Debo Adegbile deserved full Democratic support and Senate confirmation to top civil rights post

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Debo Adegbile is supremely qualified to lead the Justice Department's civil rights division. He was, after all, the director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, working for that organization in different legal capacities from 2001 to now. He has argued cases before the Supreme Court and is, needless to say, an expert in a wide range of civil rights matters.

But as director of litigation at the NAACP he worked -- among many other things -- on the defense team for Mumia Abu-Jamal, who had been sentenced to death for killing a Philadelphia policeman. And not in the original trial phase but only in the death penalty phase, where -- as I'll get to shortly -- there were serious constitutional problems that needed addressing. But no matter. Apparently it's not appropriate to do such things -- to defend a black man facing death on a civil rights violation (just as apparently certain people don't deserve their constitutional rights to defend themselves in court, and those who defend them are somehow doing something wrong) -- and that was enough to turn enough Democrats against him to join with the anti-Obama Republican mob to block his nomination in the Senate. He was rejected 52-47.

One expects Republicans to oppose a supremely qualified Obama nominee for the top civil rights job in the federal government, especially a black man from the NAACP, but what's up with Dems voting against him? Well, they're the barely Democratic, Republican-leaning Democrats from purple and red states you might expect them to be -- Bob Casey (PA), Chris Coons (DE), Joe Donnelly (IN), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Joe Manchin (WV), Mark Pryor (AR) and John Walsh (MT). All that was needed was a simple majority, but these cowards stood with the Republican obstructionists, and worse, to vote down a great nominee.

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No fast, no furious

By Mustang Bobby

Fortune magazine, that bastion of liberal bias and anti-capitalism (except it's anything but), reveals that there's no there there to "Fast and Furious":

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.

Memo to Darrell Issa: Your fifteen minutes are now up. Thank you for playing our game. We have some lovely parting gifts for you, including your very own home lobotomy kit.

By the way, if you're waiting for the rest of the media to pick up on this report from Fortune, go stand over there next to the folks waiting for Mr. Godot. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

U.S. government alleges Iranian involvement in plot to assassinate Saudi ambassador. But something stinks.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you've likely heard by now, it is being reported that Iran has been implicated in an assassination plot in the U.S.:

FBI and DEA agents have disrupted a plot to commit a "significant terrorist act in the United States" tied to Iran, federal officials told ABC News today.

The officials said the plot included the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, with a bomb and subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C. Bombings of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, were also discussed, according to the U.S. officials.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in an announcement today that the plan was "conceived, sponsored and was directed from Iran" by a faction of the government and called it a "flagrant" violation of U.S. and international law.

"The U.S. is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions," Holder said. 

Wait... what? Really? Iran? Terrorism? Against a high-value Saudi target in the U.S.? Something doesn't seem right.

As Max Fisher asks at The Atlantic -- and more people need to be asking this -- "would Iran really want to blow up the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.?"

Assuming that Iran is thinking rationally, the answer is obvious: No.

If they would go through all the trouble to organize a bombing attack on U.S. soil -- no easy thing to do -- why target someone so low-level? For that matter, why launch an attack on U.S. soil at all, something Iran has never done in the tumultuous decade since September 11? Why now, as opposed to, for example, during the height of the Iraq war? Why incur the wrath of the U.S. now, so soon after releasing the U.S. hikers detained in Tehran? (Their release was a modest and long overdue concession, but one that suggests the path of Iranian diplomacy.)

And why get involved with Mexican drug cartels? Is that really someplace where Iran has good contacts these days? As Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress asked, "Wiring money into US? Talking about plot on phone? Does that sound like an intel service to you?"

All that said, it really is possible that this is exactly what Holder says it is. Stranger things have happened, and Iran may have simply made an enormous, if out-of-character and obviously self-hurting, blunder. It's also possible that the two Iranian men really were planning to bomb the ambassador, but are either rogue members of the Revolutionary Guards or not really members at all. Clearly, there is much more information in this story that has not yet been made public. Maybe that information, if it ever comes out, will back up the official U.S. version -- which the White House already says it will use to escalate sanctions -- and maybe it will tell a different story. But, either way, the story as we now know it would have been unlikely to persuade Iran's leaders that this was a good idea.

It's just not in Iran's interests to be involved with something like this. And, indeed, there's no evidence -- at least no evidence that has been released publicly -- that Iran's government was behind this alleged plot:

The Justice Department statement notes that two men "have been charged in New York for their alleged participation in a plot directed by elements of the Iranian government to murder the Saudi Ambassador to the United States with explosives while the Ambassador was in the United States."

But what elements? What does that even mean?

One of the men is an Iranian-American. The other is "an Iran-based member of Iran's Qods Force, which is a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that is said to sponsor and promote terrorist activities abroad." Okay, but does this mean the plot was officially sanctioned -- and that therefore Iran needs to be held accountable "for its actions," as Holder put it?

The statement notes that there are "Iran-based co-conspirators." Okay, maybe, but it seems far more likely that these two men and whatever shadowy co-conspirators they had in Iran had gone rogue, perhaps with rogue elements of Qods supporting them, than that this was some officially sanctioned operation. Indeed:

Senior Obama administration officials said the U.S. currently does not have any information indicating that either Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad necessarily knew about the assassination plot and said the U.S. will pursue a path of response that would not include the possibility of an armed conflict with Iran. 

So, then, what? Other countries with whom the U.S. has been on generally good terms (e.g., Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) have rogue elements operating within "the government." Iran just happens to be... well, not a friend, and so an easy target. (And let's not forget that the U.S. even kills its own citizens without anything resembling due process. President Obama has made assassination a core component of his ongoing war on terror.) 

