly, right-wing commentators would like you to believe that the economy’s winners are a large group, like college graduates or people with agreeable personalities. But the winners’ circle is actually very small. Even households at the 95th percentile ­ that is, households richer than 19 out of 20 Americans ­ have seen their real income rise less than 1 percent a year since the late 1970’s. But the income of the richest 1 percent has roughly doubled, and the income of the top 0.01 percent ­ people with incomes of more than $5 million in 2004 ­ has risen by a factor of 5.

Video obtained by NBC News shows that Raytheon’s system was not tested under the most trying of conditions. It was mounted on a test stand, not on a moving vehicle.

By contrast, a different Pentagon division, the Office of Force Transformation (OFT) tested a competing Israeli system — called Trophy — and found it at least 98 percent effective against RPGs in near-battlefield conditions.

9.6.2006 High on Opium, Not Democracy Robert Scheer:

The good news, for drug fiends, is that Afghanistan has just harvested its biggest opium crop ever, up a whopping 59 percent from last year and big enough to cover 130 percent of the entire world market. The street price for illegal heroin, 92 percent of which now comes from Afghanistan, should be way down from Bangkok to London, and for those shooting up in the back alleys of Chicago. The bad news, for the rest of us, is that in Bush-liberated Afghanistan, billions in drug profits are financing the Taliban.

I don't get much hope from Democrats these days, a timid and skittish bunch, slow to learn, unable to sing the hymns and express the steady optimism that is at the heart of the heart of the country. I get no hope at all from Republicans, whose policies seem predicated on the Second Coming occurring in the very near future. If Jesus does not descend through the clouds to take them directly to paradise, and do it now, they are going to have to answer to the rest of us.

9.5.2006 The Nation John Nichols

The Anchorage Daily News concluded that, "Net Neutrality is hardly a heavy-handed government intrusion into the free-wheeling world of the Internet. It is a simple antitrust rule that protects consumers by keeping Internet companies from exploiting their control over connections. Congress should get ahead of the curve and ensure net neutrality before abuses begin to spread."

That's the right position. And it is summed up by a measure that the Senate should pass before its members go out and ask Americans for their votes this fall: The Internet Freedom Preservation Act. Sponsored by Maine Republican Olympia Snowe and North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan the act would provide meaningful protection for Net Neutrality.

In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

Giant Sequoia National Monument boasts more than half of all the Sequoia redwoods in the world, with most of the remainder found in the adjacent National Park. The popularity and awe-inspiring beauty of the Sequoia forest and its wildlife led President Bill Clinton permanently protect the forest as a National Monument under the Antiquities Act. Earlier, President George Bush Sr. had proclaimed the Sequoia groves off limits to commercial logging.
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In 2005, the Bush administration officially reversed those policies by finalizing plans to allow what amounts to commercial logging in the Monument, even inside the prized Giant Sequoia groves. The administration's plan would have allowed 7.5 million board feet of timber to be removed annually from the Monument, enough to fill 1,500 logging trucks each year. This policy would have included logging of healthy trees of any species as big as 30 inches in diameter or more. Trees that size can be as much as 300 years old.

Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, hired a consulting firm to review its election system. The county recently adopted Diebold electronic voting machines that produce a voter-verified paper record of every vote cast. The investigators compared the vote totals recorded on the machines after this year’s primary with the paper records produced by the machines. The numbers should have been the same, but often there were large and unexplained discrepancies. The report also found that nearly 10 percent of the paper records were destroyed, blank, illegible, or otherwise compromised.

“De facto, we are going to make biowarfare pathogens at NBACC in order to study them,” Penrose Albright, former assistant Homeland Security secretary for science and technology, told the Washington Post.

