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Barack's Law: Kangaroo Courts With A Smiley Face
Newshoggers.com —
... puts it bluntly: "the principled position would be reject the notion of special justice for certain defendants and to rely on our legal system to mete out blind justice." And Glenn Greenwald, in another excellent long post, points to what is perhaps the gravest implication of Obama's decision to do all this by Executive Order: ...
Just Ridiculous
N/A —
“Pragmatism” of course is why Obama is now for the military tribunals he used to be against. Oy.
Obama Says He Will Keep Military Commissions
The Moderate Voice —
... Glenn Greenwald gets to the heart of the problem with the decision to keep the tribunals, even with increased protections added in (emphasis is Glenn’s): ...
Hullabaloo — ... In that reagrd, Obama has announced that he will reinstate the Military Commissions. The only reason to do that is because the US has have people in custody whom they can't prove guilty in either civilian court or a normal military court. But somebody, somewhere believes they are guilty anyway and so a separate justice system that will allow them to be "proven" guilty must be created. It's an interesting concept. I guess we'll just have to count on the good faith and good will of our leaders to always know who's "really" guilty. As a reader wrote into Jack Cafferty yesterday ...
The Obama Straddle
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
... . Greenwald is on the case. I'm much more sympathetic to Obama's compromise than Glenn. Once you remove torture, and allow for real legal defenses, and avoid hearsay, the worst of the Bush-Cheney system is eliminated. And it remains my belief that the conflict with al Qaeda is much more like war than criminal enforcement. Finding a way to provide some of the nimbleness and experdition of war-powers without the inhumane dimension of the Cheney era is not easy. But it strikes me that the president is making a thoughtful effort to get the balance right. ...
First Steps Taken to Implement Preventive Detention, Military Commissions
Commondreams.org Views —
... These claims are demonstrably false. While it's true that the Bush/Cheney military commissions were initiated with no Congressional authorization, the commissions were eventually authorized by Congress when it passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- with the opposition of most Democrats, including then-Sen. Obama. As I documented at length here , Democratic objections to Bush's military commissions -- including from key Obama officials -- were not dependent upon any specific procedures, but were opposed to the entire idea of military commissions themselves. If ...
David Danzig: Gitmo Trials: Being All They Can Be
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... , an attorney and journalist who writes for Salon, is right when he says, "what makes military commission so pernicious is that they signal that anytime the government wants to imprison people but can't obtain convictions under our normal system of justice, we'll just create a brand new system that diminishes due process just enough to ensure that the government wins. " ...
Detainees to Get 'The-State-Always-Wins' System of 'Justice'
Commondreams.org Views —
... has been high on the list of considered sites. So what we have here is not an announcement that all terrorism suspects are entitled to real trials in a real American court. Instead, what we have is a multi-tiered justice system, where only certain individuals are entitled to real trials: namely, those whom the Government is convinced ahead of time it can convict. Others for whom conviction is less certain will be accorded lesser due process: put in military commissions, to which most leading Democrats vehemently objected when created under Bush. Presumably, others still ...
11/13: A Question Of Justice
Blogometer —
... a military commission instead of a criminal court: "So what we have here is not an announcement that all terrorism suspects are entitled to real trials in a real American court. Instead, what we have is a multi-tiered justice system, where only certain individuals are entitled to real trials: namely, those whom the Government is convinced ahead of time it can convict. Others for whom conviction is less certain will be accorded lesser due process: put in military commissions, to which most leading Democrats vehemently objected when created under [George W.] Bush . [...] A ...
Situational Justice
The Moderate Voice —
... So what we have here is not an announcement that all terrorism suspects are entitled to real trials in a real American court. Instead, what we have is a multi-tiered justice system, where only certain individuals are entitled to real trials: namely, those whom the Government is convinced ahead of time it can convict. Others for whom conviction is less certain will be accorded lesser due process: put in military commissions, to which most leading Democrats vehemently objected when created under Bush. Presumably, others still — those who the Government believes cannot ...
The Administration Guts Its Own Argument for 9/11 Trials
Commondreams.org Views —
... even a limited number of Terrorism suspects to federal court is politically difficult and controversial, as the last couple of days have demonstrated. But by refusing to embrace and defend the core principle of justice at stake here -- that a distinguishing feature of our political system is that we don't imprison or kill people without charging them with a crime and proving their guilt in a real court, and that military commissions and indefinite detention are un-American (which Democrats argued under Bush ) -- the Obama administration has made it far more difficult for it ...