As Steve Clemons writes, "[t]his alleged assassination plot simultaneously may indicate both the intensity of anti-Saudi passion among Iran's senior leaders and a greater aggressiveness by Iran against the U.S." But what if there's much less to it than Holder and the U.S. government would have us believe? Even it's not true that the story is pure fabrication, as Iran suggests -- there may very well have been some sort of plot, after all -- what if the allegations are being trumped up for political reasons? Bush-Cheney did that all the time. Do we really think Obama is above such things?

(What possible political reasons? To suck up to the Saudis? To suck up to Israel? -- especially important given 2012, and Obama has already vetoed Palestinian statehood. To vilify Iran even more? For Obama to show that he and his administration are tough on terrorism? Who knows.)

Think Progress has a couple of updates:

-- "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the AP that the alleged terror plot, which she said 'crosses a line,' also 'creates a potential for international reaction that will further isolate Iran.' The U.S. is in discussions with other countries about potential diplomatic moves to hold Iran to account." 

But shouldn't there be more evidence to justify any such international moves?

-- "'One thing that's important to remember,... these are serious allegations but at this point they are just allegations,' said CNN's Reza Sayah, 'And if you look at this regime's history, it doesn't fit their M.O. Is it possible that they were involved? Certainly. Do these allegations need to be proven, do we need to see more details? I would say certainly before jumping to conclusions.'"

Yes, exactly, allegations. But jumping to conclusions is what people are doing, and how could they not? The Justice Department statement is somewhat qualified in its claims, but the public message is that Iran was directly behind the plot. And the media, needless to say, are running wild with it. Sexy stories like this don't come around every day, after all, and they're in the business of selling fear, not nuance, of engaging in idle speculation, not rational examination of the facts.

Look, I'm not saying there wasn't a plot, and, if there was, I'm not saying Iran wasn't involved in it. Maybe it was, if not officially at least through rogue elements with ties to terrorism, rogue elements either acting on their own or with the unofficial blessing of someone higher up the food chain.

But something stinks here, and it wouldn't surprise me if this just faded away, political points having been made.

A muffin does not cost $16

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you remember those $16 muffins, the ones served at a DOJ conference a couple of years ago, the ones conservatives are using as yet more evidence of government bloat, of government spending run wild?

A complete and utter myth. There were no $16 muffins.

Thanks to Kevin Drum for pointing this out -- though, of course, the myth has already become part of the right's anti-government narrative.

Wherein, of course, the truth has no place whatsoever.

Obama's recess appointments and the faux outrage of Republicans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republicans are outraged -- outraged, they scream at us! -- over President Obama's recess appointments (six on Wednesday alone!). How dare he? Is he a tyrant or something? A Republican president would never ever ever do such a thing. Never ever!

(Ahem... John Bolton... ahem. And, no, I did not scream bloody murder when Bush appointed him. While I vehemently opposed Bolton, I recognized Bush's move as perfectly legal. As you may remember, Bolton was never confirmed and ended up resigning several months after his appointment.)

And, of course, all Republicans care about is bipartisanship. They just want to help out, to work productively with Democrats to get things done. They'd never ever ever act in a partisan way. Never ever!

Or am I to believe that WaPo's "Right Turn" columnist, Jennifer Rubin, is just full of shit?

On Wednesday, Obama shed any pretense of bipartisanship in making six recess appointments. As were his previous recess appointments, this batch included two individuals whose records are so controversial that they could not obtain confirmation even with 59 Democratic senators.

Thankfully, our good friend Steve Benen has taken the time to wade into the muck to set the record straight:

President Obama nominated six qualified officials to fill a variety of executive branch vacancies. These nominations were considered in the respective Senate committees, and approved by committee members. If brought to the floor, each of the six would have been confirmed, most with more than 60 votes. (When Rubin claims they were too "controversial" to "obtain confirmation," this has no relation to reality. She's simply wrong.)

Knowing this, conservative Republicans, who've engaged in obstructionist tactics unseen in American history, placed anonymous holds on the nominees. They could have simply voted against the nominees and urged their colleagues to follow suit, but that wasn't good enough -- Republicans had to shut down the advise-and-consent process altogether.

This, in turn, left the president with a choice: (a) leave the positions vacant until a Senate minority agreed to let the chamber vote up or down; or (b) fill the vacancies with qualified nominees who enjoyed the support of a Senate majority. He wisely chose the latter.

In other words, Rubin is indeed full of shit.

Plain and simple, this is about Republican obstructionism (a partisan effort by the disloyal opposition to prevent Obama from being able to govern effectively), and Obama's response to it, not Democratic partisanship or a presidential abuse of power.

And these supposed Constitution fetishists of the right ought to read the Constitution, along with some history:

Every president since George Washington has used recess appointments; it's a power explicitly given to the president in the Constitution.

Game. Set. Match.

**********

The appointment Rubin most objects to is James Cole as deputy attorney general. She points to his supposed "controversial stance on the War on Terror" as justification for blocking him. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), that loathsome and utterly hypocritical supporter of terrorism, called his appointment "absolutely shocking."

Really?

As David Waldman points out at Daily Kos, Cole supports civilian trials for terror suspects. Republicans do not, of course, but Cole's "stance" is hardly all that "controversial," and certainly not so beyond the pale that he doesn't deserve a high-ranking job in the Justice Department -- which, of course, is a political job, and one should expect the person who holds it to have some views that the other side may not agree with. And, again, he was only blocked because a senator put a hold on him, not because he didn't have solid support in the Senate.

Waldman also notes that Cole has targeted political corruption, including among Republicans, most notably Newt Gingrich. But that can't have anything to do with it, right?

Because Republicans are so very honest, so very helpful, so very bipartisan. They say so themselves!!!

