This is a real bummer of a day for those of us who really, really wanted to see Dawn Johnsen's nomination confirmed. It's even more of a bummer to realize it was probably Ben Nelson who scuttled it months ago, before Scott Brown was elected and after Al Franken was sworn in. From the Huffington Post:

But the votes, apparently, weren't there. Johnsen had the support of Sen Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) but was regarded skeptically by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) -- primarily for her positions on torture and the investigation of previous administration actions. A filibuster, in the end, was likely sustainable. Faced with this calculus, the White House chose not to appoint Johnsen during Senate recess, which would have circumvented a likely filibuster but would have kept her in the position for less than two years.

I have my doubts about Lugar, to be honest. The Republicans are too dogged in their determination to undermine this administration at every turn to let any of their ranks fall away. And Nelson once again demonstrates his undying loyalty to Republican principles with his "skepticism".

Dawn Johnsen is hardly a six-headed monster. She's a highly regarded lawyer with experience in the OLC's office. She has expertise in the legal questions surrounding executive power and yes, she's known for her views on abortion.

Frankly, I'm getting pretty sick and tired of the Republicans and Ben Nelson using abortion as an excuse for every obstructionist tactic they can throw against a wall. This Congress has done more to undermine women's reproductive rights on spin alone than any other I can recall in recent history.

It would be good for Democrats in particular to remember they ran on a platform that honored a woman's right to choose and make her own reproductive decisions. It's truly time to quit making us the sacrificial lamb for political pokey points.

You remember Ken Blackwell, don’t you? He’s the guy who in 2004 served simultaneously as Ohio Secretary of State and co-chair of the Committee to Re-Elect George W. Bush. He used, and abused, his office to help the Bush campaign – including rejecting voter registration forms that weren’t on 80-pound paper stock.

Anyway, he must have been prepping for CPAC when he wrote his latest op-ed on FoxNews.com. Here’s what he said about the Obama administration:

What we are witnessing right now is an anti-Christian programmatic pogrom. What is a “pogrom” it’s the word that describes anti-Jewish raids by Cossacks and others in czarist Russia, but a programmatic pogrom best describes what is happening right now. These are not isolated attacks. And while we no longer have Cossacks to threaten, we now have left-wing bloggers who actually call themselves Kossacks (after the Daily Kos).

A “pogrom,” let’s recall, is “an organized massacre of helpless people; specifically: such a massacre of Jews.” And Blackwell, who most recently served as the vice chair of the RNC Platform Committee, contends that President Obama’s nominees would be leaders of this “pogrom” if confirmed.

He said this about Dawn Johnsen, who was nominated a year ago to lead the Office of Legal Counsel: “If she is confirmed, we will see a radical anti-Catholic, pro-abortion zealot influencing policy throughout the Justice Department—but also policy throughout the entire federal government.”

Johnsen, as it happens, is Christian and teaches Sunday School. She has prominent Republican supporters and a sterling record of commitment to the rule of law. But Blackwell thinks her confirmation is on par with the mass slaughter of Jews.

But he didn’t stop there. He also singled out Chai Feldblum, Obama’s pick to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying that “if confirmed, she would be in position to pursue the pogrom nationwide.” As Ben Smith pointed out, Feldblum is a “Jewish law professor and disability rights scholar… whose father survived the Holocaust in the forests of Poland after losing most of his family.”

Feldblum is also a widely acclaimed academic and vigorous advocate for religious freedom. But that doesn’t matter to Blackwell, who isn’t really big on rational argument. As Rabbi David Saperstein wrote today, “Blackwell’s use of rhetoric invoking the pogroms, the widespread destruction of countless Jewish lives in Eastern Europe, is aimed at quashing reasoned political discourse,” and it “desecrates the memory of those who died in the pogroms.”

One thing is clear, Blackwell isn't trying to convince people – he’s trying to incite them. So will the RNC and Republican leaders denounce the remarks or just pretend not to notice? I think we all know the answer.

The Brad Blog: American Law Institute, the 'only intellectually respectable support' for capital punishment in the U.S., abandons support for it

The Hunting of the Snark: Let's clear out the deadwood

Capital Eye: Stakeholders in the health insurance debate gave big to congress critters

Pruning Shears: The OLC does not have a head. Does it need a body?

