The second coming of Shrub

Glenn Greenwald

I often avoid reading Glenn Greenwald because: 1) I read slowly and 2) he writes as if each word will give him an extra hour of life.

However, this is a must read. For example:

As has been voluminously documented here, one of the most notable aspects of the first year of the Obama presidency has been how many previously controversial Bush/Cheney policies in the terrorism and civil liberties realms have been embraced. Even Obama's most loyal defenders often acknowledge that, as Michael Tomasky recently put it, "the civil liberties area has been [Obama's] worst. This is the one area in which the president's actions don't remotely match the candidate's promises." From indefinite detention and renditions to denial of habeas rights, from military commissions and secrecy obsessions to state secrets abuses, many of the defining Bush/Cheney policies continue unabated under its successor administration.

Despite all that, there is substantial political pressure from all directions for Obama to reverse the very few decisions where he actually deviated from Bush/Cheney radicalism in these areas. In the wake of extreme political pressure, mostly from Democrats, the White House just forced Eric Holder to retreat on his decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City, and numerous Democrats now appear prepared to join with the GOP to cut-off funding for civilian trials altogether, forcing the administration to try all Terrorists in military commissions or just hold them indefinitely. The administration has created a warped multi-tiered justice system where only a select few even get civilian trials -- those whom they know in advance they can convict -- yet there are growing signs that the President will abandon even that symbolic, piecemeal nod to due process.

I never expected great things from Obama. Great things rarely happen in Washington D.C., but I did hold out hope he would undo the things Shrub did to fuck up the principals upon which the US was based.

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Note: Headline links to source.

Report: Hoover Had Plan for Mass Arrests

No comment, but (always a but), 1) this should surprise no one except for how long it took to discover and 2) suspension of habeas corpus doesn't appear to have been a problem inasmuch its happened.

Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, less than two weeks after the Korean War began. But there is no evidence to suggest that President Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of Hoover's proposal to house suspect Americans in military and federal prisons.

Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage," The New York Times reported Saturday in a story posted on its Web site.

The plan called for the FBI to apprehend all potentially dangerous individuals whose names were on a list Hoover had been compiling for years.

"The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States," Hoover wrote in the now-declassified document. "In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the writ of habeas corpus."

Habeas corpus is the right to seek relief from illegal detention, and is a bedrock legal principle.

A little known fact of history is half of those Hoover intended to incarcerate had seen him cross dressing or performing homosexual acts.

Via AP.

Must read IMHO

This is one to watch. Perhaps we can get the wheels back on this wagon.

Today the Petitioners in the Al Odah case submitted their brief to the Supreme Court. At issue in the case is whether detainees at Guantanamo Bay have constitutionally protected rights to habeas corpus and due process. In February, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the elimination of habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo detainees under the Military Commissions Act did not violate the Suspension Clause of the Constitution because that clause does not apply to aliens held outside of U.S. sovereign territory.

The Supreme Court originally refused to hear the case, but in a highly unusual move, it later reversed itself and granted cert. The case, which seems likely to produce a historically significant opinion one way or the other, is scheduled for oral argument in December.

via The Anonymous Liberal.