**********

Yes, the shit stinks. And there's a lot of it.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... oh, and your Nazis too

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This certainly gives new meaning to what comes next in "The New Colossus" -- that is, to "wretched refuse":

A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a "safe haven" in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad...

Perhaps the report's most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.'s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

The Justice Department report, describing what it calls "the government's collaboration with persecutors," says that O.S.I. [the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, "created in 1979 to deport Nazis] investigators learned that some of the Nazis "were indeed knowingly granted entry" to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. "America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well," it said. 

(Read the whole piece for specific details.)

Obviously, the U.S. wasn't pro-Nazi, but it is rather troubling that the CIA provided such aid and comfort to Nazis (regardless of what those Nazis provided in terms of intelligence). And this wasn't just back in the 50s. Nazis were being protected well into the '80s.

Hypocrisy? Sure, although the U.S. played nicely with right-wing dictatorships throughout the Cold War, so it hardly comes as much surprise that it would also protect Nazis. And of course it's much worse than hypocrisy or a failure to abide by America's supposed principles and values.

No, the U.S. wasn't overtly pro-Nazi, but it certainly found common cause with Nazis after the war, and was more than willing to work closely with (or use) Nazis (ex- or otherwise) to advance its objectives.

It was a time of widespread anti-Soviet paranoia, but America's priorities were clear, and they had nothing to do with bringing significant figures in Hitler's regime to justice or with ensuring that the truth would come out.

(For more, see Jeff Kaye at FDL.)

Transparency, huh?

By Mustang Bobby.

Mark Thiessen, the Washington Post's newest columnist, defends Liz Cheney's witch-hunt of the Justice Department.

Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department had hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would -- and rightly so.

Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information.

[...]

Yet for raising questions, Cheney and the Republican senators have been vilified. Former Clinton Justice Department official Walter Dellinger decried the "shameful" personal attacks on "these fine lawyers," while numerous commentators leveled charges of "McCarthyism."

This is McCarthyism in and of itself. In his opening sentence, Mr. Thiessen jumps to the conclusion that the attorneys defending the suspects are sympathetic to their clients' beliefs by comparing them to "mob lawyers" in charge of prosecuting mob cases. He carries on, citing an investigation by Fox News as his source of information that these attorneys are somehow unpatriotic, and compares the situation to the attacks when "fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack" during the Bush administration. In other words, the men who basically said that the president has the power to do whatever he wants to get information out of suspects, up to and including torture and killing, were vilified for their positions. Aside from the fact that the two situations are in no way comparable, the attorneys defending the al-Qaeda suspects were doing what lawyers do and what the Constitution requires, whereas John Yoo and Jay Bybee were clearly skating out onto thin ice, both legally and morally. And to lump David Addington, the man who helped out Valerie Plame, in with them is, to be generous, a stretch of right-wing logic that doesn't even pass the laugh test. Since Mr. Thiessen's previous employment was as a speechwriter for George W. Bush, it's pretty clear that his acquaintance with the canon of ethics for lawyers and the interpretation of the rule of law is, to say the least, problematic.

Mr. Thiessen is also ignoring the fact that a slew of former Bush administration lawyers and the Hero of the Clinton Impeachment, Kenneth Starr, think it is McCarthyism.

"We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications," wrote the 19 lawyers whose names were attached to the statement as of early Monday.

The statement cited John Adams's defense of British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre to argue that "zealous representation of unpopular clients" is an important American tradition.

The attacks on the lawyers "undermine the Justice system more broadly," they wrote, by "delegitimizing" any system in which accused terrorists have lawyers, whether civilian courts of military tribunals.

The one thing that's clear in Ms. Cheney's crusade and Mr. Thiessen's enabling of it is that neither of them give a flying rat's ass about "transparency" or the "right to know." It's a malicious attempt to tear down the Department of Justice for political gain. It's nothing new for the Cheneys, and Mr. Thiessen is just another one of their Wormtongues.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

WH considering military trials for 9/11 suspects

By Creature

If this comes to pass, and that's a big if, AG Holder should resign in protest. Someone needs to take a stand. It's a shame that that someone doesn't seem to be Barack Obama.

Civil rights, back on the agenda

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I tweeted on this last night, but I thought I'd link here to the NYT story:

Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census.

As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly.

It's about time. Anyone who thinks that discrimination against minority and other disadvantaged groups is a thing of the past is living in a dreamworld of delusion. And anyone who thinks -- as Bush and his underlings did -- that there's no need to enforce civil rights is essentially sanctioning bigotry.

Conservatives talk up equal rights for all, hence in part their opposition to "special" rights for some, but they don't believe in such fairness anymore than they believe in universal health insurance. Yes, it would be nice if there were no such thing as discrimination, and no need for a Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, but the reality is still quite different than the dream.

And, in opposing the enforcement of civil rights, conservatives are disregarding the plight of countless Americans who are still treated unfairly simply because of the colour of their skin or because of some other disenfranchising characteristic -- and not because they genuinely believe in equality, either in dream or reality, but because of their own partisan, ideological preferences, not to mention their own personal advantages.

Rule of Law Issues Explored --

By Carol Gee

Supreme Court Justice David Souter plans to retire after his successor is chosen and confirmed. President Obama has committed to have the new justice in place when the Supreme Court reconvenes. The nomination process will consume an enormous amount of time, media attention and legislative energy between now and October.

[Image: Wordle.net]

Early signs of back to Bush -- By the time the new court convenes, the Obama Justice Department should have its act together. Many of us have been very concerned as we get reports that the new government's lawyers have not stepped aside from many of the questionable Bush Justice Department court arguments.