Democracy Now!: Why is the whistleblower who exposed the massive UBS tax evasion scheme the only one heading to prison?

VetVoice: Bob Barr to Republicans: STFU

In a big "FU" to the Republican obstructionists in Congress, Barack Obama has re-submitted Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel, after the GOP blocked her nomination late last year.

It should be noted that Johnsen has had glowing recommendations from both sides of the aisle for her legal acumen, but because she did work for a pro-choice group two decades ago, she was deemed "too liberal" to be acceptable for a Congressional vote:

The renomination of Johnsen-the Obama nominee who has waited the longest for a vote-is especially noteworthy. Currently a professor at Indiana University School of Law, Johnsen is extraordinarily well-qualified to head the Office of Legal Counsel. She served for more than five years in that office during the Clinton administration, including as its acting head for more than a year. She has the bipartisan support of both her home state senators and from former heads of OLC from both political parties. Senior officials from every administration since Gerald Ford's have endorsed her nomination.

"President Obama made an excellent choice in Professor Johnsen to lead OLC, and today he's shown his willingness to stand on principle and call the Republicans on their attack and delay tactics," said Marge Baker, Executive Vice President of People For the American Way. "President Obama's statement today is a refutation of the GOP's efforts to spin this eminently qualified nominee as a controversial choice, and he should be applauded. Professor Johnsen's legal scholarship, her integrity, her substantive knowledge, and her commitment to this nation's security and to the rule of law will serve this country well once she's confirmed."

To be fair, this is not strictly a GOP issue:

At least two Democrats — Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — have also said they oppose her, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, did not give her a floor vote.

It's patently absurd that someone as eminently qualified as Johnsen should not get even the respect of being given a vote. John Yoo--the poster child for the phrase "the banality of evil"--has no problem with his nomination to the OLC, but Johnsen does?

In addition to Johnsen, Obama has re-submitted the nominations of five others whose original nominations were effectively killed by GOP obstructionism:

Mr. Obama will also renominate Christopher Schroeder to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy and Mary Smith to lead its tax division; Craig Becker to be a National Labor Relations Board member; and Louis Butler Jr. and Edward Chen to be district court judges, the official said.

Will any media member ask Dick Cheney why HE never released any memos when he was in power? is that too much to ask. He's playing games right now and trying to suck the media and the American people in.

Dick Cheney was having a grand old time defending torture, saying that he wasn't in the torture business, but hey, we waterboarded a few people because his buddies at the OLC helped him out. He was spinning his web and telling us that the OLC and the Bush administration acted within the law when they starting waterboarding prisoners on Face the Nation. He denies that they ever used torture. Cheney also said George Bush knew and approved everything they did. I guess when he said we didn't use torture his was misleading America.

He also used the GOP talking point that we used the same techniques on our own troops in the SERE program so it ain't torture. His daughter (Liz Cheney) learned a lot from him because she used the same defense to Norah O'Donnell which didn't even pass her smell test.

He absolutely wouldn't change a thing and still wants more memos released. When will journalists ask Cheney why he didn't released these documents when he was in power? Bush was taking a tremendous amount of heat over the torture issue at the time.

Schieffer was asking him if he would allow himself to be questioned about these topics and go "under oath." Cheney dodged the question by saying he'd have to look into it legally and see what precedent he would set , but he's talking now. He WILL NEVER go under oath.

SCHIEFFER: Senator Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was on this broadcast recently. And I said, do you intend to ask the former vice president to come up? And he said if he will testify under oath. Would you be willing to testify under oath?

CHENEY: I'd have to see what the circumstances are and what kind of precedent we were setting. But certainly I wouldn't be out here today if I didn't feel comfortable talking about what we're doing publicly. I think it's very, very important that we have a clear understanding that what happened here was an honorable approach to defending the nation, that there was nothing devious or deceitful or dishonest or illegal about what was done.

He's just trying to justify torture and he's using TV to promote his views. Let's see if he'll go on with Lawrence O'Donnell and face some real questions. If Cheney will never appear with another guest or interviewer that uses facts to question him with, what makes you think he'll go in front of Leahy?

