I’m watching the Obama train come into the station, and hoping that Bush & Cheney might be going out of town on a rail.

Thank you for the hyperlink and your previous post.

Hey mespo! How are you celebrating ‘Obamania’?

(see WPO link)

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Patty C 1, April 5, 2008 at 8:02 pm

Don’t you find it interesting that CIA Director Hayden now wants to provide insurance policies so as to remove the concern of exposure to future litigation – “take that off the table”, so that in the future, agents and new hires won’t have to question if their actions in the field are legal or not.

Huh?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/washington/20lawyers.html?_r=1&ex=1358485200&en=7cbf5132f0704efd&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

In Legal Cases, C.I.A. Officers Turn to Insurer
WASHINGTON — When Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. came under investigation for ordering the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes, one of his first calls was to a small Virginia insurance company that thrives on government trouble.

Like a growing number of C.I.A. employees, Mr. Rodriguez, former head of the agency’s clandestine service, had bought professional liability insurance from Wright & Company. The firm, founded in 1965 by a former F.B.I. agent, is now paying his mounting legal bills…

From my experiences as a public servant in the federal government and in retirement, ensuring documentation of ‘testimony’ and/or facts within the administrative record is critically important. If the government ‘affords’ you the ‘permission’ to sue that entity, then the administrative record is vital. Everything else not ‘in the record’ that might be crucial to a case is just ‘extra-record’ evidence or fact and therefore not legally relevant; except possibly as somewhat limited value within a potential amicus curiae brief that courts often frown on and that defendants/plaintiffs often complain about and often request the court’s exclusion of such ‘extra-record’ attempts at justice. Therefore, regardless of how trivial something might appear—such as Holder’s not specifically stating that torture is illegal—it is vital to ensure that such specific statements are entered in the record and I am surprised that Senator Leahy did not seek a declarative statement of illegality from Mr. Holder ‘for the record’. Otherwise, we can only ‘assume’ that Mr. Holder considers waterboarding illegal by simple deductive logic alone.

Assumptions, logical reasoning, and scientific facts are often not legally relevant, especially in a legal case v. a factual case. I learned this the extremely hard way because courts of law give deference to government defendants when facts are involved, regardless if those governmental “facts” have demonstrative falseness, inconclusiveness, biasedness, or if the rebuttal/refutations of the facts emanate from an experienced authority who is not employed by the government. A judge will confer deference to a neophyte, no-nothing, and perhaps disingenuous governmental civil servant in uniform over a highly experienced and credentialed nongovernmental expert.

I think that some thoughtful and careful congressperson must get Mr. Holder’s direct and unequivocal statement entered into the ‘official record’ that as an experienced lawyer and a former federal judge, that he ‘knows’—not believes—that waterboarding is illegal, in addition to his previous confirmation—submitted for the official record—that waterboarding is torture.

I am not a lawyer; as a nonprofessional, I welcome any rebuttal, corrections, or expounding regarding what I have posited as my understanding of legal deference, the administrative record, extra-record evidence and/or facts, the importance of definitive and unambiguous declaratives for the official record, or any other legal points I might have misstated above. I derived my experience of those legal aspects from personal involvement while confronting violations of environmental rules, regulations, and law committed by the federal government to which I dedicated my career.

So rather than being pardoned because of large contributions given to Clinton by Rich’s socialite wife, it appears the pardon was really carried out because it was felt that the interests of Isreali intelligence where more important than the integrity of the White House.

So, I’m expecting a flurry of troll posts in the following days defending Rich, Holder, and the Clintons.

I noticed that too in Holder’s treatment of the question and how he cited a number of examples of past water-boarding methods throughout history. I also wondered why a simple yes or no was not given to the question rather than the lengthy review.

However, if he did agree that is was torture, and it is understood that under U.S. law torture is illegal, then there is little or no room to wiggle out of prosecuting these illegal acts unless he intends to be the second-coming of Alberto Gonzalez and simply ignore the law in the vain hope that nobody notices …

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy asked Mr. Holder “do you agree with me that waterboarding is torture “AND illegal”. What surprised me was that Mr. Holder agreed that waterboarding was torture; however, he did not say that it was illegal (as Leahy asked). His omission to the second part of Leahy’s question could have been a simple oversight, although perhaps not.

Of course, we all know that it is illegal because we also knew it was torture. However, we needed the chief legal officer of the U.S. to state that waterboarding was (is) illegal—for the official record—after he acknowledged that was torture.

Who said anything about trying to make you happy? You sound about as feminine as the psycho from ‘Silence of the Lambs’.

“Precious … Precious!”

I won’t distract you. I’ll let you get back to making your girl-suit.

I watched his ‘testimony’ today on C-Span in support of Mr. Holder. He was very direct, he did not back away from any questions, and he spoke well of Mr. Holder.

Virtually every law enforcement agency supports Holder and there is no reason why he should not be confirmed as AG.

As far as the sliime ball Holder:

Mr. TURLEY NEEDS TO GO ON HIS FAVORITE (BUT HE GETS PAID) TV SHOW AND BLAST ERIC HOLDER OR HE IS JUST ANOTHER STUPID PARTISAN HACK. HE NEEDS TO DEMAND THE RIGHT TO CONFRONT HOLDER ON THE RACHAEL MADDOW AND KEITH OLBERMANN SHOW AND IF HE DOESN’T HE IS JUST ANOTHER TWO BIT PARTISAN DO AS I SAY DON’T DO AS I DO PARTISAN HACK. But we all know he won’t because he values the $350 per show he gets paid to sit and spew the slime ball lines that he does.

Talk about pathetic …

“The fact that you are not doing this means you are just ANOTHER LOW CLASS PARTISAN HACK…”

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Pretty is as pretty does–and says.

SHAME ON YOUR MR. TURLEY. YOU ARE A PATHETIC PERSON.

Who among us has not allowed ourselves to be used by someone who was our boss, someone who had authority over us, or with whom we placed our full trust, only to learn that we made a mistake in judgment?
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From the link provided:

{Quote: “But Freeh told senators at Holder’s confirmation that Holder was nevertheless a man of “tremendous integrity” who “will never allow himself again to be put in that position.”

“The pardon of Marc Rich was a corrupt act,” Freeh said, but was not Holder’s responsibility.” End Quote}.
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