Detainees at Gitmo -- Davis Cynamon, an attorney for 4 Gitmo detainees has been fighting for their due process rights, accuses the DoJ of "abandonment of the rule of law," according to TPMMuckraker's post, "Not Just State Secrets: Obama Continuing Bush's Stonewalling On Gitmo Cases, Lawyer Claims," (4/10/09). To quote:

"The Department of Justice has been doing everything in its power to delay and obstruct these cases," said Cynamon, whose clients were picked up in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in the period after the 2001 U.S invasion of Afghanistan. "They're not doing anything to move the case along, and doing everything to avoid it."

Asked whether he had observed a shift of any kind in the government's approach since the Obama administration came into office, Cynamon flatly replied: "None whatsoever."

This kind of leftover Bush court stance has been difficult for many of us to understand, given the high quality of President Obama's nominees for his key legal positions.

Nominations blocked by Senate -- The nominations of Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and Harold Hongju Koh to serve as Legal Advisor to the State Department are being held up by conservatives in the Senate, says the Firedoglake post, "Legal wrangling: Why the fuss about legal nominees?" (4/9/09). To quote (emphasis mine):

The nominees themselves are so well-qualified, so clearly within the progressive political mainstream, and the attacks against them so frenzied, one is left scratching one’s head and wondering: what on earth is going on here?

. . . [Senator John] Cornyn castigates Johnsen for her “prolific and often strident criticism of the legal underpinnings of the previous administration's counterterror policies.” . . . Johnsen’s criticisms of the legal underpinnings of Bush’s counterrorism policies have been right on the mark. The Bush administration itself was forced to renounce some of the OLC memos Johnsen criticized because they were so profoundly flawed. And let’s not forget that the Supreme Court has had four opportunities to review Bush counterterrorism policies and has struck the policies down each time. That’s because Bush had a tendency to ignore the law. John Cornyn doesn’t care; Dawn Johnsen does.

. . . The bottom line is that the stakes here are thus much higher than whether Obama gets his first choice to fill these slots. And they go beyond how the rule of law will apply at the Justice and State Departments.

Most observers agree: the attacks on Johnsen and Koh are spring training for the coming attacks against Supreme Court and other judicial nominees (Koh himself may be one) who display a similar commitment to the rule of law. That’s why it’s so important to expose what’s behind the current attacks, and defeat them.

We can predict that Republican right-wingers and the like will stage protests in all forms against whomever the President nominates to the Supreme Court. They will get media attention, they will pressure senators, and they will be extremely visible. Those of us on the other side are demanding Constitutional stances from the new administration. We must also support for our opponents' right to speak freely, even if outrageously.

Citizens must act to make our wishes known to our President and to our elected representatives. These fundamentals are beautifully explained in Firedoglake's post, "Peaceable Assembly; Petitioning to Redress Grievances (4/8/09). To quote:

The first ten amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights and they became law in 1791. Among the first of these are the rights peacefully to assemble, to exercise free speech, and to petition the government to redress grievances. They are first because they are fundamental to the preservation of representative government.

. . . First Amendment rights have a kind of "Use 'em or Lose 'em" quality. We exercise them to protect us against their silent or notorious abridgment. We assert them to remind public officials of their public promises. Most of all, we use them to make our views known and to encourage others to adopt them, Congress and the President included. We do not use them in order to give an unruly government an excuse to abridge them further.

The rule of law was explored in today's post. President Obama will no doubt appoint a person to the highest court in the land of whom we can be proud. And it will inevitable spark a big fight. Between now and then it is my expectation that Attorney General Holder and his stable of lawyers will have gotten a handle on how they can roll back the most dangerous and destructive of the Bush legal positions. If they do not, the Supreme Court will be forced to rule against them over and over until they finally "get it."

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

On accountability: the chains that bind

By Carol Gee

Committee Report -- A report released Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee will prove to be a very important declassified document coming out of the work of Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), his staff and committee. To quote David Cloud's Politico article:

Newly declassified documents reveal how harsh military interrogation procedures approved for use at Guantanamo Bay prison by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also filtered down to war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

. . . The chairman, Carl Levin (D-Mich.), said the decision by Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials to authorize the interrogation practices “set the tone” that led to prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

“Authorizations of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials resulted in abuse and conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody,” Levin said in a statement.

Levin said it was still a “question” whether senior Bush administration officials “should be held accountable.” He called for Attorney General Eric Holder to name a retired federal judge or some other “distinguished individuals” to look at “what steps, if any, should be taken” against high level officials.

. . . The report also documents how personnel from the Army’s Survival, Resisance, Evasion and Escape school, a military organization that trains U.S. soldier in resisting interrogation, traveled to Guantanamo and Iraq to train interrogators there in use of harsh methods.

Will the committee act? Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that, if Republicans can't back his idea of a truth commission to investigate the Bush torture program, he will launch a Judiciary Committee investigation. An investigation is already underway in the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to the story in Congressional Quarterly-Politics (4/22/09).

News Analysis: At Core of Detainee Fight: Did Methods Stop Attacks? -- taken from the New York Times, April 23, 2009, written by Scott Shane. This is a relatively even-handed article that lays out the arguments for and against this justification. President Obama is mildly criticized in this piece. Summarized Shane said, "Starkly opposing narratives have arisen about what, if anything, was gained by the C.I.A.'s use of physical pressure to intimidate Qaeda operatives."

Fundamental disagreements -- "Torturers should be investigated, too," is what Roger Simon at Politico thinks today. Here is a bit of what he said:

. . . the president has stated on any number of occasions — and as he stated today — in saying, ‘I think we should be looking forward and not backward.’”

But justice often looks backward. That is what justice is largely about. We look back at actions and decide whether they were right or wrong, just or unjust, innocent acts or crimes against humanity.

