Letters to the Editor
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Updates on the Justice Department investigation of the destroyed tapes
Glenn says in his updates that "the fact that Mukasey appears to retain control certainly ought to undermine public confidence in this investigation." Let the whole blog say Amen!
As an aspiring member of the public, I say here and now that I have no confidence whatever in this investigation. Any member of the Bush administration deserves to be judged, presumptively at least, by the principle of guilt by association. How could Mukasey have gotten his job if he did not understand and agree that his principal task is to protect Bush and the other top members of the regime? Remember, Bush has set everything topsy-turvy. So the Justice Depart is there to seek injustice, not justice. And so on. So I look for Mukasey to do everything necessary to keep Bush from being indicted for the crime, the crimes, he is so obviously guilty of.
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Wow...
After refighting the Civil War and another pie fight I can't remember, now it's on to the 9/11 "did they do it" "they let it happen" "WTC7" food fight.
Good times.
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@ Kitt and Zack
Yes, this is starting to look to me like another attempt at a whitewash. This process will require a lot of scrutiny, but as suggested, it is likely that cries of "national security" will be used in an attempt to shut the whole process down.
And yes, as for "no underlying crime" keep in mind Mukasey's waffling on the question of waterboarding. If it is not a crime, how can any of the rest of this be a crime? In fact, the one I'm done with was claiming this morning that destruction of the tapes was patriotic. We clearly still have a long, long way to go.
As I said at the beginning of the day, we need a new Special Prosecutor law and we need it now. Mukasey is hopelessly compromised on this entire issue. If he doesn't recuse himself by the end of the week, we will know for sure that the fix is in.
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Aych
When you feel you are right about something, do you not defend your point of view?
-- Aycharaych
Don't use shooter for an example. I haven't replied to you about anything since you flippantly and carelessly called me a liar, and you then failed (and continue in that failure) to apologize when you discovered that you had been wrong.
You see, yes, I defend my point of view, but I also feel it is only right to make amends when I've been shown without a doubt that I was wrong. Especially in the case of a personal insult to someone. I've even apologized to shooter because I was wrong about something I replied to him about.
Plus I don't push my POV on whatever my favorite subject is every damn day no matter what the subject of the day or thread is about. It's kind of like 'waiting your turn' or 'common courtesy'.
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@WT
All this was very serious stuff around the beginning of the 20th century. Planck thought he had ruined physics. Brouwer believed that the marriage of logic and mathematics was the worst thing that ever happened to mathematics. Einstein made his famous comment about the dice. Poincare warned that simple theories had complex consequences.
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@Shooter 242 - re: habeas corpus
Habeas Corpus may not be "settled," as the lawyers say, when one looks at the Jose Padilla case.
Padilla is supposed to be sentenced this month on a federal conviction of aiding terrorists. Some legal analysts are saying the Padilla case is a slam dunk for Supreme Court review, probably because of questions about how habeas was handled.
I'm just not sanguine about the status of habeas corpus when I look at Padilla. And I ain't a lawyer, Shooter. I'm like you - just another Mr. J.Q. Public.
Habeas hasn't been "destroyed," as some here today have claimed, but it sure has been bruised up some.
All through the Padilla case, the government's position has been that the president's "military moves," including calling any American citizen, like Padilla - like you or me - an "enemy combatant," are not subject to judicial review.
As far as I know, regardless of the rulings on habeas during Padilla, that's still the government's position. The president can label anyone, citizen or no, an "enemy combatant," and then try to deny that person the right to petition for a habeas corpus review of charges in open court.
I asked Mr. G. about habeas some days ago, in part because I heard Sen. Specter talking during a judiciary committee hearing about negotiations on its status on a statutory level, meaning how Congress regards it. Specter also seemed to suggest there were some pending constitutional questions about habeas, perhaps an allusion to that possible Supreme Court review of Padilla.
Glenn sugested there have been talks about habeas in Congress with Padilla in mind. Well that's good.
Still, I just find it irksome that the government sought to deny Padilla the right to habeas corpus in the first place.
What were they thinking? Y'know?
And under those circumstances, it seems to me today that none of us can be happy campers about the status of this basic legal right.
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Kitt
Don't use shooter for an example. I haven't replied to you about anything since you flippantly and carelessly called me a liar, and you then failed (and continue in that failure) to apologize when you discovered that you had been wrong.
I posted the contents of every link you provided on this board for all to see. None of them were an answer to my question and indeed most of them were vituperative and redundant rants.
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Aycharaych
I'm going to give you one more shot at honesty. After that, because I don't want to take space boring the crap out of everyone, and because I will deem you as hopelessly dishonest, I'll go back to ignoring you.
You childishly chased me around asking me to reply even though I had already replied more than once, but you didn't know it. What I wrote in the reply is completely irrelevant to whether or not I replied to your childish taunts. It only matters that I did reply.
I reminded you a number of times that I had already replied. You didn't see the reply or the reminders. When I, again, informed you of those replies were on the board already, and you finally read that one, you called me a liar by saying that if I had replied then I would have posted the links to the replies.
To make a way f'ing too long story shorter, you never apologized for having called me a liar. And now, you are lying about having called me a liar. That, Aych, is what puts you in the soup.
Now is your one and your only chance to come clean and possibly gain back some integrity. Sometimes that entails swallowing some crow. If I did it in regards to Shooter, which I did, then, well, there it is.