Letters to the Editor
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Correction re Silvestre Reyes's brother & Jose Rodriguez
It's still apparent that Silvestre Reyes has been overly chummy with Jose Rodriguez in the past, but perhaps not as chummy as previously alleged:
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001879
Where is Jose Rodriguez? [CORRECTION]
by Ken Silverstein[...] A Reyes staffer has told me that the story “is absolute fiction” and that Rodriguez has never had any discussions about doing business with any member of Reyes’s family. “There’s absolutely no truth to” the story, the staffer said. He said Reyes planned a “rigorous inquiry” into the destruction of the videotapes and that, “We are going to follow the facts wherever they may lead.”
I have retraced my steps in reporting the story and it’s clear that what I wrote was wrong. The responsibility is mine alone. I regret the error and apologize for it. [...]
- - Ken Silverstein
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shooter242
You are read with earmuffs on.....
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@Dad?
Yes, Dodd's father did historic work in the Nuremberg trials and (I've lived in Connecticut for a while but am from Massachusetts) I think is regarded with some reverence by people who remember him. There was a local story a while back about how Chris Dodd was trying to live up to his father's reputation.
So, is what he did last week grandstanding?
Reid is predicting that Dodd's presidential campaign will collapse next month, so there will be no need for Dodd to continue to be a pest on the telecom amnesty issue.
What would Freud have to say about this, considering the "search for the father" that every man is susceptible to.
Whether such a motive makes for good policy is anybody's guess.
The story on John McCain has to do with an allegation that he did "favors for a lobbyist." McCain is trying to stop the Times from running the story, arguing that the allegation is false.
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Colini Makes A Very Important Point
Reid is not doing this in order to bow to or in any way enable Bush. I have no doubt Harry would happily help kick Bush to the curb if our corporate masters required it.
Like most elected Democrats and all elected Republicans, Harry is a devotee of our official, though unstated, American State Religion -- Corporatism. Notwithstanding the political pandering to "Christians," American is, in fact, a Corporatist Nation. From birth, we're all well trained to worship large piles of cash and the people who control them. When some of us refuse to worship at the altars of corporatism and have the nerve to publicly state that even the High Priests of Corporatism should be subject to the rule of law, we will always be seen as either engaged in a self-serving cynical ploy or insane.
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Before I go...Dirigo?
But what will Aycharych write about? drugs.
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Telling Your Client What He or She Wants to Hear (and other Thoughts on Telcom Immunity)
Often during a lawyer-client relationship the client asks whether a certain desirable course of action is "ok." It is the role of the attorney to counsel the client regarding a) whether the proposed course of action is legal, b) whether it could be legal with some tweaking, or c) that it is clearly illegal, and cannot be modified to make it legal, and the client should abandon the course.
Of these three, dealing with (c) is hardest; you are invariably going to disappoint your client and run the risk that the client will leave and find another attorney who is willing to tell them what they want to hear. A good attorney must be able tell a client when a course is unwise, inadvisable, or illegal. The attorney willing to deliver these unwanted news is truly her client’s keeper.
Others measure the worth of an attorney by the creativity, resourcefulness, and lengths to which that attorney is willing to go to defend the client’s chosen course. These attorneys are often rewarded with the client’s continued patronage, leaving the real attorney with no client and the solace of an "I told you so" somewhere down the road.
Bush enablers such as Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, and John Yoo fall squarely into this second category. Using the power of their offices and gossamer-thin legal justifications, these attorneys made the administration’s many abuses possible by providing the administration’s law-breaking with the gloss of apparent legality. Examples are legion, and include such gems as the dismissal of the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," the opinion that waterboarding is not torture (the newly-slippery term "torture"), the invention of terms such as "detainee" to avoid "prisoners of war", the Vice President’s argument that he is not part of the Executive Branch, and that the AUMF "justified" the terrorist surveillance program.
The entire eavesdropping fiasco could have been avoided if attorneys had done their job. When asked "Can we waterboard people?" or "Can we ignore the Geneva Conventions (and Habeas Corpus, the 6th Amendment, etc.) for prisoners at Guantanamo?" or "Can we eavesdrop on Americans without a court order, warrant, or approval of the FISA court?" the answer should have been an unequivocal "No."
It was not. The administration’s lawyers knew that what the administration proposed in terms of capturing communications without a court order or warrant violated both FISA and the Constitution. The telco lawyers also took the path of least resistance. Having heped draft FISA, the telcos cannot argue that they did not understand the law and its requirements. They chose to disregard the law, designed precisely to prevent and circumscribe government overreaching, and instead accepted the Administration’s unexamined say-so that it was perfectly legal to hand over their customer’s communications. Qwest’s attorneys deserve a round of applause for not caving into the government’s demands, standing up for its customers'rights, and being able to read a statute.
To find out what happened here, look no further than the Administration and telco legislation, currently masquerading as the Senate Intelligence Committee bill. That document, continuing in the fine tradition of nomenclature that gave us the "Patriot Act" (which undermined the rights our founding Patriots fought to secure) describes the wholesale turning over to the government of your phone records, emails, and other communications as "assistance." Sec. 201.(1). The law then uses inoffensive phrases such as "communication service provider [that] provided assistance . . . to the intelligence community." rather than the more accurate "communication service provider that handed over to the government your private communications without a warrant or court order and on the government’s unchallenged say-so. "Trust us." Section 201 (3)(A).
Discover what the law excuses, and you'll know what the government did. The law creates immunity for companies that turned over communications of U.S. citizens when "authorized by the President." Therefore, the President - head of the entity that FISA was designed to protect us from - "authorized" the holders of the information to ignore FISA, and disclose the information pursuant to some indubitably wispy legal opinion contradicted by the law.
The telcos knew what they were doing was wrong, and the administration knew what it was doing was wrong. They would not want immunity so badly if either believed otherwise. The positions were legally indefensible. They broke the rules and got caught. Retroactive immunity is obstruction of justice, a ham-handed attempt to absolve those involved of consequences for their law-breaking, and a last-ditch attempt to ensure that the scope of it never comes to light.
Finally, in the Dashed Hopes department, there is Mr. Mukasey. After being confirmed by our Senate with a mission to undo the politicization and restore independence to the DOJ, it seems odd that he would make the statements he made this week. In defending the administration’s push for retroactive immunity, Mukasey trotted out the Administration and telco talking points for why there should be no consequences for the wholesale violation of the law and our rights.
There is something profoundly depressing about a public official who is charged with enforcing the laws of the country advocating retroactive immunity to excuse and absolve violations of the laws of the country, deny litigants a day in court, and participate in a cover-up of government misconduct. Some of his statements missed the point so badly that it appears Mr. Mukasey can in fact fill the big clown shoes that Gonzales left behind.
These include the quip that we should be thanking the telcos for turning over our communications, rather than complaining about the violation of our rights: "[T]he companies deserve our gratitute, not ligitation."
We cannot allow telco immunity to pass. Refusing to whitewash the lawbreaking is our first step out of this up-is-down universe where the target of a law can "authorize" its violation, then pardon the violation, conceal the extent of the violation, with the Chief Law Enforcement Officer as Chief Cheerleader for not enforcing the law.