. . . I thought we had gotten past all this. I thought we had established the fact that all people bear responsibility for their own actions and that saying, “I was just following memos” is not good enough.

Where are the prisoners? As it turns out, there are dozens of prisoners held by the CIA that are still missing and their fates remain unknown. Dafna Linzer, a reporter for the investigative journalism organization, ProPublica, reported this detailed information April 22. In response the CIA claimed that a list provided in the story is probably "flawed."

CQ - Behind the Lines excerpts:

President Obama yesterday left open the door for a “further accounting” on Bush administration use of harsh interrogation techniques, as well as possible prosecution of the federal lawyers who rationalized it, Reuters’ Caren Bohan recounts — as The New York Times’ Brian Knowlton sees a newly declassified Senate report shedding more light on high-level approval of the tactics. In releasing the Bush-era “torture memos,” Obama’s lawyers spilled the beans on the methods used, “but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved,” ex-Bush speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen complains in the Washington Post — as to which, see Alex Koppelman’s Salon critique. “The memos prove we didn’t torture,” David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee Casey, meantime, banner in The Wall Street Journal. (4/22/09)

Feds: President Obama visited CIA headquarters yesterday in a gesture of reassurance following his release of Bush-era torture memos, The Associated Press’ Pamela Hess reports — as The New York Times’ Peter Baker and Scott Shane find momentum for a torture probe mounting. (4/21/09).

Commission on Accountability.org. HT to Steve Clemons on Twitter for this very valuable resource. It is a way to sign on to a group effort by a number of heavy hitters in the human rights movement. It calls on the President to appoint a nonpartisan commission to investigate.

Reference:

• The Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) training - U.S. News and World Report
• "The Guantanamo Officers' Club," an outstanding essay about a real hero by Spy Talk's Jeff Stein.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

OLC torture memos revealed -- an overview

By Carol Gee

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder should be given a great deal of credit for releasing the latest memos produced by the Bush Office of Legal Counsel, to the American Civil Liberties Union. Glenn Greenwald makes this point strongly in his first post following the release of the mostly unredacted material. It contains a number of excerpts from the memos with interesting points about each. He and many others were unsure at the start of the day what the President would do, given the huge fight going on within the administration. Greenwald is sharply critical of the administration's decision not to prosecute however, pointing to an inability to reconcile certain basic principles of the rule of law, treaty obligations, etc.

President Obama's written statement upon the release of the memos, is included in Firedoglake blogger emptywheel's post, which adds to the discussion and reflections on the lack of accountability for the wrong-doing. She makes a couple of useful points about the release: "The ICRC report may have made a difference in this fight. . . No mention of who wrote these memos. . ." And Wheeler closes with this: "If we're a nation of laws, then we cannot let those who have broken the laws to go unpunished. That's not retribution. That's what 'nation of laws' means."

More from emptywheel -- A further point made by this outstanding investigative writer, who labels the OLC memos "erroneous and inflammatory assumptions, and John Rizzo's lies," is that the OLC memos should not be taken as authoritative regarding the events surrounding the interrogation program. For example, the section on the supposed mental health of Abu Zubaydah is patently wrong. Also the ICRC report contradicts the section on the frequency and harshness of the use of sleep deprivation. Another post links to the ACLU website that has the original memos (in pdf) posted, and reminds us that the ACLU lawsuit was what freed up the memos from the DOJ in the first place.

Here is the latest on the torture memos from the investigative journalism organization ProPublica:

1) Newly Released Memo Inadvertently Reveals CIA Held and Abused Missing Prisoner.
2) Obama Promises to Defend Interrogators, But No Promise on the Bush Lawyers Who Signed Off.
3) Resource: The Missing Memos

References: Following are several authoritative and complete articles on the story of the release of these OLC memos:

• "Interrogation memos detail harsh tactics by the C.I.A," by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane of the New York Times (4/16/09). An earlier NYT story: "Memos reveal scope of the power Bush sought in fighting terror," by Neil Lewis (4/3/09).
• "Obama Releasing Four Torture Memos," by Zachary Roth at TPM Muckraker (4/16/09). Includes a good AP overview along with the official statements of the President and the Department of Justic
  
• "Obama says no prosecutions, no 'laying blame' for interrogation techniques," is by Keith Perine and Seth Stern of the Congressional Quarterly-Politics website (4/16/09).
• "Obama Releases Torture Memos, Vows Not to Prosecute," by David Kravets from Wired-Threat Level (4/16/09).

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Tales of torture

By Carol Gee

Reminders of not so long ago

Recommended Reading -- "The Red Cross Torture Report: What it means," by Mark Danner in The New York Review of Books, (pub. 4/30/09). The text of the ICRC Report is linked in Danner's piece, as well as Dick Cheney's statement on the value of torture made on 2/4/09. This is the part of the ICRC report that refers to Abu Zubayda:

Mr. Abu Zubaydah commented that when the collar was first used on him in his third place of detention, he was slammed directly against a hard concrete wall. He was then placed in a tall box for several hours (see Section 1.3.5, Confinement in boxes). After he was taken out of the box he noticed that a sheet of plywood had been placed against the wall. The collar was then used to slam him against the plywood sheet. He thought that the plywood was in order to absorb some of the impact so as to avoid the risk of physical injury.

"They should have listened to Noor al-Deen," is by emptywheel on Abu Zubaydah (3/29/09). Abu Zabaydah and Noor al-Deen were picked up in a Pakistani safe house in 2002. Thinking, mistakenly, that they had members of alQaeda, they were questioned. Al-Deen told the truth, which was eventually corroborated and he was released to Syria. Zubayda was eventually tortured so much that he is now permanently dysfunctional. To quote the conclusion,

So you've got a panicked teenager spilling his guts, insisting that Abu Zubaydah is just a functionary. And at the same time, Abu Zubaydah was saying he was just a functionary (and providing what useful intelligence he had to offer). And the US response to that was ... to make Abu Zubaydah their torture experiment--their test case for what torture techniques did and did not "work."

