Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 1824
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Tim Russert:: "Helllooooooo? Anyone home?"
[Read the article: Neoconservative Eliot Cohen's new position at the State Department]
[Read more letters about this article: Here][from the MTP interview with Lindsey Graham]:
MR. RUSSERT: "There won't be any sectarian violence." All those judgments were wrong. Why should the American people continue to believe in those same people who had so many misjudgments leading up [to] and executing the war?
Just go read the response (click the link or go here: "http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17378926/page/4/"). Graham doesn't answer Russert's question at all.
Time to demand that we get a real answer to this very important question, rather than the "praise (and promotins) for the guilty and punishment for the non-participants" that this maladministration is foisting on us daily.
Also time to ask why the Republican party put party over country in sending a bunch of incompetent party hacks and shills to Iraq (and New Orleans). Time to lay responsibility for this debacle where it belongs and to say that never again will such incompetents be allowed within ten miles of a position of responsibility.
FWIW, any Republicans out there just "seeing the light", you should have known this was coming: Early on, John Negroponte, Otto Reich, and Elliott Abrams resurfaced in the Dubya maladministration (see "http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/aug2001/cont-a01.shtml"). These are crooks and thugs of the first order.
Cheers,
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"state secrets privilege"
[Read the article: Confrontational investigations, subpoenas, and hearings are the priority]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn [from the post]:
Just look at some of the developments in the last few weeks alone. The administration successfully convinced an appeals court last week to uphold dismissal of the lawsuit brought by Khaled el-Masri -- the German citizen who was abducted by the CIA, shipped around to various countries for interrogation, and then dumped on the side of the road in Albania once it was determined he was innocent. The administration claimed that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would risk disclosure of "state secrets" -- a doctrine previously confined to a very narrow scope of cases but which the administration has expanded beyond recognition in order to all but entirely shield its conduct from judicial review and to shield itself from accountability under the law.
They 'followed the law'. Ever since Reynolds (set in the midst of the Great Read Scare), the "national security" wins out. Even the abuses of the Nixon administration didn't significantly curtail this 'rationale' (see U.S. v. Nixon). While Nixon's "exective privilege" was held not to pertain to his White House tapes just on his own say-so, they still said that in cases where actual "national security" interests are demonstrated, these win unconditionally.
That Reynolds was in fact an attempt to cover up government malfeasance (see "http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/01/012604.html") and not an instance of "national security" goes judicially unnoticed, as does the fiction that no court can deal with cases of secret information adequately. There is no notion of "balancing" the right to redress (and the need to punish wrongdoing) against the putative and hypothetical risks of exposure of "national secrets" involved with courts looking into the matters at hand.
Perhaps it's time for the courts to revisit Reynolds. While there is some notion that the "state secrets privilege" cannot be used solely to cover up gummint malfeasance or malice (the courts will examine in camera the gummint submissions as to whether there are actual "state secrets" involved, this inquiry ends regardless of any other facts in the case once this has been shown to the court's satisfaction ... and here the courts are instructed to give great deference to the gummint in determining what specific facts are in fact "state secrets"), there's no recourse once "state secrets" are shown. This is not a suitable situation for a free, open, and accountable democracy like ours. It's precisely where "state secrets" crop up that our freedoms are most at risk (if one looks through the glass darkly enough, as "m.b.f." here does so well); this is the breeding grounds for insidious fascism.
We need checks of gummint excesses even at the price of a little "security". This is a notion ingrained in our gummint from the inception. If the gummint is committing wrong, they need to pay a price ... and we too should shoulder the burder of a 'slip' of "secret information" (if such is to occur), as part of that price. If the nation is at peril as a result of such, there's plenty other areas where we have failed, and perhaps they need tightening up first....
We have a solution too, and it came as a result of Nixon's excesses. The Church Commission created the FISA courts in the '70s just to be able to deal with sensitive information but to still maintain accountablility and oversight. This has worked. Courts can and do deal with sensitive information all the times, and the end result has been positive. Likewise with classified information; the leaks that have occured (not the outright spying of such as Aldrich, Hanson, et.al) have been more of a nature to be embarrassing to the gummint than to the actual national security interest, and overall the beneficial effects of such probably outweigh any detrimental effects. Courts can and should start to hold the gummint to account for their misdeeds; without such accountablility, the misdeeds will only flourish to all our detriment. The courts should reverse Reynolds and hold that "state secrets" are no bar to litigation in cases of (alleged) gummint misconduct. If procedures are not presently sufficient to protect actual secrets, they should be modified as need be (perhaps even allowing special [but still Article III] courts) to try such cases.
If the courts won't do it, we need to get Congress to do so. The strength and vitality of our democray require it.
Cheers,
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Why would they want to disinvite Coulter?
[Read the article: Fallout from the Coulter speech]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She's the life of the party, the red meat. She was killing 'em with her schtick. That's the kind of thing the audience wants to hear, not some namby-pamby politicians....
Cheers,