The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention made it illegal under international and U.S. law to make or stockpile bacteriological or viral organisms for use as weapons. The United States is exploiting a loophole: The treaty allows nations to develop small amounts of biological warfare agents for defensive research.
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That, according to a NBACC Power Point presentation, briefly posted on the Internet and quickly removed, is what the Fort Detrick lab does—in secret and without meaningful monitoring. The profound secrecy that surrounds the project, as well as CIA and intelligence involvement, raises alarms; these are ratcheted up to red alert in light of the Bush administration’s track record of violating international treaties and lying to the public. And then there is Congress’ history of defining “oversight” as a failure to notice rather than a duty to oversee.
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But according to the Council for Responsible Genetics, “mistakes happen.” Fort Detrick and other Level-3 and -4 facilities have had a number of accidents, including the loss of ebola and anthrax samples; exposure of workers to anthrax; a three hour power failure that compromised containment and led workers (you’re going to love this) to seal the windows with duct tape; a leaking test chamber that infected workers with tuberculosis; a researcher who contracted the ebola-like sabia virus and exposed 75 other workers; and two researchers infected with HIV from defective gloves. And, last but not least, don’t forget that the anthrax spores used in the September 2001 mail attacks traced back to Fort Detrick.
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And then there is the insanity of trusting critical scientific decisions to an administration that gives equal weight to the theory of evolution and the fable of creationism, that undermines stem cell research by confusing a zygote with an infant, and that is waiting until it has to govern in scuba gear before acknowledging global warming.

Trust me, indeed.

Citing an "unpublished opinion of the [Attorney General's] Office of Legal Counsel," the Secretary of Labor's Administrative Review Board has ruled federal employees may no longer pursue whistleblower claims under the Clean Water Act. The opinion invoked the ancient doctrine of sovereign immunity which is based on the old English legal maxim that "The King Can Do No Wrong." It is an absolute defense to any legal action unless the "sovereign" consents to be sued.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, emerged from the meeting and said, "These are very controversial provisions that the [Clinton] White House wants. Some they're not going to get." ....[Hatch] also said he had some problems with the president's proposals to expand wiretapping.

9.4.2006 Jack Balkin responds to David Broder:

" This election is not about the individual virtue of the candidates; it is about which party will be authorized to organize the House and the Senate, with all of the prerogatives attached to that organization, including all-important subpoena powers for investigations. I wish one could believe otherwise, but, as Walter Cronkhite used to say, "that's the way it is....

Falsehood # 1: the debate is about whether the President can eavesdrop on Al Qaeda and other terrorists;

Falsehood # 2: "most Americans" support warrantless eavesdropping.
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The difference between FISA and the warrantless eavesdropping program is not about whether the President can eavesdrop on terrorists. He can eavesdrop on all of the terrorists he wants under FISA as it is written. What is being debated -- the only difference -- is whether he should be able to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans with judicial oversight (as all Presidents have done for the last 30 years) or whether he can eavesdrop on Americans in secret, without oversight (which led to severe abuses of the eavesdropping powers in the four decades prior to FISA). That is what is being decided, not whether he can eavesdrop on terrorists.

"Does Rumsfeld really expect those of us who think we are about to march over a cliff to just shut up and get in line?" (Here)

9.4.2006 Health Policy Malpractice Paul Krugman:

Think about that: they won’t let vets on Medicare buy into the V.A. system, not because they believe this policy initiative would fail, but because they’re afraid it would succeed.
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In 2003, however, the Bush administration pushed through the Medicare Advantage program, which offers heavy subsidies to H.M.O.’s. According to the independent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, Medicare Advantage plans cost the government 11 percent more per person than traditional Medicare. Oh, and mortality rates in these plans are 40 percent higher than those of elderly veterans covered by the V.A. But thanks to the subsidy, membership in Medicare Advantage plans is surging.

With this week's revelations that former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage was Robert Novak's other Valerie Plame source, supporters of the White House have done an odd kind of victory dance. Armitage's role is proof, they say, that there was no concerted effort to punish Joseph Wilson and expose Plame's identity because Armitage wasn't even on the Rove/Libby side of the debate.
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I will concede that Armitage may have been a talkative gossip, with no real malicious intent, but the notion that the latest revelations let the Bush gang off the hook entirely seems badly misguided.

The truth is, we're dealing with revelations that are not mutually exclusive — Armitage can be an inadvertent Novak source and White House leakers can be guilty of wrongdoing.

Can be purchased (Here)

"The standard that the court set was that a kid has free-speech rights as long as the expression of those rights doesn't upset the normal workings of a school," said Allen Gilbert, of the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case.