Yet more reason they destroyed the torture tapes showing Abu Zubaydah's interrogation.

Office of Legal Counsel - Memos upon which torture rested

There are no excuses for ongoing concealment of torture memos," wrote Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com on 4/6/09. The ACLU has been battling in court for two years to get the Steven Bradbury OLC memos released. Greenwald's very interesting post explores why the release has been blocked from a number of different angles. To quote,

They are, in essence, the Rosetta Stone for documenting the war crimes committed not by low-level CIA agents but by the highest-level Bush DOJ officials.

. . . Those are the torture memos that are now at the heart of a growing controversy, as the Obama administration has sought multiple delays . . . the anti-disclosure crusade inside the Obama administration is being led by John Brennan. . . while it is true that Brennan has been aggressively advocating against disclosure, it is the threatened obstructionism [of two Obama appointees, Dawn Johnsen and Harold Koh] from the Senate GOP that is the "principal" cause of concern inside the White House.

"Bradbury Memos: Not Quite Yet," from The ACLU Blog of Rights (4/2/09). The ACLU in its lawsuit agreed to a two week extension of the release deadline so the government can finish its review of three Bradbury memos reportedly providing legal justification for CIA enhanced interrogation methods amounting to torture. The government may also review a Jay Bybee memo. The memos are "critical to understanding the foundations of President Bush's torture program," ACLU said.

Bad Timing -- "They picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue," was written by emptywheel (3/7/09). With all the other OLC memos just coming out, the Obama administration had a hard time with its presentation regarding dismissal in the Jose Padilla lawsuit against John Yoo. The judge was not impressed.

"Memos reveal scope of the power Bush sought," is taken from the New York Times (3/3/09). To quote the intro:

The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.

That opinion was among nine that were disclosed publicly for the first time Monday by the Justice Department, in what the Obama administration portrayed as a step toward greater transparency.

. . . The memorandum issued by Mr. Bradbury this January appears to have been the Bush lawyers’ last effort to reconcile their views with the wide rejection by legal scholars and some Supreme Court opinions of the sweeping assertions of presidential authority made earlier by the Justice Department.

To be continued -- The International Red Cross report on torture and the New York Times article on the OLC memos form the bookends of the story that must be told, over and over, so that it is not forgotten or swept under the rug.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Guantanamo, Iraq, and Iran -- a digest

By Carol Gee

Attorney General Eric Holder is indicating that he is reluctant to examine detainee treatment under the Bush administration. This followed the publication of information about a 2007 International Red Cross report containing detainee interviews that claimed torture. Holder did say that he would be bound by "wherever the law and the facts take" the DOJ, noting once again that they do not want to criminalize policy differences. The DOJ has recently had discussions with European officials about taking some of the detainees. The AG reported that they are looking who and what method might be used to try other detainees, suspected of crimes. This comes from CQ Politics of 3/18.

The Obama administration's new definition of terrorists looks a lot like the old one, says Christopher Weaver, writing for ProPublica on 3/17. The administration is no longer using the phrase "war on terror" and now, "enemy combatant." In a detainee habeas corpus case, the DOJ did not substantially change the claim to hold suspected terrorists, as it is tied to the 2001 Congressional resolution known as the AUMF. New rules will still have to be adopted. To quote the article's conclusion:

The filing is littered with ambiguous phrases like "private armed groups" and a "novel type of armed conflict" instead of "enemy combatants" and the "war on terror." The scrapping of martial lingo backs away from the Bush-era argument that asserts the commander in chief's right to lead the military independently from Congress. However, in a press release the Justice Department explained that the latest definition still relies on the international laws of war as they apply to a 2001 congressional resolution that authorized the president to use military force.

"They're recognizing a right to detain," Madeline Morris, a Duke law professor who helped prepare a major brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of several detainees. "They're recognizing that that right is not governed by existing [laws of war]," in these cases, and that new rules will need to be articulated.

What they're not doing, so far, is showing their hand, our experts agree. "In every way, it's better than the old definition," said Mariner, the Human Rights Watch expert. "It's just not substantially different."

Several Republican senators are attempting to derail the nomination of Christopher Hill as the new Ambassador to Iraq, according to CQ Politics (3/17/09). Led by Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), five senators sent a letter to President Obama urging the withdrawal of Hill's name from consideration. Brownback has also threatened to but a hold on the nomination. The others are Jon Kyle, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, James Inhofe, and Christopher Bond.

Just exactly how to engage with Iran was the subject of a very interesting analysis by Adam Graham-Silverman of CQ Politics on 3/16. The headline points to a "just right approach." Dennis Ross is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's special adviser on the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia. In addition to Ross, Richard Haas, Senator Kerry, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, and Zbignew Brzezinski also weighed in with opinions. It is a good read. To quote further:

The administration’s review of U.S. policy toward Iran could be completed this week and will have to provide answers to some pressing questions, from what concessions and pressure the United States can bring to the table to what kind of Iranian nuclear program it can accept

In conclusion, here are a couple of excerpted paragraphs regarding the Middle East from my most recent CQ Behind the Lines newsletter by David C. Morrison:

Courts and rights: . . . another Post piece has the ACLU calling for an independent prosecutor to investigate CIA torture allegations. . . Old terror case files are being dusted off as the Obama administration considers prosecuting high-profile Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian courts, focusing on pre-9/11 crimes, AP reports. . .