CBS has the full transcript and you can read more below the fold:

Continue reading »

On MSNBC today, Norah O'Donnell got into a heated debate with Liz Cheney over the torture memos and what role her father had in pushing torture through. The two started shouting down one another, but Norah wouldn't back down from the bullying tactics Republicans for the most part successfully use on cable shows. Norah brings up the timeline and points out that it was her father who signed on to it earlier than most and wonders if he pushed the OLC to approve these measure. Liz Cheney tries to use the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape as a justification that "enhanced methods" aren't really torture because our troops were trained in this manner and it's denigrating to them to say otherwise. Huh? Now, we're against the troops again? She also uses the yet-to-be-substantiated Republican Talking Point that we got a lot of useful intel from torturing. E-mailer Margaret writes in:

In the first place, how does Liz Cheney know we got valuable information? Did she have the same clearance as the Pres and the VP? Beyond that, her rationale for torture, not being torture, because what we do to our own service people isn't torture, is making my head

L. CHENEY: (W)hat you're doing is reading headlines and talking about direction of lawyers, which is a very different thing. And there's no assertion that that's what went on. The lawyers' opinions were sought in order to make sure that the program that the CIA ran stayed within the law. And the lawyers did a very responsible and professional job of laying out exactly what were the limits of how far we could go. And that is precisely what makes it so damaging that these memos have now been released. O'DONNELL: Listen to yourself – listen to yourself, Liz, "how far we could go." L. CHENEY: That's right. O'DONNELL: How far could we go with detainees? I mean, how far could we... Torture them in order to get information? L. CHENEY: How far – no. For how many minutes you could ask them certain kind of questions. How many... (CROSSTALK) L. CHENEY: I'm sorry, it's very, very important point. O'DONNELL: It's a very important point. L. CHENEY: It is a very important point. O'DONNELL: The Geneva Convention were established... L. CHENEY: Norah, there is nothing... O'DONNELL: ... to protect our men and women in the military. So that America would be a beacon in the world so when our men and women are captured overseas that they would not be tortured. We would never want our people to... L. CHENEY: Norah, are you going to give me a chance to answer your question? O'DONNELL: Let me finish my point. L. CHENEY: I get your point, Norah, but the point is – no, Norah, wait a second... (CROSSTALK) O'DONNELL: ... America no longer cares about torture? L. CHENEY: That's not what the world is hearing, Norah. First of all... (CROSSTALK) O'DONNELL: .. and if gets valuable information, then OK, we're for it. Is that the message they send? L. CHENEY: Norah, that may be what you're saying, but that's not what I'm saying. O'DONNELL: OK. L. CHENEY: What I'm saying that is there were a series of tactics, a series of techniques that had all been done to our own people. We did not torture our own people, these techniques are not torture. The memos laid out... O'DONNELL: Did we torture other people? L. CHENEY: No. O'DONNELL: You just said, we did not torture our own people. L. CHENEY: Therefore, the tactics are not torture. We did not torture. The memos laid out the extent of exactly how far we could go before it would become torture, because it was important we not cross that line into torture.

Cheney just wanted to be like Pol Pot, I guess:

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding. The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

And as Digby writes:

It shouldn't have taken any warnings. You don't have to be an expert to know that there is a huge difference between having your own people train you to withstand these techniques and using them on prisoners. And you don't have to be a historian to figure out that malevolent torture techniques have been considered poisonous and evil by civilized people for quite some time now. (That nobody even bothered to find out where these techniques came from is just another example of the "Brownification" of the US Government under the idiot Republicans.) It was bloodlust, plain and simple. They gave themselves permission to become barbarians. That we now have even more proof they consciously sent these SERE techniques to Iraq to "Gitmoize" it --- a country which we invaded under false pretenses and which had not attacked us first --- takes these crimes to yet another level. If nothing else, allowing a bunch of low level grunts to pay the price while the men and women who gave the orders publicly pretended they were appalled at the behavior they themselves had sanctioned, makes all arguments that these leaders shouldn't be held accountable completely untenable.

Marcy gives the shorter Liz Cheney: "I'm proud my daddy is the prime mover of torture." Full transcript below the fold:

Continue reading »

During our most excellent Live chat with the ACLU's Chris Anders, he revealed this very disturbing fact while answering your questions.

