There is an interesting exchange that has surfaced between a Stanford student and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. The student confronted Rice about whether waterboarding is torture. She responded with a Nixonesque argument that, if the president ordered it, it cannot be a war crime. It sounds a lot like Nixon’s 1977 statement: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” I discussed the Rice comment on this segment of Hardball.
Category: Courts
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia publicly lashed out at Fordham Law Professor Professor Joel Reidenberg who having his students compile a 15-page dossier on his private life. For civil libertarians, Scalia’s objections to a lack of privacy is analogous to Rep. Jane Harman’s outrage over being intercepted as part of the NSA warrantless program that she helped approve.
Continue reading “Scalia Slams Fordham Law Professor For Privacy Invasion”
Civil libertarians were a bit disappointed again in President Barack Obama’s press conference on Wednesday. While he reaffirmed that he views waterboarding to be torture (a well-established legal fact), he repeatedly referred to what the Bush Administration did as a “technique” of interrogation and a “mistake.” I discussed the Obama press conference and the torture issues on this segment of Rachel Maddow. I will be discussing these issues again on tonight’s Hardball.
Andrew Speaker, the lawyer to cause an international health panic by getting on an international flight with tuberculosis, has filed suit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for invasion of privacy. In his complaint, he blames the CDC on the breakup of his marriage, claiming that the couple went through with the wedding but then broke up after the wedding and never turned in their marriage license. He insists that he never had the worse form of TB, though critics insisted that he did not know that until after he was quarantined.
Continue reading “TB or Not TB: Lawyer Involved in 2007 TB Scare Sues CDC”
Ninth Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee responded yesterday to critics about his infamous role in writing some of the torture memos. Notably absent is his earlier denial of being the author of the memos that he signed, according to close friends. He now stands by the torture memos and Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) says that Bybee should be given a medal for rationalizing torture. I discussed the Obama press conference and the torture issues on this segment of Rachel Maddow.
Continue reading “Bybee Defends Torture Memos While Ranking Republican Says He Should Be Given Medal”
Wayne County Circuit Judge Annette Berry had a jury form that only a prosecutor would love: it had not option for a verdict of “not guilty.” The error has resulted in the Michigan Court of Appeals overturning the conviction of Michael Jess Wade, 50, a former security guard who was convicted of shooting and killing a suspected thief.
Continue reading “Michigan Verdict Overturned After Judge Gives Jury No Option For a Finding of Not Guilty”
In light of the recent defenses made recently on behalf of Judge Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and Steven Bradbury, this picture appears to capture their sudden emergence into the public debate.
Continue reading “Bush Officials Surface To Answer Torture Claims”
The Texas Supreme Court has overturned the verdict in a major torts case based on a nine-word note from a juror. During the second-day of jury deliberations in a rollover cases against Ford, a note was sent to the judge from forewoman Cynthia Cortez of the jury asking, “What is the maximum amount that can be awarded?” Cortez even put a smiley face on the note which sent Ford’s attorneys into a panic to settle the case. They quickly agreed to a settlement of $3 million. It was not until after the jury was dismissed that they learned that Cortez allegedly sent the note without the approval of the jury and that the jury was siding with Ford in its deliberations.
Continue reading “Texas Supreme Court Overturns Verdict Based on Nine-Word Note From Foreperson”
A Senate Intelligence Report shows that Condoleeza Rice, then national security adviser, approved of the torture program as early as 2002. One week later, Attorney General John Ashcroft signed off the the legality of the torture by finding that the “proposed interrogation techniques were lawful.” It was also revealed that torture was used on Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the first person charged in the United States in the 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.
Continue reading “Report: Condoleeza Rice and John Ashcroft Approved of Torture Program”
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has called for Judge Jay Bybee to resign in light of his central role in the torture program and memos. Leahy declared that “[t]he fact is, the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee did not tell the truth. If the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee had told the truth, he never would have been confirmed.”
Continue reading “Leahy Calls for Judge Bybee’s Resignations and Others Call for Impeachment”
Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, has called the alleged interception of her calls with a suspected spy “an abuse of power” and has called for the transcripts of the call to be given to her. As suggested in an earlier blog, she has promised to make the transcript public if given to her. However, she would not confirm the conversation while denying any quid pro quo arrangement to help accused American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists — Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman — in exchange for AIPAC’s help in securing the House Intelligence Committee Chairmanship. While Harman is reported as ending the call with the statement that “This conversation doesn’t exist,” she now denies that the conversation existed as reported in the media.
Notably, the same week that this conversation was revealed, the Administration is reportedly considering dropping charges against the AIPAC lobbyists — precisely what the AIPAC contact reported demanded from Harman in her help to reduce or dismiss charges.
Now this is a sentence that most of my clients would relish. Pittsburgh contractor William G. Tomko Jr. was convicted of using his $5 million mansion as part of a tax evasion scheme where he avoided $228,000 in taxes by having work on the mansion disguised as payments for work done at five area schools. U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster sentenced Tomko to have to live in the mansion as his punishment under a sentence of three years’ probation with one year to be spent on house arrest. Tomko’s cell will be a 8,000-square-foot mansion on eight acres and with $1.8 million in furnishings and $81,000 in fine art. I hope that he can hold up under the pressure of living in this particular cellblock. A divided court of appeals panel has upheld the sentence.
After refusing to release even unclassified materials as Vice President, former Vice President Dick Cheney is now calling for the release of all interrogation reports to show that torture works. This is the same Cheney who supported the denial of such evidence to courts and criminal defendants and Congress. However, now that calls for prosecution for war crimes are increasing, Cheney suddenly believes in transparency in government. In the meantime, Obama has reversed earlier statements and indicated that he will not rule out prosecutions of Bush officials. We discussed this latest development on this segment of MSNBC Countdown.
Continue reading “Torture Works: Cheney Unrolls New Campaign to Justify War Crimes”
Here is today’s column in USA Today concerning the argument today before the United States Supreme Court in the case of April Redding.
Continue reading “Lockdown High: Zero-Tolerance Policies and Authoritarian Learning”
A British tabloid is reporting that it conducted an undercover sting and confirmed that the father of Rubina Ali (one of the child star’s from the movie Slumdog Millionaire) is trying to sell the girl for £200,000.
Continue reading “Oscar Special: Father of Slumdog Millionaire Child Actress Accused of Trying to Sell Daughter”