Over there: . . . “What failed in Iraq, fails in Afghanistan,” Strategy Page flatly concludes — as The Long War Journal sees two Taliban leaders denying recent reports that their leader is in peace negotiations with the Afghan government. The White House is considering expanding strikes inside Pakistan against Taliban power centers beyond the tribal areas currently targeted, The New York Times reveals.

See also Behind the Links for further info on this subject.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

No one is above the law

By Carol Gee

The day they took office the Obama administration had a legal problem. In fact they had several, left behind by their predecessors. These problems did not grow out of the rule of law, but outside of the rule of law. All of the current shocking news about the Bush administration is the result of revelations of law breaking. The Geneva Conventions were ignored, Americans were spied upon without a court order, and prisoners were kept in custody for years without charges being filed. And they were tortured. All kinds of government materials were classified that were embarrassing but not secret, and Congress was not kept legally informed for its oversight purposes. The U.S. military was prepared to act against its own countrymen. Our personal phone calls, e-mails, medical and financial records were surveilled by mass means, illegally and without privacy protection.

Rather early on President Obama and Attorney General Holder reaffirmed that no one is above the law. For that reason, the Obama lawyers must not give undue weight to the Bush lawyers' extra-legal opinions and the positions of his Office of Legal Counsel should not be assumed to have legal standing.

Claiming state secrets, over classification of materials, threats to national security, warrantless wiretapping, can never trump the rule of law coming solidly out of the Constitution. This is where the three co-equal branches of government come in. Here are some simple examples:

Duly sworn judges have the right to rule on evidence. They have security clearances, in effect. Duly elected members of the legislature have the right to practice oversight of the executive branch's execution of the laws passed by Congress. They also have security clearances in effect. Disagreements go to court to be adjudicated. Neither the executive branch nor the courts make laws. Courts interpret the laws. Legislators ratify U.S. treaties into international law. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable search or seizure, and limits what the military can do within the U.S. Bill of Rights civil liberties cannot be permanently abridged by mere executive fiat.

Lawyers in the current administration who come out with legal arguments in adherence to a number of Bush positions are on shaky ground. Protecting executive power prerogatives is not a good enough argument when those Executive powers are clearly not legal. This means that today's lawyers and courts must look to the experts and go further back to find precedents that are on solid ground. The Justice Department's move to try a detainee on formal legal charges is the kind of legal decision making that is a step in the right direction.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Double Binds

By Carol Gee

The question of what to do about the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been on the minds of both the previous and current administrations. Shortly after being sworn in President Obama instructed military prosecutors to ask that the proceedings be delayed in order that a full review could take place. This from TPM Muckraker, (2/6/09) explains the most recent events: "Thanks To Obama's Order, Military Drops Charges In Gitmo Trial." It settles the question of whether military tribunals will be the justice method of the Obama administration. At the same time the 9/11 families were not happy about it when they recently met with the President. To quote:

All but one judge complied with the prosecutors' requests. That one, Army Colonel Jame Pohl, declined to do so.

But now, the Associated Press reports, Susan Crawford, the top legal authority for Guantanamo's proceedings, has decided to drop the charges in the case over which Pohl is presiding, thereby bringing the case into compliance with Obama's order.

Shedding additional light on these dilemmas for the administration, are columns at Salon.com, by Glenn Greenwald. In his 2/6/09 piece, "Counter-terrorism logic" (Update section), Glenn debunks the claims that 61 released detainees have returned to the battlefield. In an earlier (2/4/09) column entitled "Various Items," several pertain to today's subject here: Item 3 -- regarding the Obama administration's position on rendition of detainees, Item 5 -- regarding the US Government erecting a wall of secrecy around what it has done to torture detainees, and demands that "other countries [the UK] do the same, upon threat of being punished," and Item 6 regarding an ACLU letter to Secretary of State Clinton regarding the US/UK matter in Item 5 above. (See ACLU Blog for more on the Gitmo Truth Out)

Another illustration of the difficulty in which the administration finds itself is the quandry of a public opposition to torture and secret detentions, colliding with a legal requirement to defend former government employees under certain conditions. John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and John Ascroft will get help in the Jose Padilla lawsuits over his alleged torture. The story is from Wired - Threat level (2/4/09): "Obama: Reject Torture, defend Torturers." To quote:

The new U.S. president has renounced those Bush administration practices, but government lawyers continue to defend the previous administration's top officials accused of authorizing and carrying out those policies.

. . . Chief among those enjoying a taxpayer-funded defense is John Yoo . . . As a Bush administration lawyer, Yoo wrote the so-called torture memos the previous administration invoked to rationalize torture of enemy combatants.

. . . in federal court in San Francisco, in a lawsuit (.pdf) brought by Jose Padilla. The one-time alleged "dirty bomber," Padilla claims Yoo's internal legal opinions paved the way for his harsh interrogation while he was secretly held without charges at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

Government lawyers are also defending former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other Bush administration officials in a second lawsuit by Padilla accusing (.pdf) them of violating his constitutional rights.

Double binds, where we are damned if we do and damned if we don't, appear to be a fact of life for the new administration. That is the inevitable outcome of the Bush administration's failure to adhere to the rule of law. The future will not be easy, but the Constitution stands as bedrock to help solve these double-bound legal dilemmas.

See also a collaborative post today about this same subject called, "Bush Leftovers For Sunday Dinner" at my brand new blog, Behind the Links.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"This is an excellent day for those who believe in presidential adherence to the rule of law [...]" -- Digby, reacting to Obama's great pick of Dawn Johnsen to head the DOJ's Office of Legal Council. It's a sad day when we cheer presidential adherence to the rule of law, but such is the state Bush & Cheney have left us in.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Obama picks Eric Holder as attorney general (maybe)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff is reporting that "President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition."

There is still the not-so-small matter of vetting to be done "before the selection is final."