On holdover appointees from the Bush days, here is one that ought to get everyone on the phone to their member of Congress and the White House right now ---

Did you know that Panetta has kept John Rizzo as Acting CIA General Counsel? If you look at the newly released Justice Department memos, they were all addressed to John Rizzo. Truly unbelievable that he is still in charge of legal advice at the CIA.

What shocking news.

Here's the ACLU website with some documents addressed to John Rizzo.

A 18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF] A 46-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF] A 20-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF] A 40-page memo, dated May 30, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]

As far as I'm concerned, anyone involved in memos penned by Jay ByBee and Steven Bradbury should not be working for the Obama administration.

I googled Rizzo's name and found this post from Marcy:

This suggests it's likely that Rizzo knew that CIA was intending to do one thing with waterboarding but tempering the description of that in the OLC memo. Also, I outlined ways in which it appears the information Rizzo provided to OLC was, at a minimum, under dispute when it was given. In other words, Rizzo may well be the key person who manipulated the OLC process to legalize torture.

As I've written many times, the OLC was compromised by the Bush administration.

The OLC, which is a component of the Justice Department, was created to provide objective legal advice to the Attorney General and to resolve legal disputes among federal agencies. During the Bush administration, however, the OLC became a facilitator for illegal government conduct, issuing dozens of memos meant to permit gross violations of domestic and international law. Some of these memos have become public through leaks to the media and through the ACLU's litigation under the Freedom of Information Act. But most of them are still secret.

David "I can't talk about torture because al-Qaeda may be watching

Addington was the puppet master of the OLC. It's not surprising that in 2007, the Bush administration withdrew his name.

The White House on Tuesday withdrew the nomination of John A. Rizzo to become the Central Intelligence Agency’s top lawyer amid mounting opposition from Democrats over his role in the harsh interrogation of C.I.A. detainees. The nomination of the 32-year agency veteran to become general counsel is the most prominent casualty of the partisan fight over the spy agency’s program of detaining and questioning top terrorism suspects since the Sept. 11 attacks.

--

Mr. Rizzo has been the C.I.A’s acting general counsel on and off for most of the past six years, including the period in 2002 when the Bush administration was constructing a legal foundation for the agency’s then-secret detention and interrogation program.

At a Senate hearing in June, Democrats pressed Mr. Rizzo about whether he agreed with a 2002 Justice Department memorandum that gave legal guidance to the C.I.A. program. The memorandum argued that nothing short of the pain associated with organ failure constituted illegal torture.

The memorandum was issued in response to a request from the agency to authorize a slate of interrogation techniques to be used in secret jails abroad. Among the techniques was one known as waterboarding, a method that induced a feeling of drowning. Mr. Rizzo said in June that he raised no objections at the time to the Justice Department opinion but said that he now believed it was “overbroad for the issue that it was intended to cover.”

He's still the "acting counsel" because Stephen Preston has not been confirmed yet. There needs to be some heavy scrutiny on Rizzo and fast.

I know that this is a few days old, but still deserves to be seen again. Rachel Maddow reports on Judge Bybee's CIA memo that involves torturing a prisoner with insects. It's 1984 all over again. This is sick and it shows how disturbed Dick Cheney and his henchmen at the OLC were and still are. And this man is one step away from the Supreme Court, where he'd have a nice relationship with Scalia, I'm sure. He needs to be impeached. Pat Leahy says that Bybee should just resign.

If that's the case, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), told reporters Tuesday, then Bybee should resign. "The 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," said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The decent and honorable thing for him to do would be to resign. And if he is a decent and honorable person, he will resign," he said deliberately.

County Fair has a long list of conservative reactions to the release of the torture memos. It's one big laugh-O-thon.

Numerous conservative media figures have downplayed, mocked, and jeered the notion that the use on detainees of harsh interrogation techniques authorized by the recently released Justice Department memos constitutes torture. Listed below are further examples of conservative media personalities making light of the idea that such practices constitute torture:

• During the April 16 edition of CNN's No Bias, No Bull, convicted Watergate criminal G. Gordon Liddy compared the proposed technique of placing a detainee who "appears to have a fear of insects" in "a cramped confinement box with an insect" to his appearance on a game show, stating, "I went through worse on Fear Factor."