Regardless, any "announcement is not likely until after Obama announces his choices to lead the Treasury and State departments."

By the way, Holder, an Obama friend and advisor, is the Clintonite behind the infamous Marc Rich pardon.

I must admit, I don't know much about him -- Holder, that is -- but I've never been terribly impressed.

**********

UPDATE:

1) Mark Halperin posts a release from the American Constitution Society (ACS). In a recent speech to that organization, Holder was impressive in his criticism of the Bush Administration's conduct of the war on terror (and in his argument for what is needed now):

Our needlessly abusive and unlawful practices in the "War on Terror" have diminished our standing in the world community and made us less, rather than more, safe. For the sake of our safety and security, and because it is the right thing to do, the next president must move immediately to reclaim America's standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights.

2) Jeralyn Merritt notes, adding to the con side: "As U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., Eric Holder sought to raise marijuana penalties and restore mandatory minimum penalties for drug crimes." Not good.

3) Steve Benen writes that everything he knows of Holder is "positive," which may be an exaggeration. Still, he links to this fantastic speech Holder gave to the ACS in 2004.

On the strength of this speech alone, my estimation of Holder has risen immensely today. Consider, for example, this passage:

I believe that we have the capacity as a nation to meet all of these challenges. But the answers to these problems are not to be found in the conservative agenda that relies on what are already old proposals and tired rhetoric.

The solutions are contained within a new, dynamic, progressive movement that has the ability to inspire and motivate the people of this nation in the way that progressives have in the past.

I'm keeping an open mind at this point, but he may very well be the right person for the job.

Return to the rule of law? The horizon is yet obscure.

By Carol Gee

President-elect Barack Obama is a lawyer. He was for several years a popular teacher (rising to senior lecturer level), of constitutional law at The University of Chicago, and was also a community organizer. He has a good resume. What will that mean to his transition into the presidency, and subsequent efforts (we all absolutely assume) to restore the rule of law to his administration? McClatchy has the whole story.

• Department of Justice -- There will be a bevy of great candidates suggested for the Attorney General's position. In the meantime David Ogden, a Clinton administration veteran, is heading the DOJ transition team, according to TPM Muckraker. The post quotes the WaPo:
  
  

  "Democrats and interest groups have been developing "to do" lists for Justice, which had deemphasized antitrust, civil rights and environmental enforcement work under President Bush."
  
  

  Ogden's deputy on the transition will be Thomas Perelli, who, according to the Post, "supervised the government team suing cigarette makers and oversaw the Justice unit that defends federal agencies in complex legal disputes."

• "Confronting the other 'third rail' of politics -- Criminal Justice Reform" is from the ACLU blog. We have heard President-elect Obama talk about the huge numbers of people incarcerated in the United States. Can it be high on his agenda, given the economic crisis? To quote:
  
  

  . . . released this week . . . "Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Next Administration and Congress." This transition guide for the Obama administration and the 111th Congress lays out in great detail all of the reforms, both major and minor, that should be undertaken to have a criminal justice system that protects public safety, but also honors our commitments to fairness and equality under the law for all. A coalition of more than 20 organizations (including the ACLU) comprised the 2009 Criminal Justice Transition Coalition that compiled these excellent, workable recommendations.



• Copyright czar -- In October, our current president Bush (OCP) signed a new law creating a cabinet-level position who is to be, to quote Wired-Threat Level, "charged with implementing a nationwide plan to combat piracy and "report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic international intellectual property enforcement programs." Our next president (ONP) will no doubt make the first appointment.

What will an Obama administration be able to do to restore the rule of law in the face of extremely high expectations? How are we to feel about the bizarre news that there was a run to buy guns yesterday? Will OCP Bush close Guantanamo before he leaves office? Will ONP Obama seek to restore the right of Habeas Corpus if the question comes before the Supreme Court? We all have our own ideas. Looking to my civil liberties guru, Glenn Greenwald, who has often been skeptical of Obama's willingness to vote as a true liberal, says in his Saturday post:

(3). . . people [ ] start pressuring Obama now to pay attention to their political principles and agendas. And it's certainly likely that Obama will end up doing many, many things that warrant and provoke intense criticism. I have no doubt about that. But he's entitled to actually start doing things -- on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, civil liberties, the economy, and otherwise -- before judgments are formed.

"Like Lincoln and FDR, Obama faces nation in crisis," Yahoo! News headlined today (Sunday). To quote the article's conclusion, about which I wrote the night of the election:

Obama supporters who spontaneously flocked to the White House into the wee hours after his election Tuesday night were anxious for Obama to move forward. Gazing at the illuminated Executive Mansion where Bush slept, one waved signs that said: "Why wait? Evict Bush now."

For some, jubilation was tempered by recognition of the enormity of the tasks Obama faces.

"It's not just about him," said Rachel Reclam, of Olympia, Wash., an international affairs student at George Washington University. "He inspired people, but I'm not expecting miracles. The financial crisis, the war in Iraq, the health care crisis are not going to be over tomorrow."

Thousands -- or millions -- of us were moved to tears this past week. It happened to me when I realized that the people on the TV screen in the shadows were on Pennsylvania Avenue. That is where I would have chosen to be if I could have traveled last Tuesday. And my anger is not yet completely gone. Regret for the lost years is what the tears were about, that and utter relief that this era has come to an end and a new one has begun. As I have said before, it is a sea change. And, at the moment on this Sunday, it is entirely enough.

References:

1. Michael Rattner at Dandelion Salad -- video on Obama and civil liberties.
2. ACLU transition plan for the Obama administration: "Actions for restoring America."
3. Rising Hegemon posted a neat cartoon of Lincoln. H/T to "betmo" for this.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)