Continue reading »

I've joined up with the Courage Campaign to begin an action that will result in the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee. He is not fit to hold this position. The OLC is not supposed to rubber stamp any administration's causes.

The OLC drafts legal opinions of the Attorney General and also provides its own written opinions and oral advice in response to requests from the Counsel to the President, the various agencies of the executive branch, and offices within the Department of Justice. Such requests typically deal with legal issues of particular complexity and importance or about which two or more agencies are in disagreement. The Office also is responsible for providing legal advice to the executive branch on all constitutional questions and reviewing pending legislation for constitutionality. The decisions of the Office are binding on all executive agencies.

How could he possibly justify torture and then sit on the 9th circuit?

Join the grassroots movement to impeach Judge Jay Bybee by signing your name to the resolution before Friday's California Democratic Party convention.

When President Barack Obama released the contents of President Bush's torture memos, America learned the full extent of the horror that was unleashed at Guanatanamo Bay on detainees. One of the memos was written by Jay Bybee in August 2002. It authorized the use of waterboarding, "cramped confinement", "walling" -- where a detainee's head is repeatedly pushed against a wall -- and even putting insects into a confined space with a detainee.

Jay Bybee is now a federal judge here in California, serving on the important Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. He has not been held accountable for the lawbreaking he committed and enabled.

The California grassroots are determined to change that. Los Angeles Democratic activists John Heaner, Agi Kessler and Richard Mathews have sponsored a resolution calling on the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Jay Bybee.

Please join the L.A. County Democratic Party, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, and the Crooks and Liars blog by signing your name in support of this resolution. DEADLINE: Friday 9 AM:...read on

As the ACLU pointed out on C&L this weekend:

In an 18-page memo (PDF) dated August 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General to the Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee, analyzes specific techniques – facial holds and slaps, placing detainees in confinement boxes (including placing one detainee in a box with an insect after he conveyed having a fear of insects), prolonged sleep deprivation, and waterboarding – and concludes that these methods, administered individually and in combination, do not constitute severe physical or mental pain and suffering.

Shockingly, Bybee also states that the presence of medical personnel at the time of interrogation implied that “those carrying out these procedures would not have the specific intent to inflict severe physical pain or suffering.” He concludes that the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture. This memo is considered one of the cornerstones of the torture program, and provides written authorizations to the CIA to use such harsh interrogation techniques.

If this man can make a ruling like that just to placate Cheney's thirst for torture---what can he do in the future? He must be removed.

Reading the planted story in the Washington Post to somehow try and draw a little sympathy for Judge Jay Bybee is practically an admission that he believes the memo he's credited with writing wasn't sound legal analysis at all, and in fact he does believe that the argument he used to try to absolve these interrogation techniques of their criminal nature was in reality a ruse. Either his "how-to guide" for CIA agents to avoid violating the Geneva Conventions was a lie or he never wrote it in the first place and just signed off to make it official. In the Washington Post piece, friends and anonymous sources are sprinkled in to try and make us like the judge. He's just a man who never wanted to work at the OLC anyway and he's full of regret.

"On the primary memo, that legitimated and defined torture, he just felt it got away from him," said the fellow scholar. "What I understand that to mean is, any lawyer, when he or she is writing about something very complicated, very layered, sometimes you can get it all out there and if you're not careful, you end up in a place you never intended to go. I think for someone like Jay, who's a formalist and a textualist, that's a particular danger."

Tuan Samahon, a former clerk who recalled Bybee's remarks at the reunion dinner, said in an e-mail that the judge defended the legal reasoning behind the memos but not the policy decision. Bybee was disappointed by what was done to prisoners, saying that "the spirit of liberty has left the republic," Samahon said

.

That is his alibi and I'm sure David Broder's eyes welled up with tears after he finished reading the piece. A man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, wait ... wait ... wait ... he was at the right place at the wrong time in history because what he really wanted was to be on the 9th Circuit Court and just took the gig at the OLC because Alberto had nothing for him. Well, his loyalty paid off because now he's a sitting judge with a lifetime appointment on the bench he longed for.

"The whole idea that the Constitution is based on a kind of wariness of mankind's tendency to grab power, that is an idea I got from Jay," McAffee said. "So the whole idea of uninhibited executive power, from him, does seem passing strange."

Continue reading »